Mics for 8 piece voice group

BahHumbug

I have a friend who organises an 8 piece ladies vocal group.  You could call them a choir, although the material is not stereotypically choral, more folky and pop-y.
Anyway for their amplified performances to date they’ve used a selection of dynamic mics, but haven’t had enough of these for ‘one each’, so they are having to share.  From what I’ve seen of them, none of them are mad keen on cosying up enough with each other to get much out of the the mics.  The result is the sound man having to turn up the gain to the point of feedback.

So, the organiser is wondering about some sort of alternative approach to mic’ing them.  She’s got the idea of an omni-directional mic in mind, but I think that what she’s really imagining is ambient mic’ing, as opposed to close mic’ing.   She has asked me for advice, but it’s really not something that I have experience of.

Can anyone here offer any useful advice?

Ta

octatonic

Nope, keep it simple and let the performances carry the recording.

I'd stick a pair of U87's (or another LDC) or KM84 (or another SDC) about 3ft in front of the group to the singers and pan them to suit.
I wouldn't bother with omni unless you want to hear the aircon at the back of the room running- cardioid pattern is fine.

LDC vs SDC is up to personal taste but the room makes a huge difference, I often favour LDC's for detail but SDC's work great with the right group and most engineers I know tend to go for SDC's with choirs.

Play with the distance between the mics- you wan't to avoid cancellation or comb filtering, it depends on the room as to where that will be, but often I will put the mics 1.5x apart from the distance from one mic to the singers.
So if you have 3ft from the mic to the singers then put the mics 4.5ft apart from one another.
If they are loud then move the mic away.
If you have great pre's (I use Grace 501's) that are are linear rather than coloured then move the mics further back and capture more of the room.

With vocal choirs I always use a hardware limiter because they can clip the converter if running hot and then the performance is unsalvageable.

You wouldn't close mic a choir unless you had a lot of loud instruments happening in the room and wanted to avoid spill.

Alternative mics to consider- AKG 414's (XLII has more of a presence lift than the XLS, for choirs I prefer the XLS).
If you want a budget option then Rode NT2 works great with female vocals, or whatever the Rode SDC is these days (M5?).
If you want to go super fancy then a pair of ribbons (Coles 4038, Royer SF12's) give you a lot of clarity without the crunch- you will need great clean 'straight wire' type preamps to get the best out of them.

maltingsaudio

Personally prefer small condensers for this sort of job, with the main singers on their own mic. I would use my ADK SC1 or AT 450’s, however depending on where you can rig them a really good budget alternative is the red5 RV85 at £30 a pop https://www.red5audio.com/product/rv85-hanging-condenser-microphone/. 

BahHumbug

Wow, thanks @octatonic, for that extensive answer.  I was wondering about using a couple of large diaphragm condensers.  It sounds like your answer is a little bit from the recording point of view, whereas, my question was very much from the live performance angle.  I suspect similar principles apply though.
Many thanks again for your thoughts.

octatonic

Ah I missed that it was for live.
Same advice though.

ESBlonde

If you get to experiment you can use an identical pair of cardoid or supercardoid small diaphragm condenses. The setup is critical. Place the pair so that one diaphragm is above the other (touching), and at 90deg to the other so they form an X or crossed pair. Place this front and centre half the distance of the width of the group. Treat it as a single point mic but it has a stereo style pickup without being too strong on the middle/closest voice.
Quality mics make a difference of course, but I too have had great success with the red5 SDC mics in this application and on a grand piano where close micing is not required.
 If you absolutely have to have isolation from background noise then no more than 3 to a mic like an sm58 and have them get closer to the mic than the next, effectively have three groups of singers.

Stuckfast

You really DON'T want two mics to actually be touching -- any slight movement of the stand will cause very noticeable knocking sounds when they bang together. If you go for an X/Y pair keep them a cm or so apart.

I think it really depends on circumstances. If they want to be able to get it really loud through the PA then the only option really is for each singer to have a stage mic. If it's just a question of providing a little bit of reinforcement then a strategically placed pair of mics will do the job and sound a bit more natural. It's very important that the singers are disciplined and practised in how to work with the mics.

BahHumbug

Thanks again chaps, lots of really useful advice

ICBM

If they are going to use separate dynamic mics, make sure they are all the same type - that makes stopping feedback much easier, since different mics have different sensitivity peaks and feed back at different frequencies, and it makes it much harder to just notch out a particular one. If they're all the same type you're essentially only having to EQ one mic.