SR/Live Sat, October 11, 2008

With Sennheiser microphones already in use on some of the most watched, music-based, prime time reality shows on television, it’s really no surprise that an array of the company’s wired and wireless mics are also deployed on the latest addition to the MTV evening lineup, “Rock the Cradle.” Sennheiser mics are heavily featured on FOX’ “American Idol” and “Don’t Forget the Lyrics!” as well as ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” and now music mixer Randy Faustino, with the support of Sennheiser’s Thom Salisbury, has also selected the RF handhelds and wired evolution Series vocal and backline mics that he uses on “Idol” for his new gig on “Rock the Cradle.”

“We’re using the SKM 5200 with the MD 5235 capsule on the main vocals,” confirms Faustino, who mixes the live music on “Rock the Cradle” from a remote truck parked next to Stage 21 at the CBS Radford lot in Studio City, California, where the weekly episodes are produced. “We’re using the same mic complement as I used at ‘Idol’ - the e 602 on kick, e 604s on the toms,
e 914s on overheads and hi-hat. On guitars we use e 906s, and the e 935s on the hard-line vocals for the guys in the band.”

A live performance, recording studio and television production mixer with over two decades of experience, Faustino has had the opportunity to try many microphone models over the years. He has good reason to favor Sennheiser products. “They’re a great mic to work with,” he explains. “They’re warm. The highs and lows are nice. The rejection is good and they take less EQ
than most mics. Generally, my experience with the microphones is that they sound really good out of the box - which is rare.”

In a live performance situation microphones typically benefit from the application of EQ to counter the environment, he elaborates. “We do a lot of EQ to live microphones to make them work for live, as opposed to a studio, recording. With the Sennheiser microphones you end up doing a lot less EQ and get a really nice sound. You can just plug a 935 into the console and go, ‘Wow, that sounds good already!’ You start doing a little bit of EQ and you can really sweeten it up nice.”