Live Church Recording Setup

[toddincharlotte]

My church is going from an off the board type setup to a live 2 track stereo setup for a few different reasons.  We've puchased a pair of Studio Projects C4s.  Right now they are at the far back of the church about 120' from the sound source but we are moving them up closer.

We have a couple of options but the most viable right now appears to be mounting them on booms to the light rig.  It is an LED rig and makes no noise.  The rig is 5-7' from the front of the stage mounted one foot from the ceiling.  It is about 20' long.  The mains are closer to 40' apart.  The plan was to use the cardiod capsule and mount each to the very ends of the light rig and point them toward the FOH [roughly 10' from the mains].  The problem we see with that is potential issue with high frequency dispersion [120 degree horns] in that the light rig is so close to the stage the PA horns may not be dispersing enough 10 feet from the source and 5' from the front of stage.  The other option would be to move them back or put more space between them, this makes the install a little harder as they would have to mount directly to the ceiling.

Coming up from the floor is not an option due to aesthetics......church feels it would interfere with worship.  Besides that the Mains are roughly 10 feet from the ceiling so the sound source is high too.  We're moving off the board because it's a very "dry" signal coming out and requires the sound crew to maintain both the channel aux feeds to the recorder as well as the live sound.  We felt a live stereo recording would be less maintenance and possibly provide a better sound adding the room acoustic etc.  It will also capture the sound of the worshipers which we see as a bonus in this case.

Any suggestions are helpful, I can probably post a picture of the space Thursday morning [we rehearse Wednesday nights].

[Hypnocracy]

Things I would consider...Get a pair of Omni capsules...If too much height is an issue hang the C4's from the XLR cable...Mix in the SNB for a matrix to balance the frequency response...the omni will add wetness to the SNB...A pair of Used AT853's would be the preferable mic of choice for me...that way you could hang from the ceiling at the location you want and have a very low visual impact.

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Coming up from the floor is not an option due to aesthetics......church feels it would interfere with worship. 

Yeah. I've recorded in churches before and it's almost uncomfortable using a stand; it almost always feels out of place. I wouldn't do it as a long term solution unless it was the last resort.

We're moving off the board because it's a very "dry" signal coming out and requires the sound crew to maintain both the channel aux feeds to the recorder as well as the live sound.  We felt a live stereo recording would be less maintenance and possibly provide a better sound adding the room acoustic etc.  It will also capture the sound of the worshipers which we see as a bonus in this case.

I'm with Hyp; I'd pick up omni caps for the C4s (or the smaller AT mics he mentioned) and feed the mics into the sbd and route them to the aux outs only, then do a couple of test recordings with choirs or sermons to get an ambiance guide for how much signal to feed from the two mics in combination with the other sbd channels to get the proper mix. Only hitch will be calculating proper delay in milliseconds between the C4 pair and the other inputs/sounds. That would be optimum in my mind.

Baring that, I'd probably do what you're doing, but still use omnis. Just make sure you put the caps equally close to each of their respective stacks/PAs.

[toddincharlotte]

OK.....thanks for the ideas and yeah I guess it makes sense to mix in the SNB.  I would likely take the 2 track out to the recording mixer in 2 channels.  We have the omni caps so I'll switch those out to pick up some more hall ambiance.  Will upload a photo in a few for suggestions on placement. ....space them wide near the mains or more of a close ab type deal?