Topic: Optimize my 4 channel technique

[captainentropy]

Thanks, Gutbucket, for the M/S tutorials. I'll be bookmarking this!

So far it looks like both nights sound great. We shall see when I finish mixing/mastering night 2 (I was able to include the C414s this time).

Here's the result for night 1 (just the one, center-placed source) https://archive.org/details/acollective2025-05-19.flac24

Listen to track 6, "Ends Meets", to hear how the vocals turned out. There are four vocalists, Noah (Panda Bear) is the lead, he's pretty obvious with his amazing falsetto, there are two female backup singers that you can pretty cleanly hear as a "response" to his "call".

Thanks again for all of your comments   

[captainentropy]

Second night, mix of two sources (AKG C414 XLS + Nevaton MC59W), in case anyone wanted to see how it turned out...

https://archive.org/details/acollective2025-05-20.flac24/

[rocksuitcase]

I listened to the first night almost all the way through. Nice sound, kind of what I would expect from that location. Good job!

[captainentropy]

I listened to the first night almost all the way through. Nice sound, kind of what I would expect from that location. Good job!

Thanks! How about night 2? It's a 4 ch. mix.

[rocksuitcase]

I listened to the first night almost all the way through. Nice sound, kind of what I would expect from that location. Good job!

Thanks! How about night 2? It's a 4 ch. mix.

I listened to night 2 also. I think it has a very smooth sound overall and possibly a bit more of a natural "you are there" sound than N1. Good job for sure!

[captainentropy]

I listened to the first night almost all the way through. Nice sound, kind of what I would expect from that location. Good job!

Thanks! How about night 2? It's a 4 ch. mix.

I listened to night 2 also. I think it has a very smooth sound overall and possibly a bit more of a natural "you are there" sound than N1. Good job for sure!

Thank you! I agree. Do you think that is due more to there being a second pair of mics spaced wide or that that they were large(r) diaphragm mics?

[Gutbucket]

I still need to give this a listen.. but in general I consider sound quality at the recording location, the other qualities of the particular mics used, their polar pattern and how they are setup, all to be more influential than the size of the mic diaphragm.

Rock's comment on it having a "natural "you are there" sound" is something I tend to associate with the portrayal of the ambient content in the recording-  the underlying background in which everything happens, the space in which the music is heard to occur, the reverberant room sound and audience reaction sounding "open and 3-dimentional".  Much of that impression comes from achieving sufficiently low diffuse-field-correlation between playback channels, which is fancy speak for the ambient sound arriving randomly from all directions not having a clearly-distinct phase-relationship in the resulting recording.  That occurs automatically (some argue "artificially", but I say "if it sounds right it is right") when spacing a pair of mics sufficiently far apart.

The advantage I see in using this kind of multiple-mic stereo array is that you can more easily get both that big, naturally immersive, 3d "you are there" sound from the wide-spaced pair, and simultaneously get clear, tight, phase-correlated upfront-sound from the coincident or near-spaced pair.  The wide-spaced pair alone might sound very natural and immersive but "distant", while the center pair sounds more clear and upfront but "flatter and less dimensional".  Together they are more likely to provide the best of both worlds in the resulting recording.

[captainentropy]

I still need to give this a listen.. but in general I consider sound quality at the recording location, the other qualities of the particular mics used, their polar pattern and how they are setup, all to be more influential than the size of the mic diaphragm.

Rock's comment on it having a "natural "you are there" sound" is something I tend to associate with the portrayal of the ambient content in the recording-  the underlying background in which everything happens, the space in which the music is heard to occur, the reverberant room sound and audience reaction sounding "open and 3-dimentional".  Much of that impression comes from achieving sufficiently low diffuse-field-correlation between playback channels, which is fancy speak for the ambient sound arriving randomly from all directions not having a clearly-distinct phase-relationship in the resulting recording.  That occurs automatically (some argue "artificially", but I say "if it sounds right it is right") when spacing a pair of mics sufficiently far apart.

The advantage I see in using this kind of multiple-mic stereo array is that you can more easily get both that big, naturally immersive, 3d "you are there" sound from the wide-spaced pair, and simultaneously get clear, tight, phase-correlated upfront-sound from the coincident or near-spaced pair.  The wide-spaced pair alone might sound very natural and immersive but "distant", while the center pair sounds more clear and upfront but "flatter and less dimensional".  Together they are more likely to provide the best of both worlds in the resulting recording.

That makes sense to me.

I think the highlighted section above is what I hear when I mute and unmute the wide-spaced AKGs. Since the two nights (linked above) are the same center mics in the same location (but the 2nd show [2025-05-20] had the AKGs mixed in), the same can be heard if comparing both nights (different setlist of course).