Headset microphone

A headset puts the capsule close to the mouth and keeps it there regardless of which way the wearer turns. That fixed, short distance is the entire argument for it.

The arithmetic is unforgiving in the lavalier’s direction. A lav sits eight or ten inches below the chin; a headset boom sits an inch or two from the corner of the mouth. The voice arrives at the headset far stronger, so the channel needs much less amplification to reach the same level in the room — which means the loudspeakers can go louder before the microphone starts to hear them and ring. In a live ballroom that margin is frequently the difference between a presenter who can be heard at the back and one who cannot.

It also removes the two failures a lavalier is prone to: level dropping away as the speaker turns their head, and clothing noise, because nothing touches the capsule.

What it costs is the look. A headset is visible in every photograph and on every camera, and some speakers refuse one on sight. That is a legitimate preference, and the answer is to raise it in advance rather than at the podium — a speaker who has agreed to a headset in the production call does not discover it in the five minutes before they walk on.

Corporate event production — owned inventory, our own crew, and a site survey before anything is specified.

• Lavalier microphone The small clip-on microphone worn on a lapel — invisible on camera, and the one whose sound is decided almost entirely by where it is placed.
• Wireless microphone A microphone with a radio transmitter instead of a cable — legal in a narrower slice of spectrum than most people assume, and not something to buy by channel count alone.
• Gain structure Setting the level at each stage of the signal chain so the system runs well above its noise and well below its ceiling — the thing that is wrong when a mix sounds thin, noisy or brittle.