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Author Topic: Invest in new recorder or preamp?  (Read 9166 times)

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Offline yltfan

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Re: Invest in new recorder or preamp?
« Reply #15 on: January 11, 2016, 12:19:52 AM »
Another vote for the 680 here. Never had an issue with either of mine (and maybe you can talk me into selling the stock one - the other is a busman mod)


I can say that you would indeed get six channels but to make use of the 7th and 8th on a 680 you'd need a preamp with a digital output of some kind. I always seem to find uses for the one or two channels my recorder doesn't have...


Not  exactly true, if the SBD has a spdif out, you can use that without a preamp.
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Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Invest in new recorder or preamp?
« Reply #16 on: January 11, 2016, 09:06:21 AM »
I think the biggest problems here is that I listen to the same equipment used by different people at different venues and there seems to be very little consistency.  I predominantly record at smaller venues where few others are recording so it is difficult to hear how equipment compares.
 
Other than microphones, most equipment sounds pretty similar as long as it is setup properly, operating correctly, isn't overloaded or over-noisy.  The biggest variables between recordings is: the band, the acoustics of the venue, the sound-guy and PA system, the recording location, the recording setup and microphone technique.. all of which are all usually more influential than then the choice of microphones, which are in turn the most influential part of the equipment chain, usually.  The rest of the equipment used has an influence, but is pretty far down that hierarchy.

Quote
taping is trial and error and we have to buy to try
^
This, partly.  Advice from a recording forum can point in appropriate directions and shorten the learning curve. But one needs to actually try various things to really understand them.   Yet you needn't necessarily buy new gear to do so.  Borrow stuff, buy gear which lends itself to multiple applications, buy discounted second hand gear, etc.
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 HealthCov Chris

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Re: Invest in new recorder or preamp?
« Reply #17 on: January 18, 2016, 02:05:40 PM »
Thanks everyone for chiming in.  Its Done!  Worked great this past weekend as I recorded 6 channels (4 mics, 2 SBD).

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Offline acidjack

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Re: Invest in new recorder or preamp?
« Reply #18 on: January 18, 2016, 04:12:35 PM »
I think the biggest problems here is that I listen to the same equipment used by different people at different venues and there seems to be very little consistency.  I predominantly record at smaller venues where few others are recording so it is difficult to hear how equipment compares.
 
Other than microphones, most equipment sounds pretty similar as long as it is setup properly, operating correctly, isn't overloaded or over-noisy.  The biggest variables between recordings is: the band, the acoustics of the venue, the sound-guy and PA system, the recording location, the recording setup and microphone technique.. all of which are all usually more influential than then the choice of microphones, which are in turn the most influential part of the equipment chain, usually.  The rest of the equipment used has an influence, but is pretty far down that hierarchy.

I agree with this, though that "setup properly" is a big one. Go to any festival and observe all the convoluted patterns, highly variable heights, etc. and you'll see why stuff sounds so different. Not to mention that every venue sounds pretty different, and again, people's techniques within them can vary a good bit.
Mics: Schoeps MK4V, MK41V, MK5, MK22> CMC6, KCY 250/5, KC5, NBob; MBHO MBP603/KA200N, AT 3031, DPA 4061 w/ d:vice, Naiant X-X, AT 853c, shotgun, Nak300
Pres/Power: Aerco MP2, tinybox v2  [KCY], CA-UBB
Decks: Sound Devices MixPre 6, Zoom F8, M10, D50

My recordings on nyctaper.com: http://www.nyctaper.com/?tag=acidjack | LMA: http://www.archive.org/bookmarks/acidjack | twitter: http://www.twitter.com/acidjacknyc | Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/acidjacknyc

Offline HealthCov Chris

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Re: Invest in new recorder or preamp?
« Reply #19 on: January 19, 2016, 11:47:10 AM »
I think the biggest problems here is that I listen to the same equipment used by different people at different venues and there seems to be very little consistency.  I predominantly record at smaller venues where few others are recording so it is difficult to hear how equipment compares.
 
Other than microphones, most equipment sounds pretty similar as long as it is setup properly, operating correctly, isn't overloaded or over-noisy.  The biggest variables between recordings is: the band, the acoustics of the venue, the sound-guy and PA system, the recording location, the recording setup and microphone technique.. all of which are all usually more influential than then the choice of microphones, which are in turn the most influential part of the equipment chain, usually.  The rest of the equipment used has an influence, but is pretty far down that hierarchy.

I agree with this, though that "setup properly" is a big one. Go to any festival and observe all the convoluted patterns, highly variable heights, etc. and you'll see why stuff sounds so different. Not to mention that every venue sounds pretty different, and again, people's techniques within them can vary a good bit.

Since I have several experienced tapers on this post, I want to slightly deviate from my OP.  Assuming I typically try to run NOS configuration, how do you alter the configuration when not centered in the venue?  For example right of center significantly more inline with one speaker stack than the other.  To this point I have maintained the NOS and adjusted my gain settings accordingly.
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Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Invest in new recorder or preamp?
« Reply #20 on: January 19, 2016, 02:41:38 PM »
Assuming I typically try to run NOS configuration, how do you alter the configuration when not centered in the venue?  For example right of center significantly more inline with one speaker stack than the other.  To this point I have maintained the NOS and adjusted my gain settings accordingly.

The simple and probably best answer is to listen with eyes closed for a while, turning to face directly towards the apparent acoustic center, then turn the microphone array to face the same direction.  Maintain equal levels, don't change the microphone configuration, and completely ignore what your eyes tell you.  Rely only on your ears to orient the microphone setup.  Don't worry if it looks like it's pointing off in the wrong direction.  Don't try to compensate for being off-center by pointing at the opposite side.  Just "center" the sound by listening and turning the stand.

Shoot to make the music as centered as possible, don't worry about the audience sound, which may end up even further off center due to the way you need to turn the stand to center the music.

Afterwards, if you find the sound is slightly weighted to one side or the other, adjust levels to compensate.  But you can only do that by so much without the power distribution becoming overly lopsided between the two channels.  If the playback soundstage is already pretty much acoustically centered due to the angular orientation of the microphone stand, it's much easier to fine-tune things with a slight level adjustment.

For already recorded stuff which sounds way lopsided on playback, recorded with the mic array pointed by eye instead of by ear, first listen to the Left and Right channels solo'd to determine how different they sound in isolation.  If the timbre of the music is obviously different, EQ the channels individually until they sound similar, and so both sound right in isolation.  Then listen to them in stereo, see if adjusting levels helps center things enough, and make any further side to side EQ tweaks needed to balance things.  In some situations, delaying the dominant side slightly (like only a few milliseconds) can help pull the apparent center back towards the physical center.  If you do that, don't mix the original and it's delayed copy together on the delayed side, mute the original and only use the delayed signal part (0% dry / 100% wet).
« Last Edit: January 19, 2016, 03:18:29 PM by Gutbucket »
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 Gutbucket

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Re: Invest in new recorder or preamp?
« Reply #21 on: January 19, 2016, 03:17:02 PM »
^The not at all simple alternate answer which potentially could help adjust for being off-center has to do with adjusting the microphone configuration in combination with rotating the stand.  It's probably far more trouble than it's worth, would be hard to do precisely in the field, and is not something most tapers would want to try, but is interesting to me technically.  I won't go into it here in too much depth, but it has to do with adjusting the angle of each microphone so they are no longer in a symmetrical arrangement with the center axis of the microphone array.  Essentially, one microphone is moved forwardof the other, and that accomplishes something similar to the delay thing I described previously, "at the microphone array" itself.

That's based on the work of Michael Williams which explores the inter-relationship between pickup pattern, angle, spacing and position of a pair of microphones.  It's how he goes about "linking" multiple microphone pairs together to form multichannel surround recording arrays which are capable of seamless playback imaging between across each microphone/speaker pair sector, without gaps or overlaps.  His papers on Multi-Microphone Array Design (MMAD) explain this in depth, but are more technical than most tapers here will care to get into.

However, his "Stereo Zoom" paper is the more basic introduction to all that, and explains the simpler relationship between "normal, always symmetrical" stereo pairs of microphones.  I highly recommended it to any taper who would like to understand what is really going on with ORTF, DIN, NOS, X/Y, A-B, etc, and how all those conventional mic setups are simply points along a continuum of microphone-pattern-vs-angle-vs-spacing.  Those standard mic setups are easily repeatable and tend to work well in a general sense, and the Stereo Zoom explains partly why that is, some of the differences between them, and how they can be adapted to help compensate for different recording situations.
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 nulldogmas

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Re: Invest in new recorder or preamp?
« Reply #22 on: January 19, 2016, 03:42:35 PM »
^The not at all simple alternate answer which potentially could help adjust for being off-center has to do with adjusting the microphone configuration in combination with rotating the stand.  It's probably far more trouble than it's worth, would be hard to do precisely in the field, and is not something most tapers would want to try, but is interesting to me technically.  I won't go into it here in too much depth, but it has to do with adjusting the angle of each microphone so they are no longer in a symmetrical arrangement with the center axis of the microphone array.  Essentially, one microphone is moved forwardof the other, and that accomplishes something similar to the delay thing I described previously, "at the microphone array" itself.

You are a true mad scientist. Remind me not to let you borrow my death ray.

Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Invest in new recorder or preamp?
« Reply #23 on: January 19, 2016, 04:03:37 PM »
Heh, Yeah better to keep that thing holstered.
I'd rather bury the death ray and just point my love gun at the soul of it.. by ear of course.
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 acidjack

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Re: Invest in new recorder or preamp?
« Reply #24 on: January 24, 2016, 07:09:04 PM »
I think the biggest problems here is that I listen to the same equipment used by different people at different venues and there seems to be very little consistency.  I predominantly record at smaller venues where few others are recording so it is difficult to hear how equipment compares.
 
Other than microphones, most equipment sounds pretty similar as long as it is setup properly, operating correctly, isn't overloaded or over-noisy.  The biggest variables between recordings is: the band, the acoustics of the venue, the sound-guy and PA system, the recording location, the recording setup and microphone technique.. all of which are all usually more influential than then the choice of microphones, which are in turn the most influential part of the equipment chain, usually.  The rest of the equipment used has an influence, but is pretty far down that hierarchy.

I agree with this, though that "setup properly" is a big one. Go to any festival and observe all the convoluted patterns, highly variable heights, etc. and you'll see why stuff sounds so different. Not to mention that every venue sounds pretty different, and again, people's techniques within them can vary a good bit.

Since I have several experienced tapers on this post, I want to slightly deviate from my OP.  Assuming I typically try to run NOS configuration, how do you alter the configuration when not centered in the venue?  For example right of center significantly more inline with one speaker stack than the other.  To this point I have maintained the NOS and adjusted my gain settings accordingly.

I also see no reason to run NOS really ever, but definitely not from the floor of a venue. Gutbucket's point at stacks chart is your friend if you want a technically correct way of pointing at stacks. (As to your exact question, I think he covered it, to say the least).
Mics: Schoeps MK4V, MK41V, MK5, MK22> CMC6, KCY 250/5, KC5, NBob; MBHO MBP603/KA200N, AT 3031, DPA 4061 w/ d:vice, Naiant X-X, AT 853c, shotgun, Nak300
Pres/Power: Aerco MP2, tinybox v2  [KCY], CA-UBB
Decks: Sound Devices MixPre 6, Zoom F8, M10, D50

My recordings on nyctaper.com: http://www.nyctaper.com/?tag=acidjack | LMA: http://www.archive.org/bookmarks/acidjack | twitter: http://www.twitter.com/acidjacknyc | Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/acidjacknyc

Offline Hypnocracy

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Re: Invest in new recorder or preamp?
« Reply #25 on: January 27, 2016, 07:50:11 AM »
Different strokes for different folks...NOS outdoors in the sweetspot at a festival is heaven...in a good sounding venue at the sweetspot NOS has a slightly different sound than DIN...bryonsos and I've ran DIN an NOS on the same stand many, many times...NOS is more Open?

When not in the sweetspot...I find Point at Stacks with at least 12" of space with Cardioids an less with Hypers to give you more direct sound from the stack and less room reverberation...while still giving you a stereo Image.

The thing that kills me is the Kwon Bar aficionados...they slap a DIN or DINa bar on the stand and call it good...no matter where they are in the venue...that an the guy that ran ORTF MK4-CMC6>VMS in the section at Greensboro Coliseum...
 ;D

In all fairness...with a Cardioid it's almost more about what you point it away from than what you point it at...it's just a cone shape that is attenuated directly behind the cap.
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Offline acidjack

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Re: Invest in new recorder or preamp?
« Reply #26 on: January 27, 2016, 05:34:08 PM »
Different strokes for different folks...NOS outdoors in the sweetspot at a festival is heaven...in a good sounding venue at the sweetspot NOS has a slightly different sound than DIN...bryonsos and I've ran DIN an NOS on the same stand many, many times...NOS is more Open?

When not in the sweetspot...I find Point at Stacks with at least 12" of space with Cardioids an less with Hypers to give you more direct sound from the stack and less room reverberation...while still giving you a stereo Image.

The thing that kills me is the Kwon Bar aficionados...they slap a DIN or DINa bar on the stand and call it good...no matter where they are in the venue...that an the guy that ran ORTF MK4-CMC6>VMS in the section at Greensboro Coliseum...
 ;D

In all fairness...with a Cardioid it's almost more about what you point it away from than what you point it at...it's just a cone shape that is attenuated directly behind the cap.

For sure. My beef is always more with the idea that these exact patterns are some kind of secret sauce. If you told me "mics with wider spacing sounded more open than mics with narrower spacing and the same angle" I would say I definitely agree with that (and to some degree, I think that's what you're saying). That said, I'm less sure that exactly 90 degrees is really the answer almost no matter the setting. Totally agree re: kwon bars; they're kind of lazy. I guess I also feel like exact patterns are kind of lazy, though they're at least a useful guide...

ORTF in a tapers' section? Ugh. But I'm sure x number of people can point me to a recording they made that sounds great with it... Also hard to judge if you're not A-Bing the same thing....
Mics: Schoeps MK4V, MK41V, MK5, MK22> CMC6, KCY 250/5, KC5, NBob; MBHO MBP603/KA200N, AT 3031, DPA 4061 w/ d:vice, Naiant X-X, AT 853c, shotgun, Nak300
Pres/Power: Aerco MP2, tinybox v2  [KCY], CA-UBB
Decks: Sound Devices MixPre 6, Zoom F8, M10, D50

My recordings on nyctaper.com: http://www.nyctaper.com/?tag=acidjack | LMA: http://www.archive.org/bookmarks/acidjack | twitter: http://www.twitter.com/acidjacknyc | Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/acidjacknyc

 

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