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Cough Button questions 101...

E

engine the evaneer

Curious if anyone else uses cough buttons in their studio guest positions? We've gotten by with the old hand signaling method, and the operator drops the cougher off until done, but I guess its time for the big time...cough buttons!

So, how have you all done this? Do you cook one up yourself? Did you buy a box from Henry or Broadcast tools or somebody else? Do you just take a switch and put it in-line with your mic cable? Do you remotely switch off/on the console channel?

Our first run will be on a BE Mixtrack90 running phantom power to RE20's. Any info on the front end would be helpful! Thanks!
 
If you have the budget, buy one from the vendors you mentioned.

If you want to save a little money, if you enjoy doing a solder project now and then, or if you need to have one that fits exactly where you want it, build it. Here is a diagram someone passed along to me when I asked the same question a couple of years ago.

http://www.freeinfosociety.com/electronics/schematics/audio/coughdropmicmuteswitch.pdf

I went nuts building this one. I had two different schematics. Neither one worked when I "mocked them up". (They would MUTE, but they would also put a loud 'POP' into the circuit. Finally I realized what the problem was. I built it at home and my little voice-over pre-amp had a non-standard way of handling phantom voltage. In my studio, both little mock-ups made the same obnoxious pop.

When I took the project to the auditorium setting where it would be used by a moderator sitting at the side of the stage, it worked like a champ! She could turn her own mic off and on even though the mix operator could not get good visibility of her location.
 
engine the evaneer said:
Curious if anyone else uses cough buttons in their studio guest positions? We've gotten by with the old hand signaling method, and the operator drops the cougher off until done, but I guess its time for the big time...cough buttons!

So, how have you all done this? Do you cook one up yourself? Did you buy a box from Henry or Broadcast tools or somebody else? Do you just take a switch and put it in-line with your mic cable? Do you remotely switch off/on the console channel?

Our first run will be on a BE Mixtrack90 running phantom power to RE20's. Any info on the front end would be helpful! Thanks!
Click to expand...

OK this might be a stupid question but what is the reason to run phantom power to an RE 20?
I have never done so and have never seen an installation that does. Seems like you'd be asking
for pops and clicks when the cable is rattled.
 
"OK this might be a stupid question but what is the reason to run phantom power to an RE 20?
I have never done so and have never seen an installation that does. Seems like you'd be asking
for pops and clicks when the cable is rattled."

Never apply phantom voltage unless it's absolutely necessary. A short in the microphone cable could damage the microphone.
 
I've done both: purchased and rolled my own. If you're muting a dynamic mic, you can simply short pins 2 and 3 to mute. That will work fine. The cap in the circuits shown is required to prevent the "pop" when using phantom power.
 
Thanks everyone, you all were right about phantom power, we don't use it anywhere in the building, don't know what I was thinking. Once we picked apart the board logic and tested in a raw setup, I'm going to just use the simple studio hub one button switch.
 
Glad it will work out for you. Just for your info on future projects.

If you're using dynamic mics (e.g. RE20), you may simply short pins 2 & 3 to mute. It's that basic. If you want a tally as well, use a double pole switch. One side to pins 2 & 3 and the other side to the tally.

In your first post, you mentioned using a switch to open the circuit. Not the best configuration. That method will "float" the mic pair and any noise on one side of the pair will be amplified. Shorting the pair prevents this problem.
 
My memory from the era when these things existed in radio stations where I worked, there was a capacitor or and capacitor-and-resistor across the switch circuit so that there was not a small pop when the cough switch was operated... on the non-phantom-voltage circuits of that era.

One of the folk lore tales of the industry involved the guy sitting at his mic, pushing the cough switch regularly as he spit out a few shame-shames for the benefit of the humans in the studio with him. After the little show-off stunt, there appeared the hand of an engineer working under the desk, and in his hand were the recognizable components of such a cough switch.... disconnected. The folklore says the announcer got up and walked out the door, never to return. He knew what his fate would be as soon as the manager could make his way to the studio.
 
Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:
My memory from the era when these things existed in radio stations where I worked, there was a capacitor or and capacitor-and-resistor across the switch circuit so that there was not a small pop when the cough switch was operated... on the non-phantom-voltage circuits of that era.

One of the folk lore tales of the industry involved the guy sitting at his mic, pushing the cough switch regularly as he spit out a few shame-shames for the benefit of the humans in the studio with him. After the little show-off stunt, there appeared the hand of an engineer working under the desk, and in his hand were the recognizable components of such a cough switch.... disconnected. The folklore says the announcer got up and walked out the door, never to return. He knew what his fate would be as soon as the manager could make his way to the studio.
Click to expand...


The cap certainly won't hurt. I've never had a problem just shorting the pins, however. Thanks for the story. It's been a bad day but that story put a story on my face!
 
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