Hi Chris! Long time no write so I thought I'd check out what's going on in your neck of the woods and found this! Wow! You should be proud. Your daughter plays like a professional already. Great to hear that there still are teenagers in this day and age who have an understanding of what quality really is and are acting upon that insight. Gives me hope for the future!

Interesting also to hear what a single unit can do for the recorded sound. It sounds like you were in the audience but quite near the performer. Am I right? That Bricasti sounds quite lush, but subtle. Interesting. Actually, I did a very similar recording with my Zoom H2n of myself and a few colleagues performing excerpts from L'Elisir d'Amore accompanied by a student orchestra. It would be interesting to hear what you could do with that file to enhance the sound. I did what I could with it in order to burn a few cd's to give to the other participants, however, I'd love to learn from you how to go about mixing and mastering classical music. I've tried to find books on the subject but it's almost impossible to find anything not concerned with pop or rock music production! The signal chain for mixing and mastering classical music must necessarily be a much more subtle affair: no heavy compression for one thing. But I can't imagine modern classical music engineers keeping their hands off some kind of compression or limiting!

Would you consider working your magic on my recording? Maybe you'd consider mastering an aria? What do you say?

Thank you. I am very proud and she is only 15 years old. She has a promising career indeed, I only hope we guide her well.

Yes, I was sitting in the audience with my hand on the H4n ( with a damaged mic too (kids erk) !)
Good to hear from you, anything for a friend! :) dropbox the file and I'll give it a try.

Processing classical music. Yup, tread carefully when approaching this genre. HD transparent gear and baby steps are essential. I trust my decisions more now then when I first attempted this genre. Being a performer like you sure helps. And having the knowledge and love for this music makes it fun.

I have a few Bricasti's now. I use them as stem aux on my analog console. In other words, my DAW bus and aux's all output to dedicated stereo channels on my console. (SPL Neos)
After the console, I 2-bus into the Dangerous Master where various analog gear is at my disposal.
I capture the final mix onto a second DAW, uncoupled from the first DAW. The second DAW is my mixdown system set at 44.1/24 .
I use the second DAW for finishing or mastering which consists of a limiter and basic finishing techniques. It 100% ITB at this point.
I upload the final mix to the web/CD burn etc. It works great.

I have a Crane Song STC-8 in the analog chain all the time. example: DAW1> DA > STC-8 > AD> DAW2
I barely use it, but what it does is good.

Can we do an A/B and post it here? This is always good for the readers listening and learning. :)

Cheers!

It's obvious you've already guided her well. I think most of the rest is really up to her. I wish her all the luck in the world.

Right! Uploading the file to our shared Dropbox folder as I'm writing this, says 1 hour remaining. The file is a wav at 44.1/24. We should absolutely do an A/B! And while you're at it, please improve/edit out my forced top notes. Actually, I have to mention—for the record—that I was in bed with a terrible flu just two days before the performance, so please, any listeners go easy on the tenor who sings Quanto è bella. That's me. ;-)

Another thing to mention is that I and another tenor share the Nemorino parts.

Now, I did my own "mastering" on this material, but I suspect my efforts were heavy-handed, to put it mildly. My objective was to make the vocals stand out, in order for it to be useful for my colleagues. So I applied som Pultec EQ'ing, some mid/side processing and some weird stereo imaging. Anything that focused the vocals and brought them forward in contrast to the orchestra. Of course, I realise this is not what one would do if one was after a professional natural sounding CD quality production. So it's going to be intereresting indeed to hear what you can do with your pro ear and pro gear. ;-)

You must be very proud of her. You've got a little wunderkind. Nice. You did her good, pop. And that's why you have the good reverb.

So I'm curious? Here's your kid... making her debut, why didn't you put out some real microphones and make a real recording? You couldn't get permission? Too much union nonsense no doubt?

Well that Italian sausage reverb you've got sounds real sweet. It did add that nice silky, incredible natural sounding texture. Though I also liked the dry one. You, at least I, certainly feel the room in the dry one. Which is both good and bad.

The one with the M 7 was truly much more refined sounding. She did a wonderful job. No doubt that is a slick gizmo.

I'm curious though... did you pass it through any of your other premium gear? It sounds so nice. Hard to accept that the M-7 took care of what sounded like some EQ or acoustic anomalies? It was definitely different. Like a hot knife through butter good.

And thankfully... it wasn't rock 'n roll for a change! How refreshing.
Remy

Thanks, thats the M7 but also through the analog matrix because it has to get to the other side. DAW1 >DA (bricasti) >DAW2
But, this is how powerful those are. I also emphasized more than we might like.
I was in the audience on this one so I only had the option for an H4n in hand.