WHAT IS THE IDEAL LEVEL FOR A LAVALIER MIC?

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WHAT IS THE IDEAL LEVEL FOR A LAVALIER MIC?

Hi(Bonjour)!

I use a digital recorder with phantom 45v and a Shure Lavalier SM93 with his preamp.

I get level around -36 to -24dB. Once imported into FCP or Soundtrack I get the same values.

Despite those numbers, I see that my audio from video shooted material with auto gain set to ON on my cam are louder and I have to set my lavalier track to +12dB.

What is the ideal level for Lavalier interview?

Michel Boissonneault

PowerMac G5 dual 2.3, 4.5 Go, Apple Cinema display HD 23", FX-1, FCS 2, Mac OS X (10.4.11), Ati Radeon X1900GT G5 edition, and iMac G4, FCE HD 3.5, macuser since 1988

Posted on Jan 11, 2008 12:19 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 11, 2008 12:42 PM in response to Michel Boissonneault

The level for any microphone is ideal if it gives you sufficient dynamic range with transient peaking but no distortion.

The numbers are not really meaningful unless you have a rally good outboard mixer and an audio person. If you boost a mic too much, you get background noise that is hard to remove and you end up with not headroom for peaks. If it's too low, you end up boosting the signal too far and you introduce lots of noise.
bogiesan

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Answer 2

Jan 14, 2008 10:40 AM in response to Michel Boissonneault

The average level doesn't matter that much. What is important is that you set your level fairly loud but just make sure it's low enough that it never peaks (0 db, full scale).

If you're recording 16 bit, it's more crucial to keep levels higher, to avoid losing quality on quieter stuff. If you're recording 24 bit, you don't need to worry about setting it so high and can back off a bit.

As long as you're happy with the sound quality, it doesn't really matter if your signal level doesn't match other sources. Just turn up that track or normalize it. It won't make a difference on background noise either, it will either get turned up while recording, or turned up later when you're mixing.

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