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#1
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Comments on my chamber music recordings?
Dear rec.audio.pro readers,
I've been recording some silent film scores for DVD release in my home project studio. The DVDs are nationally distributed, show up on Turner Classic Movies, and in one case, a recording was played at the Silent Film Festival in Pordenone Italy, so I want them to sound as good as I can get them. I've picked up some very helpful tips on this newsgroup about home recording techniques -- I've added some room treatments and bass trapping, though I'm limited somewhat by the fact that the room has eight windows, an eight-foot ceiling, and needs to be available to live in. I'm willing to make some more changes, but I wanted to get some feedback on what I've done so far in case there's an obvious best next step to take. The orchestra is five pieces -- piano, violin, cello, clarinet, and trumpet. The piece is a light-classical romance from the collection of a silent film music director -- I chose this piece as the sample because all four solo instruments get some exposure. I'm recording from a single x-y stereo pair based on advice I've received here, and because some people may still be listening to videos on mono speakers, so I want good mono compatibility. Anyway, I'd be grateful for any comments. I've posted a "dry" version, and the same recording with my reverbs and eq added. If I should be posting these in a better format, let me know -- the aiff files are 27 megabytes, which seems ungainly, so I made mp3s. With treatment: http://www.mont-alto.com/MontAltoWet.mp3 Dry: http://www.mont-alto.com/MontAltoDry.mp3 Thanks in advance for any comments. Rodney Sauer Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra www.mont-alto.com |
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#2
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Comments on my chamber music recordings?
I listened on my computer speakers, Monsoon 2000 planars.
Both recordings have a too-prominent clarinet, though the wet version is better-balanced. The wet version is more pleasing; the dry sounds a if it were recorded in a room with inappropriate or even unsympathetic acoustics. I hear nothing Korngoldy about it, but it does have an appealing early-20th-century "potted palm" quality. I assume that was waht you were aiming for. |
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#3
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Comments on my chamber music recordings?
"Soundhaspriority" wrote in message
wrote in message ... It's gorgeous. The room is pretty nice, maybe somewhat dead and cold. The peak levels are probably too low. Peak levels are about 10 dB below FS. I'm under the impression that while small groups sometimes play in large venues, that the group and the music were designed to be played in smaller room to smaller audiences. Thus the audience hears a sound that tickles the extent of the room, and is not lost in it. With these recordings I get a sense of imposed delicacy because of the low recorded level. The dry version, in particular, reminds me of some of the luscious Erich Korngold scores. The dry sounds as good as dry can get. I would call the dry version dryer, and the wet version wetter, but they aren't all that much different. I understand your desire for some reverb, but the reverb does not add to the remarkability of the dry score. Well, the dry version isn't all that dry. I'm sure some tweaking will get you there. The kinesthetic image I get is this: "dry" is in a small, warm, comfy space, while "wet" is in a dark, ominous space. While not cold, the recordings are not warm, for better or worse. Can you give us any notes about mike placement? It seems to be minimally-miced with coincident mics. Like an acoustic mix, not a board mix. The ensemble seems perfectly balanced. I'd like a fair bit more piano. In particular it seems to be distant while the other instruments particularly the clarinet seems to be a lot closer. The cello lacks air and reverb, it sounds like it is in a smaller, but not way too small fairly dead room. |
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#4
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Comments on my chamber music recordings?
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#5
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Comments on my chamber music recordings?
On Nov 15, 6:06 pm, "
wrote: Dear rec.audio.pro readers, I've been recording some silent film scores for DVD release in my home project studio. The DVDs are nationally distributed, show up on Turner Classic Movies, and in one case, a recording was played at the Silent Film Festival in Pordenone Italy, so I want them to sound as good as I can get them. I've picked up some very helpful tips on this newsgroup about home recording techniques -- I've added some room treatments and bass trapping, though I'm limited somewhat by the fact that the room has eight windows, an eight-foot ceiling, and needs to be available to live in. I'm willing to make some more changes, but I wanted to get some feedback on what I've done so far in case there's an obvious best next step to take. The orchestra is five pieces -- piano, violin, cello, clarinet, and trumpet. The piece is a light-classical romance from the collection of a silent film music director -- I chose this piece as the sample because all four solo instruments get some exposure. I'm recording from a single x-y stereo pair based on advice I've received here, and because some people may still be listening to videos on mono speakers, so I want good mono compatibility. Anyway, I'd be grateful for any comments. I've posted a "dry" version, and the same recording with my reverbs and eq added. If I should be posting these in a better format, let me know -- the aiff files are 27 megabytes, which seems ungainly, so I made mp3s. With treatment: http://www.mont-alto.com/MontAltoWet.mp3 Dry: http://www.mont-alto.com/MontAltoDry.mp3 Thanks in advance for any comments. Rodney Sauer Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestrawww.mont-alto.com I enjoyed the wet more than the dry. The dry had a not-so-pleasing "small-room" quality to it. A little hard and boxy sounding. The wet was wider (on my super cheap headphones here at work! lol), and more pleasing overall. Nice work, and a very nice performance, I might add. Keep up the good work! Corey |
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#6
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Comments on my chamber music recordings?
"Soundhaspriority" wrote in message
... "William Sommerwerck" wrote in message . .. I listened on my computer speakers, Monsoon 2000 planars. Both recordings have a too-prominent clarinet, though the wet version is better-balanced. The wet version is more pleasing; the dry sounds a if it were recorded in a room with inappropriate or even unsympathetic acoustics. I hear nothing Korngoldy about it, but it does have an appealing early-20th-century "potted palm" quality. I assume that was what you were aiming for. William, this kind of music was influenced by immigrant Jewish Klesmer musicians, because, in those days, they were not yet accepted as part of the cultural mainstream. Clarinet is very prominent in Klesmer, and this was carried over into early film music. If one's expectations are rooted in classical chamber music, one could be disappointed. In this case, I think there is a specific preservationist objective. I don't disagree with you, but I've heard many, many Korngold scores. His music is more akin to Strauss (note the anachronistic music in some sections of "Robin Hood"). This piece was not of that ilk. Rodney remarks that he used a figure-8. My experience with this technique is that it seems to remove all the ambience, which could be a good thing, given his description of the room. Agreed, in principle. When I recorded live, I often used figure-8s, for exactly that reason. |
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#7
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Comments on my chamber music recordings?
On Nov 16, 10:59 am, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote: "Soundhaspriority" wrote in message ... "William Sommerwerck" wrote in message ... I listened on my computer speakers, Monsoon 2000 planars. Both recordings have a too-prominent clarinet, though the wet version is better-balanced. The wet version is more pleasing; the dry sounds a if it were recorded in a room with inappropriate or even unsympathetic acoustics. I hear nothing Korngoldy about it, but it does have an appealing early-20th-century "potted palm" quality. I assume that was what you were aiming for. William, this kind of music was influenced by immigrant Jewish Klesmer musicians, because, in those days, they were not yet accepted as part of the cultural mainstream. Clarinet is very prominent in Klesmer, and this was carried over into early film music. If one's expectations are rooted in classical chamber music, one could be disappointed. In this case, I think there is a specific preservationist objective. I don't disagree with you, but I've heard many, many Korngold scores. His music is more akin to Strauss (note the anachronistic music in some sections of "Robin Hood"). This piece was not of that ilk. There are a lot of pieces I could have put up, some a bit more "Korngoldy" -- I have literally many thousand of these little pieces, all arranged for a variable-sized orchestra that can range from a piano trio to about 30 pieces, and based on the catalogs that sometimes appear with the music, there's a lot more music that was published that I don't have. The breadth of the silent film orchestra repertoire is daunting, but when you remember that more live music was being played in film theaters than anywhere else on the planet, the surprising thing is not that there's so much of it, but that it's been so completely forgotten. But I digress from my point, which was that I want to see if anyone has helpful advice to improve the recordings! So thanks for all of the comments. I have read them all, and will continue to do so. I didn't dwell on my set-up in my first description, partly because I didn't want to get too sidetracked into a discussion of this versus that mic and/or preamp, but it's not figure 8 -- these movie scores are more likely than some things to be played back in mono, so after lurking in this group for a while I bought a Rode NT-4 and I therefore do x-y stereo. I also bought a pair of NT-5s which I've sometimes used as a spot mic on the cello or violin, but I found I generally didn't add much from those channels, since even though it DID sometimes improve the instrument tone, it also made the instrument too loud in the mix. No one so far has blamed anything on the mic and the preamps, so I think if I spend more money, I want it to be on the room itself. The other big part of this is that I am recording and playing the piano simultaneously. This partially explains the low levels -- if I red-line the levels in a loud piece, I probably won't notice until we're done playing, and the other musicians will scalp me when I tell them we have to do it again because I screwed up. Also, it made sense to me to try to record the entire film score at the same level, and this particular piece is pretty quiet. If there's an on-screen fire, storm, or sword fight; the music gets substantially louder. I experimented with a post-production compressor to make the quiet pieces louder without topping out the loud ones, but it made me nervous since I don't know what the hell I'm doing, so I've been leaving it off. But, if I'm careful, I can almost certainly record at somewhat higher levels. The NT-4 is plugged into a Mackie Onyx board, which I bought partly on Mike Rivers' recommendation as having useful, inoffensive, but quite affordable pre-amps. I know there are better pre-amps, but I feel that the pre-amps are probably not the weak link in my chain. I think it's the room. I provided "dry" and "wet" because I use the reverb and eq to mask some issues, and I thought the "dry" might prompt some useful comments. There is a carpet on the hardwood floor, but when we roll it up, the clarinet just takes over. Its sound smears around the room (he's sitting way off to the side but you may notice there's still almost no directionality). I'm afraid the real solution is to remove the rug while damping the ceiling -- but that's a huge project. Since the ceiling is 8 ft high I don't want to hang a cloud ceiling because it'll start bumping heads; and above the ceiling drywall there's blown insulation in an attic, so removing the drywall and replacing it with a softer ceiling would be a big, messy project. One thing I'm considering is attaching fabric-covered fiberglas panels over part, but not all, of the ceiling. I'm not trying to make the room dead, I just want to control it a bit. However, I have not tried partially rolling up the rug so that the cello has hardwood around it but the clarinet is on carpet. That would be worth a shot. I have the stereo mic on one side of the room since we need to all fit on one side of it. It's about 5 ft off the floor, and 15 inches from the wall. I did attach a piece of fiberglas insulation panel to that wall to reduce direct reflections. I had a lovely spot picked out in an irregular part of the room where no flat walls faced the mic from closer than 8 ft, but to my frustration, none of the musicians liked the sound I was getting from there. Thanks again, this advice is invaluable for me to figure out what to tweak next. Rodney Sauer Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra www.mont-alto.com |
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#9
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Comments on my chamber music recordings?
"Peter Larsen" wrote in message ... wrote: Dear rec.audio.pro readers, I've been recording some silent film scores for DVD release in my home project studio. [snip] I've added some room treatments and bass trapping, though I'm limited somewhat by the fact that the room has eight windows, That is not a limitation, it is a set of possibilities called adjustable acoustics. an eight-foot ceiling, and needs to be available to live in. The ceiling height is however an issue. Don't deaded the room to a graveyard, ain't gonna work for strings, but you DO need to make the square yard above the mic pair non-reflective and you may find it very useful to cover the same square yeard of floor with pillows when recording. I'm willing to make some more changes, but I wanted to get some feedback on what I've done so far in case there's an obvious best next step to take. There are, room addressed above, you need to come more to grips with what stereo is about, and imo you should set that coincidental to MS and record MS instead, if it can't be used for it, then it is the wrong coincidental for that purpose. The orchestra is five pieces -- piano, violin, cello, clarinet, and trumpet. The piece is a light-classical romance from the collection of a silent film music director -- I chose this piece as the sample because all four solo instruments get some exposure. I'm recording from a single x-y stereo pair based on advice I've received here, and because some people may still be listening to videos on mono speakers, so I want good mono compatibility. Understood. There are definite issues with the recording, and one of the options is of course to add some reverb, it fixes what is wrong, but not where it is wrong. Anyway, I'd be grateful for any comments. I've posted a "dry" version, and the same recording with my reverbs and eq added. If I should be posting these in a better format, let me know -- the aiff files are 27 megabytes, which seems ungainly, so I made mp3s. With treatment: http://www.mont-alto.com/MontAltoWet.mp3 Listened a wee bit, I plain do no like it because therre is too much verb with no or too little predelay. More predelay ... say 20 ms .. allow you to make do with less verb. Also it is boring because the initial stereo is boring, to paraphrase Harvey you can polish an object, but polishing does not transmute. Dry: http://www.mont-alto.com/MontAltoDry.mp3 My initial reaction was that it is LEFT, CENTER, RIGHT, and nothing intermediary, also the piano is too remote, it could be that there was too little difference channel signal. Fixing that is about transmuting. First thing I noticed when loading it into audtion was that there was a channel difference that seemed improbably large. After fixing that - it is about 3 dB in average level - I took the audio to MS via the "hannel mixer" and lo and behold, difference channel is some 8 dB below sum channel. "Rich stereo" has the difference channel in the range equal to sum to 4 dB below sum). It is a terse room and it is a coincidental setup that produces something that is very close to plain pan-pot multimono, but boosting the difference channel 2.5 dB made a lot of difference. Boosting it more sounded plain wrong, it seemed to me that it was the floor reflection that became too obvious. The piano got a lot more right and the audio suddenly happens on a room canvas as it should. It is the same issue that you try to fix with reverb, but again, reverb is polish, and what is needed is the transmutation in sum and difference land and then taking it back to stereo. It may still need polish, but it can probably do with a lot less. With that fixed, ie. after converting back to plain stereo, the properties of the miking setup became more obvious. You are not exactly where the focus is, the stereo is "loose", my first adjustment had been to try to move the stand 3 inches closer to the ensemble and the mic pair two inches up. All of the above just my opinion, and your mileage may vary wildly. You need to get a better understanding of what happens when you move mics around and you need to understand what stereo really is about, as well as the importance of the direct vs. reflected issue. What you did with adding verb was to add reflected audio, but you could have had some more of that for free by changing the sum to difference ratio. Just remember that the difference signal vanishes in mono. That is mostly very useful, because less reflected sound works better when it is monophonic due to the larger need for clarity. Also ... make no mistake, your result actually works and sounds just right as silent movie supplementary audio, my suggestions above are only about another route to a similarly useful result. You also ask about your choice of mp3 options, I normally say at least 192 kbits per second, ms stereo is ok, intensity stereo is not ok because it wipes difference signal out, my preference is however variable bandwidth max quality. I don't mind making re-processed audio available, either as mail to you or briefly to this newsgroups participants, but it is for you to decide. Rodney Sauer Kind regards Peter Larsen "Old soundtrack" was the first thing that came to mind. Everything sounds "somewhat artificial, but not in an irritating way" (sins of omission, not comission). It does not "pull you in", but neither does it "drive you off". |
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#10
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Comments on my chamber music recordings?
Tim Padrick wrote:
"Old soundtrack" was the first thing that came to mind. Everything sounds "somewhat artificial, but not in an irritating way" (sins of omission, not comission). It does not "pull you in", but neither does it "drive you off". Yes, it does sound like early movie sound. Early sound stages and early production styles were very concerned with clarity and dryness. So yes, in that respect he got it very right! I ought to have made that more clear, however he asked in the broader context of general chamber music recording as indicated by the chosen header and that was the context of my analysis and follow up. Kind regards Peter Larsen |
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#11
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Comments on my chamber music recordings?
On Nov 18, 3:36 am, "Peter Larsen" wrote:
Tim Padrick wrote: "Old soundtrack" was the first thing that came to mind. Everything sounds "somewhat artificial, but not in an irritating way" (sins of omission, not comission). It does not "pull you in", but neither does it "drive you off". Yes, it does sound like early movie sound. Early sound stages and early production styles were very concerned with clarity and dryness. So yes, in that respect he got it very right! I ought to have made that more clear, however he asked in the broader context of general chamber music recording as indicated by the chosen header and that was the context of my analysis and follow up. Kind regards Peter Larsen Thanks, Peter, for your detailed analysis. While I'm familiar with the concept of mid-side recording (this uses two microphones where one is mono, pointed at the source, and the other is a figure-eight mic recording the "sides" at 90 degrees, and it requires some post- recording finagling in software, if I understand correctly). I'm not sure what you mean when you transmuted my x-y stereo to m-s. Obviously, it's something done post-production in software, and I'd like to listen to your results. Is this something that standard DAP software can do (I'm running Digital Performer)? If so, I can attempt it here on my original files to avoid several mp3 conversions. Damping the square-yard of ceiling over the microphone spot is a lot easier than damping the whole ceiling, of course. I've seen techniques where an acoustic panel (Owens-Corning 703 rigid fiberglas) is suspended in some kind of frame, and attached either snug to the ceiling, or suspended a few inches from the ceiling to create space above. Is this the sort of thing you have in mind? Rodney Sauer Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra www.mont-alto.com |
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#12
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Comments on my chamber music recordings?
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#13
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Oop!
On Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:41:22 -0500, "soundhaspriority"
wrote: [snip] However, the 8 foot height provides resonances at multiples of 60Hz, which I am most familiar with in the context of bass problems. Can you supply a link to a technical backgrounder? Oops! The modes are 60, 180, 300, 420... This is a suprisingly difficult subject, because the whole idea of room modes is so often misunderstood, or at least mis-interpreted. Parallel surfaces can support a "mode" at a half wavelength, and strongly at integral multiples of reciprocals. So an 8 foot ceiling (the fate of we peasants in the land of sheetrock, also called drywall in Old America) supports a mode at 1130 ft/sec divided by 8 feet, or about 140 compressions and rarefaction cycles per second. And integral multiples of 140. And some others at integral multiples of half of all these numbers. The real meaning of "modes" requires more poetry than I'm capable of. Others will do much better. Perhaps most suprising is that there *isn't* a simple predictable universal cancellation or reinforcement. What's interesting to me is how unintuitive such a seemingly physical thing really is. It's not that it's voodoo; it's that it's deeper than that. Pardon all the dangling whatsistits, and much thanks as always, Chris Hornbeck |
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#14
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Oop!
On Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:35:17 -0500, "soundhaspriority"
wrote: What puzzled me is Peter's reference to the midrange. In hifi reproduction, at least, these modes have been traditionally associated with bass problems. Above some frequency, the modes are more closely spaced than the critical bands, at which the audible effect becomes questionable. It then becomes a ray tracing problem. Some early reflections appear to be helpful, as I have learned with respect to hard flooring around a string. Other early reflections are very harmful. These are things that experienced recordists have great knowledge of. I search the web for hints when I encounter a new situation. I, as is my wont (how the **** do ya spell that anywho?), expressed myself poorly - gee, what're the odds? Room modes are a separate topic, unrelated to your comments about ceiling absorbsion, natch. You're not going to make me look up the spelling of obsorption are you? Thanks. To be slightly on-topic (for me) room modes in small rooms, living spaces and the like, are (*) in the lower midrange and through the voice range. The common 8 foot ceiling is as much a fact of life as death and pussy. No real work-arounds, only accomodations. Back to off-topic: (*) What does this mean? That the frequency response at some specific location is only indirectly related to the frequency response of a source at another location in the same room. Strange enough, or maybe not, but there's an exquisite sensitivity in the difference between the two responses to exact positions in the room - all well described in the lit, but in terms best described as poetic. There actually *is* a simple Neutonian mapping, which completely describes everything observed. It's just very difficult to translate to the intuitive; very unusual for Newton (encoded in our DNA!) It's an ordinary resonant system - rock on the end of a spring kinda thing - so why can't I generate an intuitive internal model? Not your problem, of course. Much thanks, as always, Chris Hornbeck |
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#15
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Oop!
On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:59:34 -0500, "soundhaspriority"
wrote: The individual modes manifest as simple oscillators, but to derive an impulse response function from first principles is nontrivial. It's actually a field theory type problem. The master equation for acoustics is the Navier-Stokes, and it is very analogous to Maxwell's for electrodynamics. The difference is, Maxwells are actually linear partial differential, while Navier-Stokes is nonlinear! Yeahbut, of course the real world is really-truly-if-you-ask non-linear, but why isn't a (wrong-ish but believable) linear intuitive model out there? Dick Pierce posting here once got at the model in a way I could almost absorb as intuitive, but I couldn't follow through. My only real intuitive path is to think in impulses and additions, solely linear. My bad, but there it is. Since it is a field, there is a PDE that is obeyed for every point in the field. If only Navier were linear, there would be an "integral form", just as there is for Maxells. Once you have an integral form, you can isolate the "Greens function" from under the integral. The Greens function is a semimagical expression that when integrated over the entire volume AND the boundary of the enclosure, gives the field value at a point, which is what you want. But Navier-Stokes is more devilish, because unlike Maxells, it is not invariant under a coordinate transformation. IOW, if you are moving in the fluid (air) there is no way in hell you can make the equation look as if you are not moving. The only way the equation can be solved exactly is by perturbation expansion, ie., Feynman diagrams. And you would not believe the strange currents that flux back and forth between the infinitesmal volumes: it isn't isothermal. There are corners of acoustic theory that were first solved by Gerzon, and some riddles that have never been solved. So don't beat yourself up  Acoustics at the field level has bedeviled the best minds. Certainly doesn't include me. This stuff is way, way over my head. But I still have my peasant upbringing's belief that an explanation within my knowledge system is possible. Often wrong, but sometimes ultimately true. But I really would like to know why I should hang a baffle on my 8 foot ceiling. I would have to drill into it, and that ain't theoretical  Now this I *can* answer. It's because an 8 foot ceiling is too ****ing low. Start at twice that. Next question. But seriously, much thanks, as always, Chris Hornbeck |
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