Audio Rentals

Location Sound Rentals, Explained by People Who Wrap Cable

Sound gets hired last and blamed first. We stock this department so a one-person band can pull clean dialogue without a dedicated mixer, and so working mixers can cross-rent the piece they’re missing instead of buying it.

What do I need to record interview audio?

A shotgun mic on a stand or boom overhead, a wireless lavalier on the subject as backup, and a recorder that takes both. That redundancy is the whole game: when a collar scratches the lav, the boom track saves the edit. Add headphones you trust and fresh batteries every morning.

For two-person interviews, double the lavs and keep one boom moving between subjects, or park a second shotgun. Cheaper than re-shooting an answer you can’t use.

Lav or boom?

A boomed shotgun almost always sounds better: fuller, more natural, no clothing noise. Lavs win when the frame is wide, the subject moves, or you can’t put a person on a pole. Most of our kits go out with both, because most days need both.

How do I keep audio in sync with camera?

Timecode boxes on both ends, jammed at call and again after lunch. Drift is small but real, and resyncing in post costs more than the rental does. No timecode inputs on your camera? A clap slate still works the way it has for a hundred years, and we rent those too.

What does location sound cost to rent?

Individual mics run roughly $25 to $75 a day. A complete interview sound package, recorder, boom, two wireless lavs and timecode, generally lands between $150 and $300. Comteks and IFB for clients are cheap insurance at a few dollars per ear.

Notes from the audio cage

Every wireless kit leaves here on a fresh frequency scan because the RF picture in midtown Manhattan looks nothing like a field outside Pittsburgh. Foam and furry windscreens get inspected and replaced on a schedule. And we label transmitter-receiver pairs so nobody plays the matching game at 6am. If your shoot has a camera package coming from us as well, say so, and we’ll confirm the audio inputs and cabling match before anything gets cased. Questions we didn’t cover live in the full audio catalog, or just send us the job.