Outdoor Recording
August 7, 2021
It has been a while since I have added new input to my blog.
What is new on the web site is my book on Live Sound. This represents a three year effort.
The other new item is in the Gallery section: I have added a short video of a performance by Mike Agranoff. The live sound, recorded sound, stage, and curtains are my doing. Actually I built two stages as they kept moving where the event was to take place. Roger St Germain did the video. The Acoustic Cafe has been running for about 25 years and this very well may be the very last performance. The new fire marshal has ruled we can no longer hold it in the Milford Library … the acoustic cafe no longer has a home.
For Mike’s performance we used a single AT2020 microphone. I am very pleased with how transparent the sound is. The two side mics, both AT2020’s, were only for recording, and as it turned out, completely unneeded.
Recently I have been working with Roger St Germain to provide audio to the events he is doing video. Despite the fact that we can often get a direct feed from the performers sound board, in practice this turns out to be iffy. Sometimes instruments like electric guitars, or even drum sets, are not going though the main board, and sometimes the performers give you a monitor feed that is different from the front of house.
So we decided to record the sound “acoustically” using our own mics. The event was by a band named Brickyard Blues and it is outside.
We tried three sets of mics. The first is the classic stereo setup using two condenser “pencil” mics placed about 10 feet from the stage, near the center, and up about 7 ft. This setup turned out to be OK but not great. Even with a foam windscreen on the mics they were very sensitive to wind noise. Given the distance to the stage, the mic gain was very high. This setup was also missing something in the bass, but the midrange was quite good. No, I have not told you what brand / model of mics I used. These are high quality mics and I am sure the problem was me using them incorrectly.
The next setup was two mid diaphragm condenser mics (again AT2020’s) placed near the front corners of the stage. The “cat fur” windscreens did a good job and the mic gain did not need to be as high as for the pencil mics. Again this setup did an OK job. This time the bass was a little heavy.
The best setup, and this surprised me, were two boundary mics (AT Pro44) placed at 45 deg angles at the front center of the stage. No they did not need high gain, quite the contrary, my preamp setting was for 0 dB! For live sound the ability of boundary mics to hear everything is a real feedback problem, but for recording this ability is a real plus. I was afraid that they would be overly sensitive to foot noise. This turned out not to be the case. Overall this setup worked the best although still a bit bassy. The boundary mics also gave the best stereo image.
Each one of these setups had their own sonic color due to the different types of mics and their different location.
When you mix all 6 mics together, adjust the pan a bit, and add a low cut filter you get the best overall sound. Of course, since it was outside, you can occasionally hear a street noise.
I need to beg, borrow or xxxx, a high quality medium or long shotgun (interference) mic and hear how it compares to the boundary and side mics for recorded live music music.