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Orchestral Recording with Behringer B-1 Microphones
On Wednesday night, I made my first orchestral recording using the Behringer
B-1 Large Diaphragm Condenser Microphones. The venue was a former library, with a huge, 100-year-old vaulted ceiling, making seem a little like an old church roof of the Byzantine design. Reverb times were akin to the venues that string orchestras used to perform in for commercial and radio performances in the late 1950s. The orchestra is a 50-piece affair, with the usual violin, viola, double basses, brass, woodwinds and a full percussion section. I assembled an array that holds five mics in a "U" pattern. Picture the bottom of the U having three mics across its width (Left-Center-Right) and each wing of the U being a single mic for LR - RR in the surround sound setup. The front mics are configured O.R.T.F. with a center channel mic in between. The rear mics are at 90º angles to eachother. All of this sat on a single stand, with a single cable bundle that I tied together the night before. Deployment of the gear went smoothly and quickly. I ran the cables back to my MotU 896 and plugged into the appropriately-pre-labeled jacks (labeled for their respective Dolby Surround assignments). The firewire was connected to my Sony GRX560 laptop with 80GB 5400rpm drive. The session was also videotaped--I had two 3-chip cameras with high def wide angle lenses, one on a dolly, the other stationary for the conductor shots. Some of the orchestra members walked up to me and commented that they had never seen a microphone configuration like that before. I explained that it was an experimental recording in Surround Sound. One of the double-bass players asked if we were making a movie. (Actually, this session was a documentary about the conductor, who is the son of a famous American composer). I recorded in 24/96 samples. Five channels from the mics, and one additional channel from the conductor's wireless lapel. Fortissimo peak levels were around -11dB. Due to the age of the building, retrofitted air conditioning units lined the two exterior walls of this large room. All of these units were running, and humming, a nice 60hz hum that pervaded the entire session. Other than that, the place would have been fairly quiet on a Wednesday night, excepting the occasional police sirens in the streets below. The session went smoothly as anyone could possibly ask. I did my homework in advance, right down to packing 135lbs of gear on one handtruck! When I returned to my editing suite later that evening, I immediately copied the 15.1 GB of audio files from the laptop to one of the workstations and set to work assembling a stereo mix from the RF - LF mics to hear what is sounded like. So what about the recording? Of course, I could hear the a/c running in the background, and that kinda' destroyed the noise floor throughout the session, but the orchestra sounded sweet and opulent! It sounded like the best of the audiophile CDs that I own, only more crisp and well-defined. With the memory of how the orchestra sounded still clear in my head, I set the playback levels on the big house system and just took it all in. In stereo, the soundfield was wide and spacious. Balance from top to bottom was perfect. High end was soothing and silky. Bottom end was warm and not overdone. The recorded needed NOTHING done to it. So I left it alone, other than normalizing it to get it above the noise floor of my Turtle Beach sound card. FFT analysis of the cymbal crashes in one number showed energy going up to 35KHz. The acoustics of that old library (about 60x80' with a vaulted ceiling maybe 30' at the peak) reminded me of the first "beautiful music" recordings, back in the days of Ted Wheems and David Rose. Just enough reverb time to augment the performance, and very retro in feeling, (which went along with the music format). So it was like I was back in 1959 again, but with 2005 gear! This was the first of two rehearsal sessions before the concert. Session Two is tonight. Concert is Saturday night and will be "Retro Pops" format. I am recording all three. By the time all is said and done, 261 gigabytes of digital video + audio will have been generated! If the remainder of these sessions goes this well, I'll be very pleased. Editing in post is going to be interesting, to say the least. -- Best Regards, Mark A. Weiss, P.E. www.mwcomms.com - |
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#3
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Well, that's a good illustration that it's not so much about which microphones you use, but where you put them and how the orchestra sounds in the room. You might have liked $1,000 mics a little better, but if you're happy with what you got, that's fine. And if it was a lousy room or the mics were in the wrong place, simply substituting $10,00 worth of mics wouldn't have saved the day. Just came back from Session two (2 rehearsals for this orchestra--the big event is Saturday night) and am previewing the recordings/video. Another stellar performance. I managed to get them to turn off the A/C for the first 45 minutes of the first session. It got too hot in there and after 3/4 hour, the conductor requested that it be turned on again, but at least I got some good noise floor to work with on the first 4-5 numbers. Since the tracks are 1.4GB a piece, I'll assemble the L + R pairs into a stereo WAV file later on and listen to the first 1/2 hour to enjoy the fruits of my (sweaty) labor. :-) When I bought the B-1s, I spent months evaluating them. I found the polar pattern to be smoother than the Neumann TLM-103 and U-87. s/n ratio was within 1dB of the Neumanns. Frequency response seems to be a match too. Frankly, the U87 and the B-1 are indistinguishable to my ears, both on headphones and on a pair of Wilson Bishops with Mark Levinson amplifiers driving them. So I sold my Neumanns last summer and used the cash to buy six more B-1s and a MotU 896. The B-1s are great mics with more s/n ratio than any venue or studio I have worked in, even including my own. For real quiet, I go outdoors in the northwest hills of CT woods and add +50dB gain (digitally) to the 24-bit files and now I can here distant jetliners in the air miles away, traffic from major highways over 10 miles away, and the sounds of insects crapping on the leaves. All sounds I cannot hear with the naked ear. Recording an orchestra is easy work for these mics. Paired with the MotU 896, they make a perfect recording setup. I'm using a mic bar that's configured in a "U" shape, with three mics (L-C-R) along the bottom of the U and one additional (LR-RR) on each wing of the U. The rig deploys quickly. All setup, including two camera video shoot with tripods, dollies, zoom controller hookup and the audio gear, was up and running in under 20 minutes. Tomorrow night, I'll be recording and videotaping on the Green in Downtown Danbury, as the Pops concert takes place. Here's hoping for great weather! -- Best Regards, Mark A. Weiss, P.E. www.mwcomms.com - |
#4
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Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:
On Wednesday night, I made my first orchestral recording using the Behringer B-1 Large Diaphragm Condenser Microphones. The venue was a former library, with a huge, 100-year-old vaulted ceiling, making seem a little like an old church roof of the Byzantine design. Reverb times were akin to the venues that string orchestras used to perform in for commercial and radio performances in the late 1950s. The orchestra is a 50-piece affair, with the usual violin, viola, double basses, brass, woodwinds and a full percussion section. I assembled an array that holds five mics in a "U" pattern. Picture the bottom of the U having three mics across its width (Left-Center-Right) and each wing of the U being a single mic for LR - RR in the surround sound setup. The front mics are configured O.R.T.F. with a center channel mic in between. The rear mics are at 90º angles to eachother. All of this sat on a single stand, with a single cable bundle that I tied together the night before. Deployment of the gear went smoothly and quickly. Hello Mark, Listen very carefully and you will find out that 17 cm ORTF for stereo is fine, but a center mic in between is not good for the sourround sound front. Also the rear mics seem to be to close to the front. The coloration of large diaphragm mics are also not ideal. I know you are just starting. Good luck. Cheers Jens |
#5
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setup. The front mics are configured O.R.T.F. with a center channel
mic in between. The rear mics are at 90º angles to eachother. All of this sat on a single stand, with a single cable bundle that I tied together the night before. Deployment of the gear went smoothly and quickly. Hello Mark, Listen very carefully and you will find out that 17 cm ORTF for stereo is fine, but a center mic in between is not good for the sourround sound front. Also the rear mics seem to be to close to the front. The coloration of large diaphragm mics are also not ideal. I know you are just starting. Good luck. Cheers Jens I didn't mean to give the false impression that I've just started making recordings. I meant DIGITAL recordings with Behringer mics. Actually, I've been recording concert bands since 1977, but this is the first time I've done it with the Behringer mics and digital audio chain. :-) In the old days, I used reel to reel decks and analog mixers for these gigs. I used to be a big fan of small diaphragm condensors, but after hearing the transient response of the B-1s, I'm sold on the sound. What coloration? What I heard in my headphones and what I heard without the headphones sounded damned near identical, save for the time and delay differences between my position the the mics'. I chose to go a little more than 110º angles between the front L-R mics, knowing there would be a center channel. The stereo mix sounds "discreet" as a result, but with the center mix in there, it meshes nicely. As for the rears, the mics are all cardioides, and I don't want to distort the delay factors by moving them far away from the fronts. They are maybe 25cm back from the fronts and completely isolated by the back pattern rejection. I'm in the process of capturing the videotapes to the HD array at the moment. Video from three cams has to be synched, then the audio's 6 tracks (includes an LFE channel that I may or may not use -- because the bass drum player was too timid to really whack that thing) will be synched to camera audio and all heads trimmed to the same start point. The challenge comes from having so many options before me. In the past, I had only two channels to work with in post. There were few decisions to make. But I'm sitting here listening to the stereo mix I derived from R-L in 24/96 and boy does it raise the goosebumps! This has more of that "you are there!" feeling to it than anything I have on CD from Telarc, Phillips, et al. The freedom from any hint of hiss is also refreshing. Something the Big Boys haven't seemed to address. -- Best Regards, Mark A. Weiss, P.E. www.mwcomms.com - |
#6
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Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:
I know you are just starting. Good luck. I didn't mean to give the false impression that I've just started making recordings. I guess he just scanned through it. I don't see a newbie splashing out on MULTIPLE Neumann mics only to sell them almost immediately afterwards. -- Best Regards, Mark A. Weiss, P.E. www.mwcomms.com - -- JP Morris - aka DOUG the Eagle (Dragon) -=UDIC=- Fun things to do with the Ultima games http://www.it-he.org Reign of the Just - An Ultima clone http://rotj.it-he.org d+++ e+ N+ T++ Om U1234!56!7'!S'!8!9!KAW u++ uC+++ uF+++ uG---- uLB---- uA--- nC+ nR---- nH+++ nP++ nI nPT nS nT wM- wC- y a(YEAR - 1976) |
#7
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I know you are just starting. Good luck. I didn't mean to give the false impression that I've just started making recordings. I guess he just scanned through it. I don't see a newbie splashing out on MULTIPLE Neumann mics only to sell them almost immediately afterwards. I'm also a longtime audiophile with a sound system worth more than my house. :-) That decision took a LOT of sanity checks. But I feel quite good about it as I review the tracks I captured Saturday night. At first, I thought they seemed a bit bright when listened to on the Dynaudio Acoustics, but on the Wilson Bischops, I am "there!" -- Best Regards, Mark A. Weiss, P.E. www.mwcomms.com - |
#8
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Some samples at last:
The orchestra was recorded with a five mike array that I assembled. (You can see it over the conductor's head in the principal shot). The array consists of an O.R.T.F. pair, with the addition of a center channel mike in between, plus another stereo pair at 90º angles to eachother for the rear surround channels. It is deep into the center of the orchestra, so the violin section and celli will appear come from the rear channels, while the brass and percussion are in front. One additional mike was placed out by the double-basses and bass drum and it drives the LFE channel. The streaming Windows media files are version 9 and require the Pro Audio 5.1 Surround CODEC for the audio. Multiple cameras were placed around the orchestra. This is a rough cut edit. The video is not complete yet, so the editing may appear choppy: www.tinyurl.com/dws47 www.tinyurl.com/9aoub -- Best Regards, Mark A. Weiss, P.E. www.mwcomms.com - |
#9
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Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:
Some samples at last: The video is good and helpful. The orchestra was recorded with a five mike array that I assembled. Recently posted my thought on such an array, don't want to re-iterate. The array ... is deep into the center of the orchestra, so the violin section and celli will appear come from the rear channels, while the brass and percussion are in front. In the context of the music in question it is - to me - a strange choice. It would make more sense to me to have the surrounding noises be the surrounding sound, ie. to have the mic stand home more conventionally placed in the focus of the orchestral sound, which - usually - is behind the conductor. One additional mike was placed out by the double-basses and bass drum and it drives the LFE channel. It will take some effort to convince me that any other location than mic-cluster center is appropiate, please try. The streaming Windows media files are version 9 and require the Pro Audio 5.1 Surround CODEC for the audio. Which means that it is probably not fair to comment on a stereo playback. Comments made would be less than completely favourable. It is in my opinion an error to have a mic stand under that canopy, I think that that is what makes the overall sound "contained". Also the 10 kHz range appears exaggerated, but this is based mainly on the cymbal sound, and cymbal sound can vary greatly. DPA made some 5-1 mic setup experiments, probably wortwhile reading material. A good presentation, including playback of audio samples, was arranged by the danish chapter of the AES a couple of years ago. Which is why I didn't rush to get a FR2, I want a FR4, 6 or 8 .... O;-) ... from the 197x discrete four channel recordings that I have heard 4 tracks is enough, and it should be possible to re-matrix into any relevant distribution format. My understanding of these matters is possibly very incomplete. www.tinyurl.com/dws47 www.tinyurl.com/9aoub It could be helpful to have the discrete audio tracks for those two snippets, and it would certainly make evaluating the mics somewhat easier. Thank you very much for illustrating your post with examples, very interesting ones. I would try two changes to the setup: move the mic-cluster to a more conventional location for the surround to be what actually surrounds and move the lfe mic to cluster center. I have yet to try such a setup, so I can not promise that the changes will work better than your initial try. Mark A. Weiss, P.E. www.mwcomms.com Kind regards Peter Larsen -- ******************************************* * My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk * * The Vienna Copyright convention applies * ******************************************* |
#10
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The video is good and helpful.
The orchestra was recorded with a five mike array that I assembled. Recently posted my thought on such an array, don't want to re-iterate. URL? Subject line? The array ... is deep into the center of the orchestra, so the violin section and celli will appear come from the rear channels, while the brass and percussion are in front. In the context of the music in question it is - to me - a strange choice. It would make more sense to me to have the surrounding noises be the surrounding sound, ie. to have the mic stand home more conventionally placed in the focus of the orchestral sound, which - usually - is behind the conductor. Logistics dictated the position to a large extent. I wanted the mics in a central location (behind the conductor and overhead would have been great, except that it would have been in the "traffic" area of the stage, where the conductor walks to and from a house PA microphone), but not directly behind the conductor, who's body would interfere with the sound, unless I had some way to hoist the mics really high up. Another factor was this being an outdoor concert, we had to compete with city noise and traffic. I started to look at the surround channels as additional channels of sound, rather than ambient noise pickup as a result. One additional mike was placed out by the double-basses and bass drum and it drives the LFE channel. It will take some effort to convince me that any other location than mic-cluster center is appropiate, please try. A very clear reason, in fact: There was no bass to be heard at the mic location. The bass drum head was perpendicular to the mic array, meaning that bass drum output (a bass drum radiates like a dipole, with a huge null in the middle) was toward the back of the stage and toward the front outside of the stage. Since there are no solid walls to bounce the bass, the bass drum was completely inaudible at this location. Hence the placement of a LFE channel mic on-axis to the bass drum head. The streaming Windows media files are version 9 and require the Pro Audio 5.1 Surround CODEC for the audio. Which means that it is probably not fair to comment on a stereo playback. Comments made would be less than completely favourable. It is in my opinion an error to have a mic stand under that canopy, I think that that is what makes the overall sound "contained". Also the 10 kHz range appears exaggerated, but this is based mainly on the cymbal sound, and cymbal sound can vary greatly. I too noticed this on lesser speaker systems, such as the Dynaudio Acoustics monitors that I mix on. However, on the Wilson Bischops, the high end sounds exactly as it did when I recorded it. This particular orchestra has a somewhat thin middle to lower range and a bright, tends-to-be-brittle high end. Particularly challenging to get this to sound balanced. DPA made some 5-1 mic setup experiments, probably wortwhile reading material. A good presentation, including playback of audio samples, was arranged by the danish chapter of the AES a couple of years ago. Which is why I didn't rush to get a FR2, I want a FR4, 6 or 8 .... O;-) ... from the 197x discrete four channel recordings that I have heard 4 tracks is enough, and it should be possible to re-matrix into any relevant distribution format. My understanding of these matters is possibly very incomplete. www.tinyurl.com/dws47 www.tinyurl.com/9aoub It could be helpful to have the discrete audio tracks for those two snippets, and it would certainly make evaluating the mics somewhat easier. I'm thinking about making a stereo submix, derived from the front & rear channels. Extensive listening tests will be a factor in my decision to downmix, all to aware of potential phase/comb filter effects that may arise. Thank you very much for illustrating your post with examples, very interesting ones. I would try two changes to the setup: move the mic-cluster to a more conventional location for the surround to be what actually surrounds and move the lfe mic to cluster center. I have yet to try such a setup, so I can not promise that the changes will work better than your initial try. I'm negotiating a contract with a professional orchestra in another city, and that concert will be indoors in a fine acoustic space, a concert hall. I've discussed the idea of flying the mic array, and in such a case, I can derive LFE from the center channel mic. In a hall, the bass output will be reinforced by the boundaries of the space, eliminating the need for a localized LFE mic. Getting the mics further away will dry out the upper register considerably. I've also noticed that this other symphony orchestra has a less brilliant high end. The sound is spectrally more balanced than it is with the symphony I just recorded last weekend. In a perfect situation, I would do things differently, but since these were concerts and not recording sessions, the recording had to take secondary place in importance and thus mic placement. Thank you for listening and commenting! -- Best Regards, Mark A. Weiss, P.E. www.mwcomms.com - |
#11
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Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote: The video is good and helpful. The orchestra was recorded with a five mike array that I assembled. Recently posted my thought on such an array, don't want to re-iterate. URL? Subject line? This forum, orchestral mic(s) or sumthing, here is the essence: Brucks sputnik however is a square frame, probably 6 to 8 inches each side with a cardiod at each corner, and thus 90 degrees between each and every. Output is discrete 4 channel. I would probably not do it quite like that, imo it is possibly better to have all 4 cards on the same cross-bar. The modern version would be to use 5 cards on a ring at most 1 foot in diamater, probably as small as can be - ie. so that the XLR plugs touch in the center, it can not be smaller. Perhaps even with a central omni for bass only. Just an idea, not tested, a paraphrase over a DPA suggestion for deploying omnis .... More comments later, no time right now ... Kind regards Peter Larsen -- ******************************************* * My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk * * The Vienna Copyright convention applies * ******************************************* |
#12
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This forum, orchestral mic(s) or sumthing, here is the essence: Brucks sputnik however is a square frame, probably 6 to 8 inches each side with a cardiod at each corner, and thus 90 degrees between each and every. Output is discrete 4 channel. I would probably not do it quite like that, imo it is possibly better to have all 4 cards on the same cross-bar. The modern version would be to use 5 cards on a ring at most 1 foot in diamater, probably as small as can be - ie. so that the XLR plugs touch in the center, it can not be smaller. Perhaps even with a central omni for bass only. Just an idea, not tested, a paraphrase over a DPA suggestion for deploying omnis .... More comments later, no time right now ... I see. That configuration appears to be ergonomically-based, rather than inter-aurally-based. I chose the 17cm spacing to retain the dimensions of the ear-to-ear spacing of human heads. Both configurations are similar in other respects. I'm busy editing the second half of the concert now. I have to edit in audio clips that the conductor played as part of the introductions to musical interludes, as well as slides he used. Many tracks of a/v material coming together as one program. About 14 audio channels in all, with the house mix feed and camera audio included. -- Best Regards, Mark A. Weiss, P.E. www.mwcomms.com - |
#13
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Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:
[quoting me] Brucks sputnik however is a square frame, probably 6 to 8 inches each side with a cardiod at each corner, and thus 90 degrees between each and every. Output is discrete 4 channel. I would probably not do it quite like that, imo it is possibly better to have all 4 cards on the same cross-bar. The modern version would be to use 5 cards on a ring at most 1 foot in diamater, probably as small as can be - ie. so that the XLR plugs touch in the center, it can not be smaller. Perhaps even with a central omni for bass only. Just an idea, not tested, a paraphrase over a DPA suggestion for deploying omnis .... I see. That configuration appears to be ergonomically-based, rather than inter-aurally-based. Yes, practicalities matter, but it is in fact based on the paper "The Stereophonic Zoom" (around 1983) by Williams. I chose the 17cm spacing to retain the dimensions of the ear-to-ear spacing of human heads. Reading that paper will alter your understanding of stereo and it was because of having read it I included also the larger base circle as a suggestion, even if somewhat impractical as seen from a locationists point of view. The concept being that it might be that the de-correlation between front L, C and R would otherwise be too small. Both configurations are similar in other respects. Yes, which is why I found your concept most interesting. While searching for that Williams paper I found another one: http://iem.kug.ac.at/%7Esontacchi/20...d/williams.pdf and then of course there is the DPA compendium, it may be available on their site. They played an interesting recording of a drumkit made with omni's on a hula-hop ring at the AES event mentioned. Mark A. Weiss, P.E. Kind regards Peter Larsen -- ******************************************* * My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk * ******************************************* |
#14
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Yes, practicalities matter, but it is in fact based on the paper "The
Stereophonic Zoom" (around 1983) by Williams. I chose the 17cm spacing to retain the dimensions of the ear-to-ear spacing of human heads. Reading that paper will alter your understanding of stereo and it was because of having read it I included also the larger base circle as a suggestion, even if somewhat impractical as seen from a locationists point of view. The concept being that it might be that the de-correlation between front L, C and R would otherwise be too small. Both configurations are similar in other respects. Yes, which is why I found your concept most interesting. While searching for that Williams paper I found another one: http://iem.kug.ac.at/%7Esontacchi/20...d/williams.pdf and then of course there is the DPA compendium, it may be available on their site. They played an interesting recording of a drumkit made with omni's on a hula-hop ring at the AES event mentioned. Thank you for the interesting whitepaper. Information, ideas and theoretical concepts are the food for experimentation. I have a new clip of an indoor recording, which addresses some of the issues talked about earlier in this thread. This particular session was recorded at the Danbury Music Center, a former 100 year old library with nice vaulted ceilings and pleasing acoustics, remeniscent of the radio orchestra settings of the late 1950s. You'll hear a lot of incidental noises, like talking, because this is a rehearsal and the orchestra members are taking notes and asking eachother questions. Recording setup is 6 Behringer B-1 large diaphragm condenser mics and a Mark of the Unicorn 896, 8-channel, 96KHz, 24-bit A/D converter with individual phantom-powered mic preamps. DAW is a Sony laptop computer running Vegas 4.0 multitrack software. This MP3 clip was from the second rehearsal, June 17th. I managed to get them to turn off the a/c for the first 56 minutes and we got some nice audio! This is just a sample of the Left Front and Right Front mic channels, for a basic stereo recording: http://www.dv-clips.com/MP3/magnific...normalized.mp3 -- Best Regards, Mark A. Weiss, P.E. www.mwcomms.com - |
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