Hey, if the band is playing well, the room and mic placement is
decent, why wouldn't it sound great? Cheaper mics don't automatically
mean crap... usually the problem is more acoustics or performance
based.

Al

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 10:27:08 GMT, "Mark & Mary Ann Weiss"
wrote:

I dug out an old Betamax tape I made in 1986 of a 5-piece jazz ensemble
performing at a night club, just to refresh my memory of what I had in my
collection of old tapes. I found the experience downright disturbing. Why?
Because it sounds so darned GOOD. It has no right to sound good. It was made
with electret condenser mics made around 1982, feeding a Radio Shack mixer,
driving a Radio Shack model 22 Beta Hi-Fi VCR. I used a Quasar professional
series Newvicon video camera for the visual portion of the recording, which
looks simply awful by today's standards. But the sound... I could not
believe it.
I have some state-of-the-art digital recordings I bought on CD that were
made in 2003 and they don't sound that much better. In fact, a lot of my
newer recordings have a blanket of hiss in the background. This old
recording only suffered from VCR-related problems: tape dropouts and a 30hz
purring sound caused by the vertical scan rate of the helical recording
heads. Aside from that, the transient response, the s/n ratio on the high
end and the smoothness of the frequency spectrum was an unexpected delight.
The drums were rousing, very stunning with no dynamic compression. The saxes
sounded like they were right in the room and the standup bass had a
beautiful detailed clarity and a nice full-bodied bass that didn't boom. The
piano sounded smooth with no overhanging notes. And during set breaks, I
heard no hiss in this relatively quiet venue.
So if my best digital recording of a jazz ensemble is a 10, this recording
easily comes in at a 7.5 or better.
The think that irks me, is that, with today's digital technology, why are we
still getting CDs with very audible hiss on them, when a pair of electrets
driving an old RS mixer can produce a recording that is much quieter to the
point where any hiss is masked by the ambient noise? What kind of signal
routing and planning can cause state of the art recording facilities to turn
out such a noisy recording?
Now that I have much better recording equipment today, fully digital, I am
dying to engage another ensemble recording and see how much better I can do
than I did in 1986 with the Betamax VCR.
But I still can't believe how enjoyable and natural the sound of that old
recording is!