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In Reply to: SA-CD SURROUND posted by Erdo on August 14, 2005 at 07:37:28:
If on the other hand I only choose to connect to the two front channels only and still play the MCH layer of the disc,will I hear only what the basic stero pair picked up as opposed to playing the multimiked dedicated stereomix???
When playing for example the excellent Mahler 5th on Pentatone or Mahler's sixth on Telarc for that matter, that way I hear a leaner, cleaner, less obviously multimiked soundpicture than via the dedicated stereomix!?A sound closer to the old purist examples of early Telarcs Mercuries and Living Stereos.
I don't deny that MCH can be better than plain stereo.But plain stereo with fewer mikes sounds more natural and more realistic than multimiked stereo to me.Why did Telarc abandon their purist approach and begin using multimiking? even in stereo?
I'm putting this question to both Bishop and Erdo!
Follow Ups:
I cannot speak for Telarc, but Michael can and did in a very clear way. Multi-miking or the purist approach (2 microphones for stereo?)?? There is no clear division. I agree with what Michael says and that using only 2 microphones rarely gives the result I am after. Remember that using two microphones in stereo and listening on 2 loudspeakers does not give you the same sound as where the microphones are. One factor is that the microphone 'mixes' the direct and the indirect sound making different discrimination afterwards very difficult. The microphone generally changes the perspective as to compared how the human ear hears and perceives at the same location. An example: if you use one microphone at a very busy party where many people speak and you try to follow a conversation, the microphone will already have superimposed all the noises on top of each other, making this almost impossible to understand if you listen on one speaker. Using a stereo pair in that situation will increase the resolution when listening on 2 loudspeakers, because some of the spatial acoustical characteristics are retained. But it may give a more true sound picture if you use a middle pair and two wider spaced mikes and mix them with time alignment together. You will certainly get a better and more convincing sound reproduction if you use five loudspeakers and 5 microphones, maybe also with some modest used close mikes, giving the same intelligibility as in the real situation where the ear can zoom in the conversation by using the acoustic features and can discriminate on sounds from different locations.Combining the 5 channels in a consumer player to two channel will never give you anything predictable or better than the optimal stereo mix, and you really should stop expecting it to do so.
Multi channel recordings are for multi channel playback. And I hope that many people will be ‘infected’ with the wonderful results this can give, like I am and many of the musicians I have recorded are.
I have not changed my stereo orchestra mic-ing or mixing technique in any significant way in the past 15 years. Here's what you are listening to on most of my typical classical orchestra recordings:STEREO: (L to R) L orch. omni; center L/R orch KU-100; R orch. omni. That's FOUR microphones going to 4-channels of preamps no further than 20' from the microphones and directly to (usually) a Millennia Media Mix Suite to the stereo tracks. The Mix Suite is a hot-rodded line-level mixer that allows passive and/or active mixing of mic preamps. Sometimes there is a bit of a stereo mic pair out in the hall mixed in as appropriate for the piece.
For the surround mix there are often different mics and more of them used in the various perspectives, i.e.: LF/RF; Center: and LS/RS. There are some mics that are mixed in a small way between the Front channels and the Rear channels in order to have a good connection of Front to Rear. I use the same preamp and mixer arrangement as the stereo setup, but it's a very different mix of course.
When you describe listening to the Front channels ONLY as being "leaner," - OF COURSE IT'S LEANER! The Front channels must have a somewhat closer perspective in order to mix well with the Rear channels. Otherwise the whole soundfield becomes a swamp of reverberation! No set of the surround channels were ever intended to be listened to without the rest of the channels - THEY ARE MEANT TO WORK TOGETHER AS ONE PRESENTATION.
IMO, for large orchestra, a single stereo mic pair does not give me the perspective that I want to achieve. Also, there is NO such thing as a "purist" approach to recording music, IMO. ALL recording of any kind is an interpretation of the live music. The ONLY purist approach is to sit and listen to the live music IN-PERSON. A stereo mic pair will never, ever reproduce accurately what the our ears hear, at least not with any technology currently available to us.
Best Regards,
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