17-05-2014, 05:06 AM
Another take on Song of India. Trying to go for a very natural live sound, here.
About my mix (pardon my keyboard spew)...
Problems this project presented:
Bleed! Bleed! Bleed! The worst was on the bass, kick, and the piano.
Pretty much everything else I could reasonably deal with using an
expander and EQ (not necessarily in that order) to at least tamp it
down to usable levels.
Hum in the preamps for the Beyer M160. (Grounding issue?) Bad joojoo...
Not really noticeable if you trim properly but most obvious at the
beginning and the end.
One difficulty was figuring out what to do with the room mics (and I see others
struggled there as well). There was no indication in the notes about placement.
My guess is that the mono mics were wide placement and inspection of the
waveforms seems to suggest that the AR51s are 2 ms behind the C24 and the
M160s are about 8 ms behind suggesting a stereo overhead, two area mics right
by the conductor, and two front of stage mics in front of the group and to
the sides as you might find with a pair of spaced omnis. There is also
no way to tell what patterns were used since every one of the
microphones is a variable or at least multi-pattern tube mic except
the Beyer M160s. We can only take educated guesses there.
With no information on mic placement and no hints on how the group
itself was physically arranged, it took a good deal of listening to
try to decide where to pan things so that they did not disagree with
the room mics. As far as I can tell, the band was laid out in a
balanced arrangement with some of each instrument on each side. I
couldn't tell which room mic was where so just guessed that the first
one listed was "left" and the second "right" and treated them
accordingly.
Now comes the "gotcha" from this project. While checking phasing of
the room mics, I noticed something odd with the sound from the C24.
(For those who did not do their research, that's an older stereo tube
mic with a movable top capsule.) Well, I summed the track to mono and
the audio virtually disappeared. Seems one of the channels was
recorded reverse polarity! Wonder if anyone else noticed that. Just goes
to show that simply because it's a stereo track doesn't mean it's right...
I've go to comment at this point that I didn't much care for the sound
of that kick drum. A tube condenser seems a very odd choice there. You
have ~$36,000 worth of microphones on stage and you put the most
expensive by far on a kick drum? I mean, I know this was a Telefunken
showcase but seriously, you couldn't find something better to do with
that U48? (Like maybe that muted trombone.)
What I did:
(My project was mixed entirely in Sonar X3 Studio with just vendor
supplied plugins and, yes, I'm very much a novice. No external inserts
were used. Total time spent, probably 10-12 hours.)
First, an overview of my routing setup. After the usual chopping and
cleanup, I routed all the common instrument spot mics to subgroups and
then routed these through another group. The room mics were also
grouped together so that at the end of the chain, I had a fader for my
main mix and another fader for the room mics that I could balance
against each other to tune the final sound (although there was a lower
limit than I wanted before the room mics overwhelmed the dynamic
adjustments made in the mix.)
The great thing about a professional group like this is that the
recording almost mixes itself. The band did a fairly good job of
matching dynamic levels so only small overall adjustments were needed
there. That doesn't mean it was perfect though.
Once I got my basic mix done I decided that I didn't like my gain
structure and went back and changed everything up to get a more
consistent--and generally higher--pre-fader level on the individual
tracks. After redoing the mix, this change made the variations in
dynamic relationships from section to section more pronounced as well
as pointing out transient tones all over the place (along with a
couple of dips in volume) that I was gonna have to deal with.
With all that bleed, I decided that I really didn't want to use
compressors to try to fix all the transients in the spot mics so I
thought I'd go ahead and just use my ears and apply volume automation
to the subgroups for the bulk of it (here's why I did all that
routing) with a few separate touches to the individual tracks. The
biggest issue here was that first trumpet who seemed to be enjoying
himself too much and tried to push every accented note through the
ceiling... That one took a lot of work. Oh, and don't forget that 4
kHz notch for brass! These guys were more than a little on the harsh
side most probably because of the limitations on mic placement for a
live performance and those trumpets can be quite piercing. Very much
the opposite problem presented itself with the dynamics of the piano
and the guitar. They were playing so gently that they were coming up
short quite often.
I did, however, apply compression to the drum overhead mics and the DI
for the bass. (Thank heavens for that DI or I would never have been
able to get a decent bass tone.) A little light peak compression was
also applied to the overall mix to gently tame the smaller peaks I
either didn't notice or chose to let through to preserve the live
sound character and keep it on the punchy side. Since Sonar doesn't
allow for inserts on the master fader (WTF, yo??), I just created
another group fader to use as a submaster and routed the other two
through it. A redundant step, but it works.
I didn't feel it necessary to apply any additional reverb and really don't
think it would have been appropriate to the track either so what you hear
is entirely natural ambiance.
Lastly, I applied a decent amount of LA2A style compression to the
M160s to try to bring out more of the reverberant sounds because I
love the tone of those two mics, followed by a little light peak compression
on the room mics as a whole (but slightly faster and harder than what
I put on the overall mix and mostly to tame that first trumpet). I'm
not sure if this was the best move but wasn't exactly sure how to
handle compression for room mics for a wind ensemble. If anyone has
any tips on how to handle such situations, I'd be very curious to have
your opinions. The 'net seems sparse when it comes to this topic.
Anyhow, here's the end product and I'm generally satisfied with the
outcome. Your feedback is very welcome. Without question, I have a lot
to learn and happily accept tips from those with more experience.
Enjoy!
About my mix (pardon my keyboard spew)...
Problems this project presented:
Bleed! Bleed! Bleed! The worst was on the bass, kick, and the piano.
Pretty much everything else I could reasonably deal with using an
expander and EQ (not necessarily in that order) to at least tamp it
down to usable levels.
Hum in the preamps for the Beyer M160. (Grounding issue?) Bad joojoo...
Not really noticeable if you trim properly but most obvious at the
beginning and the end.
One difficulty was figuring out what to do with the room mics (and I see others
struggled there as well). There was no indication in the notes about placement.
My guess is that the mono mics were wide placement and inspection of the
waveforms seems to suggest that the AR51s are 2 ms behind the C24 and the
M160s are about 8 ms behind suggesting a stereo overhead, two area mics right
by the conductor, and two front of stage mics in front of the group and to
the sides as you might find with a pair of spaced omnis. There is also
no way to tell what patterns were used since every one of the
microphones is a variable or at least multi-pattern tube mic except
the Beyer M160s. We can only take educated guesses there.
With no information on mic placement and no hints on how the group
itself was physically arranged, it took a good deal of listening to
try to decide where to pan things so that they did not disagree with
the room mics. As far as I can tell, the band was laid out in a
balanced arrangement with some of each instrument on each side. I
couldn't tell which room mic was where so just guessed that the first
one listed was "left" and the second "right" and treated them
accordingly.
Now comes the "gotcha" from this project. While checking phasing of
the room mics, I noticed something odd with the sound from the C24.
(For those who did not do their research, that's an older stereo tube
mic with a movable top capsule.) Well, I summed the track to mono and
the audio virtually disappeared. Seems one of the channels was
recorded reverse polarity! Wonder if anyone else noticed that. Just goes
to show that simply because it's a stereo track doesn't mean it's right...
I've go to comment at this point that I didn't much care for the sound
of that kick drum. A tube condenser seems a very odd choice there. You
have ~$36,000 worth of microphones on stage and you put the most
expensive by far on a kick drum? I mean, I know this was a Telefunken
showcase but seriously, you couldn't find something better to do with
that U48? (Like maybe that muted trombone.)
What I did:
(My project was mixed entirely in Sonar X3 Studio with just vendor
supplied plugins and, yes, I'm very much a novice. No external inserts
were used. Total time spent, probably 10-12 hours.)
First, an overview of my routing setup. After the usual chopping and
cleanup, I routed all the common instrument spot mics to subgroups and
then routed these through another group. The room mics were also
grouped together so that at the end of the chain, I had a fader for my
main mix and another fader for the room mics that I could balance
against each other to tune the final sound (although there was a lower
limit than I wanted before the room mics overwhelmed the dynamic
adjustments made in the mix.)
The great thing about a professional group like this is that the
recording almost mixes itself. The band did a fairly good job of
matching dynamic levels so only small overall adjustments were needed
there. That doesn't mean it was perfect though.
Once I got my basic mix done I decided that I didn't like my gain
structure and went back and changed everything up to get a more
consistent--and generally higher--pre-fader level on the individual
tracks. After redoing the mix, this change made the variations in
dynamic relationships from section to section more pronounced as well
as pointing out transient tones all over the place (along with a
couple of dips in volume) that I was gonna have to deal with.
With all that bleed, I decided that I really didn't want to use
compressors to try to fix all the transients in the spot mics so I
thought I'd go ahead and just use my ears and apply volume automation
to the subgroups for the bulk of it (here's why I did all that
routing) with a few separate touches to the individual tracks. The
biggest issue here was that first trumpet who seemed to be enjoying
himself too much and tried to push every accented note through the
ceiling... That one took a lot of work. Oh, and don't forget that 4
kHz notch for brass! These guys were more than a little on the harsh
side most probably because of the limitations on mic placement for a
live performance and those trumpets can be quite piercing. Very much
the opposite problem presented itself with the dynamics of the piano
and the guitar. They were playing so gently that they were coming up
short quite often.
I did, however, apply compression to the drum overhead mics and the DI
for the bass. (Thank heavens for that DI or I would never have been
able to get a decent bass tone.) A little light peak compression was
also applied to the overall mix to gently tame the smaller peaks I
either didn't notice or chose to let through to preserve the live
sound character and keep it on the punchy side. Since Sonar doesn't
allow for inserts on the master fader (WTF, yo??), I just created
another group fader to use as a submaster and routed the other two
through it. A redundant step, but it works.
I didn't feel it necessary to apply any additional reverb and really don't
think it would have been appropriate to the track either so what you hear
is entirely natural ambiance.
Lastly, I applied a decent amount of LA2A style compression to the
M160s to try to bring out more of the reverberant sounds because I
love the tone of those two mics, followed by a little light peak compression
on the room mics as a whole (but slightly faster and harder than what
I put on the overall mix and mostly to tame that first trumpet). I'm
not sure if this was the best move but wasn't exactly sure how to
handle compression for room mics for a wind ensemble. If anyone has
any tips on how to handle such situations, I'd be very curious to have
your opinions. The 'net seems sparse when it comes to this topic.
Anyhow, here's the end product and I'm generally satisfied with the
outcome. Your feedback is very welcome. Without question, I have a lot
to learn and happily accept tips from those with more experience.
Enjoy!
Old West Audio
