The Sound Man is not a chauvinist term, just a common nickname for a male whom provides production location sound mixing and recording for video, film or television productions.

The production services typically consists of mixing audio from shotgun microphones and lavaliers most commonly. The sound man/person is assigned with mixing stick microphones (microphones held in the hand) or other sources as well, most always to the camera or digital recorder. Time code may be a factor to synchronize audio to the recording to camera and external recording device as well.

A SOUND MAN is often also called a sound guy, or audio guy, production sound recordist or location sound recordist, production sound mixer, or location sound mixer as well. Sound woman is the gender counterpart with the exact same production assignments. Sometime the sound man is referred to as a sound guy among other male or female production peers as well.

Here are some links to production industry equipment resources -

Lavaliers

Lavaliers / AKA Radio Mic, Wireless or Wire - For location sound and other applications lavaliers are used do everything in sound gathering a boom can't reach for particular shots (wide shots, shots farther out than the boom pole's reach or other limitations from other types of microphone technology). For this discussion we're referring to the transmitter and receiver combination, and components for sound gathering. Here's more detail by Wikipedia with more overview and manufacturers I have overlooked - click here.

For lavaliers there are many popular ones, most common are Lectrosonics, Sennheiser, or others from Sony, Zaxcom or Shure wireless for radio mics. There is also lavaliers from Azden, Samsun, Audio Technica + a few others for specific video, television or film production applications.

For your Colorado resource for location audio I use Lectrosonics most then Sennheiser for wireless radio mics.

Mixers

ENG / EFP Mixers - The most common mixer or mixer recorder combination for a sound person - sound man or sound woman is typically a 4 channel or more preferred mixer. 4 channels enable the sound recordist to gather at least 4 sources at a time to mix and send to camera. Larger mixers typically start into the realm of mixer recorders and used for high end video or film production applications. Time code sync is more desirable for several reasons although a redundancy with several modern day cameras. Often a mix and record is needed for some productions including motion picture film or DSLR cameras or cameras without a clean signal to noise sound recording

ENG / EFP mixer & recorders are made from several similar companies as well as specialist companies. Some of the popular makers include Sound Devices, PSC, Wendt, Zaxcom, Fostex, Tascam, Teac, Nagra, SQN, Sony, Shure, Roland, and Azden

PSC, Sound Devices, Fostex, Tascam, Zaxcom, and Wendt have the quieter signals and more desirable features for ENG and EFP aka location sound

Shotguns - Shotgun Microphones - Boom Microphones

Technically called a shotgun microphone

Other Equipment - includes a whole diverse group of resources for location audio from hand held microphones, xlr cables, adapters, bridges, comtek + other goodies (audio equipment with specific task).

If you need rates or other information, please call me, Nick (720) 299 2084 as I'm not always handy by email.

Try me recently with assignments through Boulder, Broomfield, Lafayette, Lone Tree, Colorado Springs,Denver, Aurora, Castle Rock, Highlands Ranch, Littleton, Englewood, Greenwood Village, Centennial, Sheridan, Parker, Lakewood, Golden, Thornton, Northglenn, Arvada, Wheat Ridge, Westminster, Longmont, Commerce City, Fort Collins, Aspen, Vail, Breckenridge, Dillon, Beaver Creek, Avon, Cripple Creek, Black Hawk, Central City & Brighton. Out of Colorado recently includes Los Angeles, NY New York, Vancouver, San Diego, Mexico City, London, Annapolis, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC among other places.