I'd put a much higher priority on having a forward pointing pair over the pair from the stage pointing backwards. The reason is you want your ambient mics to pick up the room acoustics and the reverb created by the music. Obvioulsy, you're aware that a SBD on its own is stale and lifeless. It's the matrix between your ambient pair and your SBD that gives a nicely mixed SBD recording depth and life. Of course, if the FOH guy gives you a crappy SBD mix to your recorder, nothing can fix that. I've had mixes where it's all vocals and no drums because he fed me the room mix and didn't have time to mix to a separate bus for my recording.
If I had a larger budget with full control, and lots of mics and recording tracks, yeah then I might consider doing what Phish, Umphrey's and some of them do when they turn a pair of mics around and record the audience, but that would be one of my lowest priorities for getting a good live SBD/aud matrix.
I both agree and differ.
First let’s back up and define the problem. For a good mix, you’ll want good band sound, good room sound and good audience sound. There are two important balances to think about between those things: a good balance of all the members of the band making up the band sound and a good balance between that direct band sound and the ambient room/audience sound. How you reliably achieve that, easily, while also playing in the band is the question.
Here are three suggestions for a band member making a 4 channel recording consisting of 2 mic channels and a 2-channel soundboard mix (SBD) that will be mixed down later to 2-channel stereo-
1) Mic pair on stage facing band + SBD. If you use a pair of omnis as the on-stage pair, then the mic arrangement is less critical AND you’ll get plenty of good enthusiastic audience reaction from the people up front enjoying the music the most- the good enthusiastic kind of audience reaction, not a bunch of uninterested talking in the back of the room. This would probably be my first choice.
2) Directional mic pair facing crowd + SBD gives you a greater range of control over the balance between the direct SBD sound and the ambient room/audience sound due to increased isolation between the two sources. You’ll have greater control over how much ambient room sound and audience you can mix in, or not. BUT the SBD needs to be halfway decent since the mic pair is mostly excluding the band sound, intentionally. The welcome flexibility is lost if the SBD feed is shitty.
3) AUD Mic pair back at the SBD facing the band + SBD The most common way it’s done around here. That’s partly because most tapers here doing matrix recordings are coming from a long history of making 2-ch AUD recordings and have expanded on that by moving to 4 channels and also recording the SBD with which to matrix their AUD, and partly because there is no need for long cable runs or borrowed snake channels and all gear is together back by the board. This is also relatively safe since ideally the AUD if good should be able to stand on it’s own even without the SBD. However, this would probably be my last suggestion of the three for you (okay, maybe 2nd if the SBD feed is bad) because the other suggestions make better sounding recordings.
Why last?
A few reasons. You are in the band. You will not be out in the crowd attending mics setup in the optimal sweet spot of the room. That means setting them up at the SBD booth which is protected. There are a couple reasons why that may be less optimal- 1) the crowd reaction you’ll pick up back there isn’t as good as that from in front. I may well consist of more disinterested cocktail banter in the immediate vicinity than enthusiastic cheering. If you want good crowd enthusiasm, you want the mics where the enthusiastic fans are. 2) If the SBD is more than about 20’ from the stage you’ll need to shift the timing alignment of the files when mixing down to avoid an echo between the two sources. That’s not the end of the world, but does mean some additional work. 3) You need to setup the mics back at the SBD, which is more hassle for you as a band member than simply doing so on-stage. You’ll need a taller mic stand, maybe a clamp or two.. generally more flexibility in set up options is needed because the SBD arrangement will be different in various venues, whereas your on-stage mic setup can pretty much be more or less the same every time. Taking care of mics on stage may well be more practical for you as a band member. The opposite is true for most tapers where it is easier for them to setup in the room or back at the soundboard (and hang out with them during the performance), rather than get permission to put mics on stage.
Advanced suggestion-
If your band is playing small bars, the SBD is probably mixed to mono. If after doing this a while you notice that one band member’s contribution tends to be problematic on the recordings, consider recording only one SBD mix channel and use the other channel to record only that problematic thing in isolation using a direct out from that channel of the board. Might be the bass, vocal, or whatever.
Oh yeah, one more personal preference thing since I’ve wasted this much of your time already- As long as the room and crowd sound is good and cooperative, don’t lean too heavily on the SBD in your resulting mix. Try to keep it sounding organic and “you are there” live, rather than sterile and canned as much as you are able to. An over sterile SBD heavy matrix sounds more like a practice session than an exciting live concert.
Topic: Noobie seeks Aud/Sbd matrix advice (Read 5901 times)