Any thoughts about soundfield (eg calrec) mics?
You are referring to mic arrays which allow an analogue matrix processing later on in the production chain like Ambisonics or RealMatrix?
I have no practical experience with this particular type of mic array but they all do share common disadvantages of directional main microphones particularly with bass waves and long distances while being superior to XY/ORTF/NOS style arrangements in terms of ´getting the whole picture´ of reverb from the hall.
That does not mean they capture the whole three-dimensional sound field in its entirety as some people might think. For certain situations they might work as a one-point arrangement but I fail to see the general advantage over conventional A/B+spot mics arrangement as you have in terms of average level more matrix processing thereby getting equal or stronger risk of phase shifts or potential cancellation errors.
Yes. Itâs always struck me as a fundamentally good idea, but fraught with practical difficultiesâŚ
The ability to record all channels of the array and post-process in the digital domain might help - but I guess the mic characteristics are likely still a limiting factor.
Adjusting the balance between direct sound and indirect sound later in the production is in general a very good idea. Especially when recording on location without an acoustically proper control room as it is close to impossible to judge the perfect ratio on either nearfield monitors or headphones correctly.
The question is at which price this is coming and what is the alternative. The same can be achieved with an A/B arrangement plus spot mics for the ´weak´/solo instruments or for example with M/S plus ambience mics. Both alternative variants are not ´one-point microphoning´ but usually work with less use of matrix and cancellation effects and much lower dependency on the directional effects of the mics used.
âOne-Point Recordingsâ was the term specifically used by DENON and Tatsuo Nishimura, not by Bob Katz. DENON produced a series of those recordings that are available as e.g. 5x CD box.
Today, e.g. Frans de Rond does superb recordings. Heâs the recording engineer of Sound Liaison and gives some insight to his work:
âWhen recording with just one stereo microphone, the Josephson C700S, we must create the complete soundstage on the spot by gently moving each instrument left and right and closer or farther away from the microphone. The height of the microphone is also important. Especially for the low frequencies, the placement of the microphone in relation to the studio floor is important.
The result is a recording with full phase coherence, perfect imaging, a wide and deep soundstage and superior realism. And it forces the band being recorded to play!
Itâs real, itâs live, itâs now. â
Hifi Critic âOne microphone âŚ. itâs totally enchantingâ
Inner-magazines âFabulousâŚchallenging the possibilities of current recording technology.ââŚ
It doesnât guarantee, that everybody could just walk in and come along with good results. Itâs not for everyone. It requires patience, sensibility and experience.
For our recording contest, the expression âMinimal Microphoningâ was chosen for a reason. The contest is not strictly limited to a single stereo mic. It could be three capsules, like in the Josephson, or even ambience mixed into the stereo tracks. The result counts!
However, just two Earthworks mics, separated by a modified Jecklin disk, can do a great job. Ask renowned recording and mastering engineer Barry Diament / Soundkeeperrecondings. https://www.soundkeeperrecordings.com/ and read how his recordings are received.
This contest is a great opportunity for students to learn from experts in this field.
Please, feel encouraged participating!
I owned several of these recordings and even had a discussion with Tatsuo back in the days. Many of these show exemplarily the inherent weaknesses of one-point-recordings, particularly those which were coproductions with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Frankfurt so they exist in manyfold mixes for the live broadcast, multi-mic mix and one-point.
Funny sidenote: The later ones of this series also exist as a genuine 5.0 recording with proper surround main mic arrangement, and here the concept works pretty well although they are not flawless (The woodwind and tympana problem is not solved for example).
I am not familiar with his catalogue, but did he do anything with a group bigger than 8 musicians? I see mainly chamber (Jazz) recordings so what I had pointed out is not really applicable in this case.
That is a special variant of an M/S characteristics main mic adding an additional dipole capsule. It is indeed capable of overcoming the aforementioned problems of an XY/ORTF configuration particularly with bass reproduction and capturing the ´rear end of the reverb´ in a hall. But I agree to the recording engineer that such microphones are very very sensitive to altering distances to single instruments, floor, ceiling, side walls and alike. Risk is pretty high that an instrument or a group of instruments will ´drown in reverb´, which combined with localization problems on the flanks (due to M/S cancellation) might bring most recording engineers to use such mics in closer proximity to the musicians or for very small groups.
In my understanding it mostly requires accepting pretty strict limitations of which instruments/voices to choose, which room to record in, which music to play how loud and where to place all this. If recording engineers are willing to accept all this, I wonât stop them, but I have a different understanding of the creative process of recording.
And i do not see the point in sacrificing so much while trying to recreate a realistic ambience with just two channels when you can have both in a proper multichannel and multi-mic recording. If I would have the time and partners to participate, I would definitely not choose stereo but something like an Auro3D multichannel arrangement.
AURO and other 5.1 âŚ11.1 are off topic.
Siegfried Linkwitz didnât appreciate them much for music.
Every time, I listened to such 5.1 (at dedicated setups at shows or in cinemas, it was easy to point to loudspeaker positions. Good for cinema effects, but for music it feels just too artificial to me. The contrary of âloudspeakers acoustically disappearingâ.
From DENON, we occasionally demo the âConcerto in B-flat major âLa Notteâ, RV 501, F.III-1: I. Largo â Andante molto â I Fantasmi; Presto.â
13 musicians in a northern Italian palazzo, recorded three decades ago with just two B&K 4006 onmis, spaced by 60cm. Of course, this recording comes with the typical set of pros/cons, but there are too many modern recordings that cannot reach this level of listening satisfaction.
Recording technique and experience advanced since three decades.
So did the rendering:
Today, rendering at shows is on our LX521.4MG full range dipoles, that illuminate the room with a completely different polar pattern than box speakers:
- Figure-of-8 pattern, uniformly âilluminating the roomâ
vs. - omni in bass, changing to a pronounced forward directivity in the tweeters
The difference is immediately audible when it comes to soundstage presentation of such recordings.
Todayâs Minimal Microphoning techniques can be an excellent field of learning for students, wanting to learn about all the effects that influence the signal before it enters the microphone cable.
That may need some extra work during rehearsing, but less work for post-processing.
Of course, the musicians must be ready for this, patient and reasonably proficient to play one take without large errors/mishaps (Iâve been told, that this is not always the case)
Luckily, we can offer experts advice for the students to guide them.
Having listened to minimally micâd recordings from Frans de Rond, Barry Diament, or Doug Fearn on a full-range dipole should give the students motivation to dive deeper into making these pieces of art.
This comment can only originate from a listener who is unfamiliar with any surround recording made with a dedicated surround mic arrangement in an acoustical environment. Would say that 99% of all classical surround recordings follow the concept of a natural ambience recording with the surround/rear/immersive speakers mainly delivering indirect sound.
Making the speaker channels virtually disappear is the main goal of acoustical surround recordings.
The comment ´artificial´ is maybe applicable to many pop, electronic and partly jazz and rock as well as some vintage classical recordings using rear speakers for effects. These two concepts of surround mixing should be separated as the latter is not aimed to reproduce a natural sound field, may be it in stereo, surround or immersive.
This concept and directivity pattern is not unique and most what is prescribed to the Linkwitz dipole is also applicable to many other speakers concepts, may it be fullrange dipoles, cardioids, line sources, line arrays or dedicated horns. Or it can be achieved with proper room treatment, carefully matching speaker directivity and room.
I do not see any major difference between the aforementioned speaker concepts when it comes to soundstage presentation. Would even say that dipoles bear a risk that the depth-of-field and ambience might be deviating from the original recordings because of the 8-pattern and the reflection from the wall behind the speakers. Of course this depends a lot on speaker placement and the room itself.
But I would personally prefer full range cardiods for this reason as they are easier to set up.
I managed to listen to some Soundkeeper recordings in the meantime and found them to be significantly underwhelming. They show some significant flaws when it comes to recording direct and indirect sound: Indirect sound tends to sound like ´double mono´ from the very flanks lacking a center; instruments which are positioned off-center in the stereo image sound full-bodied and at times drown in reverb while centered sources, particularly lead vocals, tend to be thin-bodied, overly dry, being in some kind of acoustical mist if that makes sense. Drums and percussion elements sound muddled and overly reverberant, with the reverb coming very early, harsh and at times dominant. The general impression is pretty ´boxy´ like in a garage with two separated mono mics being very far apart from each other but close to the walls.
That is pretty unusual so I could not really understand what is causing these issues. It sounds as if some fractions of the recordings are binaural and some are direct originating from omnidirectional mics, maybe some mics of different characteristics had been mixed, which does not sound like a puristic recording concept to me. On over-ear headphones the ambience impression was good while on IEM and loudspeakers it was very poor which is untypical for binaural recordings, particular those made with a dummy head.
I fail to see any advantage of this one-point concept if it ever was one. But I kind of catch the idea of highlighting the typical reverb pattern in music recording in which most of people would expect a present staging.
I could offer some alternatives following similar sonic aesthetics but executed much better. Some recognized recording engineers like David Chesky, âProf.â Johnson (Reference Recordings) and Werner Darbringhaus (MDG) are very good at that.
Arindal,
Yes, there are some good Chesky and Keith Johnson tracks, that we use for demoing.
If you mean Dabringhaus´ (without ârâ) and D&Gs 2+2+2 technique. That would be off topic. Same for the surround talk, that you brought up, it is off-topic here, too.
Please open another thread about surround and multichannel for this.
Iâm sorry to hear, that you cannot achieve satisfying results when replaying Soundkeeperrecordings. AFAIK they have not been mixed as binaural. Nor did they use a dummy head.
They have been post-processed on Magnepan 3.7s. So, you would probably hear what the engineer heard, when using a similar replay system.
It makes no sense, mixing apples and oranges and pears.
Cardioid vs dipoles vs box speakers.
The polar pattern and arrangement of microphones have an effect, as does the polar pattern of a loudspeaker system.
If your replay results are so different from what press and mastering engineers hear (see https://www.soundkeeperrecordings.com/ , scroll down to âWhat theyâre sayingâ), could they maybe all be strayed?
If you can teach us something, weâd be grateful to hear what you have done and how you did it. Please, show us your stereo tracks and weâll see from thereâŚâŚ
Why? One microphone is one microphone, no matter how many channels and capsules are involved. There was already mentioning of the Josephson C700S which is a 3-capsule mic arrangement so I fail to see the conceptual difference.
BTW MDG did a lot of great stereo mixes as well and some non-classical recordings meet the ideal of capturing the room of the performance way better than the mentioned one-point recordings. I can name examples if anyone is interested.
They definitely did not use a dummy head nor a traditional binaural technique. That is obvious when reproduced via IEM because the lead vocals in the center show typical in-head-localization which does not happen with dummy head recordings.
There are typical flaws of binaural recordings, though, particularly the shifted tonality depending on the direction of the source and the reflection-heavy flanks of the stereo image.
I do not think that the way I have listened to them has anything to do with my dissatisfaction. The recordings which were recommended by you and Torben her simply show flaws like
- bloated, boomy bass (typically resulting from omnidirectional mics placed in disadvantageous places in the room like pressure maxima)
- dominatings reverb, particularly early reflections of walls close to the mics creating some ´boxy´ ambience but lacking center focus and creating a broad, diffuse imaging containing kind of ´split double mono´ reverb patterns from the sides/flanks
- thin, dry lead vocals not matching the level of the instruments
- some instruments like strings overly diffuse
none of this is can ever be an issue of the loudspeakers or headphones, however flawed they might be. I do not doubt that someone might like it for an emphasized ambience but according to my taste this comes at the price of deteriorating the balance of the instruments and the homogeneity.
Everone is free to subjectively perceive this boxy, flank-laden ambient reverb as ´natural sound´, but I do not see any reason to do that. And modern microphones and recording techniques offer simple solution to avoid all the aforementioned problems. A pair of natural sounding omnidirectional mics plus a properly delayed spot mic per voice/string instrument and this is it.
When properly set up and room acoustics fully taken into account, the difference between full range dipoles and full range cardioids is neglectible according to my experience (which is to be expected as the directivity index over frequency is similar or identical). If there is a significant difference, it is usually the dipoles showing flaws which cardioids simply do not have.
Yes. Or they simply like what I call flawed and what every trained recording engineer would perceive as a flaw.
I have named engineers and labels which I think are following a similar ideal to those which you have recommended and I pointed out why I think these are better. As a start, check out this album:
