Hi,
Allow me to disagree.
Nowadays, as far as most pop recordings go you do not record, you produce as you record.
The goal is to sell product not to record the artist's playing.
With some exceptions of course...
It does show in my vinyl collection; about 60% of it is recorded in the late fifties to late sixties.
Cheers,
Allow me to disagree.
Nowadays, as far as most pop recordings go you do not record, you produce as you record.
The goal is to sell product not to record the artist's playing.
With some exceptions of course...
It does show in my vinyl collection; about 60% of it is recorded in the late fifties to late sixties.
Cheers,
Recordings of modern live rock bands are not all that different to their live performances - tons of limiting, compression etc and every individual band member trying to make as much noise as possible.
This is what the youngsters are hearing live and what they expect on record.
Combine this with them listening on rough sounding shelf systems or even worse car audio systems and rough sound is what they expect.
It is normal for them to walk out of a modern disco or live show with their ears 'cooked' and ringing, and I expect a lot of industrial deafness in the future.
The success that we had Friday night is that we were able to pull a big clean clear hifi and loud sound without ear shutdown or ringing - band breaks were outside in the beer garden and night sounds were perfectly clear to our hearing despite having just walked out from a wall of glorious blues/rock sound.
Eric.
This is what the youngsters are hearing live and what they expect on record.
Combine this with them listening on rough sounding shelf systems or even worse car audio systems and rough sound is what they expect.
It is normal for them to walk out of a modern disco or live show with their ears 'cooked' and ringing, and I expect a lot of industrial deafness in the future.
The success that we had Friday night is that we were able to pull a big clean clear hifi and loud sound without ear shutdown or ringing - band breaks were outside in the beer garden and night sounds were perfectly clear to our hearing despite having just walked out from a wall of glorious blues/rock sound.
Eric.
You Can't Polish A Turd.............
The band shown above are totally pro, and they sound like it too.
Many years ago I saw one of my favorite bands and I noted that the live engineer was all over the desk for about 1 1/2 songs, and by the end of the second song stood up and moved to his stool six feet back from the desk, folded his arms and did not go near the desk for the rest of the show.
I asked him about this after the show and his reply was that the band on stage are so professional and their sound so good that once intial levels are set there is no need to keep adjusting.
He pointed out that if the desk is initially set and then 'locked', then the band will modify their playing to get their desired in room sound, and that the band preferred to work that way.
This I have always considered good advice and I try to do the same when possible.
Conversely the worst mix I have heard was of a high profile band where the engineer would not leave any fader or knob alone for more than about 8 seconds, and the sound just got progressively worse right up to the end.
If I have ever wanted to slap a live sound guy, this was it.
Eric.
Yes, and the same aplies live.Thunau said:
The band shown above are totally pro, and they sound like it too.
Many years ago I saw one of my favorite bands and I noted that the live engineer was all over the desk for about 1 1/2 songs, and by the end of the second song stood up and moved to his stool six feet back from the desk, folded his arms and did not go near the desk for the rest of the show.
I asked him about this after the show and his reply was that the band on stage are so professional and their sound so good that once intial levels are set there is no need to keep adjusting.
He pointed out that if the desk is initially set and then 'locked', then the band will modify their playing to get their desired in room sound, and that the band preferred to work that way.
This I have always considered good advice and I try to do the same when possible.
Conversely the worst mix I have heard was of a high profile band where the engineer would not leave any fader or knob alone for more than about 8 seconds, and the sound just got progressively worse right up to the end.
If I have ever wanted to slap a live sound guy, this was it.
Eric.
I get the point....I think...
Back to the original posters question:
Yes. the mic'ing probably is usually done wrong.
So, absolute phase is not preserved in many amplified performances or recordings.
Perhaps that is another reason why even the best reproducing systems I've heard, make noises that are nothing like the naked instruments.
Of course there are instruments that make no natural noises of their own. I exclude those from my comments
Back to the original posters question:
Yes. the mic'ing probably is usually done wrong.
So, absolute phase is not preserved in many amplified performances or recordings.
Perhaps that is another reason why even the best reproducing systems I've heard, make noises that are nothing like the naked instruments.
Of course there are instruments that make no natural noises of their own. I exclude those from my comments
RE: Ze point?
Hi,
We're not getting any younger, John...
EC8010 never really confirmed whether my response to his question was correct....the little fox.
Enough to drive you crazy when you do have a polarity switch, let me tell you.
Cheers,
P.S. Having a perfectly chilled Keizer Karel beer as I type...
Hi,
We're not getting any younger, John...
EC8010 never really confirmed whether my response to his question was correct....the little fox.
Enough to drive you crazy when you do have a polarity switch, let me tell you.
Cheers,
P.S. Having a perfectly chilled Keizer Karel beer as I type...
mrfeedback said:
All the decent manufacturers usually provide that information in the spec sheet. It goes something like:" positive sound pressure on the diaphragm results in positive voltage on pin no. 2 of the XLR connector".
As to absolute polarity, I believe that I have heard the difference but only on some speakers. Usually anything with electro-acoustic crossover slopes other than 1 st, 4th, 8th, etc. results in inverse polarities between tweeter and woofer over large frequency ranges. Three-way systems or two-way plus sub can get so mangled as far as phase shift goes that it doesn't matter anymore what absolute polarity is the system .
Another factor is mastering which can also inadvertently invert the polarity. Some digital plugins invert polarity by adding a single sample to the beginning of a file for some technical reasons (I'm not 100% sure why, it's a math thing. I bet DSP savy participants here can fill us in).
Another big factor is the use of multiband compressors/limiters so prevalent today. They use IIR filters which scramble the phase just like an analog crossover. After it's all said and done, the frequency domain might stay unaffected or affected in desireable ways, but the time domain and the transient response (same thing more or less) of the recorded events is all over the place. The very high frequencies might exhibit a proper polarity but associated low and mid frequencies might not. So don't expect to be able to tell reliably when listening to modern pop and rock music which polarity is the correct one.
If you have a set of Maggies or Vandersteins and listen to Steely Dan circa 1977 there is a good chance that the correct polarity will be somewhat more "right" sounding.
Just to share an odd mic up for a drum kit... You can get a surprisingly good sound with a couple of overheads set about 2 to 3 feet apart peeking over either shoulder of the drummer at head height. Works good with a more sensitive condenser ala C414 or some of the larger diaphramed AT's. At times it may require an extra mic for the snare depending on how agressive the drummer is and naturally, it will not work for live sound, it's for studio only. Next time your in session and have some time try it out.
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