Topic: Sound "wavering", like audibly side-to-side

[Brennan]

Just got back from day 2 of 3 of Wilco's Solid Sound festival....much fun and I met some super nice tapers.

In listening to Wilco's set I'm hearing what sounds like the sound wavering from left to right and sometimes back to normal / center. Think of it like this - if you were to follow the sound with your eyes, it moves left to right, like someone is holding a hand near one of my mics and blocking the soundwaves.

I have a couple ideas - either it's the preamp battery or the preamp levels. Of course I'm using my trusty CA 9000.

Quick backstory: I had a bad day yesterday with extremely low levels so I cranked it today. Thus I went around using the +30 switch and then monitoring levels to get as close to 0 as possible w/o clipping (and I never did clip).

This was great for Sir Richard Bishop, a solo guitarist. But for Wilco I suspect the opposite. Could this be the problem, that the pre was being overloaded?

Second idea: could the battery be failing? I don't have a way to test it since I'm 3000 miles from home but it was good before I left. I'm considering that it may not be sending equal amounts of signal to the left and right channels - is that possible?

Great meeting those of you who were there and see you tomorrow.

PS - The stand was anchored to the ground so it wasn't moving around or being bumped or anything similar, it stayed still the entire show.

[Belexes]

How far back were you? Wind manipulates sound to cause it to shift like you are describing.

[jibooer]

I wouldn't worry about the pre-amp or your power. Even the best of rigs will capture wind phasing if you are a good distance from the sound source. Somtimes you will even hear phasing, but not necessarily the wind that is causing it. I would chock it up to an outdoor taping experience.

[Brennan]

That might be it. It was me and another guy clamped to my stand and I'd say we were around 100' back. It's definitely listenable but the waveform isn't really pretty either. Sorta like sticks of butter but not SOLID brickwalled. Funny thing is, with a little high-pass the peaks become far more evident.

[todd e]

i bet it's very obvious when using headphones, but less obvious when played on speakers.  i know that when i critically listen with phones, i pick up all sorts of phasing which i rarely hear on my playback.

[Brennan]

i bet it's very obvious when using headphones, but less obvious when played on speakers.  i know that when i critically listen with phones, i pick up all sorts of phasing which i rarely hear on my playback.

Yeah, I'll have to listen to it on the big speakers and see how it sounds.

[Shadow_7]

It could just be the mic stand swaying in the wind.

I've run into issues with battery life, with high gain and the limiter on.  But it generally doesn't affect both channels, unless they're both in the same preamp.  And it probably wouldn't be side to side if that was the case.  And in my case, although it was only one channel and came and stayed, it didn't go back to normal at any point until the batteries were replaced.

[momule]

Just got back from day 2 of 3 of Wilco's Solid Sound festival....much fun and I met some super nice tapers.

In listening to Wilco's set I'm hearing what sounds like the sound wavering from left to right and sometimes back to normal / center. Think of it like this - if you were to follow the sound with your eyes, it moves left to right, like someone is holding a hand near one of my mics and blocking the soundwaves.

This is one of the biggest problems with taping outside.  It is known as phasing.  Basically the wind manipulates the sound before it gets picked up by the mic.  I dont do alot of outdoor or festival taping because if this.  Sometimes lowering your mics to a more head level can help with this problem.  I find the higher you go with the mic stand the worse it gets.   You technically could fix this using a phase tool in your favorite audio editing software but it would take forever.

[manitouman]

^^^ Yup, same thing happened to me at Mile High Music Festival. Was able to get Jack Johnson with minimal wind. Second night wasn't so great trying to tape DMB. Happened another time with NIN. Not much you can do about it. Even if you have great mics and windscreens, you can't do anything about it if the wind distorts the sound before they reach your mics.....I take that back, you could get closer to the sound source 

[adrianf74]

^^^ Yup, same thing happened to me at Mile High Music Festival. Was able to get Jack Johnson with minimal wind. Second night wasn't so great trying to tape DMB. Happened another time with NIN. Not much you can do about it. Even if you have great mics and windscreens, you can't do anything about it if the wind distorts the sound before they reach your mics.....I take that back, you could get closer to the sound source 

... and getting closer to the source runs the risk of a more LESS NATURAL sounding recording.  The wind is the one element you can never beat outdoors (even with windscreens).  I gues the other option you could choose is to not record outdoors.   

[admkrk]

^^^ Yup, same thing happened to me at Mile High Music Festival. Was able to get Jack Johnson with minimal wind. Second night wasn't so great trying to tape DMB. Happened another time with NIN. Not much you can do about it. Even if you have great mics and windscreens, you can't do anything about it if the wind distorts the sound before they reach your mics.....I take that back, you could get closer to the sound source 

... and getting closer to the source runs the risk of a more LESS NATURAL sounding recording.  The wind is the one element you can never beat outdoors (even with windscreens).  I gues the other option you could choose is to not record outdoors.   

well, if you are so far back that the wind is blowing the sound all over then, that is only natural sounding for being in a shit position and wind screens have nothing to do with this. personally i prefer recording outdoors and rarely have a problem with wind unless a hurricane is in the area. fans/acs/smoke eaters/etc. cause me more problems. 

[adrianf74]

So I'll add some more fuel to this... I was hit by the same issues the OP described on a recent recording.  I wasn't using my pre-amp simply because it was a "free show" at a fair-like setting close to the lake. There was a soccer game on about 300 yards away and a concert at a Live Nation event about 800 yards away.  Neither of these were my issue.  There was a wedding going on which meant they didn't blast the audio as loud as they could have at the venue.

For this show, I used my CA-14/C's, my CA-UBB and the dead rats.  Had the Edirol R09 set at 21 (which is usually not a problem when I'm traveling light).  It sounded decent at the show and I was sure I got a decent recording.  Listened to it with headphones several hours later and could hear some wavering and a lack of bass (which was also apparent at the show).   When I checked it out the next day, it was thin sounding (lack of bass at the source) and the wavering could be heard. 

From my experience, I chalk it up to not being close enough to the speakers (I was about 2/3's of the way to the soundboard) and because there was some wind (marginal to significant), being closer would've led to a better recording.

So, as admkrk points out... "natural sounding for being in a shit position" is what you get.   Lesson learned.

[admkrk]

lol yep, i have yet to make a recording that sounds better than it did then where my mics were. the only real difference from recording outdoors as opposed to in is there are more random factors.

for example i did small fest like what you described only it was just off the beach instead of a lake. early on there was little wind but as the day progressed the wind picked up quite a bit. you could hear the difference there and even more so on the tape. don't usually have that happen inland.   

[adrianf74]

lol yep, i have yet to make a recording that sounds better than it did then where my mics were. the only real difference from recording outdoors as opposed to in is there are more random factors.

for example i did small fest like what you described only it was just off the beach instead of a lake. early on there was little wind but as the day progressed the wind picked up quite a bit. you could hear the difference there and even more so on the tape. don't usually have that happen inland.

This was one of those random factors... sucks because it was a great show.   I boosted the "missing" bass in the recording and I can still hear the wavering.   I think I might've been better off with the omnis over the cards for this one.

Yeah, I hate taping near bodies of water.  Being in Toronto, I was downtown by Lake Ontario.  I've been burned twice this summer by winds near the lake, too.  :S