Topic: Onstage questions...

[cybergaloot]

When it comes to choosing between omni's and card's (or other) for onstage I look at how loud I expect the audience to be.  How close is the audience to the mics? Is it a small club with dancers in front of the stage or is it more of a concert setting with a seated audience or one that is further away from the stage? I'd guess the venue makes a big difference as well. Is the room boomy or have a lot of reverberation? Cards might be a better choice in that situation.

I found it handy this weekend to be running omni's at the stage lip. I was able to crank the stage mics when the harmonica player stepped out into the audience and played acoustically. But then my situation is a bit different in that am tied into everything and mixing to stereo on the fly. I use the ambient mics to give the recording more of a live feel and usually they are kind of low in the mix.

[fleish]

I had 1 spare channel on my deck the other night and was totally thinking man I wish I had an extra clamp and an omni mic to throw up there too.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

These cards vs. omni questions are often best satisfied with subcards.

[Gutbucket]

Subcards on stage are a general win in that they can provide some of the best aspects of both both omnis and cards.

If reducing the level of audience enthusiasm is one of the goals which influences the decision towards using cardioids, then consider a setup that uses less angle between the mics.  ORTF will pickup more crowd reaction behind the pair than DIN, and an even narrower angle (usually with a slightly wider spacing to compensate for less angle) even less so.  Think of the overall sensitivity of the pattern as a pair to sounds from behind, verses thinking of each mic pattern individually.

One useful trick I like to do if I have an extra channel is to tape a single miniature omni onto the surface of the stage (boundary mounted) a couple feet in front of my stereo pair of cardioids.  That extra omni channel can be very useful to fatten up the bottom end, firm up the center of the soundstage and also provide a bit more 3-d image depth.  I bring it up in the mix just enough to see if it helps with those things, and leave it out if it doesn't.  I just need to make sure it is protected so it doesn't get crushed if accidentally steped on.

The 'couple of feet' thing is intentional because I want it far enough away to not get problems of being sort of near-spaced but not exaclty coincident with the main pair.  By placing the omni farther on stage than the main pair I get two advantages: it's positioned slightly closer to the sources so the direct/reverb ratio of the omni, already improved by the boundary mouning, is closer to that of the directional pair, and secondly the distance somewhat decorrelates the signal from that of the main pair so there should be less potential phase issues like comb filtering when the three are mixed together.  I usually don't delay the omni to align with the stereo pair, but if I did, it would actually increase the decorrelation for sound arriving from directions other than directly in front of the omni (primarily the crowd and reverberance), while increasing the correlation for the direct sound arriving from straight ahead.  That's my fancy sounding justification anyway, mostly I put it there just to get it closer to wehre I would want it alone.

[ethan]

Any opinions on splitting omni's on each side of the stage? I'm thinking mostly for large stages/large venues where the stage lip is really far from the instruments/amps.

[Gutbucket]

Any opinions on splitting omni's on each side of the stage? I'm thinking mostly for large stages/large venues where the stage lip is really far from the instruments/amps.

Yeah, a simple stagelip omni pair alone has worked less well for me in that situation.  But wide spaced omnis matrixed with the SBD can work well.  In that case the SBD fills the middle of the playback stage with it's direct clarity and the omnis provide width, depth and ambience.  Since they are so wide they will be mostly decorrelated from the SBD even if they need to be time-aligned (but they probably won't need to be), making their contibution sound big, diffuse & wide.

The other time very wide omnis has worked for me doesn't really apply for what people are doing around here, but I've found them useful at times as a pair of dedicated surround channels, in addition to main mics at the center.  But in that case, unless going for the "I'm on-stage at the center of the band" wrap-around perspective, there can be too much direct sound in the surround channels than what is desirable for ambience channels, and I usually prefer putting the omnis below the stagelip to catch less of the on stage sound and more crowd and room- similar to wide spaced cardioids facing the audience at the stage corners, which is pretty standard setup for a dedicated pair to catch room sound and crowd reaction.  It's easy enough to gaff tape a pair of 4060's 10' apart to the stage lip wall facing out at the audience, which is usually how I've been doing that.

[fleish]

I'll be honest.  I'm getting away from standard configurations lately and I think the sound quality on my recordings are improving.

I have been doing this a lot lately myself.

When I'm not recording with the Neumann's for which I have specific NOS/DIN/DINa/ORTF mounts I end up doing this as well. My other mounting method is just on a 4-post bar so I just set the angles & spacing to what I think looks like it will sound good.

[Gutbucket]

Crazy on-stage example only tapers will appreciate-

The last couple times I've recorded an on-going monthly jazz trio here, where I get to try all kinds of crazy setups and usually run too many mics just because I can, I settled on the following:

Stereo pair of cardioids in DIN on stage at stage lip (Gefells)
Alternate stereo pair (ADK TLs)
Single 4060 omni boundary mounted on stage a few feet closer than stagelip, in line between the stereo pairs and the snare drum.
Wide spaced pair of 4060s taped to the stage lip wall under the lip facing the audience.
Extra 4060 taped to the stage lip facing out, centered between the other two, directly beneath the stereo pair (mostly just because I had an extra channel and that extra mic was already there as the mate to the one boundary mounted on stage).

Everything went into the DR-680, Gefells through the V3, ADKs direct, 4060s via Niant PFAs.
That gives me lots of stereo mixdown options:
1) Choice of either stereo pair alone.
2) Add some center omni.
3) Add room and crowd reaction with the wide spaced, audience facing omnis (either just a touch, mixed in at low level, or automating level to bring it up more between songs).

Multi-channel:
4) Full descrete 5 or 6 channel surround using either of the stereo pairs as L/R, discarding the other stereo pair and using the omnis as C/Ls/Rs and possibly Cs.

Loads of options.

[cybergaloot]

One thing not mentioned so far is the height of the mics. Of course you will be limited much of the time by not interfering with the sight lines for the audience. I have read that its good to get them up at the height of the top of the kick drum. In my situation that is neither needed nor a good idea because the dancers come so close to my mics. I put my mics between the monitors and only raise them to the height of the monitor.

One problem I have run into doing running split omni's between the monitors was when a guest guitar player sat in and plopped his amp right down in the middle ... surprise! It was a dead hole. I had to scramble to hook up a mic to put in front of his amp. The monitors work as baffles. Although this alters the pickup pattern into more of a card shape, it still is not a card and retains the fuller sound of the omni's.

[Gutbucket]

Snare height can be good, but low as possible can be good too- where sound kind of travels cleanly along the floor without reflecting much off of it.  I've moved from the stalk mounted omnis to boundary mounting them on the floor itself in some cases because of that, but it's situation dependant. The TL's in the above example were attached to the stand legs, as low as they could physically go with right angle connectors on the cables. I even re-strung the shock mounts so the clearance from stage to connector was only about 1/4".

I do try to avoid being the height of the middle of the kick, especially if it is relatively close, and shift to one side or the other (preferably the snare side) or up or down if I'd otherwise end up there.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

The monitors work as baffles.

That can be used to great advantage in taming an overwhelming kick drum.

[Charlie Miller]

One thing I always tried to do when working with Kimock was run the board feed through the snake and record from the stage. This way the stage mics don't have to run through the snake. I would plug them direct into the recorder.

[ethan]

One thing I always tried to do when working with Kimock was run the board feed through the snake and record from the stage. This way the stage mics don't have to run through the snake. I would plug them direct into the recorder.

Yep this is what I like to do usually too. Get yourself some male-male and female-female XLR gender changers. Often the house will be using all the returns but with the gender changers you can create your own return.

[phil_er_up]

I usually run 4-6 mics on stage and a sbd feed.

When I run on stage I bring:

4 XLR 50 feet cables all wrapped together. Then leave 10 feet at each ends to make splits for mics stands. This has always been enough cable at the venue I frequent.

4 extra sets of 15 foot XLR cables
Many short 1/4 inch to XLR cables for SBD feeds
6 foot XLR, RCA, 1/4 inches ways to connect to the SBD.
Many different connectors.
4 mics stands

I get there early and if there is no snake, set up mics on stage, then run mic cables back to SBD area and then tape down the cable next to a wall or someway out of the way. Can use the ceiling too...

[fleish]

One thing I always tried to do when working with Kimock was run the board feed through the snake and record from the stage. This way the stage mics don't have to run through the snake. I would plug them direct into the recorder.

Just curious as to why?