Topic: Strange rattling to bass drum

[Rairun]

I taped this show last night:

https://archive.org/details/mogwai2023-02-18

Throughout the set, but particularly clearly at the beginning of track 2 ("To the Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth"), you can hear a slightly delayed rattling sound following the bass drum in the recording, though I didn't notice it live. It's not distortion or clipping. I'd never had this happen to me before.  My CA-11 cards were firmly mounted on my glasses with croakies. I was on the front row, dead centre.

Could the barrier be rattling? Or maybe the small PA speakers facing the audience in front of the monitors (you can see one in the photo)? The noise sounds closer than that. Could they be resonating with my glasses or even the microphone capsules themselves? I wouldn't think the issue is the mics, since everything else sounds fine. But if not them, what?

I'm puzzled!

[Gutbucket]

Certainly sounds like bass impact driving sympathetic rattling in something, somewhere.  Not distortion or clipping.

Listening here on a single channel headphone.  Might be able to tell more in stereo if the noise is localizable in its pan position.  I'd half expect it to be panned strongly to one side or the other if it was the mic mounting, from one side being looser than the other or whatever, but who knows.  Might be the fill monitor rattling against the stage, or exciting something near it, but could be a lot of things.  Likely not caused by your recording rig, but hard to rule that out entirely.

[goodcooker]

Sounds like a blown speaker or a woofer driver that has come loose from it's mounting hardware.

Is the picture from your vantage point while recording? That fill speaker on the stage right in front of you is likely the culprit.

Recording sounds great! I listened at work today on my earbuds and with music like this it's hard to tell if the distortion you hear sometimes is intentional or not. There's a lot of fuzz pedals and effects going on.

[Rairun]

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Might be able to tell more in stereo if the noise is localizable in its pan position.  I'd half expect it to be panned strongly to one side or the other if it was the mic mounting, from one side being looser than the other or whatever, but who knows.  Might be the fill monitor rattling against the stage, or exciting something near it, but could be a lot of things.  Likely not caused by your recording rig, but hard to rule that out entirely.

Good point! You can hear it on both channels (though not always equally) so this probably rules out the mics.

Is the picture from your vantage point while recording? That fill speaker on the stage right in front of you is likely the culprit.

It is, yeah. It was the first thing I suspected, and this is not the first time I've heard less than ideal fill speakers (though not at this venue), but it always sounded more like distortion than this.

Recording sounds great! I listened at work today on my earbuds and with music like this it's hard to tell if the distortion you hear sometimes is intentional or not. There's a lot of fuzz pedals and effects going on.

Thanks! They always put on such good shows.

[Gutbucket]

Just got around to a more proper listen. Nice sounding CA-11 recording there.  Didn't really notice the rattle much except for the start of track two. In the end I'd categorize it as simply one of the particularities of a live performance recording.