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In Reply to: RE: The pic of that console is a great example of posted by E-Stat on August 24, 2014 at 15:29:25
The sound I heard in that room, through that console, on B&W 801s was stunningly good. (The amps, btw, were Mac MC-2500s, one per channel. I don't know if they were modified or not.)
I have never been in a session with 60 channels going - not even close. But Kaufman has done operas there, and I can see that adding up. When you are not recording in, say, Carnegie Hall or the Met Opera house, you're pretty much stuck with lots of micing. Their live room can fit a full orchestra, chorus, and principals, and, with flippable gobos on the walls set to their hard side out, the room has a 2.5 second decay time. But it's still not a great concert hall, so you can't do it with Bob & Wilma's three spaced omnis. How many mics do you need in a big neutral room to capture 70 musicians, 200 choristers, and 6 principals? I don't know, but it's probably a bunch. From what I can figure, Richard Mohr used about 15 mics for the 1961 Price/Gorr/Vickers/Merrill Aïda, which was tracked *in* La Scala.
Kaufman does a lot of film, and to get the spacial audio cues correct for a movie audience apparently takes some fairly intricate micing, which I'm guessing adds up to lots of channels.
The control room is interesting. It's a live end/dead end setup, with the rear wall *absolutely* dead. One of the engineers brought a blind friend over and asked if he could hear the back wall. He couldn't. (Diffuser pic attached.) It's a little spooky, but lets the engineer hear *into* the mix with extreme specificity. Again, I'd guess this becomes a big deal when mixing for 7.1, or whatever standard is used for film now. Pic is one of the diffusers in the room.
For pop or (especially) rock music, channels can get eaten up pretty fast. You can mic a drum kit for a small jazz combo with mics on the snare and kick, plus a pair of overheads - four mics total. But for rock, you'll get mud. That's when you'll often see these mics: snare top, snare bottom, kick in, kick out, floor tom, rack tom, hat, and pair of overheads. That's nine mics for a basic drum kit. Each electric guitar will be mic'd at its amp, plus direct. That gives you the ability to balance whether you want more of the intrinsic sound of the instrument (direct) or more of the amp/speaker, which may or may not be sounding its best in your particular live room. And some guitar amps benefit from having both dynamic and condenser mics on them, which brings you up to three channels per guitar. (Remember, mics do not hear like we hear. They can act as audio microscopes, or telescopes, or flatten everything, and their response can vary with the extreme SPL ranges generated by amp heads.) So, a basic drum kit, two electric guitars, bass guitar, keyboard, and three vocal mics can be 19 channels or more. Add more for bigger drum kits, other percussion, and yet more for some of the effects guitarists have on their pedal boards. It's all about capturing in the limiting environment of a studio live room what's needed so the band will sound right when played back at home.
Some of my favorite records are the three-mic Mercuries, and Doug Sax's minimally mic'd Sheffields. But the Layton/Mohr RCAs are pretty amazing, as are the Deccas of that period. In the right hands, a bunch of channels can be a good thing, even if, back in the Mohr days, everything had to be mixed *while tracking* down to the number of tape tracks available, which wasn't much.
Big consoles don't make bad recordings. Bad engineers make bad recordings. Rupert Neve's V3 sounds just glorious, and in the right hands it's gotta be a really good tool.
WW
"A man need merely light the filaments of his receiving set and the world's greatest artists will perform for him." Alfred N. Goldsmith, RCA, 1922
Follow Ups:
So, a basic drum kit, two electric guitars, bass guitar, keyboard, and three vocal mics can be 19 channels or more. Add more for bigger drum kits, other percussion, and yet more for some of the effects guitarists have on their pedal boards...
Exactly. And some folks wonder why recordings never sound real.
Big consoles don't make bad recordings
Anytime you use the capacity of that console, you're going to have a unnatural sounding recording.
Maybe you're right. Now here's a very straight question: how do you mic drums?
WW
"A man need merely light the filaments of his receiving set and the world's greatest artists will perform for him." Alfred N. Goldsmith, RCA, 1922
The SOP in rock recording at the time was to put the drummer in a small, dead isolation room with multiple mikes on different parts of his kit.
Jimmy reasoned that this unduly constricted the sound by robbing it of the acoustic ambience that made live drums sound good. He put Bonham out in the middle of a large, somewhat reflective room and set just a stereo pair of mikes about 12 feet away.
So what do you think of the drum sound on those Zep records? To me, it has more punch and more spaciousness than was typical in other rock recordings of the same era. Of course, Bonham was such a balanced player that he didn't need different parts of his kit balanced and mixed electronically. That certainly helped.
I don't, but my reference depends upon whether you refer to rock or classical. For rock, it is the Sheffield Drum Record. Contrary to your previous assertion:You can mic a drum kit for a small jazz combo with mics on the snare and kick, plus a pair of overheads - four mics total. But for rock, you'll get mud.
the resulting sound is anything but "mud" to these ears. Are you familiar with that recording? That is exactly how the miking was achieved by Bill Schnee. Actually, the Keltner track used but three mics omitting the snare highlight.
My reference for classical is any number of Telarc recordings such as the Firebird or Carmina Burana by the ASO. Renner used a total of five on the former with no need for drum specific mics. Or, the Fine team you mentioned earlier.
Edits: 08/25/14
I just pulled it out and gave it a listen for the first time in a couple decades. It's pretty great.
I guess what I should have said is that most engineers, in typical live rooms, will get mud trying to minimally mic rock. And the track record *is* a very pared-down ensemble; mostly bass, reduced drum kit, and synthesizer. (Is there any snare or hat?) I don't think I've heard anyone try to do a minimalist mic setup on a typical rock band, i.e. two EGTs, 1 bass, drums, 2+ vocals, keyboard.
But the drum sound on that record is really good.
Love the pic, BTW. A couple years ago at the AES, a nephew (I think) presented pics and home movies of the early Mercury days, including their location recording truck.
WW
"A man need merely light the filaments of his receiving set and the world's greatest artists will perform for him." Alfred N. Goldsmith, RCA, 1922
And the track record *is* a very pared-down ensemble; mostly bass, reduced drum kit, and synthesizer. (Is there any snare or hat?)
That must not be the same recording. This "not-at-all-pared-down" kit has kick, toms, snare, high hat, cymbals, cow bells and a wee recorder.
This recording is taut and punchy with crisp sounding "skins" and plenty of upper harmonic extension on the steel. Not sure if you followed the post from The Devil that included a link as to how the Fleetwood Mac Dreams album was recorded. Apparently, six mics were used on the drums with the difference being two on the toms. The toms on SH14 (despite not having their own mics) sound darn good on my electrostats. :)
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