Topic: Recording outdoor festivals

[runonce]

If I ask the soundman 'are you mixing in stereo?' he very well may be, but a stereo mix may not be what is feeding the mains, which is where the sound that the audience hears comes from.  The other suggestion, asking 'is everything panned center in the house PA?' is a very precise and useful alternative question - try asking it in venues small and large and see what answers you get.

Perhaps - but I think referring to panning is confusing...we pan the drums all the way to the left...that how you assign subgroups...its still mono.
In one venue,  we pan the kick drum a little because one part of the room is a bit longer and we think the kick gets a bit box-y sounding on the short side. Does that make it stereo? Not really.

Im still trying to wrap my head around why someone might mix in stereo - and only feed the PA in mono?

When I set out to do show with a fellow soundtech...we dont ask ourselves "are we going to have the same info coming out of each speaker" - we ask "are we going to run this show in stereo or mono?"

And again - you seem to dismiss the smaller pan increments as somehow not being stereo. We just did a small outdoor fest - and with the exception of a bluegrass band - we ran everyone in stereo. Often panning is done evenly distribute the sound...not to create some effect or image...

At an outdoor fest, I might expect some of the lesser bands to be run in mono just for simplicity for the tech crew - perhaps the headliner might run in stereo.

[bo0zZe]

It´s not always best to run close to the speakers at open airs.I decided to get very far away at one show during a festivel and the result was the  best recording i made from that festival. They had PA right next to the stage and i was for sure 150m from the stage..nearly outside.



greetz

[achalsey]

something like this?

http://www.amazon.com/Funny-Umbrella-Fishing-Costume-Party/dp/B001H3QJ6S

[bo0zZe]

d´oh ^^
iam not really sure if it really works out well. recording in the rain is in my opinion a problem i can´t fix .

nah i´ve got another question to the more experienced  ppl ....
i just recorded smthn.. very small crowd and i was ca 10m in front of the pa. did turn off the hpf and got a very nice recording. but there´s 1 thing i don´t know how to put into- the sound goes like in a circle from left to right all over the recording. how did this happen? actually live there was nothing like that.and i also didn´t edit anything. how do i avoid this ?

[Myco]

something like this?

http://www.amazon.com/Funny-Umbrella-Fishing-Costume-Party/dp/B001H3QJ6S

This would be great if you wanted to have a recording of entire entire show where all they played was the opening to The Doors "Riders On The Storm". 

[adrianf74]

I can relate to the difference in sound depending on the company and equipment used.  Location is key.  Some people swear by stack taping using Omnis.  Others will swear by using cards (in an open rig) up by the soundboard.  I had a similar situation a couple of weekend's back: on the Friday, my buddy and I open rolled on the lighting side of the soundboard/lighting area with stands at 8.5 and 10 feet respectively.  My stand had the CA-14 omnis at 8.5 feet, my buddy had the AKG 480 HC's at 10 feet.  Strangely, as I posted in another thread, the CA-14's smoked the AKG's. 

The next day, I noticed my stand was busted so I moved up about 1/2 way from the board, and rolled on the first act.  Rolled the omnis again.  The mix was thin (keyboards were prominent), bass was booming and mids were nowhere to be heard.  By the time the headline act was on, I was about 8-10 rows from the barricade (about 30-40 feet from the stage).  That recording was possibly the worst one I ever made.  It didn't help that it was very humid, either.

The third day, I ran my stand at 10 feet over the soundboard side of the soundboard/lighting area.  Ran the omnis for two acts and the cards for the middle act (Jon Anderson solo).  The cards sounded artificial.  The omnis sounded fuller.  The sound on the third day was the best and the sound on the recordings with the omnis was nice when I played it back. 

The moral of the story - it's a crapshoot.... it really is. 

[Gutbucket]

If I can, I try to walk around an listen for what I think will be the best spot, though it's a bit of a learned skill to decide which spot is actually best.  Many (most) large PAs are far more directional in the vertical plane than the horizontal and the sound can sometimes change dramatically in the space of a few feet overhead.  I don't usually monitor with phones when I record or setup, but I did listen extensively a few times when messing with setups at a couple outdoor venues to try and optimize things.  In one of those particular situations I found an easily decernable sweet 'height' of between 7'-8' with the clarity tapering off dramatically above both and below that.  I choose to run omnis at 7-1/2' and risk the yap, while most others ran 9'-11' or so.

[T-90]

If I can, I try to walk around an listen for what I think will be the best spot, though it's a bit of a learned skill to decide which spot is actually best.

ive never seen you do this 

[Gutbucket]

ive never seen you do this 

Sometimes I do it just to entertain the other tapers.

[skinnypaul]

Well, the results are in and.... while I run CSBs I'm staying close to the stack!

Thanks for the advice all. Lots of useful stuff to think about. The one thing I totally agree with - yes, it's a crapshoot 

P.S. Wow - I'd forgotten how much festival crowds talk during the music...

[easyed]

I've voiced my opinion and other people have voiced their opinions, some agree some disagree.

I think the bottom line is the results, so any of us who actually CARE about the quality of the our recordings would be well advised to TEST the different locations.  If you're at an outdoor festival, choose a band you don't care about and record part of a song from DFC equilateral triangle from stacks (speak into the mics where your location is for later reference) and then walk over to as close to a single speaker stack as possible and record part of the same song there.  Then go somewhere quiet and listen to the results.

I also assert that it is extremely rare that left and right speaker stacks, in a small venue or a huge venue, are putting out different information.  The way to determine the accuracy of this hypothesis is to ask the soundman at shows you go to and start to collect evidence.  You'll find that 99% of venues do not send different content to left and right speaker stacks.  If they do, they should be fired, because anybody in the audience that is not in the center will not hear everything, therefore cheating people on the left or right of center out of the full spectrum of the music they paid to hear.

So don't depend on opinions, start gathering facts and do what gets the best results.  The person with the best tape wins the debate.  (Here is my entry: http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=86017 )