Orchestra: The Final Frontier

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:41 pm

I recently realized that I never posted back to this thread with the end results. So... here they are!

Daphnis et Chloe, Suite No. 2, excerpt

Main Pair: CMC62

Outriggers: KM-183

Winds: KM-184

Bass spot, Harp spot... both time aligned to main pair

So, what do you think? Please be picky.

Any suggestions for improvement, be it in mic choice, placement, or mixing, would be appreciated.

Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 8:16 am

This may be as close to sin as possible. But I know one of my teachers prefers to leave the percussion out of it. Instead he reconstructs it in midi.
I would be damned if any one of you could pick out what was recorded in the hall and what was added in with his recordings.
I am not a huge fan of the idea, but it works very well for him. He has yet to have a conductor complain about the results. Mind you he does allot of his work in Europe, where, well people are a hell of a lot less forgiving about production techniques in classical recordings.
But a large reason why he is able to get away with a seamless integration is due to his incredible mixing skills. His ability to manipulate the ear is phenomenal.

So that would always be an option. But only if it was not a recording of a public performance.

Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 8:23 am

Just listen to the recording.
Good work man.
The hall sounds a little brighter then what I am used to, but the cellos and violas playing sound really great. Every thing in the high end just seems to be full of air, so to speak.

Congrats on the job. I hope you continue to fine tune your skills. Your clearly well on the right path.

Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 9:48 am

David- First and foremost, a beautiful sounding recording. Clean, clear, and airy. However - and perhaps this is because I am at my computer listening through headphones - it didn't seem to me as "naturalistic" an image as I like in classical recordings. I felt as if I was placed in the middle of the orchestra rather than in front of it. It had more of a film score feel rather than a concert recording feel. Again, I'm sure the headphones are a big part of this, but my guess is that the high levels of the spot mics is part of it as well (though you certainly got great balance). I'm sure better ears and minds will speak soon, but I thought I'd give my first impression before I was talked out of it by people who knew better.

Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 2:15 pm

Thanks for the input guys.

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 3:37 pm

Surely Jeremy, David, Ben, Joe, Tom, or someone can hear something to complain about, right?

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 3:50 pm

Okay...listening now.

Overall good. Here are my criticisms, but bear in mind, I think the recording is good overall.

The flute solo (both flute and alto flute) sound like they're sitting in the cello section. This is likely due to a spot mic registering too much.

This relationship plus the lack of spots on percussion (presumably) makes the auxilliary percussion instruments sound like they're 30' behind the woodwinds.

Despite the relatively close spacing of the omnis, I'm getting a pretty pronounced hole-in-the-middle.

This doesn't sound like the warm-fuzzy CMC6 MK2 sound I'm used to. Were they "s" "h" or straight MK2 caps? How much of the sound is from the 183s? (This has a much more 183 sound than it does Schoeps).

The harp sounds good.

I would have put some reverb on this. While the hall is nice, it's a bit dry. Perhaps moving the mics back just a tad would have helped both this and the hole too.

Did you normalize this clip? The peak at 2:25 actually hits 0dBFS and there's obviously MUCH louder stuff in the rest of the piece.

The principal violin has a very sweet (definitely CMC62) sound. The flutes and clarinets though pierce a little.

Considering the use of all omnis in the front arrays, I would have expected a little wider of a soundstage. Did you hard pan all of your main array mics?

The other reason I say that this sounds more like the Neumanns is that there seems to be a disconnect between the low bass and the mids. This is subtle, but it definitely feels more like a 183 than a CMC62.

I know...I'm being really picky, but I think that's what you're after.

Would you be interested/willing to upload the individual tracks from the 24 bit files? I'd love to play around with them and see what could be done with the mix!

Again - sorry if I'm seeming critical. The overall quality is good. I've certainly heard lesser quality on commercially released CDs. (Of course, those WWs at the end of the clip need to consult a tuner...)

Cheers -
J.

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 5:18 pm

It would be great if you could upload the tracks. I would love to play with them as well. (don't worry, I just want to play, not exploit your hard work in any way).
This goes out to Cucco as well. If you have any songs you don't mine people playing with, please allow us to have some fun with them.

I just want to mix.
This weekend I get to work with some recordings of the Berlin philharmonic. It should be allot of fun. It's all in 5.1 as well. Only thing is, for the project we have to add in a modern element, and some sound design elements. So I would love to work with some traditional recordings to mix in stereo.

Please stop me if I am out of line asking for such things. I just love to mix, and I have yet to have much of a chance to mix orchestrations. Typically when I am mixing a song with some, its already been bounced to a stereo track. So I have yet to have some real fun.

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 6:11 pm

I feel entirely the same actually...I've yet to capture a recording properly. It's always been straight off the live mix with a dash of EQ applied to remove the goddamn buzzing noises caused by using a dodgy PC power supply.

This is why I'm excited about our band's concert coming soon. The way it'll be set up, I'll get to record a few songs entirely in parts and then mix properly later on, without the pressures of covering 2 monitors and the live mix at the same time. And I get to add decent reverbs to guitar/vox...

My only concern is that I'm letting it run away with me and I know I'm going to have to watch that it doesn't ruin the live mix. Few people will notice but I don't want to be 4 seconds behind a feedback cause I'm toying around with a couple of knobs and not listening to the mains.

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:05 pm

Thanks a bunch for the great critique! Exactly what I needed.

To answer your questions...

Yes, my wind spots are up rather high in level, but to my ears, this is where they gave me the clarity I wanted. Maybe they should be backed off a bit. I though they were picking up a good deal of percussion, too, so I'm surprised that the percussion sounds so distant.

The mains were straight MK2, not S or H.

Yes, I did do some volume adjustment to this track to balance with the other recordings on my demo reel. When someone listens to my stuff, I don't want them to have to touch the volume knob.

I did hard pan the mains and the outs.

You want to remix it?!? Kick ass! I'm sure I will learn a hell of a lot from this. Thanks so much, Jeremy! Here are the 24 bit tracks of this excerpt, along with my setup and mix notes (pay careful attention to the time alignment numbers), and an impulse response of the hall that this was recorded in ( I like to use this to soften spot mics and to add realistic overall verb).

Daphnis Multitrack Excerpt [self-extracting RAR archive - 109 MB]

Fraz, you can f with it if you want. Care to share your Berlin Phil recording?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 9:41 am

David French wrote:

Care to share your Berlin Phil recording?

Did I miss a reference somewhere?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:21 am

Okay...so here's the stuff -

The track (a different section than previously posted) is here:

http://www.sublymerecords.com/RO/DavidFrench/Daphnis.mp3

Here is an image of the screen shot from the file:

Sorry for the large size. I reduced it as much as possible where you could still see the settings.

There's no effects added on individual tracks, only panning and volume. The master buss contains a small amount of EQ. There was a bump (thanks to the timp) at around 80Hz that I cut just a little with a wide curve and added a little back at around 50Hz.

I added a little bit in the treble just to get more reach into the orchestra. (This is why I much prefer the MK2s - it digs much further into the orchestra than the MK2).

The reverb is a custom impulse and only lightly added.

There was no time alignment of any of the spots, but you can see that I used very little of them at all. The bass spot was (is) mostly inaudible at the level that I have it but does chime in a little bit (keeping me from having to use more than .5dB at the LF boost). The WW spots were only lightly brought in to add a little more body to the WWs. I didn't bring them up high enough to accent any articulations.

The limiter is there to simply catch the one timpani hit that got away from him/her and jumped to +3dBFS despite the rest being quite normal in range. Since it only affected less than 50 samples, I didn't feel as though this was a detriment in any way.

So, now I'm curious. First - what do you like and dislike about the mix?

Second, what did I do that has you scratching your head and asking "Why the hell did he do that??"

Third, what would you different?

Cheers-

Jeremy

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:57 pm

Will be devouring this a little later.

Could you post your impulse?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 1:10 pm

David French wrote:

Could you post your impulse?

I have mixed feelings about doing that. While I'm all for sharing and helping, this particular set of impulses has been a good secret weapon for me. I'll gladly tell you a bit more about them off-line, but I'm hesitant to share them... Sorry. Crying or Very sad

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 2:13 pm

That's fine. I was just curious about its qualities and why it is the best choice for this piece of music. I'll try to do what I can to get a feel for the reverb while listening. If you have anything to say about them off-line, I would be happy to listen.

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