Sounds good. You should be encouraged! Especially because you are thinking about the right things!
One thing that I think works in favor of this recording is that music which is sparse and 'open' sounding instead of being dense wall-of-sound type stuff can tolerate a lot more ambience and reverb. If this was a bass heavy, echoing rock show taped from the same location and situation it might sound too swamped and reverberant. Location is everything in recording. Sometimes you have some control over that and sometimes not. Equipment like mic choice can influence that somewhat, but changing location has much more influence and you can never completely get away from the sound of the room.
Is there a technilogical reason why hypers aren't made for stealth, or is it just a coincidental state of the world?
Many of the smaller mics we use for st3lth type recording were originally designed as lavalier mics for talking head, on-the-talent type use. Most of those are omnidirectional, because it is easier (and less expen$ive) to make a good, natural sounding omni mic than a directional one, because it's easier to place a non-directional mic on the talent without having to point it in a particular direction (which applies to our use too) and because when mounting the mic right on the source, its easier to get enough level of what you want without resorting to directional mics which introduce other compromises.
People do use hypercardioid mics for se3lth, but because they are technically harder to engineer, good sounding ones tend to be expensive. Using a mic that is considerably more directional also means you have to take more care to point it correctly and to keep it pointed correctly for the entire concert. Cardioids are a bit more forgiving in that aspect, omnidirectional mics even more so. Personally I tend to use omnidirectional mics and go to extra lenghts to get them where I want them because they just sound more natural to me. Cardioids and especially hypercardioid mics often sound 'funny' - closed in and weird in the bass, dull, or honky to my ears. [shrug] Other people make great recordings with them though.
- Yes, this is what it sounded like there. My first thought when the show started: sound kind of sucks on the vocals. But then, I got caught up in it and forgot about it.
The brain is an amazing, highly adaptable organ and the most important piece of recording equipment.
It constantly astounds me how we can mentally adjust to bad sound, how we can focus on one thing and ignore other sounds, and how the presence of other senses (especialy sight) can 'fill-in' to complete the experience. The incredible data processing center between our ears has a lot less information to work with when presented with a stereo recording than when present at the actual event. Your initial reaction when the show started is probably a more accurate objective assessment before your brain helped to 'fill-in-the-gaps' and reflects the fact that you are a very aware listener (Ignoring the fact that the sound guy also dials in the sound a bit over the first song or two). Listening back to the recording you are sort of stuck in that 'first impression' mode sound-wise by the primitive technology of stereo recording and playback. If you really think about it, it's actually rather amazing that such technology can be as convincing as it is.
- Next tape there will tell me alot. Similar kind of artist, much closer up.
Truth. The ONLY way to really learn (IMHO) is by experience. The feedback loop of tying something, listening, trying something else, listening again and making the comparison is the only way to really know, regardless of all the helpful suggestions and stuff you read. Those things are helpful and can speed the way, but they can't actually move your understanding forward.
A meta thing:
I'm interested in knowing what we mean when we say it sounds "hollow"? Acoustically, what are we talking about? Part of what's interesting about this new hobby is getting a handle on knowledge that I don't have a firm mental representation for. I assume that word popped into my head for this sound because of some other things I've heard like this in some environment which was, in some way, hollow. But what is it? No perception of sound direction, but rather sound coming as if it's bouncing off walls around? Something else? I'm finding this to be an odd cognitive state: having things I can, sort of, recognize but for which I don't much trust my vocabulary, and whose physical properties I don't know at all.
We all have a mental sound concept of 'hollow' and other labels for the qualities of what we hear which we develop though listening experience. In technical terms, what people ascribe to the quality of 'hollow' might be things like a certain reverberation time, a certain frequency response, stored energy resonating over time, etc. At some point the descriptive terms fall flat because 'hollow' can mean sounding like a rotted log, or sounding like a tin can, and we might not be talikng about the same 'hollow'. I know that through the experience of recording I've become much more attuned to sounds and which technical aspects correspond to my subjective experience of them. It's just being aware of what you are hearing and making the connection to the technical aspects and terms that relate to your experience.
What it reminds me of is this: when I was little, I had a cat that made this one kind of miaow that I called a "round miaow". No clue why, it just seemed the right name - there was nothing round about what the cat was doing, but everyone knew which miaow that was. Many, many years later I learned that the kind of vowels I would have to use if I were imitating that sound were called "round vowels". So somehow, in trying to name that sound, I filtered it through my own production mechanism and landed on the same term that whoever came up with "round vowels" landed on. Logical, because we round our mouths to make them. But what it pointed out for me was how strange it was to have certain areas of knowledge for which we have fairly accessible mental representations, and others, like this acoustic knowledge, which we manipulate(I mean just as people, not tapers) without any obviously common representation.
My take? A much as we like to think of ourselves as unique individuals (I certainly have a strong sense of individuality) we all are the same animal and are products of very common experiences. In reality, we all have much more in common than whatever we consider to be our own original ideas. Just as we are mostly unconscious of the influence of the time we live in and the culture that surrounds us, its rare that we realize that the way we think and the ideas we use are so contemporary and 'of our time' until we find out that people 200 years ago or in some far away culture (who both realistically share what, 80% or more of our experience and values?) thought about something so differently.
Sorry for all the words, but thanks for getting me thinking and rambling.
Topic: new taper seeking critique (Read 5183 times)