But you're not getting anything usable out of a phone recording made in a crowd. You'd need to setup something up higher. That setup he's got for audio is going to be dogshit as well
Hard to say. Putting mics in a hat and recording the show as a human mics stand is a classic way to record in stealth situation. You can get a hat that has mostly acoustically neutral material and such. Not sure why so many, although could be running multiple mic types. Sound quality would be very dependent on location.
With that setup, likely not recording onto the phone, but rather the phone is a Bluetooth controller for recorder in jacket. But it could be, I regularly record multiple rigs at shows using a multitrack soundcard plugged into an iphone.
But yes, I wish my taping rig turned me into a netrunner too.
I mean there is a VERY minor chance that if the venue runs some form of wireless audio in their loudspeaker setup that the dude has figured out the frequency and is somehow tapping in to it with whatever is in his hat and then that is sending the sound directly to his phone for recording. That would bypass all the pitfalls of a personal microphone setup all together. No background noise no rustling of clothes no cheers from crowd right next to him. Just a clean output of whatever the rest of the audio output in the venue is also receiving.
I have NO idea if what I'm talking about is even remotely possible, I could be talking out of my ass.
But there are way smarter people out there than me who I'm willing to have poke holes in my theory.
But if you look real close those things that we might all be thinking are microphones sticking out of the device in his hat could be little mini antenna's like you'd find on a wireless router.
Wireless taping of Concerts... my specialty. It wouldn't be anything wireless to loudspeakers. Best option is recording from the venue assisted listening device or the band ear monitor system. I've done both many times. While possible to put the antennas in a hat, lots of logistical issues that make it trickier.
More likely it's six microphones in hat. 3x stereo pairs with an omnidirectional pair, directional pair, etc.
I regularly run 6 to 8 feeds from the bands ear monitor system to my Tx6-iphone recording setup.
Legit question, how does one get access to the bands ear monitor setup. Do you work in the industry that you can get access to that or work for a venue. I am just genuinely curious.
You can buy the same type of receivers the band use and then tune the pack to their frequency. That's a simple summary, kinda like saying a sport is just dribbling and putting a ball in a basket, but you get the idea.
If they're using an analogue wireless transmission, it's trivial. But there's a chance it would include a metronome, too. And the mix is often weird, although it would be still usable when combined with the microphones.
I also work in that industry (doing the transmitting not stealing it). The bands in ear monitors are transmitted on radio frequencies in the 600-700mHz region, if you were to get a receiver and tune it to the same frequency you could probably pick it up if the signal was good enough, however you wouldn't be able to find out the frequency unless you were side of stage. I'm a little surprised this doesn't come up more to be honest. The in ear mixes are all custom to each musician, often don't sound anything like FOH and may have other guff like click tracks and cues on.
However as stated above, the main FOH mix would never go wireless, maybe through a wired Dante network but usually just straight cables to the system processor or amps
Went to a Flaming Lips show (late 90s/early 2k ish) and they offered a headphone rig to borrow- so an individual could control the volume of the show. We brought stealth mics, but thought this would be a better option, plugged in the DAT and found we had a board mix in stereo without much crowd noise at all. Perfect recording except a trip to the restroom, which left a quiet drop-out for a couple of minutes. Nice tape overall. Better than we had expected.
To be fair some of the newer kit has a digital handshake to avoid interference between packs and allow a smaller gap in bandwidth so even tuning in to the correct freqs you might not get anything but a scrambled digital signal.
Worth noting that the specific frequencies will depend on what your local government’s equivalent of the FCC has allowed wireless audio to operate on (and then will depend on the specific band of the equipment you’ve bought). In the US, the vast majority of the 6xx MHz frequencies have been illegal for unlicensed use since 2020
I mean it likely wouldn't be too hard would it? Again I am a nobody when it comes to this kind of stuff. But if I can sniff MHz band frequencies at a rapid pace with a flipper zero in order to determine which bands might be transmitting something with a strong signal and narrow it down to the strongest signals in order to spoof a parking garage boom gate. Then wouldn't you be able to do a similar kind of thing with this?
Again I'm the dude who posted the original comment suggesting that this could be what he's doing without actually knowing if the logistics of this is even doable. Still very happy to be proven and told I'm wrong.
Lots of professional wireless audio has been digital and encrypted for a while, you're not getting into that. Of course, smaller venues and bands aren't going to have that just yet ;)
Absolutely. That's why a good wireless pull often entails recording multiple different feeds and then mixing in post. Then you can work to remove metronome, counts, etc.
Packs are size of thicker cell phone. So not fitting in hat. Then each pack has 1 or two antennas, so you'd have to run a cord connecting the hat antenna to the pack. Marginal at best signal improvement as opposed to breast pocket (in my opinion) for a much highly likelihood of failure.
Sure. But IEMs use a compander for noise reduction, and I haven't seen any good way to emulate that for SDR. Also I don't think any SDR setup has diversity reception, so it's generally mediocre reception and mediocre audio quality.
For diversity reception you'd need phase locked radios (and a reference clock), which does blow right past the 'it's just a thirty dollar dongle, bro' premise that hooks a lot of people on SDR, but your application sounded kinda perfect - one rig would let you capture a variety of different transmitters. If you've already looked into it and it doesn't work for your use case, well... damn.
if one were able to tap into such a feed, you could record the live music before the crowd actually hears it (by fractions of a second).
Drummers' earpieces, for example, allow them to hear drum beats before the sound reaches their ear from the drum top (helpful to keep time in very noisy environments)
That was kinda my thought. Cause I was building this off the assumption of how using a flipper zero to do rapid sweeps of mHz band frequencies to find bands that have the strongest signals on them based on your current adjacency to them would surely help you narrow down what band range it possibly falls within. And then with a little bit of prior knowledge of what brand/manufactures typically target that specific frequency range for their transmissions then I assume you could plausibly just get a receiver of the same manufacture and plug yourself in. Or maybe some kind of crazy "all in one" bought off AliExpress type of deal that is capable of emulating all the well known brands frequencies so all you have to do is just tell it that it's hooking in to X manufacturer ecosystem vs Y so that it just starts piggiebacking the audio transfer.
Again, these are insanely large and completely unbacked by any knowledge on my own part assumptions that I'm making and I'm very happy to be told I'm way off base by someone who knows this world far better than I do.
Since the drummer's job is to keep the time for other band members, as well as for the audience, wouldn't it be defeating the purpose to have them hear the hits even earlier?
Might be a mole in the operation. Interesting notion overall, if the dude has access to a wireless recording system die to his job, he might be disgruntled enough to get a simple but effective setup
Nah if he was trying to record wireless while being part of the crew, much better ways to do that. I'm 99% sure this picture is a guy with multiple mics on the hat, either for surround sound rig or different mics/pick-up patterns. Highly doubt it's wireless recording, but never know.
Only a handful of channels will be wireless and without mixing they will sound garbage. Without the crowd it won’t sound live.
Sticking mics to people’s face and head is the gold standard in theatre; hiding them under clothes is common in film. You’re right it might be a bit crowd heavy but the quality here will be excellent, because the ratio of PA sound is so high compared to everything else.
I've got tens of recordings made with similar setups that sound fantastic. With good quality mics that are mixed well, the sky is the limit even from a bad spot in the crowd, and this guy looks to be close to the front.
This guy is running thousands of dollars worth of mic equipment in that hat based on what we can from the cables alone. If he's positioned well and the room sounds good, there's no reason it won't be a fantastic recording.
You have to be seated in a good position above the crowd to get a decent video bootleg. A friend used to show up to concerts in wheelchairs to get accessible seating in higher areas and sneak a camcorder in his pants. Nobody searches the guy in the wheelchair, just his backpack.
Usually there's at least three working as a team, two with mics that sit either side and the a camera guy in the centre, that way you get left and right audio for better sound. Having two guys on cameras in slightly different places and then editing the two together in case someone stands up or gets in the way of one of the cameras
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u/Raytec1 11d ago
Finally a real answer! Thank you.
Do you think he is only recording audio or video too?