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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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In Reply to: Re: "In the case of Classical music, polarities become a mixed bag with the advent of heavy multimiking" . . . no. posted by unclestu52 on May 12, 2007 at 01:19:19:
"That's interesting that DDG would apply time correction for their recordings."It's one of their reissue series the name of which is escaping me right now. But I've heard before-and-after on two or three of them, and the difference is not subtle. They do increase the prominence of the stereo pair as well, but the main thing you hear is the absence of comb-filtering.
"My understanding is that most companies mixed their recordings down to only a few channels on their masters."
Your understanding would be wrong. There are plenty of multitrack digital tape machines out there and have been for a long time. The last time I did a Pops recording I stopped counting after 38 microphones, and it was clear that the mixing and balances were to be done later.
"Since you are so familiar with the DDG process, you surely must have access to deeper information about their methodology?"
Well, going by what DG says, it's quite simple: they simply plot the distance between each spot mic and its instrument(s), then the distance between the stereo pair and that/those instrument(s), calculate the difference and apply time delay to the spot mics so the arrival time for each is the same. I know that Denon used to do this in real time at the recording session for their multitrack projects, but I'm unaware of any other company doing it.
"I would also suspect that such methodology would not be applicable to the very early DDG recordings where the master tapes were essentially mixed in real time."
Obviously.
"You can all it what you want, but I tend to lump most time issues as being phase and/or polarity related."
Obviously "time issues" will be either/or, but why not be precise? I'm not calling it "what I want," I'm calling it what it is.
"What may be initially a phase issue manifests itself as a polarity issue on playback."
No. Polarity implies the relationship between 0-degrees and -180 degrees, either/or. Phase refers to any number of conditions in-between. Since the thread is nominally about polarity (actually it's about KlausR's preference for "scientific evidence" to the evidence of his own ears, but never mind) it makes sense to call it by its rightful name.
"Call them what you will, but the reality is that when played back on a stereo pair of speakers, the information is confused and does not represent the true tonality and articulation of the instruments (or vocals) being played."
Correct, but you can have a recording that is being played back with the correct polarity yet still has jumbled phase issues due to multimiking. See why precision is important here? Most folks are confused enough about these things that we ought not add to the problem, and clarity of expression helps.
"Any human does not hear sounds simultaneously from two or more spots up to 50 feet apart."
No, but neither do humans hear sounds from 12 feet apart from a stereo pair of omnis a la Telarc, nor do we hear them from zero feet apart as with a coincident pair. Perhaps the closest we come to the reality of what we hear is from an ORTF pattern, but that method has other issues, primarily a lack of low bass response.
Neither do we hear sounds from an orchestra from 10-15 feet away--where stereo pairs normally can be found--but that's because microphones don't process out the excessive reverberation that human brains do at our seats in the hall. This gets complicated fast, and it's worthwhile not generalizing excessively.
"I have yet to see a mixer which offers time adjustment for more than two channels. I see polarity switches on many, but very few real time mixers with digital time delays."
I presume DG worked with separate units. And while the usual mic positions for many recordings may well be known, they cannot be known exactly unless the company was as anal as DG was when they made them!
The presence of polarity switches on mixers is largely to spare the engineers from having to track down the odd miswired mic cable in the middle of an expensive recording session. It also allows them to do things like mic kick drums or snare drums from both sides--a common practice in the studios--flipping one of the inputs' polarity.
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Follow Ups
- Re: "In the case of Classical music, polarities become a mixed bag with the advent of heavy multimiking" . . . no. - markrohr 04:00:39 05/14/07 (0)
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