TO: Clint Stuart
In an earlier post by Kgretlein, you offered some suggestions. I'm interested in trying this technique out front of a drum kit (recording session).
My question is; you mentioned multing the figure 8 mic so that you now have two channels of the figure 8 mic-a panned left & right signal. You mentioned changing the polarity of one of those signals.
I am using a Mackie 32x8 console, which does not offer polarity/phase switching. I do have external mic preamps which will switch polarity. Would you suggest that I go figure 8 mic to one of the pre channels, then from the channels of the mic preamp out (which has multiple outs)-I could feed one out to tape, and the other out to the seconnd channel of the mic preamp, and then from the out of the second mic preamp channel to tape? And just choose either of the pre channels to invert phase (which ever sounds best)?
Or could I go from a Mackie channel-the first channel of the figure 8 (mackie) direct out to the mic preamp-change the mic preamp polarity, then from the pre to direct to tape?
Did any of that make sense?
Regards
Keith
Comments
There are several ways to approach this, none are "wrong". You
There are several ways to approach this, none are "wrong".
You could -
record the stereo spread live down to a stereo track
-or-
take just the side mic on one track (or two) and the mid mic on another, and mix them down later.
To do the stereo mixing "after the fact", or to set up your makee to send the mixed m/s to stereo tracks:
Take a short 1/4" TRS cable, bust out the soldering iron, and switch the tip and ring connections on one end. Then plug one end of the cable into the insert jack of the side mic channel - but only up to the first click so it still feeds the channel. Finally, plug the other end into the line input of an adjacent channel, and pan both channels hard L/R (or bus to the appropriate tracks).
Personally, I prefer to send the signals from the mic pre's directly to multitrack, and mix the m/s at mixdown. This eliminates one extra stage of mixer crap, still only takes 2 tracks, and you're not stuck with the blend you got that day. You should still monitor the return of the multitrack with a m/s blend during tracking to make sure you didn't screw up the mic placement or anything. You don't want to wait until the mix session to find out about something like that.
Hope that helps.