Trayvon Martin's friend and a key witness made a lot more sense than you think

[Boom Sound 416]

38. Adding compression

"To the mic signal" would not have increased the volume of the voice. There are three mics at the witness stand. One is the courtroom PA. one is for TV broadcast. And the third is a PZM or pressure zone microphone. That's the small triangle looking one. Probably the long stick mic is the courtroom PA. probably the shorter stage looking mic is the TV broadcast mic.

First of all if you talk low and you gain the mic all you end up doing is drowing out the voice even more because you add room tone to the mic. Second all broadcast tv has compression in the sound mostly to equalize the sound levels because the FCC regulates volume. That would someone can yell or talk softly and it's relatively the same volume.

There's more but I think you get the jist. If you want to hear someone on a mic and they are already a fair distance away (in this case at least a foot away (which is far for a broadcast mic)), they simply must speak up.