[geoff]

Polyenesian choir ( around 15 vox), singing religo songs to a backing back.

Can only manage 8 sets of headphones running.

Feasible to have the phone-less singers simply following those with, or
better to balance up speakers playing back the backing with the choir ?

Absolute audio quality not really the main criteria. X-Y mic scenario.

Suggestions ?

geoff

[Scott Dorsey]

geoff wrote:
Polyenesian choir ( around 15 vox), singing religo songs to a backing back.

Can only manage 8 sets of headphones running.

Feasible to have the phone-less singers simply following those with, or
better to balance up speakers playing back the backing with the choir ?

Absolute audio quality not really the main criteria. X-Y mic scenario.

Suggestions ?

Dry room, or even better a nice area outside. If you can't do a dry room,
a room with one absorbing surface behind the band will work.

Two wedge monitors on the floor out of phase with one another so that they
cancel directly on the center. Microphones _behind_ the monitors, so most
of the leakage into the microphones is at lower frequencies.

The rejection from this arrangement can actually be very good, but moving
the microphones a few inches out of the null can screw things up, so using
coincident cardioids or M-S is necessary; the width of an ORTF pair is too
wide to fit into the null.

You're always going to have a little leakage of the cuing track into the
recording but it can work remarkably well and that leakage will disappear
when the whole thing is mixed. The vast majority of leakage that you get is
going to be off the ceiling and walls, though.

If these guys are typical, they aren't going to be able to work with headphones
at all because they will feel too detached. But the wedge trick can work
remarkably well.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[geoff]

On 17/11/2016 3:07 a.m., Scott Dorsey wrote:

Dry room, or even better a nice area outside. If you can't do a dry room,
a room with one absorbing surface behind the band will work.

Two wedge monitors on the floor out of phase with one another so that they
cancel directly on the center. Microphones _behind_ the monitors, so most
of the leakage into the microphones is at lower frequencies.

The rejection from this arrangement can actually be very good, but moving
the microphones a few inches out of the null can screw things up, so using
coincident cardioids or M-S is necessary; the width of an ORTF pair is too
wide to fit into the null.

You're always going to have a little leakage of the cuing track into the
recording but it can work remarkably well and that leakage will disappear
when the whole thing is mixed. The vast majority of leakage that you get is
going to be off the ceiling and walls, though.

If these guys are typical, they aren't going to be able to work with headphones
at all because they will feel too detached. But the wedge trick can work
remarkably well.
--scott


Thanks for the suggestion. Will give that scenario a dry-run tonight.

geoff