Portable Set up for Zoom - Stake Meetings

[KeithCunningham]

Good Morning,

My Stake President has asked me to identify a kit \ system \ etc. that is portable, can be set up quickly, is not intrusive, but provides a high quaility zoom video and audio. It is easy enough to get a tripod with a phone \ devicde holder, and get zoom onto the selected device. The concern I'm having is the audio. While the selected device will have a microphone and related controls, from past experience the sound quality is usually sub par.

What have you experieneced? What have you done to help improve the sound quality from zoom broadcast from a phone or other device - not directly connected to the building sound system.

I'm interested in hearing what you've done to mitigate the audio quality issues you might have experienced using a set up like the above.

Thank you for your help and time. It is appreciated!

[robbism]

For cell phone broadcasts, I have found the Hollyland Lark M2 Wireless Lavalier microphone to be excellent ($119 for the combo version currently on Amazon). The very small microphone can be magnetially attached to the mic stand. It can also be used as a lavalier mic and has magnetic, clip and necklace option for puting it on the speaker. I find the clip is the most reliable. There is a receiver for USB-C connection to cell phone, a reciever for Lightning for lightning connection to cell phone, and a reciever for connecting either digitally or via analog to a computer or sound board. It has some light DSP filtering which works well. This keeps the set up simple and with good, strong audio. It is not bluetooth and has a range of over 1000ft unobstructed. You will likely want to disable the DSP in the Zoom app which is pretty strong. Experiement and you will find a good combination for the filters.

A good way for taping into the chapel sound is to use the Rode Wireless Me ($69 for the one transmitter version on ebay currently.) It will accept the chapel audio into the transmitter (you may need an attenuator since it is using a mic level input) and send it 1000ft unobstructed to the reciever which can be attached digitally to your cell phone, or via analog or digital to your computer or sound board. It is not as user friendly but it works well when set up correctly. It has some compression capability which is nice. This way you can have a separate system to control audio including choir and organ, and simply take the chapel audio into the transmission wherever you set up the cell phone or computer for the transmission.

[The_Earl]

We use the hearing assistance recievers to get pulpit audio at odd places in the buildings.

[brad_p]

No easy answer. Biggest problem is you need some way to keep mics far away from people. If it's too close to one person you mostly hear them cough, sneeze, sing....

For me, I ended up putting a Yeti mic on a pole high above our heads. If you have more than an 8 foot or 10 foot ceiling, that did the trick for me. (I was able to have a swing arm so I could attach to the camera pole and then have the mic go even higher.

Another option is to wirelessly transmit the audio and then put the mic in the dead center of the room. You'd also want a condensor mic and not a dynamic mic to pick up ambient noise. Then something to supply it phantom power...so now you're looking at a messy setup...a mic + phantom power suppler + wireless transmitter. I suppose you could build a nice looking box to put all these together. But due to the complexity, a mic on a pole worked better for me.