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Author Topic: Zoom F8 for Classical recording  (Read 28398 times)

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Offline kasu64

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #30 on: October 27, 2015, 02:40:28 PM »
Here's the F8 recording:

https://www.yousendit.com/download/bXBaSmI5NmNEa1hyZHNUQw

Alas,

the link is updated...
the link is expired...

does somebody put this recording with a new link ?

Many Thanks

Kasu64
« Last Edit: October 30, 2015, 10:03:09 AM by kasu64 »
><((((°> <°))))><            SD-722 Sample : https://archive.org/details/Damaris2015-07-31.Damaris-Concert_Collegiale_Bayonne_FR_Beltran_Pagola_Sonata
Maite dut Euskal Herria  Zoom-F8 Live records at "audio" : http://belharratrio.wix.com/belharratrio    
Le Pays Basque, J'aime !    SD-788T, Mics : Sennheiser = MKE 2002 "Artificial head", Blumlein-M/S : SP-LSD2, Ortf : Superlux S502
Debian 9.0 Stretch 64bits   Visit : http://belharratrio.wix.com/belharratrio  and   https://eobiarritz.wixsite.com/eobiarritz/presentation

Offline glennjr

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #31 on: October 30, 2015, 06:27:49 AM »
Hi, is there any chance for a new link to these recordings? I would love to hear them. Thank you
ChineseVocal.com  - Professional Chinese Voice Over

Offline WiFiJeff

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #32 on: October 30, 2015, 08:52:45 AM »
pms sent.  Will get other sample to ya over the weekend.

Jeff

Offline kasu64

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #33 on: October 30, 2015, 10:17:33 AM »
Well received.

Many thanks Jeffrey.

I'm waiting for others samples.  ;)

><((((°> <°))))><            SD-722 Sample : https://archive.org/details/Damaris2015-07-31.Damaris-Concert_Collegiale_Bayonne_FR_Beltran_Pagola_Sonata
Maite dut Euskal Herria  Zoom-F8 Live records at "audio" : http://belharratrio.wix.com/belharratrio    
Le Pays Basque, J'aime !    SD-788T, Mics : Sennheiser = MKE 2002 "Artificial head", Blumlein-M/S : SP-LSD2, Ortf : Superlux S502
Debian 9.0 Stretch 64bits   Visit : http://belharratrio.wix.com/belharratrio  and   https://eobiarritz.wixsite.com/eobiarritz/presentation

Offline beatkilla

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #34 on: October 30, 2015, 11:32:37 AM »

Offline WiFiJeff

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #35 on: November 14, 2015, 01:53:17 PM »
After a couple of weeks of more solo piano or string quartet, I got a chance to record violin and piano yesterday.  I am normally a devotee of single-point recording, but I have not yet found a setup that lets me do this with strings and piano where I can capture the piano sound best without swamping the strings, so I got to try the F8 with four channel input.  I had a main pair of Schoeps MK4s ORTF (thanks to the 3D printed mount from Shapeways via a TS seller) and spotted the piano with Josephson C617 omnis on a Jecklin disk.  I also decided to record a L/R mix of these (my SD633 can do this, but I never tried it), I found it very easy to fade the four channels to a stereo mix I could monitor from the F8, and ended up going with that mix, though I now think that perhaps more of the piano tracks might have been a touch better.  I recorded 4 original tracks to the first SD card, and backup 4 channels plus L/R mix on the second.  Very happy with my F8, both the on site monitoring and resulting recording were flawless (my mix may be sub-optimal). I also used both external battery (Naztech) and when that seemed to be running down (it really wasn't) I swapped out to a DC-in 12V battery between pieces, no glitches in the tape.

PM me for a link to a sample.

Offline WiFiJeff

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #36 on: December 12, 2015, 01:07:54 PM »
A piano quintet, same setup as for the piano and violin.  I used more of the piano omni pair for the mix I recorded on the F8, and it sounded good, but I was surprised to find at home that the L/R mix sounded off, I was however very happy with the post-production mix I ended up using, which was down 3-4 dB on the piano, similar to what I used for the mix on the F8 last time with the piano/violin setup.  Since I was seated quite close to the cello, I think the live sound leaked in to my monitoring and led me to de-emphasize the ORTF pair.  Will bring my Remote Audio headphones in next time to try to get a better handle on the mix channel.

Overall, still delighted with the results on the F8.  I had been thinking about buying one of the new Millennia preamps, but not sure I will need it.  PM me for a link to a sample file.

Jeff

Offline scorsesefan

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #37 on: December 13, 2015, 06:42:11 PM »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM6VOEYpm4g

BH review

Nice, thanks. Holds up pretty well sound-wise against the big guys...

Offline Pasaribu

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #38 on: May 03, 2016, 02:23:02 PM »
Would it be possible to post a new link to the recordings mentioned?

Offline robtweed

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #39 on: May 26, 2016, 01:44:37 PM »
Thought this post might be interested in another example of using the Zoom F8 to record violin and piano.

I've been asked to record a series of concerts covering the 10 Beethoven sonatas.  Venue is a really nice church in Greenwich, London with, in my opinion, a great acoustic.

This is a sample from the first concert - it was a bit of a discovery session for me to figure out a good mic placement and balance of the instruments.  The violinist is a quiet player, so the piano was threatening to drown her out.  I'm going to augment the violin with a CM3 spot mic next time and reposition the main mic array to get a better balance/spread, but see what you think of this first effort:

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/robs-music-files/sonata-1-sample.wav

Recorded using ORTF DPA 2011C + 67cm-spaced OM1 outriggers.  Mix is unprocessed, straight off the mics.

I'm always amazed at the F8 - a great device which works well for every type of music I've thrown at it so far.

Mics: DPA 2011C, Line Audio OM1 & CM3, Calrec CM652D, Behringer C-4
Recorders: Zoom F8, Zoom H4n, Sound Devices USBPre2 + MacBook Air
Mixdown: Audacity, Cubase LE on Mac OS X
Playback: Beresford Caiman II DAC, Naim NAP 100 amp, PMC TB2i speakers

Offline kasu64

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #40 on: May 26, 2016, 03:34:05 PM »
Hi
Thanks Robtweed for your sample

Here some samples recorded with my F8
during a "Belharra Trio" concert in France (Biarritz

Without any postprod...  :)

http://belharratrio.wix.com/belharratrio

Choose "Ecouter-voir"
then "Audio"
or "Video" (Audio from the Lumix G5  :-\ )



Zoom F8 is very good, but with some lacks
for field usage... (I own a SD-722 since 8 years...)

Kasu64
><((((°> <°))))><
« Last Edit: May 26, 2016, 03:38:29 PM by kasu64 »
><((((°> <°))))><            SD-722 Sample : https://archive.org/details/Damaris2015-07-31.Damaris-Concert_Collegiale_Bayonne_FR_Beltran_Pagola_Sonata
Maite dut Euskal Herria  Zoom-F8 Live records at "audio" : http://belharratrio.wix.com/belharratrio    
Le Pays Basque, J'aime !    SD-788T, Mics : Sennheiser = MKE 2002 "Artificial head", Blumlein-M/S : SP-LSD2, Ortf : Superlux S502
Debian 9.0 Stretch 64bits   Visit : http://belharratrio.wix.com/belharratrio  and   https://eobiarritz.wixsite.com/eobiarritz/presentation

Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #41 on: May 26, 2016, 03:40:20 PM »
Thought this post might be interested in another example of using the Zoom F8 to record violin and piano. [snip..]

Sounds good.  Great clarity with a very nice acoustic ambience.  I can hear the violinist inhaling before each interjection, which may bother some, but can also be interpreted as intimate realism, and can be hard to avoid depending on the player. 

I don't hear a level imbalance between piano and violin.  Personally I'd like to hear the image placement of the violin shifted leftward slightly from center to balance it in a spatial sense against the piano which images right of center and a bit further back, making it more of an duet between equally important voices, although this presentation which highlights the violin by placing it in the center with a "closer sounding" timbre is fine and totally justifiable.  ORFT + omnis = a big enveloping and zoomed-in type sound more than a sharp pin-point imaging type sound, partly due to the complex phase interactions between the four relatively near-spaced microphone positions.  It won't necessarily suffer from a "hole in the middle" like wide spaced omnis alone might, but will still have a similar sort of a diffused imaging type center, with the violin not imaging as sharply when placed dead center as it might if placed off to one side a bit.

[edited for clarification]
« Last Edit: May 26, 2016, 04:26:41 PM by Gutbucket »
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Offline robtweed

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #42 on: May 26, 2016, 04:08:40 PM »
Thanks for the feedback - yes I was quite pleased I managed to get the balance I was hoping for, but it was achieved by moving the array much closer to the violin that I'd have liked.  Here's a picture from last night which will give an idea:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjVKrJHWEAIuEfM.jpg

I'm going to see what happens when I add the CM3 spot over the violin and move the main array to a position more between the instruments.

I'll report back with a sample
Mics: DPA 2011C, Line Audio OM1 & CM3, Calrec CM652D, Behringer C-4
Recorders: Zoom F8, Zoom H4n, Sound Devices USBPre2 + MacBook Air
Mixdown: Audacity, Cubase LE on Mac OS X
Playback: Beresford Caiman II DAC, Naim NAP 100 amp, PMC TB2i speakers

Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #43 on: May 26, 2016, 05:08:53 PM »
Just edited my last post a bit to clarify a bit better.  Sounds like a good plan.  I doubt you'll actually need the spot, although it won't hurt to record it anyway. 

Looking at the photo, see how the soundboard of the violin is facing more or less directly upwards towards the middle of the microphones, and the lid of the piano on short-stick sort of shadows the direct line from piano strings to the microphones?  I'd suggest trying the same array, shifting it to the right, back a bit so that it is placed more or less between the two instruments, and lower.  You'll get less breath and playing noises from the violinist by moving a bit further back, and adjusting the overall height of the microphone array will tweak the balance in timbre between the violin and piano.  As the microphone array is brought lower, off-axis from the top of the violin and begin to "peer further under the piano lid to the strings", you'll get more warmth and less shrill brightness from the fiddle and more brightness and "closeness" from the piano closer to a normal height listening perspective.  Personally I question the whole "up high" mic placement tradition in classical recording, which to my thinking is mostly appropriate as a way of balancing the front/back direct/reverberant balance and timbre of the sections a large ensemble, where the instruments in back are considerably farther away and somewhat blocked by the instruments close to the front and the mic position.  Most of the time I think it's mostly tradition and a practical way of getting the mics out of the sight-lines of an audience.  I usually prefer a lower listening perspective which sounds more like it does when standing there in person, as the instruments were designed to do.

A lot of that is just personal preference though, feel free to ignore it!
musical volition > vibrations > voltages > numeric values > voltages > vibrations> virtual teleportation time-machine experience
Better recording made easy - >>Improved PAS table<< | Made excellent- >>click here to download the Oddball Microphone Technique illustrated PDF booklet<< (note: This is a 1st draft, now several years old and in need of revision!  Stay tuned)

Offline robtweed

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Re: Zoom F8 for Classical recording
« Reply #44 on: May 27, 2016, 03:07:50 AM »
Sounds like good advice to me, Gutbucket, thanks, and they make logical sense.  I'll try your ideas at the next concert.

My usual approach is to try to capture the kind of sound that the audience would hear, rather than someone floating six feet in the air above the musicians, or with their ears right next to the instruments, so we're very much on the same page.

Going back to the original post's title, hopefully the examples that have been posted by a number of people are proving that the F8 is definitely up to the task.  The recording quality is excellent (I record at 192k/24), the mic pre-amps are clean and quiet.  Having 8 possible channels allows a good amount of flexibility for having additional optional mics when recording in more challenging situations.  It's a nice, small, portable device that can be kept discreetly out of the way in a venue, and can be battery-powered so you don't need to worry about having power points available (a challenge in most old UK churches) - less heavy cables to carry around and have lying around on the floor at the venue. 

I'm able to take my entire kit by public transport - it all fits in a large wheelie suitcase: again a useful thing to be able to do in London, where traffic and parking is a real problem.
Mics: DPA 2011C, Line Audio OM1 & CM3, Calrec CM652D, Behringer C-4
Recorders: Zoom F8, Zoom H4n, Sound Devices USBPre2 + MacBook Air
Mixdown: Audacity, Cubase LE on Mac OS X
Playback: Beresford Caiman II DAC, Naim NAP 100 amp, PMC TB2i speakers

 

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