International. Engineer Eric West, who has been working for Fox Sports on broadcasts of U.S. baseball games, replaced his old shotgun microphones with the Shure VP89L, taking the sound to a new and higher level.
He comments that "I came to the world of audio streaming engineering because of my history of mixing live music. I equalize the bat strokes much like I do with a bass drum. I increase a small touch of high terminal, remove some medium frequencies and then push a few centimeters at the bottom. With the VP89L I have a lot more control over this."
Eric West points out two specific qualities of the VP89L that he combines to make the results better than with any other shotgun microphone he's used before. The first is that most shotguns focus on off-axis rejection of high frequencies, but the first thing that caught my attention with the VP89L was how well it rejects low frequencies.
"The 'boom' in a bat strike is on a higher frequency than a bass drum, right where you can hear it even with the murmur of the audience. With the VP89L, I can still highlight it as I want, but I don't suffer the consequences of coloring the noise of the crowd. It also has very crunchy highs, which I no longer have to increase as before," he adds.
And while the precise positions of the microphones vary depending on the design of any stadium, Eric West's typical procedure is to position his two plate shotguns on one side or the other (or behind) the back fence mesh, just 15 feet above field level and focused toward the plate (home). at knee height and at a distance of about 35 feet.
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