All reporters now come equipped with microphones and boom poles, but the sound they get might not be the best in all situations. Well-managed public events accommodate the press by anticipating their needs in advance. That usually means providing a “mult box."

Mult boxes provide high quality audio feeds to the camcorders and tape recorders used by members of the electronic media. But what, you might ask, exactly is a mult box?

Basically, it's an audio distribution amplifier that takes a single audio source in and makes it available to multiple outputs to feed the media’s recording devices. It cuts down on the gaggle of microphones and cables from reporters and offers an uncluttered, neat appearance for speakers.

Ideally, well-designed mult boxes offer some degree of isolation between outputs so one bad cable or connector doesn't bring the whole system to its knees. And — you can bet on it — at least one media outlet will have a bad cable.

Probably most important is mult boxes help avoid media "gang bangs" where dozens of microphones accumulate to block the face of the person speaking. This is how the White House, a longtime mult box user, keeps the appearance of the presidential lectern clean and tidy while feeding audio to dozens of journalists.

For many years, serious mult boxes were mostly custom-built, rented or purchased as pricey, made-to-order devices. In recent years, as mult boxes have gained in popularity, they are being commercially manufactured by a range of manufacturers.

An example is the PressMite from Whirlwind of Greece, New York. The PressMite is a professional-quality mult box that's viable for small companies and organizations who stage events that generate press coverage.

The PressMite has one mic or line level input that distributes the signal to 12 transformer-isolated mic level outputs, two transformer-isolated line outputs and a headphone monitor. The entire system is housed in a rock solid steel box (9.25 x 11.38 x 2.6 inches) weighing eight pounds. It runs off two standard nine volt alkaline batteries for eight hours of continuous use or on AC power.

The PressMite is expandable to 48 mic outputs. It offers switchable 18-volt phantom power in the microphone mode. A jack with volume control drives headphones down to 30 ohms. Even novices can setup the Whirlwind box without guesswork.

There's a unity gain mark on the output level control. When the control is set on this mark, the level of the 12 mic outputs equals the input level at the mic input. The same applies in the line level mode. There are three headroom LEDs that allow quick changes to the mic input level. This is for cases where the level of the input source changes, such as for a speaker with an especially loud or soft vocal style. The LEDs indicate 0, -12 and -24 dB of headroom.

Isolation between outputs is critical with any mult box. With the PressMite, there's an isolation of 96 dB between outputs. All pin one grounds are completely isolated from each other. Since the unit is self powered and all outputs have floating grounds, usually there is no connection to earth ground. For high RF environments, however, a ground lug terminal is provided to connect to earth ground to help suppress the interference.

For larger scale applications, the company also makes the PressPower 2 mult box, a rack-mount unit with 16 transformer-isolated outputs that runs on both AC and battery power and provides a test tone oscillator, VU meter and dual adjustable mic/line inputs.

For a lower-cost option, Radial Engineering makes the Exo-Pod, an under four pound passive floor box designed to take the balanced output from any mixing console and distribute the signal to ten XLR outputs and four 3.5mm connections. It offers as many as 14 separate audio destinations for one signal and is useful in broadcast applications, such as connecting to handheld recorders, video cameras or wireless receivers.

A whole set of informal etiquette rules have been developed by reporters governing the use of mult boxes. Because it is often difficult to get a good sound recording from a digital recorder for later broadcast or transcription for newspaper reporting, journalists made the rules to protect themselves.

Due to the need for many simultaneous feeds, news reporters tend to treat sound engineers well because their equipment can go wrong in many ways. The engineer allows all of them to get a good signal and they know it. It’s a form of self-survival.

Some sports organizations, such as the NCAA, has a written policy on the use of mult boxes for all championships games. Federal agencies in the U.S. usually provide a mult box for media use at press conferences. However, the quality and features on those boxes tend to be different. It’s the same at colleges and universities. Reporters have to be ready for anything that goes wrong at any venue.

In this era of steadily increasing numbers of media outlets, mult boxes have become essential. But they remain risky business. Reporters need to have all the adapters and cables necessary to take an audio feed from anywhere. It can be a make or break proposition.