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Gear / Technical Help => Microphones & Setup => Topic started by: waltmon on May 16, 2017, 03:53:37 PM
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Curious to hear any experiences running these outdoors as a full bodied mic or with actives. I almost always have used cards (or omni's up close) outside unless I am running 4 channel which is usually a cardioid pair plus a hyper pair.
Thanks
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Curious to hear any experiences running these outdoors as a full bodied mic or with actives. I almost always have used cards (or omni's up close) outside unless I am running 4 channel which is usually a cardioid pair plus a hyper pair.
Thanks
Walt,
they can be effective outdoors if Pointed Outside Speakers just like bad sounding venues, but they will be light in the bottom end though.
I used my 63s with actives last summer outdoors to record YMSB opening for moe., which I used my ck1s ORTF.
I like the in your face sound with 63s for the quieter bluegrass set, and think the 1s would not have sounded as nice.
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I love running my 480's with ck63's outdoors. I don't feel it is missing anything. You can find some of my recordings on the LMA. Check the link in my signature.
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Walt, glad you finally came around to AKGs ; )
I've used 63s outside, and the main thing that's different to my ears is the lack of indirect/reflected room sound that's always a large part of what gets to the mics at indoor shows. I've found that if you set them up right, you can get a great recording with less local chatter around the mics picked up. Hypers can be tricky, as you know from your Neumann days. If the split/angle is too wide, you get an unfocused image with a hole in the center. If you point them directly on axis with the PA, the image collapses and can end up sounding brittle and lacking in bass just below the midrange, while sometimes still picking up the deep bass, resulting in thinness in the mid frequency range that makes vocals sound honky. Best advice, try to have the axis of each mic just outside the stacks as another poster suggested. Usually 75-80 degrees is where you'll end up, 25ish cm distance between the caps. Hope to see you one of these days. Do you ever make it back to the Va Beach area? Don't be a stranger. Later....
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I have run 61 and63 outside with fine results from both
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Agree with the above 63's sound great everywhere!
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Walt, glad you finally came around to AKGs ; )
I've used 63s outside, and the main thing that's different to my ears is the lack of indirect/reflected room sound that's always a large part of what gets to the mics at indoor shows. I've found that if you set them up right, you can get a great recording with less local chatter around the mics picked up. Hypers can be tricky, as you know from your Neumann days. If the split/angle is too wide, you get an unfocused image with a hole in the center. If you point them directly on axis with the PA, the image collapses and can end up sounding brittle and lacking in bass just below the midrange, while sometimes still picking up the deep bass, resulting in thinness in the mid frequency range that makes vocals sound honky. Best advice, try to have the axis of each mic just outside the stacks as another poster suggested. Usually 75-80 degrees is where you'll end up, 25ish cm distance between the caps. Hope to see you one of these days. Do you ever make it back to the Va Beach area? Don't be a stranger. Later....
Very insightful post. The comments about direct verses indirect/reflected room sound, image focus, solidity of the center, and overall frequency balance all relate to the reasons behind my shift to a combination of omnis + supercards outdoors. The second equally important aspect which goes hand-in-hand with it is arranging them in such a way that the better attributes of each overshadow the less desirable traits of the other, without undue contradiction, infighting, or duplication.
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Run 'em XY-110 outdoors for an experiment. Those mics can be opened up much more than most hypers and the X,Y gives you a very satisfying center image. They've always felt more focused than the 61's to me to the point where I almost always regretted going with the 61's. People are just as chatty outside as they are inside and really unfortunately it's the crowd that we're trying to overcome more so than the room at most events these days.
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I ran 150 ortf outside and the vocals practically vanished...much better at 90 din....my thought was cards 110 hypers din if I run 4 channel outside
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Run 'em XY-110 outdoors for an experiment.
Also try a narrower PAS X/Y angle combined with your omnis spaced wide out to either side.. for an experiment ;)
Provides very useful control over things we normally have to simply guess at or hope to get right. Solid X/Y center focused on the PA providing sharp-imaging and clear vocals, opening up to a lush deep omni ambience out to either side. Adjust the mix of the two based on how good the ambience sounds, how chatty the audience is, and how much help the center image needs.
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I ran 150 ortf outside and the vocals practically vanished...much better at 90 din....my thought was cards 110 hypers din if I run 4 channel outside
Yeah that's a little wide but not too far off. The XY would help with that. I can't recall where I got this number but it's been stuck in my head. Your included angle should be up to around twice the degree where the signal at 1K drops off by 3db. The CK63 does this pretty well for a hyper with on axis response around 65-70 degrees. I always thought 110 would be safe with a little overlap. Still dropped it down for cruddy rooms. (I'm getting older and this is all "rolling into one" so take that calculation with a grain of salt.) With ORTF the spacing forces the included angle a bit more due to the addition of inter-channel delay as a spacial cue.
(http://cloud.akg.com/bestquestions/media/media/resize/id9898-wi940-he530/ck63uls.jpg)
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Here is mine from last Sunday, pointed slightly outside the stacks at Forgotten Space in a nice outdoor (backyard type environment) with lots of chatter.
https://archive.org/details/FS2017-05-21.DFW_AKG463
Chris
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Ive had lotsa good ck61 & ck63 tapes from 1999-2008 when I ran 481/2/3->DMIC-20/V2/V3/SXM2/M148 & lastly SD722. My absolute FAVORITE preamp combo out of ALL of those, were ALWAYS my 48x>SD 722 tapes! They had the best overall sound and tone to me and I still listen to some of my old 48x tapes all of the time because they still sound great to me!
I'd imagine that the 48x>MixPre3/6 will sound similarly amazing ;D
And I've run the ck63 hypers everywhere from really far back in an OTS, to really close running FOB/DFC, and like someone else stated, as long as you don't run them TOO WIDE [more than 90* IMO], they will pull consistently great sounding recordings! I always ran my ck63's@DINa and loved them at that config! That's usually all I ever run my mk41's in now[DINa] too!