Great examples. Especially since this is a good AUD recording to start with, and each additional element improves upon it, producing something outstanding.
Good well-balanced clarity on one hand, combined with good depth and dimension which conveys a sense of being there on the other, are the major contributors to what makes a technically great live recording in my way of thinking. Sharp imaging is great too, but much less important in the grand scheme of things. It's best when imaging stands atop a foundation provided by those other things, adding another layer of auditory excitement. Without them good imaging in a live recording is uninvolving and worthless on its own. Of course a great performance is foremost, but like the audience reaction and behavior, that part is not within our control.
This is why I think about how to best go about making live recordings primarily in terms of the direct and reverberant sound components: getting a clear up-front direct component balanced against a natural sounding, enveloping and spacious ambient/reverberant component, and then only secondarily think about things in terms of Left/Right and the imaging aspects. It's why I'd consider a well balanced SBD + ambient pair recording without any traditional AUD pair as a reasonable and perhaps optimal choice for many situations when limited to 4 channels. I've advocated for that around here previously for that very reason.
In light of that I'd love to hear just the rear audience facing mics + SBD if you have the time and motivation to post yet another sample.
I'd venture that it's probably not that bad a choice and may compare far more favorably against the MK5 + SBD sample than many readers might think. Conceptually the suggestion is to think about the role of each part: the SBD is the direct stuff, the rear facing mics the ambient stuff, and the forward facing pair the imaging stuff. It’s not really that segregated, there is ambience from the forward pair and may be imaging in the SBD, but the point is that it can be very useful and freeing to think of it that way instead of coming from a traditional mindset of main AUD pair plus whatever else we can get to spice that up with. The problem is it just seems wrong to not consider a standard AUD stereo pair as the starting point, but rather as the garnish, adding the final touch of imaging, gluing the SBD and ambience pair together.
In this case the AUD is a very good starting point to begin with; the SBD adds the sweet, dry, direct up-front clarity and clean transients; the rear-facing microphones add a richer sense of depth and dimension which allows me to imagine myself there. That part is too often lacking in even professionally produced live releases. This is an example what we can do as tapers that even the pro's often can't get right. The subtle magic only happens when all this important stuff is all working together well enough. We can put the listener right there in the heat of it and really convey the magical essence of the live experience, rather than sounding like an up-front studio recorded pan-potted multi-track with super instrument separation never heard live and oddly distant diffuse applause at a much lower level as if we are suddenly yanked up out of the audience into a blimp between songs, listening to them enjoying the concert far down below. Even the best professional live recordings often sound like that to me. It's as if they either don't really know what it's like to be there, or purposefully prefer a more abstracted experience. The professional recordings may be fantastic sounding and enjoyable, but no top professional production ever has the guts to really put the listener sonically right there in the impact zone with the audience. An individual fan might curse or something. Depending on the goal, we can sometimes do it better than the pros. No matter what we do it's all an abstraction but I like my abstractions of the live music experience to be convincingly concrete.
Apologies for the rant!
Thanks for posting the additional samples, and for starting the thread.
Topic: Rear-facing audience mics: Wow. New links added. (Read 11624 times)