In short
Two weeks later you want one quote out of it – and nobody can make it out.
That is the normal outcome for panels. The reinforcement in the hall was fine, everyone understood everything. But the recording came off the desk as a finished mix: questions from the floor too quiet, one panellist too loud, everything glued onto a single track. What worked in the room does not work in the recording.
I record in parallel and separately – up to fourteen channels, every voice on its own track. The mixing happens afterwards, once you can hear what is actually needed.
01Why separate tracks
Every voice adjustable on its own
Up to fourteen channels at once, each on its own track. Someone who speaks quietly gets lifted. Someone who breathes into the microphone gets tamed. Neither works once the voices are summed – in a mix, every correction drags all the others with it. Eight channels run through the Steinberg UR824, six more through the Zoom F6 in 32-bit float. For a panel of four or five, one device is enough; both together once a lectern, floor microphones and room atmosphere are added.
Questions from the floor
The classic hole in a recording: the question is audible in the hall, but not on the file. Handheld radio microphones in the audience get their own tracks here. And where there are none, the moderator repeating the question is at least clean and intelligible on the recording.
32-bit float
When someone gets louder than anything the level check suggested, the moment is still recoverable. On panels that happens regularly – it gets lively, someone leans forward. What would clip on a conventional recording can be pulled back down here after the fact.
And the post to go with it
Cleanup, levels, speech intelligibility, loudness to EBU R128. You get a version you can put online without anyone riding the volume control. On request the individual tracks as well, in case there is editing still to come.
02The day itself
Beforehand
- How many people on the panel, how many microphones
- Whether there is a sound company – and a split from the desk
- Whether questions from the floor are planned
- Whether it is being filmed as well, and by whom
On site
- Set up before doors, a run-through where possible
- Own microphones, or a recording taken from a split at the desk
- I sit at the recording during the event, not beside it
Alongside others
Where an AV company handles reinforcement and technical setup, I work next to them and take the signal off their desk – that is the normal case and the smoothest one. I need no space of my own on stage and I do not tell anyone how to run their system.
03What about streaming?
I don’t do it – and I would rather say so up front.
A live broadcast is a trade of its own: encoder, redundancy, enough upstream bandwidth on site, and someone who does nothing for the whole event but watch the stream. Anyone doing that on the side does both badly.
Above all the consequence of failure is different. A recording that goes wrong can still be rescued in post. A stream that drops is broken in front of an audience.
If you need both, I bring in someone who can do it – and take care of the part that still exists afterwards.
04What you get
In the package
- Recording of up to fourteen channels, every voice on its own track
- Setup and attendance throughout the event
- Mixing and mastering to EBU R128
- Finished version as a file, plus the individual tracks on request
- Coordination with your sound company beforehand
Terms
Price on request, at standard industry rates: a day rate plus an equipment fee depending on scale. Hired-in gear and transport are passed on at cost. Full inventory list with quantities.
Radius Freiburg, Black Forest, Upper Rhine – Basel, Strasbourg and Stuttgart in the same day.
05Contact
Tell me who is on the panel.
I’ll tell you how many tracks
it takes.