Missed this thread until today. What worked out?
I would’ve suggested to start with the mono sbd panned center combined with either the back of room pair or the stage pair panned hard left/right, and level/eq balance those three elements. Try it both ways and decide which is better.
At that point I might toy with mixing in a touch of the other pair if I wanted to play around with it, but only if that addition helped significantly enough to make doing so worthwhile, and then only enough of it to gain some clarity/timbre/image from the stagelip pair or ambient room feel and depth from the pair in back.
My reason for posting is to comment more generally-
I'm not a big believer in multiple location matrices. Stage lip plus something a bit further back in the room can work well, but I often end up questioning whether I'm using a particular source purely because it's available rather than because it brings something useful to the mix...
Conversely, I think it's a waste to mix two sources that were at the same place (I'm dealing with the same location defects in both; if a drunkard screams, he's probably in both mic pair's resulting recording as no pattern is going to get rid of that...). I think doing a mix is a compromise; you ditch soundstage clarity for a gain in something you're missing. Stuff at the same location largely adds so little in my experience that it's not worth that hit on the soundstage. ymmv.
I agree with both of you, but for alternate reasons. The primary way I think about it is in terms of what information is contained in each channel, and if and how that maybe useful or not. That’s often partly determined by what information is strongly shared between channels and what information isn’t strongly shared between them.
When I’m thinking about mixing, I care less about where the mics were located relative to each other than about what information is in each and if that information combines with conflict or harmony. General guidelines about mixing mics from the same location verses different locations become less clear because there are so exceptions to the potential rules. For me, thinking about the difference (and similarity) of information provided in each pair avoids that problem.
A pair onstage and a pair way in the back of the room
can complement each other if they don’t conflict and each provides something useful the other is deficient in. The pair onstage is probably far more dynamic, with greater direct sound clarity, strong imaging, etc and the pair in back may be more balanced overall, have room ambience, depth, audience reaction. But two pairs in nearly the same location can do that too if they are pointed in opposite directions.. and in may ways they may do so better because despite the proximity, they contain
less of the same information. I now prefer room mics that are in close proximity to the ‘main mics’ but pointed the opposite direction to a room pair in back facing the stage. The room mics will in that case not have delay problems or as much direct sound in them that will conflict with the main pair. If the ambience from them is good, that lets me use more of it in the mix before it begins to conflict with the main pair. The pair located in back may have the same amount of room ambience and audience reaction, but will also have a lot more direct sound from the stage sources and PA since they are pointing at the stage.
The division of information across sources like this to be mixed is often this 3-part one: SBD clarity, stage image and timbre, room ambience and audience. My argument is that
reducing conscientiously managing the degree of overlap between each of those things is helpful if and when your plan is to mix them together. However, if your primary intent is recording redundancy to make sure at least one source is good on it’s own, that’s no longer the best choice.
Both choices are valid. One give better redundancy in case something goes wrong, the other give better mixing options in case everything goes right.
In this case the mic’ing provides more redundancy than different information optimization, and you could decide to leverage that for reducing unwanted crowd noises by changing the balance between the stage-lip and back of room pair.
If you wanted to mic this from the same locations, but shift the emphasis from recording redundancy to the different information thing. You could put the hypers at stage-lip to better isolate the direct stage sound from the audience and room, and put the omnis in back for more room and audience and less direct sound. Neither may be better on it's own (may be worse) but the combination is likely provide more mixing flexibility.
Topic: What to do with three sources? (Read 3480 times)