On the first HFN & RR Test CD, Mike Skeet recorded a drum solo with a single mike [*]. IMHO, it is probably the most realistic drum recording ever made and fully captures the electric passion of a good drummer in full flight.
On the same test CD is 'The Garage Door'. Listening to this is a 'once in a lifetime' experience. From the info presented in this thread, it is likely only Marshy and perhaps Christophe have the correct gear to do this justice.
Please don't listen if you haven't got the correct gear as you'll probably NOT want to listen to it twice. Save it for when you have at least 500W/channel and some speakers with decent bass.
The drum recording is musical. Alas the 'Garage Door' isn't and comes under 'stuff for audiophiles' though its actually a demonstration of stereo in spite of its headbanging nature.
When Mike speaks at the start, he should sound as though he's only a few feet from you in your garage. (OK, OK. I know yus Yanks have bigger garages than the POMs)
www.ambisonia.com has loadsa recordings made with a single microphone and includes some of the best recordings I've heard of large orchestra, chamber group and also loadsa atmospheric stuff in natural acoustic spaces too. All uncompressed and of the highest quality.
You need to download VVM or Harpex to decode this to your favourite coincident stereo mike arrangement.
[*] I confess. Most of these recordings were made with mikes of my design.
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fas42,
I am not arguing that a great sound system can't make any recording sound better than an inferior system. I am just suggesting that a bad recording is just that, not well executed and how do you make that sound better than it was laid down on the tracks? Believe me I know what the difference is between a lousy recording and something that is done well. Anyone who wants to tell me that I don't know what a drum kit should sound like then should meet my friend Airto Morrera the number 1 percussionist according to Down Beat Magazine for over ten years now. When I have sat in a recording studio and listened to Stanley Clark or when he was alive Miles Davis I would have had to tell them they just didn't know how to make great music. I have been entertained by others in their homes with no amplification at all, I do know what acoustic music sounds like done by some masters of the craft. A lousy recording done by a hack will always be lousy, it will never capture the magic. I have no problem with minimalistic microphone techniques if the engineer has a clue how to set up the band or vocalist to get the best sound from that particular room or venue. I have had movies mastered on my personal monitors, not my outboard equipment but my speakers that I personally assembled from magnet to cone. We all seem to have our own expertise here, I am not anywhere at that level on the electronics side but I have been messing with waveguides and loudspeakers for a long time. Spun records in the original Whiskey-A-Go-Go when I was still in High School. Still remember the band Yes playing that night on the stage.
I am not arguing that a great sound system can't make any recording sound better than an inferior system. I am just suggesting that a bad recording is just that, not well executed and how do you make that sound better than it was laid down on the tracks? Believe me I know what the difference is between a lousy recording and something that is done well. Anyone who wants to tell me that I don't know what a drum kit should sound like then should meet my friend Airto Morrera the number 1 percussionist according to Down Beat Magazine for over ten years now. When I have sat in a recording studio and listened to Stanley Clark or when he was alive Miles Davis I would have had to tell them they just didn't know how to make great music. I have been entertained by others in their homes with no amplification at all, I do know what acoustic music sounds like done by some masters of the craft. A lousy recording done by a hack will always be lousy, it will never capture the magic. I have no problem with minimalistic microphone techniques if the engineer has a clue how to set up the band or vocalist to get the best sound from that particular room or venue. I have had movies mastered on my personal monitors, not my outboard equipment but my speakers that I personally assembled from magnet to cone. We all seem to have our own expertise here, I am not anywhere at that level on the electronics side but I have been messing with waveguides and loudspeakers for a long time. Spun records in the original Whiskey-A-Go-Go when I was still in High School. Still remember the band Yes playing that night on the stage.
Fas42, each situation is different, and record industry is... an industry.
A record has to be attractive enough in a mono radio, as the sound track of a video clip in you Tv set, both to promote the sales. It has to sound as perfect as possible across all kind of hifi systems listened numerous time while you can analyze the slightest and every detail in it. And recorded and mixed often in a very short time.
Not an easy goal.
Often the decision about the miking are imposed by circumstances, organization of sessions, qualities of instruments and musicians, available time, musicians or producer's tastes, size, facilities and acoustic of the place you record in. With no right to mistake, while satisfying the egos of a lot of people (each musician want to be front).
And let freedom for a lot of different atmospheres and colors to be decided during subsequent mixings, sometimes realized in an other studio by a different engineer... And, in the same record, you can have tunes recorded at different time in different studios, by different engineers, different musicians, and all that have to sound coherent in a single album.
Even in the same tune, some tracks can be recorded in different studios with different equipments.
I let-you imagine the part of "make believe" and the part of 'natural recording'
A record has to be attractive enough in a mono radio, as the sound track of a video clip in you Tv set, both to promote the sales. It has to sound as perfect as possible across all kind of hifi systems listened numerous time while you can analyze the slightest and every detail in it. And recorded and mixed often in a very short time.
Not an easy goal.
Often the decision about the miking are imposed by circumstances, organization of sessions, qualities of instruments and musicians, available time, musicians or producer's tastes, size, facilities and acoustic of the place you record in. With no right to mistake, while satisfying the egos of a lot of people (each musician want to be front).
And let freedom for a lot of different atmospheres and colors to be decided during subsequent mixings, sometimes realized in an other studio by a different engineer... And, in the same record, you can have tunes recorded at different time in different studios, by different engineers, different musicians, and all that have to sound coherent in a single album.
Even in the same tune, some tracks can be recorded in different studios with different equipments.
I let-you imagine the part of "make believe" and the part of 'natural recording'
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Small world! Back when I was doing drum triggers, I used to share a facility with his practice studio in Santa Barbara. Got to sit in there and listen to him playing, with Flora singing. Outstanding talent.
I'm not worried about it being "better", I just concern myself with having it register as a good experience, being convincing, when I listen to it. I deliberately use supposedly poor recordings to give me excellent feedback of progress made; I've given many examples of recordings used for this purpose, such as Led Zep I, generally acknowledged as being hard work on normal hifi's. Of interest, a couple of days ago I put on the soundtrack of Iron Man 2, this is a compilation of classic AC/DC numbers, at a volume that was subjectively deafening - my wife could only understand what I was saying when we were in the next room. But the system was handling it easily, and it demonstrated that the tracks were well recorded, it was a clean sound listening from the other end of the house.
Frank
And of course that's fair enough ... just a shame about where the industry is at the moment -- every time I hear a track on the TV from the latest pop "sensation" it's painfully obvious that it would be pretty depressing trying to listen to it on a decent system ...
Frank
Sy,
I lived with Flora and Airto when they lived in Santa Barbara. He now lives five minutes from me here in the Hollywood Hills. I am still good friends with the family and his daughter was my girlfriend at the time. We are still very good friends. Flora is now living back in Brazil as the US government told her she had overstayed her visa and can not longer come back into the country. I talked to her on the phone about two months ago and she invited me down to Brazil to stay with her. I used to call her mom some times. So you can imagine the musicians that were in that house for rehearsal! Many of the best in Jazz and I meet many of their friends and got to sit and listen to them just play for fun. Mark Egan was an excellent bass player and some others that they played with. Airto and Flora's other daughter is married to George Duke's son, we are all friends. Very small world isn't it......
I lived with Flora and Airto when they lived in Santa Barbara. He now lives five minutes from me here in the Hollywood Hills. I am still good friends with the family and his daughter was my girlfriend at the time. We are still very good friends. Flora is now living back in Brazil as the US government told her she had overstayed her visa and can not longer come back into the country. I talked to her on the phone about two months ago and she invited me down to Brazil to stay with her. I used to call her mom some times. So you can imagine the musicians that were in that house for rehearsal! Many of the best in Jazz and I meet many of their friends and got to sit and listen to them just play for fun. Mark Egan was an excellent bass player and some others that they played with. Airto and Flora's other daughter is married to George Duke's son, we are all friends. Very small world isn't it......
fas42,
What go me as much as anything was when I would watch an engineer take a recording and listen on the original NS-10 or even a set of Auratones and attempt to make the sound good there. This was just mixing for the lowest common denominator. All semblance of quality in the recording went right out the window. I could care less if a recording sounded okay on a piece of junk, but as Christophe alluded to that is part of some much of this commercial industry.
What go me as much as anything was when I would watch an engineer take a recording and listen on the original NS-10 or even a set of Auratones and attempt to make the sound good there. This was just mixing for the lowest common denominator. All semblance of quality in the recording went right out the window. I could care less if a recording sounded okay on a piece of junk, but as Christophe alluded to that is part of some much of this commercial industry.
Cool! We were sharing converted migrant worker barracks on Montecito Street, right next to Beveridge and Roger Modjeski. He had a bassist then whose name I *think* was Mike Epstein, a really fine player as well. When we heard them start up, we'd always find an excuse to drop our work and go listen. Really, really nice folks. You have good taste in friends!
He he.
Jumping from a studio to an other, while the big studio monitors can be unbalanced, it was the only way to be sure the global balance tonality was ok,, in a little enclosure you known perfectly, and be sure you can follow the basses line where no real basses available
Now, some mix on NS10, in home studios !!!!!!
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Christophe,
Those are cherished moments aren't they. And at the same time we really learned what music is supposed to sound like and the real sound of all those instruments. Another person who I met who died years ago was Joe Farrell. One of the great horn players of all time. He was also in the band and so I do know what a horn is supposed to sound like. There is nothing like that type of experience for any sound engineer or audio designer. Rock and Roll was another world all together and that was most of my experience with live PA sound. Many years sitting at the mixing console or up on stage listening to some of the best.
Steven
Those are cherished moments aren't they. And at the same time we really learned what music is supposed to sound like and the real sound of all those instruments. Another person who I met who died years ago was Joe Farrell. One of the great horn players of all time. He was also in the band and so I do know what a horn is supposed to sound like. There is nothing like that type of experience for any sound engineer or audio designer. Rock and Roll was another world all together and that was most of my experience with live PA sound. Many years sitting at the mixing console or up on stage listening to some of the best.
Steven
Respect !
Stage monitoring ? May-be the most difficult work in all audio show business ...
Christophe,
Two of the horns in my avatar were originally designed to be used in a three way stage monitor. When things were still two-way for every commercial monitor. It was a 1" compression driver and a 6 1/2" cone driver horn and a single 15" JBL usually. Very nice dispersion on stage without causing feedback problems. I just moved those designs into a consumer package and added a horn loaded dome tweeter to fill in the top over the 1" compression driver. The bass became a 10" down-firing bass reflex. The avatar isn't the final product, I increased the bottom section for more space, I think it was about a cubic meter.
Two of the horns in my avatar were originally designed to be used in a three way stage monitor. When things were still two-way for every commercial monitor. It was a 1" compression driver and a 6 1/2" cone driver horn and a single 15" JBL usually. Very nice dispersion on stage without causing feedback problems. I just moved those designs into a consumer package and added a horn loaded dome tweeter to fill in the top over the 1" compression driver. The bass became a 10" down-firing bass reflex. The avatar isn't the final product, I increased the bottom section for more space, I think it was about a cubic meter.
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