When a live performance is recorded with a stereo mic placement (say
with small diaghram Octavas, or others for that matter, angled and
close together or even separated by feet), in a medium size night club,
there always seems to be a noticeable difference between what my ears
hear and the recorded signal (flat, unprocessed, and direct to digital
on different recorders) from exactly the same location as where I
listened. Also, when the signal is clearly wet (noticeable to the
ears) with effects, the recorded sound almost always sounds completely
dry. Obviously, post processing can fix this, but what is the basis of
this phenomena. When I multitrack direct from the board none of this is
an issue, but when you are looking for a "quick and dirty" way of
hearing how the band's performance was, I find less than reasonable
correlation with the recorded vs. the "heard" signal. If anyone has a
good answer to this, I would be extremely appreciative. Thanks

On 27 Apr 2005 20:11:51 -0700, "Dave" wrote:

When a live performance is recorded with a stereo mic placement (say
with small diaghram Octavas, or others for that matter, angled and
close together or even separated by feet), in a medium size night club,
there always seems to be a noticeable difference between what my ears
hear and the recorded signal (flat, unprocessed, and direct to digital
on different recorders) from exactly the same location as where I
listened. Also, when the signal is clearly wet (noticeable to the
ears) with effects, the recorded sound almost always sounds completely
dry. Obviously, post processing can fix this, but what is the basis of
this phenomena. When I multitrack direct from the board none of this is
an issue, but when you are looking for a "quick and dirty" way of
hearing how the band's performance was, I find less than reasonable
correlation with the recorded vs. the "heard" signal. If anyone has a
good answer to this, I would be extremely appreciative. Thanks

Scott Dorsey won't take credit for this, but!! the sticking-one's-
finger-in-ones's-ear technique is so blindingly fast and useful
(and dramatic; never underestimate theater while in a theater)
as to give an ordinary guy enough rep to be able to get a very
difficult job done fairly painlessly.

If you're talking dangling from the catwalks, well... Otherwise
you'll have to either be able to monitor (fat chance) or be very
experienced with your road rig (so why ask here) or have Time (Doctor
Who's still running?).

Has worked great for me, likely many others; easy to try
experimentally too.

Chris Hornbeck
"Don't panic."

We do not merely HEAR but INTERPRET. It's part of what our brains do. We can
no more stop it than pretend that we aren;t seeing with a dual-eye parallax
3d perception and wonder why the sense of depth we see from a place isn;t
matched by the photograph taken from the same spot.
We constantly interpret and analyse our sonic surroundings and use every
clue from head movements and resulting different 'looks' at reflections and
such so that we can actively ignore the clutter and distracting things, and
concentrate on what we WISH to listen to.
On playback of a recording, we no longer have 2/3 of those clues and are
only interpreting from the limited available sonic information. Like looking
at the flat photograph with both eyes, you can;t somehow re-supply the depth
information no matter how much you fiddle with color balance or
magnification.
The only thing you CAN do is predict how a recording will sound compared to
where you;re standing: plug up one ear and turn the other ear towards the
sound source, you'll be able to get a very good idea of what the recording
from there will sound like.

On 4/27/05 11:11 PM, in article
, "Dave"
wrote:

When a live performance is recorded with a stereo mic placement (say
with small diaghram Octavas, or others for that matter, angled and
close together or even separated by feet), in a medium size night club,
there always seems to be a noticeable difference between what my ears
hear and the recorded signal (flat, unprocessed, and direct to digital
on different recorders) from exactly the same location as where I
listened. Also, when the signal is clearly wet (noticeable to the
ears) with effects, the recorded sound almost always sounds completely
dry. Obviously, post processing can fix this, but what is the basis of
this phenomena. When I multitrack direct from the board none of this is
an issue, but when you are looking for a "quick and dirty" way of
hearing how the band's performance was, I find less than reasonable
correlation with the recorded vs. the "heard" signal. If anyone has a
good answer to this, I would be extremely appreciative. Thanks

Then, the question is: Can we correlate what we hear while we are in
the hall, listening to the performance, the important issue with the
recorded documentation of the performance (which may not
"realistically" depict what the audience had heard (spelled
e-x-p-e-r-i-e-n-c-e-d). If the two are not one and the same (or
close), then the only thing that the recording should be used for is to
examine the structure of the performances, and NOT the balance, etc.,
of what the audience heard. ????

I have wrestled with this one for a while when band members hand me a
copy of the tape from the night's performance.

If I want a great copy of the performance for others to hear, then I
multitrack it.

When a live performance is recorded with a stereo mic placement (say
with small diaghram Octavas, or others for that matter, angled and
close together or even separated by feet), in a medium size night club,
there always seems to be a noticeable difference between what my ears
hear and the recorded signal (flat, unprocessed, and direct to digital
on different recorders) from exactly the same location as where I
listened.

There are two major reasons for the difference.

1. The recording and playback chain does not have perfect fidelity. (Duh...!)

2. The directional cues your ears hears are not correctly preserved and
reproduced. This causes drastic alterations in your perception of spatiality and
instrumental tonality.


Also, when the signal is clearly wet (noticeable to the (ears) with
effects, the recorded sound almost always sounds completely dry.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. However, on the surface, it sounds as if
your recorder is of very poor quality (ie, what comes out does not sound at all
like what went in).

Dave wrote:
When a live performance is recorded with a stereo mic placement (say
with small diaghram Octavas, or others for that matter, angled and
close together or even separated by feet), in a medium size night club,
there always seems to be a noticeable difference between what my ears
hear and the recorded signal (flat, unprocessed, and direct to digital
on different recorders) from exactly the same location as where I
listened.

Yes. Try listening with just one ear and you'll get a better sense of
what the microphone is picking up.

Also, when the signal is clearly wet (noticeable to the
ears) with effects, the recorded sound almost always sounds completely
dry. Obviously, post processing can fix this, but what is the basis of
this phenomena.

What is happening is that the reverb from the room is getting added on top
of the effects. And the room reverb is swamping the effects. Also realize
you're going through PA speakers that aren't the most accurate things
around either and tend to smear transients.

When I multitrack direct from the board none of this is
an issue, but when you are looking for a "quick and dirty" way of
hearing how the band's performance was, I find less than reasonable
correlation with the recorded vs. the "heard" signal. If anyone has a
good answer to this, I would be extremely appreciative. Thanks

You're going to have to be more careful about microphone placement, because
the microphone just doesn't hear the way the human ear does.

If your goal is to get a sense of how the original performance sounded,
PA warts and all, for evaluation of the PA and performance work, you
might try binaural recording. The binaural head _does_ hear the way
the human ear does, though of course you have to listen on headphones.
It's a great tool for evaluation work, though.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 4/28/05 12:30 AM, in article
, "Dave"
wrote:

Then, the question is: Can we correlate what we hear while we are in
the hall, listening to the performance, the important issue with the
recorded documentation of the performance (which may not
"realistically" depict what the audience had heard (spelled
e-x-p-e-r-i-e-n-c-e-d). If the two are not one and the same (or
close), then the only thing that the recording should be used for is to
examine the structure of the performances, and NOT the balance, etc.,
of what the audience heard. ????

If I read you right, YES to all of the above... Sirt of (read on MacDuff)
A mic-in-the-room approach to performance recording ONLY works as
playback-entertainment when the performer AND the room/hall are truly and
honsetly what you want to reproduce, hence it works for classical and jazz
and bluegrass which in general exhibit an order of magnitude or better jump
in mandating real instrument (be it acoustic or electric) TONE and player
chops as represented in ensemble balance and playing the room. Anymusical
genre that's based on a studio-close-mic-artificial playback-only benchmark
(which covers 99.44% of what Most Folks listen to) is pretty much guaranteed
NOT to work this way. The DEAD had a mindset both musical and technical (and
that's 2 separate sets of people!) that went to insane levels to make this
work, Thw Wall being the best and most wonderfully impractical answer.



I have wrestled with this one for a while when band members hand me a
copy of the tape from the night's performance.

If you want a workable reference, put two mics up in the middle and add a
board feed. MY answer is to have a board that has a separate AUX bus that's
intended as a stereo mix bus with pre/post select on each input and vol/pan
layout, that way I can get backline in at the right balance and come up with
(depending on how much trouble I want to go to for vox bus comp, dedicated
separate fx Sen/ret etc) to get a very reasonable stereo recording that
follows the mains but balances for the recording. It's STILL not real but
FEELS better listening to it. If a 'how'd we do last night' thing is all
that¹s required, I prefer to just use the two-mics-in-the-hall method and
KNOW that I'm hearing a no-win situation. It also tells you what the
audience is hearing and where your house mix can be improved. Anybody in the
band complaining about the 'character' of this when it's INTEDED to be a
study tool needs to just pony up the $500+ extra a night to bring in a
recording guy and assistant to get them a reasonable live RECORDING mix of
the show.


If I want a great copy of the performance for others to hear, then I
multitrack it.

On 4/28/05 9:43 AM, in article ,
"SSJVCmag" wrote:

Anybody in the
band complaining about the 'character' of this when it's INTEDED to be a
study tool needs to just pony up the $500+ extra a night to bring in a
recording guy and assistant to get them a reasonable live RECORDING mix of
the show.


If I want a great copy of the performance for others to hear, then I
multitrack it.

Not really...
Best example is Joe Jackson's BIG WORLD album...

On 4/28/05 6:35 AM, in article , "William
Sommerwerck" wrote:

Also, when the signal is clearly wet (noticeable to the (ears) with
effects, the recorded sound almost always sounds completely dry.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. However, on the surface, it sounds as if
your recorder is of very poor quality (ie, what comes out does not sound at
all like what went in).


I doubt it's the recorder, unless it's a cassette or low-res mp3 recorder.

I'll go out on a limb and guess that the Octavia's are cardioids? Your ears
are semi-omnidirectional.

If you try some omni's with some form of baffle in between (a la Jecklin
disc) then I think you'll get a closer representation of the original sound.


Allen
--
Allen Corneau
Mastering Engineer
Essential Sound Mastering
Houston, TX

I would suspect a major feature of what you are missing is the time
delay that occurs from the spacing of your ears. ORTF setups should
cure that. Binaural micing from a head or torso dummy picks up
additional reflective cues.

Then listen through headphones.


On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 04:35:36 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

2. The directional cues your ears hears are not correctly preserved and
reproduced. This causes drastic alterations in your perception of spatiality and
instrumental tonality.


Also, when the signal is clearly wet (noticeable to the (ears) with
effects, the recorded sound almost always sounds completely dry.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. However, on the surface, it sounds as if
your recorder is of very poor quality (ie, what comes out does not sound at all
like what went in).


Willie K. Yee, M.D. http://users.bestweb.net/~wkyee
Developer of Problem Knowledge Couplers for Psychiatry http://www.pkc.com
Webmaster and Guitarist for the Big Blue Big Band http://www.bigbluebigband.org