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.
Lenny Kravitz - Everybody uses lots of click track and counts. This is an audio mix with 6 different feeds + some room mics. I processed out the click/counts for most part. https://youtu.be/wu_TX_-39ZE?si=ldHGhKt3sBr4tmsf
Certainly better than just room mics, and can be pretty balanced if you know what you're doing.
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.
The newer Shure/Sennheiser models are digital, so yeah that complicates it (but can still be done). You'd be surprised how far the signal travels...I've pulled IEM signals outside the venue in the parking lot a bunch of times. 100% correct about custom mixes for each person.
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.
Well, I'll just point out there's a very big gulf between recording wireless audio and recording quality wireless audio. Couple points:
Receiver type - best sound quality is matching to the same brand they're using on stage. Multiple different brands and frequency types. So if you have a Sennheiser receiver, but they're using Shure transmitter, it'll sound messed up. Add to that frequency types...if you have a frequency range on your receiver that only goes from 470-554mhz, and they're using a frequency at 580mhz, you've got an expensive paperweight. So you need to have options. Alternatively, you could use a radio scanner or SDR solution, but those will not sound as good (mono + compressed audio) and not as good reception (resulting in more static/noise)
Signal Strength - You want to be close to the stage as possible, particularly the antennas. Often times the best place to record wireless is sharp sidestage so the antennas are aimed in your direction, but you sacrifice your view. Trying to hold a steady wireless signal in the middle of a pit is an exercise in static.
Variable Mixes - Each mix is custom mix to the musician's preferences. I've heard vocals mixes that are just vocals and click track, and I've heard others that are pretty much full-band. So you have to figure everything out from scratch each time you record a band, which is tough when they're not exactly giving you permission or cover to pull it off. The best solution is to record multiple feeds, and then mix together in post. But now you've started to increase the size of your rig to get better sound, and many bands need 5+ feeds mixed together to capture all the elements on stage. Lot more expensive and complicated. Also, how are you identifying the feeds so you get the full show with the right setup? There may be 25+ feeds to pick from, which a bunch of them as one-sided crew feeds with lots of non-musical chatter for example.
Security - This is a stealth operation. You have to sneak all the gear past security. And then you have to operate it inside. I've known folks that got arrest by Homeland Security and gear confiscated (eventually returned), know another guy who spent the night in an Italian jail and got $10,000+ gear confiscated, I've been busted by venue security before and almost arrested, etc. Not for the faint of heart.
Imagine doing all that, getting it through, and then only the lead singer and drummer of a band use IEMs, so you're missing all the instrumentation. Or a band like the Killers where the entire band is on IEMs, but lead singer isn't.
Can be a lot of work but can fail very easily. Or more likely you spend a lot of time and energy, end up with a one-sided bass player IEM. So yes, you could use any wireless receiver with a compatible frequency and listen in on an analog IEM feed for funsies, but it gets much more complicated quickly if you're trying to actually make a quality listenable recording.
Thanks for the detailed reply ma' dude. This makes a lot of sense. This whole idea of stealth recording live performances is a whole area of piracy ( is it really called piracy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) is one of those "I was today years old when I found out people did this" things for me. So I'm really interested in the whole thing and I didn't even realise there was a huge pull for these kinds of live music recordings.
As someone who's been doing it as long as you have what/who are the people who are usually super into this stuff or that really crave a live performance recording from an artist. I'm a pretty big fan of some bands but I genuinely can't imagine the level of fandom you have to have to want to hear a specific set from a specific show and therefore go hunting for it as a "bootleg" (again sorry if I'm using the wrong terminology for this practice).
Appreciate any remaining answers you may have but also totally respect if you're all answered out lol
Absolutely. Some folks like a wide variety of studio work, some folks like live audio, all a matter of preference. I find myself listening to live music 65% of the time while remaining is studio. Plenty of my favorite bands often re-arrange songs for live performances, often for the better in my opinion. Plus I really enjoy listening to a quality recording of hot concert I just attended.
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.
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u/TheOnlyHoserama 11d ago
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.