Dear Tapers,
I just subscribed to your wonderful forum
I had some years of experience of live recording in late 90s - early 2000s with my DPA 4060s, Rode NT4, Apogee Mi-Me and various recorders in chronological order like SONY TCD-D5, TASCAM DA-P1, Sony TCD-D100, Microtrack v1 (as bit-bucket), Tascam DR-100 MKII, Sony PCM-M10…
Now, after 15 years of working/travelling abroad with almost all my gear SADLY left in Rome to collect dust, I am back to Italy and I would like to start taping again this summer.
Might I ask you for some wisdom on a setup I intend to test when attending my next loud indoor concert with ugly acoustics
; - )
The key idea is to combine tracks recorded with
1) the Sennheiser Ambeo Smart Headset (binaural)
AND
2) the Rode NT4 pointed to the source - the stage, but maybe also the PAs in really horrible boomy scenarios. Maybe as an alternative to the NT4 I would like to use two Bayer M201TG hypercardiods in X/Y configuration for more flexibility
My intention is to use a high pass filter plugin in DAW to make a sort of crossover between
the low and mid-low part of the binaural recording done with Ambeo Headset, which hopefully will have better bass and ambience
AND
the mids and highs of the XY recording done with the Rode NT4/Bayer M201TG, hopefully more crispy and somehow - if lucky - less subjected to bad reverb
Obviously, compared to a standard M/S configuration, in my setup the S is not given by a figure-eight microphone at 90° COINCIDENT with the mic pointed to the source, but by two omnis spaced by my head, i.e. by binaural recording somehow related to the stereo central mic capture, playing the role of a sort of extended (because stereo) central channel M
I understand reading the Forum since last week that I independently rediscovered what seems to be a quite common approach among tapers, and it can work, as confirmed by Gutbucket:
QUOTE
Re: Relationships between spaced omnis and center mic
https://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=182579.15« Reply #16 on: June 22, 2017, 05:29:06 PM »
"Well in some cases it can be - low pass the added omni(s) around where the 2-ch setup naturally rolls off and that keeps everything relatively simple.
It won't significantly change the way the 2-ch setup behaves in the range in which it is sensitive."
END OF QUOTE
I understand after a still superficial reading of the treasure of infos in this forum that Gutbucket has since more than a decade developed the strategy I am naively starting to explore at intriguing levels of complexity…
===============================================
MORE DETAIL ON THE SETUP(s) I would like to test, three versions with different SIDEs S
SETUP 1 - SIDE S is given by Sennheiser Ambeo Smart Set
(simple and stealth, I expect less phase issues but less stereo separation)
SETUP 2 - SIDE S is given by two DPA 4060 at the ends of the longest possible telescopic arm
(more cumbersome, it needs two recorders (or something like a Zoom F6 that I do not own) and a longer arm. It could give more stereo separation but maybe it will show comb effect)
SETUP 3 - SIDE S (extended) is given by two hypercardiods (Beyerdynamic M 201 TG) at the ends of the longest possible telescopic arm
(even more bulky, it needs two recorders and heavier mics and arm, but it can be good to catch a PA in desperate reverberant cases)
The FRONT MIC(s) M would be in all three cases
One hypercardioid (Beyerdynamic M 201 TG) or a shotgun (*) pointed to the source
OR
(“extended” M) Two cardioids X/Y (Rode NT4) or two hypercardioids X/Y (Beyerdynamic M 201 TG) pointed to the source
(*) I understand that DSatz – thank you for the beautiful informative encyclopaedic posts! - suggests to avoid shotguns for indoor concerts from far distance. As opposed to good hypercardiods, shotguns' directivity is highly dependent of frequency, so that sounds arriving off axis and reverberant sound are recorded with STRONG colouration.
MY RECONSTRUCTION of DSatz’s reasoning to test if I understand it well
in loud indoors live concerts, for average tickets, with even a good shotgun, whe have
1) THE WEAK DIRECT SOUND of the FAR stage captured as a STRONG uncolored (flat) on axis response
2) A STRONG REFLECTED SOUND FIELD of the same FAR stage captured as a WEAK highly colored (frequency dependent) off axis respose
These two vectors (sound sources) INTERFERE, giving strong frequency-dependent phase cancellations -
with a good hypercardiod, these phase cancellations would be frequency-INdependent.
DSatz’s conclusion: shotguns work only with a ON AXIS CLOSE source surrounded by DIFFERENT off axis sources
OBJECTION by Gutbucket: "the other mics in the array help to hide the off-axis issues of the shotguns"
MY COUNTER-OBJECTION: Are not the other mics in the array subjected by frequency-dependent phase cancellations when combined with the centre mic already "distorted"?
CONCLUSION
what do you guys think of my three configurations, especially the first "stealth" one, namely
Sennheiser Ambeo Smart Headset + Rode NT4 <-----> S + “extended stereo” M (4 tracks in total) ?
All the best
Overlay 2009