Event sound equipment plays a critical role in producing high quality event videos. It includes house AV systems, mixers, microphones, and field recorders that ensure speeches, panels, and presentations are captured clearly. By working with venue AV teams and preparing backup solutions, production crews can guarantee reliable audio that enhances both live experiences and post production editing.
Clear audio is essential for event video. Whether it’s a keynote presentation, fireside chat, or panel discussion, poor sound quality undermines even the most visually polished production. Partnering with venue AV teams to access house mixers and direct audio feeds ensures that microphones on stage are captured accurately. A well managed sound setup elevates the entire event experience.
Venues typically provide mixers and house audio systems that connect to microphones. Production companies plug into these systems using field recorders to pull direct audio feeds. Wireless lavaliers and omnidirectional microphones are commonly used when podium hookups are unavailable. This setup ensures that every voice on stage is recorded cleanly and consistently.
Panels and fireside chats often feature overlapping dialogue. To manage this, each microphone can be recorded on separate audio channels, allowing editors to isolate voices in post production. Stereo separation across left and right channels ensures conversations remain clear even when speakers interject or talk over one another.
Access to house audio isn’t always guaranteed. AV closets may be locked, or mixers may be off limits to outside crews. Production teams prepare by carrying wireless lavaliers and redundant mics. Having a speaker wear both the house mic and the production mic ensures continuity if one system fails. These precautions prevent lost audio and keep production moving smoothly.
Audio sample rates must match video settings to avoid drift during editing. Standard practice for video production is 48 kilohertz. Using mismatched sample rates can cause syncing issues, delaying post production. Ensuring proper setup in field recorders and cameras prevents time consuming corrections later.
This page draws on the expertise of J. Wardrup, owner of Firebrand Media. With extensive experience managing event sound equipment, J. emphasizes the importance of collaboration with AV teams, redundant recording strategies, and technical precision. His approach ensures that events are documented with professional grade sound that supports both live impact and polished video deliverables.
Q: Why is event sound equipment important in video production?
A: It ensures clear, professional quality audio capture, which is critical for speeches, panels, and presentations to be effective in both live and recorded formats.
Q: How do production crews connect to house audio systems?
A: They use field recorders to tap into venue mixers, pulling direct feeds from microphones to achieve clean and reliable audio.
Q: What happens if house audio is unavailable?
A: Crews use backup equipment such as wireless lavaliers and redundant microphones, ensuring that no audio is lost if the venue system fails.
Q: Why do audio sample rates matter for event production?
A: Matching audio and video sample rates prevents syncing issues during editing, saving time and ensuring accuracy in post production.
Clients often praise J not only for his consistently captivating visuals, but his impeccable forward-thinking and ability to diagnose and strategize for the needs of a business from all verticals involving brand presence.
Hey guys, this is J at Firebrand Media and today we’re talking about event sound equipment. What is it and how can a production company or videographer engage it?
So from a production company standpoint, event and sound equipment is everything that is under the AV section or the audio video integration section being that in conference centers or hotels or anywhere where you’re shooting where there’s an event happening. Typically they’ll have a booth and that booth comes with a mixer, it could be behind a wall or it could be in a closet or be set out in the main open behind like a booth area. And typically the mixer will have hookups that go to the AV system or the audio video video system of the house.
They can have a projector along with an array of speakers that are either built into the conference center or the house or be hanging. When a videographer of the production company or let’s say the production company engages the AV of the house, what we’re doing is we’re trying to get a direct feed. And we do that by hooking up a field recorder to the AV booth or to an AV closet where the mixer is being held. What we do is we find a line out and jack into that mixer. That mixer will typically receive a signal from house microphones.
So when you’re at a conference center or you’re having an event and you’re talking to the AV company that’s running that event, or let’s say you’re talking to the venue and you’re trying to find out if you have omni-directional microphones, the ones that look like a little ball head, those omni-directional microphones feed to the mixer and then from the mixer, we pull that audio straight from the source. Now these are wireless, but they can also be wired and you’ll find that there’ll be hookups in the floor on let’s say traditional stages.
The Texas Theater has a traditional stage where they’ll have hookups on the stage, anywhere where you’ll see choir performances or band performances or let’s say dance performances, those theater spaces have hookups on the stage. But in general event settings, most hotels and event centers don’t have hookups at the stage area or where the podium would be. If they do, that’s a plus, but if they don’t, the house will have to equip the speaker or the person on stage with wireless labs or omnidirectional microphones.
Now, with house audio, it’s important to know that if there’s a panel or a fireside chat happening on the stage, that you’re going to get one signal. And if you want multiple signals, you’re gonna have to talk to AV and figure, or the production company will have to talk to AV and find a solution to where you can have multiple channels of audio, specifically stacking those left and right channels of audio as different mics. And that’s very helpful when we’re blending in post-production and we have to selectively figure out who we’re clipping for what reasons on screen.
So let’s say we’re shooting a multi-cam speech presentation or let’s say a fireside chat with a moderator. The moderator would have a microphone and the speakers on stage would all have their own microphones or they’ll pass a microphone. In that situation, people can easily talk over one another. If let’s say the fireside chat gets excited by a topic and people wanna interject and say what they wanna say about the topic, having a clear split on a stereo line being a left and right for per the speaker is very helpful.
Now, let’s say you don’t have access as the production company with the house audio or the AV booth, or let’s say the closet of where the AV equipment’s being held is behind locking key, and the event center/house doesn’t wanna give access to the production company or videographer to the mixer. And that’s justified because a lot of people touch equipment, change equipment, they’ll have to quickly get a contractor in there to reset, rebalance the mixer so that it doesn’t blow the speakers on the stage or in the house.
And what we generally do is pack a backup. Being that having wireless lavaliers in your kit is super important because you never know a day where the AV department’s going to fail, balancing the audio and it’s peaking, being that the speaker’s talking really loud and then to the mic and the technician and the AV booth just can’t level that, the gain, or they can’t level the actual mixer. And so you have, you know, peaking or crunching sound to the audio in any way or fashion that there’s some kind of conflict with AV or there’s an interruption of service where the microphones lose contact or service with the receiver.
You’ll wanna have your speaker, presenter, or panel mic’d up as the production company. So they’ll have two mics. They’ll have your mic on and then they’ll have the house mic or the house lab on. And that’s a good safety feature to have. So it’s good to go over that in the preliminary survey onsite.
Another tip and trick around technical specs surrounding events is knowing the sample rate of that audio. So you have 44 kilohertz, 48 and 96 kilohertz. That shouldn’t matter much to the event planners, but that matters a great deal to anybody who’s working with multi-cam production. So let’s say you’ve got multiple camera angles and you’re sampling audio or recording audio, capturing audio, you wanna make sure that sample rate is the same as the video sample rate.
The reason why that’s important is because we have something called slipping in post-production where you’ll have a timeline, a longer timeline of footage. If you marry that audio together with let’s say a clap or a clapping board or some type of audio video cue from the speaker on stage, you’ll find that the audio drifts. And when it drifts, it’s not keeping up with the sample rate of the camera that it’s interpolating for sound. And that’s super important knowing what sample rate you’re capturing it in.
We sample at 48 kilohertz being that it’s primarily used for video production. 96 kilohertz is associated with high fidelity audio, like high-fi systems. We don’t really use that. But having the systems not set in your field recorder when you jack into AV will cause so many issues for post-production slowing down the process and making a budget issue of the time used in post-production.
If you have any questions about event sound equipment or want to know more about how a production company and/or videographer can help you pre-plan those production elements, give us a call at Firebrand Media. We’d love to help you.
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