Topic: Mixed Capsules = Better Recording???

[scoper]

I use AT853s with either omni, cards, or hypercards, depending on the situation.

Last night I was taping at an arena, sitting in the lower section slightly more than halfway back from the stage, right side.

In my pre-show check, I discovered I wasn't getting levels on the left channel, thought maybe it was the capsule (I had cards in), and swapped it out for a hyper. Still no signal, and I discovered that the plug wasn't fully seated, which corrected the problem. BUT, I forgot to swap out the hypercard cap back to the regular cardiod.

So, the left channel recorded with a hypercard, the right channel with a cardiod. And the recording sounds freaking fantastic!

Was this just dumb luck, or does it make some sense? Mics are mounted inside a Kongol Ventair, in approx ORTF configuration. So, from my seat, the left mic (hyper) was pointed more or less directly at the left stacks, where the right (card) was off to the right of the stacks, gettting perhaps more crowd or room sound.

Opinions?

Scott

[KLowe]

location, location, location

[jhfinn]

Sounds like you just got lucky and just setup in the "sweet spot".

[datbrad]

A very similar thing happened to me at Phish Halloween '96. I was set up front row OTS dead center running my 460s DIN, and at the start I noticed that the levels in one chanel were just slightly below normal and kicked them up a tad and everything seemed fine after that. After the marathon show ended, I was packing up and was shocked to find one mic with a CK61 and the other with a CK63, WTF???

Well, when I got back to the hotel and checked out the recording, it was fantastic. And at home, even better. When I panned each channel to a single speaker, the difference in direct to reverberant sound between the 2 capsules was evident. But when panned back to the center, the sum of the two blended together in such a nice way, that it really sounded quite unique. I have had many compliments on my source of that show, and most from listeners not knowing the secret flaw.

I would correlate this to the 4 mic mix recordings folks are doing today with 744Ts and R4s using pairs of cards and hypers, for example, where the blended mix can sound better than either pairs of mics on their own. I don't think mixed capsule sources always sound better. I have heard just as many that I think should have been simply whichever one of the 2 types of capsules sound best, not both together.   

I think overall, the source and location drive about 90% of what you get anyway and in this case you were just lucky as I was 12 years ago. To this day, I still spot check the capsules if I have switched them recently, thinking back to that night in Atlanta.