How to Set Dynamic Microphone Levels

Video Transcript

"Now we're going to set the levels on our Dynamic microphone and, of course, I'm using my over the ear headphones to monitor these levels while we get them set. Let's take a look down at our level meter and, I'm just going to take the microphone, and you can see when I move it in front of my mouth we actually start getting those decent levels. When I'm setting levels for this Dynamic microphone, whoever is going to be talking, the reporter, I'll just make sure to have them hold the microphone how they would when we're going to actually be recording and that's what I want to set my levels to. If that were the case right now, I?d probably want to set them a little bit higher than they are at this moment. And, there we go. We're up there in that pretty sweet spot, just above the little twelve markers there, and that's usually where I like to set my levels. Probably not going to peak, peaked a little bit right there, so I might set them down a little bit more. But definitely just have your person, whoever they are, talk as loud as they're going to be talking and make sure they're holding the microphone correctly. With this Dynamic microphone they need to be speaking directly into it, not holding it off to the side. You see my levels just got way back down, but if I hold the mic back up to my mouth you can hear them again. That's setting up your Dynamic microphone on your XH A1."