Recording Audio for Stand-Up Comedy

Question

I have recently come into producing professional recording of stand-up comedy.

When it comes to capturing audio, I use two sources.

1) a line directly off the mic to get the performer

2) a mic in the room to get the audience

The problem is that the source capturing the audience gets a lot of the performer as well which sounds bad.

The performer's audio should be from the microphone line only.

How would one capture the audience without getting the sound of the performer from that source?

How is the sound captured on professional stand-up comedy shows?

Answer 1

It depends on the environment, but generally, you want directional microphones that you can point at the audience from in front of the speakers. In an auditorium designed to spread sound around though, you are always going to get some of the speaker in the sound. Directional mics will focus the direction of sound they pick up towards the crowd, but some sound still bounces back.

Another possibility, since crowd noise is generally fairly similar and non-distinct, it is entirely possible that they aren't using the crowd's actual sound. They may just be using laugh tracks to emulate the audience. This can get clean sound since there wasn't anything else going on when it was recorded.