Need help with room & mic setup

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Hi,
I need some help. I'm recording myself on a grand playing classical music.
I have a Lavry Blue A/D to a computer, and a pair of Coles 4040 mics which
I'm using in Blumlein configuration. The room is 13x24x9, with the piano
against one of the short walls, and the walls have eye level wood paneling
with a lath/plaster ceiling and wood floors. The preamp is presently a
crummy 'Audiobuddy' (really bad), as I finish my custom designed and
built tube based preamp.

The problem is that what I get really sounds bad, more so than warrented
by the crummy preamp. A couple of Cardoids pointed at the piano sounds OK,
but spacing the Blumlein pair about 8 feet way sounds bad. It gets mushy,
some notes boom out, and other things.

Obviously the room is having an effect, but I've tried putting up a blanket
behind or to the sides of mic, to damp the room out, but it didn't seem to
make too much difference. Moving the mics around doesn't seem to make a
tremendous difference either.

Any suggestions on a good way to either improve the room, or better mic
positions, or something else? Most suggestions I've gotten so far have
been for close micing, but that's more appropriate for rock I believe.



--

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Seems like since his recording system is fairly portable, it wouldn't
be too hard to find a piano in a good hall that could be rented for a
few hours.

Al

On 29 Sep 2004 17:40:45 -0400, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

>Dan <spaaaam@spam.net> wrote:
>>Hi,
>> I need some help. I'm recording myself on a grand playing classical music.
>>I have a Lavry Blue A/D to a computer, and a pair of Coles 4040 mics which
>>I'm using in Blumlein configuration. The room is 13x24x9, with the piano
>>against one of the short walls, and the walls have eye level wood paneling
>>with a lath/plaster ceiling and wood floors. The preamp is presently a
>>crummy 'Audiobuddy' (really bad), as I finish my custom designed and
>>built tube based preamp.
>
>That room is _tiny_. Especially for a Blumlein pair, which has a very
>narrow angle of acceptance. You need to get those mikes MUCH farther
>back than that room will allow.
>
>> The problem is that what I get really sounds bad, more so than warrented
>>by the crummy preamp. A couple of Cardoids pointed at the piano sounds OK,
>>but spacing the Blumlein pair about 8 feet way sounds bad. It gets mushy,
>>some notes boom out, and other things.
>
>Yes. Try pulling the Blumlein back about thirty or forty feet in a bigger
>room. Maybe fifty or sixty feet.
>
>> Obviously the room is having an effect, but I've tried putting up a blanket
>>behind or to the sides of mic, to damp the room out, but it didn't seem to
>>make too much difference. Moving the mics around doesn't seem to make a
>>tremendous difference either.
>
>That only damps very high frequencies, which if anything probably makes the
>problem worse. And it doesn't do anything about the fact that you are just
>way too close for a Blumlein pair, or the fact that you have some major
>standing wave problems in that room.
>
>> Any suggestions on a good way to either improve the room, or better mic
>>positions, or something else? Most suggestions I've gotten so far have
>>been for close micing, but that's more appropriate for rock I believe.
>
>I think if you are stuck using that room, close miking might be the only
>way to go. Have someone else play scales on the piano while you go around
>the room with a finger in one ear, listening with the other. I bet it sounds
>really boomy in most places in the room too.
>
>You need a better room.
>--scott

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

"**bg**" <info@thelittlecanadaheadphoneband.ca> wrote in message
news:vOR6d.566869$gE.58415@pd7tw3no...
>
> > Any suggestions on a good way to either improve the room, or better
mic
> > positions, or something else? Most suggestions I've gotten so far have
> > been for close micing, but that's more appropriate for rock I believe.
> -----------------------------------------------
> Close micing. Suggestions to mic from great distances are, ahh, something
> to do with pulling your leg.

And if you can still hear the room, try covering and surrounding the piano
with blankets.
-bg-
> www.thelittlecanadaheadphoneband.ca
> www.lchb.ca
> > --
> >
>
>

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

**bg** wrote:

[ provocative writing mode ON in spite of the poster followed up to
actually being a nice person, anything to get a debate over audio
instead of having people stray off into the bushes ... O;-) ]

>> Any suggestions on a good way to either improve the room,
>> or better mic positions, or something else? Most suggestions
>> I've gotten so far have been for close micing, but that's more
>> appropriate for rock I believe.

Hmmm .. obviously to get the sound of a piano in a hall, record a piano
in a hall. The next best thing can be to fake it, in which case
multitracking a close and a far pair in the available room can be
helpful. On one occasion I got decent results when trying a combination
of close miking and playing the off tape monitoring signal over
loudspeakers in the room to provide the illusion of something larger
than a living room.

> Close micing. Suggestions to mic from great distances are,
> ahh, something to do with pulling your leg.

Not "great distance", rather "appropiate distance". And Scotts
suggestion is not about leg pulling, it is about a novel way of
recording that is not yet fully understood: stereo.

That said, I was somewhat surprised over the suggested distance, until I
remembered the increase in distance that is likely to be required when
using figure of eight's compared to cardioids due to the narrower slice
of the room they record. It is all about direct vs. reflected and you
aint getting no good imaging if you aint got none of da reflected.



Kind regards

Peter Larsen

--
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