I'm not sure about the background noise, probably the strongest single component comes from the Organ Bellows--that's about 15dB of white noise, plus, because it is entirely mechanical there is quite a bit of wood on wood sound from the stickers. Then there is the Bay Area airplane background sounds, and the leather shoes that some insist on wearing, sigh. Even though the church is not completely silent, it is rainproof--can be used during a storm-- and has a nice sound. I find this acoustic better than studios, even though,eg, Skywalker ranch is quieter, the sound is not as round. For me, the ability to hear the individual voices in the music is the primary concern; since the mics have a noise floor of between 10-12 dBa the noise comes from the acoustic ambience. For example, in the pieces with organ I have to boost the leader between tracks. The acoustic measurement data gives a noise floor of -55db with no organ and -40 with organ, which is a bit below average for church recordings that are not "close miked". One can reduce the noise floor with close miking, but at the expense of the roundness of the sound. For the lute track I moved up two feet because I was picking up too much room noise, for the recorder tracks I moved out a foot or two on the spots because of the turbulence on the MK41s.
The Microphones: 2x Schoeps MK2, matched 2x Schoeps MK2H, matched 2x Schoeps MK21, matched (surrounds) 2x Sennheiser MKH40 (front of Decca tree) 2x Rens Heijnes Multipattern remote conrolled Large Diaphragm mics of my own design Spots 2x Schoeps MK41 1x Sennheiser MKH 80 in hypercardioid 1x mico-band double ribbon microphone, own design 2x micro-band single ribbon extended frequency double magnet ribbon microphones, own design based on B&O 2x Beyerdynamic m130 with modified transformers 2x Stephen Sank Ribbon Mod Mics with Reslo "unobtanium" transformers Mastering on Sequoia DAW. dt To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
