MircleWorker said:
If you are trying to record a band or an
Orchestra, I would suggest you have two mics. You will want to hang them if possible, or just put them on a very tall stand 16' to 18' above the
stage or as high as you can go if low ceiling.
You will want to set the mics to cross each other, Left mic is pointed to the right side and the right mic pointed to the left side, XY
Pattern.
I would use good mics AKG 414's, about $800.00 each. You can select between Cardiod, Omni, Hyper, and
Figure 8 pickup patterns. If those are too much money then go with good
Condenser Mic Shure SM81s are a good start.
OK to record them go right into a CD Recorder. I would suggest a
compressor on the
system.
That's pretty much what I do. For
orchestra, I don't even turn on the
FOH amps, so all my energy is focused toward recording. I have a Tascam CD burner, which works pretty well, but is a little slower at mounting/recognizing discs than I'd like. Anyway, I run my overheads pretty much like that, but since I don't have a way to get my overheads hung over the
orchestra (they go way out over the pit that is never used, no pipes or anything above it), I use floor mics on the
apron for the front coverage. The parts of the
orchestra that make it back past the arch and under the
first electric get covered by the overheads permanently hung on the
first electric. I take the left and right overhead and floor mics and pan them over to their respective channels. That gets mixed down to aux 7-8, which is what I have set up as our recording auxes. 1-2 are monitors, 9-12 are effects sends, the rest are free. Each individual
channel gets compressed (really limited, the ratio is infinity to one or darn near close to it) so the full compression happens when the recorder is a little under 0dBfs. I also put a
compressor over the
aux send as a
safety if the mix
level ever gets too high. Only the loudest parts of the concert put this
compressor into action.
Clipping a digital device sounds like complete crap, it's not forgiving like tape is. As soon as you go over 0dBfs, you're toast, so it's very important to limit your signal so it will never clip your digital recorder. That's why these compressors are so important, since orchestral music has probably the largest
dynamic range of all genres. You'll get carried away with the quieter parts, boosting your
gain to make the meters twitch, until they hit a particualrly vibrant part of the piece, and that's where you'll go into the red.
It's quite a
bit more difficult to get a good recording at a choir concert if you're also running
FOH. I'm pretty sure all of us here in the non professional world don't have the equipment or human resources to have two separate mix engineers on two separate consoles. So the
FOH engineer is usually stuck doing the recording mix as well. I mainly concentrate on the
FOH mix first, since that's what people are hearing in the
house. I run the canned music as a post
fader send to the aux 7-8, in stereo. I run the choir mics pre
fader, so their
level will be the same in the mix. I also run that in stereo as well, panning the
stage right mics a little to the left, and the
stage left mics a little to the right to give the
FOH and recording mixes a little depth. I don't compress the individual channels on the choir's overhead mics. I just put a
compressor on the aux sends and
call it good. However, I do put a
compressor on the soloist's mic, since that's almost always a necessity if you don't want them blowing peoples' ears off with their bad mic technique.
It's quite a job trying to get a timid choir heard over the music, getting them to sound good, getting the recording mix right, and making sure you're getting a reasonable
level on the recorder without
clipping.