On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 8:30 PM, David Tayler <[email protected]> wrote: about mics > reasons, normally you have some at different distances, then you mix them. > You can get by with three, four is better, six is insurance, eight is
My CD recordings, 30 so far and tomorrow will be the next one, have been done in a variety of set-ups, but these days more and more engineers opt for one set of mics, placed at ears' distance from each other, placed close enough to the musician(s) to get a direct sound, placed far enough away to catch some natural reverb. Natural acoustics, naturally. In a cosy small chapel the mics will be a little further away, in a huge church very close. It's the natural way to balance direct, dry sound with natural reverb. Just as the listener on the front row might wish he'd be a little further away in a small room, or a little closer in a big church. How far away is a matter of taste, of course. The recordings I've done with a separate set of mics for each player, and a recording engineer making a balance of the different signals, have been less natural. The same goes for the recordings with close mics for musicians and a set further away for the reverb. I know it's the way to do things according to many, but for me the results are not as if I'm in the hall, listening myself, placing myself exactly in the ambiance, however 'pretty', 'easy' or 'beautiful' the final result. Beauty is never the aim. Truth is. The studio recordings with artificial reverb added I've done should be forgotten for their results (though I use a tad of SIR myself for my YouTube home recordings in my dry, book-filled study). I have one surround sound CD, where more mics were used obviously, but I've never listened to the surround version, so I cannot comment on that setup. The ideal recording for me is where you can imagine yourself exactly in the space, and can visualise the player(s) in front of you, in three dimensions. David - should be packing his bags for three days of recording in Germany, starting tomorrow. Theorbo in mean tone with pieces from 3 flats to 5 sharps ... wish me strength -- ******************************* 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
