# Question about microphones



## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

OK, so sorry if I sound ignorant, but I'm wondering about use of microphones. I know using microphones for amplification is taboo in opera and rightfully so, although sometimes singers will use them in an abnormally large area or in places with bad acoustics. And of course you will need a microphone of some sorts to record the voice.

So my question is when should I suspect foul play when it comes to microphones? How can I tell if it is there for amplification when it should not be?

I ask because I saw this video in my YouTube recommendations and felt uneasy about the microphone:






Is amplification scarily becoming standard with opera singers, or am I missing something here?


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

If you are going to record opera then you need microphones. The question is are the microphones picking up sounds that are then relayed elsewhere (e.g. a radio broadcast) or is the output via speakers in the auditorium? It's this last one that is taboo in opera.

N.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Try this link adriesba , it give you pictures but if you go one page back you find lots of information.

https://www.google.nl/search?q=decc...VGiqQKHUFlCsMQ_AUoAXoECAoQAw&biw=1600&bih=737


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Speaking of live performances only, you can assume that just about every venue uses microphones at some point except for the Met who only uses them when they do their HD performances or under some other exceptional circumstance.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

The Conte said:


> If you are going to record opera then you need microphones. The question is are the microphones picking up sounds that are then relayed elsewhere (e.g. a radio broadcast) or is the output via speakers in the auditorium? It's this last one that is taboo in opera.
> 
> N.


I don't see any speakers in the video. I knew that would be the taboo option, but sometimes you can't see any speakers because you can't see the whole auditorium. I don't think you can see the back of the auditorium in the video. Plus, who knows what's offstage. I'm just wondering if there is a less obvious way to tell if amplification is used.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

Rogerx said:


> Try this link adriesba , it give you pictures but if you go one page back you find lots of information.
> 
> https://www.google.nl/search?q=decc...VGiqQKHUFlCsMQ_AUoAXoECAoQAw&biw=1600&bih=737


At 2:55 in the video, I see something that somewhat resembles the apparatus in those pictures. Maybe they are using microphones to simply record. 

I don't see speakers. If they are there, they hid them well.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

It always bugs me when I am watching an opera on DVD and spot the little microphones hidden in the singers hair or elsewhere.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

SixFootScowl said:


> It always bugs me when I am watching an opera on DVD and spot the little microphones hidden in the singers hair or elsewhere.


Yeah. Don't you think they could record the singers' voices without putting microphones on them? :lol:


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

adriesba said:


> Yeah. Don't you think they could record the singers' voices without putting microphones on them? :lol:


The singers can also train (besides acting and sometimes ballet) to be ventriloquists. Then they can throw their voices to a microphone off stage. :lol:


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

SixFootScowl said:


> The singers can also train (besides acting and sometimes ballet) to be ventriloquists. Then they can throw their voices to a microphone off stage. :lol:


Lol. :lol: That's not exactly what I meant.
What I mean is that the microphones don't have to be so close that they are literally on the singers. If you look up videos of the recording sessions for the Solti _Ring _recording, there don't appear to be any microphones immediately close to the singers. You can check me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the microphone needs to be so close. Unless they just do things differently in certain cases considering that singers like Nilsson could project their voices better than most.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

adriesba said:


> At 2:55 in the video, I see something that somewhat resembles the apparatus in those pictures. Maybe they are using microphones to simply record.
> 
> I don't see speakers. If they are there, they hid them well.


That's what I was thinking when I saw your question. Recording technique, sorry.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

Rogerx said:


> That's what I was thinking when I saw your question. Recording technique, sorry.


Oh that's fine. I understood what you meant. 

It's just hard for me to know whether the microphone immediately next to the singer is for recording or amplification. I'm guessing it's for recording. But I'm not sure if they always use microphones that close to singers for recording. I wonder if whether the singer is behind the orchestra or in front of the orchestra makes a difference.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

adriesba said:


> Oh that's fine. I understood what you meant.
> 
> It's just hard for me to know whether the microphone immediately next to the singer is for recording or amplification. I'm guessing it's for recording. But I'm not sure if they always use microphones that close to singers for recording. I wonder if whether the singer is behind the orchestra or in front of the orchestra makes a difference.


As in a concert you mean if I understand you correctly, like the first post.
One comes to see the "star"not the orchestra, but for example Mahler 8 or they Verdi requiem they standing in the middle unless they are superstars.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Look at this: recording history .....

Puccini: Turandot

Joan Sutherland (Turandot), Luciano Pavarotti (Calaf), Montserrat Caballé (Liù), Nicolai Ghiaurov (Timur)

Recorded: 1972-08-10
Recording Venue: Kingsway Hall, London


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

I didn't realize there were pictures of those _Turandot _recording sessions. Cool. 

Anyway, you can see that the microphones are placed some distance from the singers, whereas in the video, she is fairly close to the microphones.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

Rogerx said:


> As in a concert you mean if I understand you correctly, like the first post.
> One comes to see the "star"not the orchestra, but for example Mahler 8 or they Verdi requiem they standing in the middle unless they are superstars.


I'm just wondering if where the singer is located has much of an affect on how the sound travels.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

If you pause the video at 1:56 you can see small white rectangles on either side of the stage. Are they speakers or decoration or something else?


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

adriesba said:


> If you pause the video at 1:56 you can see small white rectangles on either side of the stage. Are they speakers or decoration or something else?


The presence of speakers in a house doesn't really let you know for sure whether they're being used to actually send amplified sound into the hall. Every opera and symphony hall has speakers--for announcements to the audience, for instance, or for shows that are supposed to be amplified for whatever reason, for a special effect or otherwise.

To a great extent, it's a matter of faith. Here is a Times story from a few years ago about the mini-kerfuffle after a photo of Damrau wearing a body mic during a rehearsal of Traviata at the Met: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/arts/music/wearing-a-wire-at-the-opera-secretly-of-course.html. Peter Gelb affirms that there's no amplification into the hall but that they use body mics for some broadcasts and recordings for instances when the stage directions take singers away from the mics near the front of the stage that are the main mics used for recordings/broadcasts.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

howlingfantods said:


> The presence of speakers in a house doesn't really let you know for sure whether they're being used to actually send amplified sound into the hall. Every opera and symphony hall has speakers--for announcements to the audience, for instance, or for shows that are supposed to be amplified for whatever reason, for a special effect or otherwise.
> 
> To a great extent, it's a matter of faith. Here is a Times story from a few years ago about the mini-kerfuffle after a photo of Damrau wearing a body mic during a rehearsal of Traviata at the Met: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/arts/music/wearing-a-wire-at-the-opera-secretly-of-course.html. Peter Gelb affirms that there's no amplification into the hall but that they use body mics for some broadcasts and recordings for instances when the stage directions take singers away from the mics near the front of the stage that are the main mics used for recordings/broadcasts.


True, true...

I heard about that incident. That's why I was considering the possibility that the microphones were used for recording in the video I posted.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

adriesba said:


> Lol. :lol: That's not exactly what I meant.
> What I mean is that the microphones don't have to be so close that they are literally on the singers. If you look up videos of the recording sessions for the Solti _Ring _recording, there don't appear to be any microphones immediately close to the singers. You can check me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the microphone needs to be so close. Unless they just do things differently in certain cases considering that singers like Nilsson could project their voices better than most.


Yes, it does seem that the voice would pick up reasonably well from a distance of some feet, there could be microphones hidden in some of the staging or in the wings, overhead or wherever (not the floor unless we like creaks and stomps).


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## Tuoksu (Sep 3, 2015)

Most opera houses use what is called "subtle sound enhancement". I think it's not so subtle


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

Tuoksu said:


> Most opera houses use what is called "subtle sound enhancement". I think it's not so subtle


The person who uploaded that video seems to be saying in the comments section that Pavarotti used microphones in his performances. Now I know he used microphones in concerts, meaning, not actual staged opera, but did he use microphones for stage performances?


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

OK

As the M.D. of an operetta company, this is an issue.

We perform in a black box theatre, and the acoustics are awful. Because of space limitations, our little pit orchestra (5-7 players, me conducting and playing 1-3 keyboards, WW, Vln, Cb, and perc./2nd keyboard) is stage right. 

The orchestra is miked, with one mix pointed towards the performers so they can hear the orchestra properly, and another mix so the orchestra is balanced across the wide but shallow auditorium.

There are overhead mics above the stage, and that feed is piped over to the orchestra so we can hear the singers.

The singers are not amplified for the audience, that is, what they hear is the live singers. 

These is the express wishes of the Artistic Director, that the audience hears the singers without amplification. This creates a small problem that the audience in the back row (there are only five rows) has a difficult time hearing the lyrics, especially since our audiences tend to be older.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Some of the best opera recordings were from mikes out in the house where you hear how the voice expanded in the house. This is particularly noticeable with Nilsson, who's voice sounds very different when recorded this way.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Some of the best opera recordings were from mikes out in the house where you hear how the voice expanded in the house. This is particularly noticeable with Nilsson, who's voice sounds very different when recorded this way.


Yes! I always think it's best to record in that way, you end up with a far more natural sound. Of course the perfect balance achieved in the recording studio (although not always!) is desirable to create reference recordings where you can hear all the detail, however there's nothing like hearing the sound of a voice soar over an orchestra.

If an auditorium isn't designed for muscial works then I can understand why some miking may be necessary, but it shouldn't be needed in a traditional theatre built for opera.

N.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Some of the best opera recordings were from mikes out in the house where you hear how the voice expanded in the house. This is particularly noticeable with Nilsson, who's voice sounds very different when recorded this way.


Which of Nilsson's recordings were recorded that way?


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## Tuoksu (Sep 3, 2015)

I finally spotted one of those during the met HD broadcast of Traviata from 2017 (Yoncheva, fabiano, Hampson). Not that I needed to see them. In all modern recordings/live broadcasts that I've heard/seen, singers' breathing is louder than their singing and you can really tell they're closely mic'ed. The voices are dull, lack squillo and brilliance. 
More obviously though, is the fact that the volume and sound in general remain perfectly unchanged regardless of the singer's position across the vast stage and whether they're facing towards the audience or turning their back on them. Something you don't hear in older recordings. Amplification makes you sound louder, and sometimes even more "dramatic" if you fake a darker timbre, but you can't fake a genuinely large, projected and penetrating sound.

Regarding the question of whether these are used for in-house amplification, rather than just for recordings and live transmission, I honestly believe that if these singers still sound barely audible with that body microphone about 20cm away from their mouth and all the engineering involved in the making of these recordings, I doubt their sound can really carry un-enhanced in the largest opera theater in the world over a large orchestra.


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

Tuoksu said:


> I finally spotted one of those during the met HD broadcast of Traviata from 2017 (Yoncheva, fabiano, Hampson). Not that I needed to see them. In all modern recordings/live broadcasts that I've heard/seen, singers' breathing is louder than their singing and you can really tell they're closely mic'ed. The voices are dull, lack squillo and brilliance.
> More obviously though, is the fact that the volume and sound in general remain perfectly unchanged regardless of the singer's position across the vast stage and whether they're facing towards the audience or turning their back on them. Something you don't hear in older recordings. Amplification makes you sound louder, and sometimes even more "dramatic" if you fake a darker timbre, but you can't fake a genuinely large, projected and penetrating sound.
> 
> Regarding the question of whether these are used for in-house amplification, rather than just for recordings and live transmission, I honestly believe that if these singers still sound barely audible with that body microphone about 20cm away from their mouth and all the engineering involved in the making of these recordings, I doubt their sound can really carry un-enhanced in the largest opera theater in the world over a large orchestra.


I would think there would be a better way to record there voices other than placing microphones directly on them though, unless the singers are so bad that the microphones need to be that close. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


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## yongfentables (4 mo ago)

Thank you for sharing these amazing videos here with us. I think you should post more of these kinds of videos. Right now, I am thinking about starting my music-related youtube channel, and I'm planning to buy a good microphone. Can you suggest to me a solid model for streaming and audio recording? My friend suggested I buy ASMR microphones designed for high audio quality because they have a better sound and good sensitivity. I'm now considering ordering a microphone from the asmrmicrophones site if any of you bought from them. I will appreciate any opinion. Thank you for the reply in advance.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

yongfentables said:


> Thank you for sharing these amazing videos here with us. I think you should post more of these kinds of videos.



Very kind of you you can doe it yourself if you like, welcome to the site.


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