New recording technique from Dutch audiophile label

For those of you who like your coffee and music extra caffeinated, you might be interested in this article from Audiophile Style about One Mic Recordings from the Dutch label Sound Liaison. A new album utilizing this technique – Up Jumped the Devil – will be released by Carmen Gomes Inc. one week from today. I’m not certain whether the album will be released to the various music services or if it would need to be purchased from Sound Liaison (link to site here). At any rate, this is a development to follow!
Carmen Gomes

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I see Audio Liaison albums on Tidal… Let’s hope we get to experiment the result of this new recording approach. BTW, there are older Carmen Gomes albums available with already great sound!

I am ever more convinced that proper recording and mastering technique is the single most influential and important aspect for our experiencing good sound in our homes… More than devices, cables, file formats or anything else…

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Andreas, yes, I have saved this album on Tidal. Excellent recording. If you go to the Sound Liaison site, you may download a complimentary track from this album in different formats for comparison. I totally agree with you: proper recording and mastering techniques are of utmost importance.

Tonian Labs is been proving this for a while…

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This was released in 2019 with “One Microphone Recording” technique… It’s on Tidal…

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This one is shown on the Sound Liaison site but with a different cover. It’s not a One Mic Recording but it is really well done. Available on Tidal.
Odelion

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Agree with you about Tonian Labs! See this thread.

I found these two. Both recorded with that special microphone they have

Pretty amazing SQ and the playing is lovely.
Michael Moore & Paul Berner plays “Home”.

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The label is getting good reviews from all the audio magazines: https://www.soundliaison.com/index.php/reviews
and I’ve seen their albums being used by several audio magazines for testing equipment.

the warmth and detail of this Quad amplifier is just as much in evidence with the immediacy of the single mike, single take recordings on Carmen Gomes Inc.'s Don’t You Cry set [Sound Liaison SL1030A; DSD256]. Playing the music in from my stripped-out ‘music’ Mac mini via the Vena II’s USB input, the sense of the musicians sitting in a group around the microphone is palpable, as is the emotion in Gomes’s voice as she cracks on the final phrases of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’.

It’s a wonderfully intimate and affecting experience, and shows just what this little amplifier can do when fed with a high-quality recording.

**'This is about as simple a recording as you’re ever going to hear: two musicians, one microphone and each track performed live, straight to DXD recording – and it’s totally enchanting…all that spontaneity comes over in spades in this set, which has the usual Sound Liaison recording quality, plus that unmistakable sense of two musicians just bouncing off each other, improvising and making the shape of the songs up as they went along. This is as live as it gets, with a real "in the room with the musicians" impression.' —Andrew Everard, Hifi Critic**
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Very fine review of the DXD version of Up Jumped the Devil in Hifi News and Record Review magazine

The album is also available in DSD at Native DSD
and in Flac and DXD at https://www.soundliaison.com/

Carmen Gomes Inc
Up Jumped The Devil (DSD64/128/256/512; DXD)*
www.nativedsd.com; Sound Liaison SL1043A

Just when you thought you’d heard every possible take on the songbook of Robert Johnson, from true acoustic versions to Clapton’s electric tracks, up jumps singer Carmen Gomes with her own rendition. The legendary bluesman died aged just 27 in 1938, amidst all those ‘sold his soul to the devil’ legends, and left a catalogue of just 29 songs, so you could argue there’s nothing new to hear. However, Gomes gives her selected tracks an atmospheric, mystical spin, with minimal backing, a simple mic set-up, in Sound Liaison style, and a ‘straight to DXD’ as-live recording approach. Her sultry voice has immediacy and intimacy, the instruments captured with real vitality, and the whole recording drips with presence and a sense of performance. I can imagine this one proving popular on the demo circuit if we ever get back to them – and that would be no bad thing. AE

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They keep at it;

SOUND LIAISON.com
Has released a very interesting series of recordings following a set of rules called the Arch Manifest

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The Arch Manifesto
Each recording starts and ends with the main artist alone in the hall
the only interplay being the acoustics of the hall and his own mind.
No audience is present except the ghosts from the past.
When the band enters the music must create an Arch, going from the single instrument performance to the more complex band performance and back to the last solo performance.
The same principle goes for the engineering; each recording starts out with only one microphone (stereo).
As the music gains in complexity more microphones may be deployed, the only limit being the imagination and technical skills of the recording engineer.
The producer and engineer must make the album feel as one, it should have a unifying ‘sound’, despite the different recording techniques employed.

Frans always says; “The art of recording is a question of listening and the more you listen the better you get at it.”
I was curious to see how all the completely phase coherent listening Frans had been doing creating the masters of the ‘One Mic’ and ‘One Mic+’ series would affect his decisions when giving him almost free rein with a multi mic setup.
I was not disappointed. His great knowledge of mic placement and phase manipulation seemed to have grown even further.
Frans has a second life as engineer and sound scape specialist for radio plays. He has received several awards for his work, the prestigious Prix Europe 2020 being the latest. I believe that his unique ability to make the sound of the instruments real and visual is a cross-pollination from his excellent work with Radio plays.
For each piece of music we would ask the band to play it through once and there after deploy the microphones needed. Oftentimes the musicians on hearing the playback would suggest small alterations in the music to make the music fit the sound. We were trying to create a sound that would fit the music and the musicians got inspired by the sound to develop the music even further.
The circle was complete.
All Sound Liaison albums have the Frans de Rond Visual Sound signature;
great depth, clear placement and an almost physical presence of the musicians.
Especially our One Mic recording series has been noticed in the world of audio recording.
When the Josephson C700S microphone is used to its fullest, the result is a completely phase coherent recording with a superior realism.

This album is their album of the week this week. Goes to show that the ‘One Mic’ recording technique is also capable registering extreme dynamics;

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