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Soundhaspriority wrote:

Bob, thank you for your cordial tone. I understand your point of view with
respect to personal experience. Here's mine. Unlike a working professional,
the number of hours, and the number of different experiences I have in this
field are comparatively limited. I don't live in an environment with access
to ongoing sessions. I can't kibbutz with mikes and performers moving in and
out. They simply don't exist in my environment. To do what I do, I either
backpack the equipment or drive it 99 miles to NY, hunt for a parking space,
schlep the stuff into a nearly dark bar, and fumble while cursing the
darkness for at least an hour and a half before I get to check a level. Then
all too soon, the musicians pack up. Today I had a really bad day. This is
how it went:

1. Three hours to pack up the selected gear into a couple cases, as well as
all the other prep for going to another city.
2. Drive up the Jersey Turnpike in heavy rain during the rush hour: 3 hours.
3. Gridlock around the Holland Tunnel.
4. Get a spot right outside! The only good thing.
5. Work my fingers to the bone hooking up, but missed all but the last 20
minutes of the first group.
6. The second group, who I adore, managed to pack fifty minutes of music
into a two hour spot. I got 35 minutes of it.
7. While carrying some stands back to the car, slipped on the sidewalk
greased by garbage and rain. Crushed my cellphone. Took me two hours to
clear out in the dark, and two more hours to get home in the rain.

The upshot is, it took me 13 hours and $40, + the $200 to repair the broken
PDA phone, to get 55 minutes of recorded performance. Sometimes it's
easier. On Sunday, I backpacked in, and got 84 minutes in only nine hours of
travel and setup.

My request was for specific recommendations of mikes good for ORTF. I made
this request because I do not have easy access to performers in order to
test microphones. When I get to NYC, I have so little time, bought at the
cost of wearing and expensive travel, I have to get the performances. This
is why I asked this forum for specific advice, not general recording
philosophy. And by the way, while some of the advice given here is good, and
all the specific advice in this particular thread is good advice, there are
also many worthless answers, given by people who are just so-so at this
field, who manage to get by because today's equipment is so good. I did
graduate work in physics, with a specialty in hydrodynamics, which is about
fluids, of which air happens to be one.
.....SNIP

Well, as this does not appear to be a forgery, yet is cross-posted to
rec.audio.tubes, I will try to answer without being too critical. WITH
the understanding that I am not by any means an audio pro, but with
some practical observations.

First, William of Occam, something over 700 years ago suggested that
one should not multiply entities needlessly. That should be your
watchword when you do this sort of thing.

If the environment is "hostile" for any number of reasons:

Lack of cooperation from patrons, ownership, musicians whatever.
Poor Acoustics
All of the above
Something else

Then it seems necessary that a recordist do what is necessary to
overcome these elements. That would be either by gaining the proper
cooperation of relevant parties, arriving at the venue sufficiently in
advance to set up without disturbing users/patrons/musicians too much,
or vastly simplifying the set-up process, or whatever other permutation
or combination of time and effort works.

Determine the level of results required or desired: If the goal is to
show the musicians how they generally sound in that venue, that should
be a relatively simple task to accomplish what with modern equipment
and specialized microphones. If the goal is a "professional" quality
recording fit for publication, that is an entirely different extreme
and requires as noted above:

A non-hostile environment.
Enough time to set up, even to test the set-up.
Full cooperation of patrons, ownership and musicians.

Not so much a suggestion to lower your standards as to manage your
expectations such that you have a legitimate chance to accomplish
something of value rather than expecting the impossible.

And you don't carry insurance on your PDA/phone? Sheesh... for
$16/year, you are out over 12 year's worth.

Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA