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Hello Folks,
I am recording a vocal soloist with a piano accompanyment in a church
on Sat. My tools are a variety of mics..but I'll first try an x-y
setup with KM-184's. I can bring a Great River stereo pre. THis is a
demo for the young lady to submit to some exclusive vocal programs at
colleges like Julliard.

Question 1....the only inputs to the H4 are combo xlr-1/4" jacks. If
I sent the Great River into the H4 via the 1/4" jacks would I gain
anything? The idea is to avoid the Zoom pre's and have greater control
over the mic gain than the 3 position gain switch on the H4,

Question 2...given 2 inputs...would YOU stereo mic the singer and
piano or put one mic on the piano and 1 mic on the vocalist. In that
case I have an AT4050 that I'd try on the singer. Then I'd use a
KM184 or KM 84 on the piano.

Tom Paul

[Mike Rivers]

On Sep 27, 7:57 am, wrote:

If
I sent the Great River into the H4 via the 1/4" jacks would I gain
anything? The idea is to avoid the Zoom pre's and have greater control
over the mic gain than the 3 position gain switch on the H4,

Yes and no. You'd gain the better sound of the Great River. But even
in the low gain position, it's easy to overload the line inputs.
You'll either have to run the Great River at fairly low gain (so you
get a suitably low output level) or put a 20 dB pad in line between
the preamp output and line input. In-line pads are easy to find in an
XLR-thru configuration, but not 1/4" plugs and jacks.

...given 2 inputs...would YOU stereo mic the singer and
piano or put one mic on the piano and 1 mic on the vocalist. In that
case I have an AT4050 that I'd try on the singer. Then I'd use a
KM184 or KM 84 on the piano.

I'd find a place to put the stereo pair of mics so that the singer and
piano are balanced and record as stereo. If you were to put one mic on
the piano and the other on the singer, you'd almost certainly want to
"remix" afterward and you might be working with unknowns there since
you wouldn't be monitoring a reasonable version of what you'll
ultimately be hearing.

[Arny Krueger]

wrote in message
oups.com
Hello Folks,
I am recording a vocal soloist with a piano accompanyment
in a church on Sat. My tools are a variety of mics..but
I'll first try an x-y setup with KM-184's. I can bring a
Great River stereo pre. THis is a demo for the young
lady to submit to some exclusive vocal programs at
colleges like Julliard.

Question 1....the only inputs to the H4 are combo
xlr-1/4" jacks. If I sent the Great River into the H4
via the 1/4" jacks would I gain anything? The idea is to
avoid the Zoom pre's and have greater control over the
mic gain than the 3 position gain switch on the H4,

Probability is that the line inputs on the H4 were implemented by putting a
pad in front of its mic pres. If you don't like them it would be probably
hard to totally bypass them.

Question 2...given 2 inputs...would YOU stereo mic the
singer and piano or put one mic on the piano and 1 mic on
the vocalist. In that case I have an AT4050 that I'd try
on the singer. Then I'd use a KM184 or KM 84 on the
piano.

I'd mic the scene with a coincident pair. I'd use spot mics on the piano and
singer and bring them up only as needed. Sounds like I'd use a small mixer
for its mic pres, right? ;-)

[Paul Stamler]

wrote in message
oups.com...
Hello Folks,
I am recording a vocal soloist with a piano accompanyment in a church
on Sat. My tools are a variety of mics..but I'll first try an x-y
setup with KM-184's. I can bring a Great River stereo pre. THis is a
demo for the young lady to submit to some exclusive vocal programs at
colleges like Julliard.

Question 1....the only inputs to the H4 are combo xlr-1/4" jacks. If
I sent the Great River into the H4 via the 1/4" jacks would I gain
anything? The idea is to avoid the Zoom pre's and have greater control
over the mic gain than the 3 position gain switch on the H4,

The problem is that almost certainly the signal to the 1/4" jacks gets
padded down and run through the H4's pres anyway. Does the Zoom have an
insert jack? If so, then it comes after the pres and that would be the best
way to go into the H4. It'll take an adapter cable or plug, though, if the
return to the insert is the ring.

Question 2...given 2 inputs...would YOU stereo mic the singer and
piano or put one mic on the piano and 1 mic on the vocalist. In that
case I have an AT4050 that I'd try on the singer. Then I'd use a
KM184 or KM 84 on the piano.

For a classical recording, I'd stereo mic the room, and KM 184s would be
okay mics to do it with. I'd use them in ORTF or XY.

Peace,
Paul

[Mike Rivers]

On Sep 27, 3:21 pm, "Paul Stamler" wrote:

The problem is that almost certainly the signal to the 1/4" jacks gets
padded down and run through the H4's pres anyway.

This is only a problem on two levels. First, it's a conceptual
problem. You just don't want to do it on principle. Second, if the
preamps are really awful, then you're running through an awful
circuit. But they aren't. They aren't great, but you'll hear a
difference, almost certainly an improvement, between mic - good
preamp - padded down mediocre preamp
and
mic - mediocre preamp

Does the Zoom have an insert jack?

Nope, but to its credit, it does have XLR connectors for the mic
inputs, and its phantom power is really 48 volts.