^^ Yeah, I wouldn't base any evaluation of something that specific off of Soundcloud. Their compression sounds pretty bad.
[Your samples sound great, though]
Thanks, I trust the ears and value the opinions of you all more than anyone else, except my own, including the musicians!
Using what was posted, I wanted to favor a +3db bell curve centered around 1200hz (flat at 500 and again flat around 3700). I personally love that sort of air that you're getting above 10khz, but I'd be interested to hear one of them in the raw 5ch format to tinker with the mix myself and see if it has the same character or if that's a byproduct of the tri-mic mix. The oomph at 60hz was well reproduced, and I was surprised that it came through that well actually.
I'm with you. I often like to bring up some presence range around 1200-2500 as well. I think I did some of that here (can't remember exactly, I'd have to go back and open the Samplitude session to check how much and where) but I also thought later that it could use some more there. I actually didn't get that impression on listening to this isolation, but in comparison to professionally recorded stuff.
The air up top around 10kHz and a good bit of the room ambience is from the MGefell M94 ORTF pair. That aspect is what influenced the decision to mix what was originally intended as two separate sources, simultaneously recorded (the 3 ADKS and the ORTF Gefells). When I combined the two while playing around with the headphone mix at the conclusion of the session to give the guys a listen, the mix really came alive. The M94s have a pretty good peak around 10K which is sweet in for diffuse field but can be a bit much that close, so I notched that down a bit.
One thing that was interesting on listening to the discrete 3-channel TL playback last night was that it didn’t seem to suffer as much from the lack of that extra air as I remember the straight 3 TL 2-channel mix doing. There could be some cancellation in the 3 mic mix that mixing in the Gefells compensates for, or it could be psychoacoustic, or I could be imagining things. I’ll have to listen to that again.
The bottom ooph quality and quantity somewhat surprised me too, especially since the TLs were all in supercardioid pattern and those MG M94 caps are a little light on the bottom. The mics may have been close enough to the kick and one of the Leslie cabinets to get some slight proximity effect, but I attribute a lot of that to the on-floor placement of the TLs. They are close enough to the floor to be within the boundary-effect zone effect at those frequencies.
I’m really digging that on-floor setup for a few reasons: it's out of audience sightlines, captures that solid bottom couple octaves, and minimizes floor reflections. One of the big factors for me in placing the 3-mic setup is making sure the center mic is off-center from the main axis of the kick, but still relatively close to the kit. I also make sure I have a clear line to the snare and angle it up towards it, not so high to get too much cymbals, though I try to get more cymbals in the Center than Left/Right and angling the Center up helps that too. Those things collectively are the keys to good on-stage drums with the 3-mic setup for me. Tapers seem worried about getting too close and getting too much drums when recording on-stage, this seems to manage that while giving me clear, clean drum transients without too much room sound. Most everything else except vocals can usually stand to be more ambient than the drums in my thinking.
Maybe it was luck, but I noticed that the only energy in the top bit or so was drum hits, so I used a super crisp limiter at about 7db worth and almost never invaded anything other than those occasional explosions. Yeah yeah, it works towards flattening the mix, but I don't see much reason to lose detail in trade for the occasional blast, especially when I can keep most of it's character and bring up other details.
Thanks, that’s helpful. You are more accomplished than I at transparent limiting, which is one reason I usually just get in there and volume envelope the big offenders. It’s one of the things I need to play around with more to get the average level up to something more reasonable in mastering for the real world.
Widen or Narrow?
Widened by the smallest amount, not to actually make the image wider, but because it pushed the drums back from out of the listeners face ever so slightly and tamed the cymbals up top slightly. That was a last moment impulse choice before bouncing these test mix tracks out.
When you did the mixdown, did you favor the center channel and use the other two channels as outriggers, or the opposite and use the center only as much as you thought necessary?
I try it both ways, sometimes it works better one way or the other. I typically start with Left/Right and slowly bring up the Center and play around with that balance until it’s as smooth and seamless as possible. Recording gain on the center TL was set 4dB lower to begin with, and I think I ended up mixing them pretty evenly here. There is some range of reasonable adjustment but since the idea of this 3-mic setup is to have stereo imaging interaction across all three mics, there isn’t nearly as much level adjustment range as a panned individual close mic setup without things going wacky. The sweet spot is pretty obvious usually.
This in depth discussion has me thinking I really should have imported the 5 raw tracks into Samplitude and done the mix there like I usually would- I could then play with treating the two sources differently as required, like manage the M94 air without affecting the TLs and vice versa.
Well done. When I get back I'll have to dig out some choice cuts and try to up the ante.
Thanks. I’d love to hear it. Have an enjoyable trip.