On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 9:26 AM, Rob MacKillop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I managed to borrow the Zoom H2 recorder from my work place. I was
I listened with pretty good quality Sennheiser headphones (HD570). I listened in order: 1. H2 dry 2. Sony with reverb 3. H2 with reverb 4. H2 dry And then played around to check and double check my findings. H2 dry was by far the best for me: honest, direct, what I hear is what you did kind of sound. Sony was fake sound. I know it's you underneath, but all that electronic reverb and hiss is hard to ignore. It's not a sympathetic sound: sharp. H2 with reverb is warm like a tub of hot water: makes me sleepy. The reverb is annoying me in the sense that you don't play as if you're hearing it when playing your music. If you'd be playing in this acoustic - large room you said? - you'd take more time phrasing and letting the sound die away. You know how your timing can change completely when entering a large church. H2 dry has room for improvement. How close was the mic? I'd do some testing with placing it further away to find an ideal distance and balance between direct sound and natural acoustic. Now it sounds a bit as if my head is in your instrument, or at least as if I'm kneeling in front of your guitar. For one thing, my knees don't stand that much kneeling, for another, I'd be afraid to get in the way of your fingers. Too close for comfort, in other words. Kidding aside, I think there's an ideal balance between comfortably listening to music in the back of the cathedral while dozing of and sitting front row holding your breath and getting all the musical nuances as well as every string buzz and finger scratch. Both have their appeal. The balance between the two will depend on listener, player, type of music and mood of the moment. Play around to see what works for you. If you're a reverb addict, try the SIR-plugin. It's adjustable, the technology behind it - what I understand of it anyway - appeals to me and the results can be quite natural. For my quick home recordings - for pupils and such - I stay in my dry study, use rather close micing and add a tad of SIR small church reverb. It's fake, but makes an easily digestible sound. As opposed to the true to live living room sound. I use a freely downloadable SIR plugin in a freeware audio programme. All this goes without saying that your playing was very nice, as was the music. But I think that was not what was at stake here. ;-) David -- ******************************* David van Ooijen [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.davidvanooijen.nl ******************************* To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
