Last Wednesday, I recorded the last meeting of one of the groups from Music Therapy course.
The recording was quite a challenge itself, as they all stood in a circle and were supposed to move around across it as well. Getting the levels right was also a problem as they sometimes sang altogether and sometimes it was just the leader saying something in between.
The room
The recording took place in the Recital Hall in Helmore building at ARU. The room has nice acoustics, not too dry and not too reverberant. There is a wooden floor, plastered walls with a lot of thick curtains on them and a balcony. Just by the looks of the room, I was expecting much more reverb, but actually it was just OK.
Microphone set-up
When I first heard 'circle', I immediately thought of putting some sort of stereo array right in the middle. Then they told me that they will be walking around and across, so I was forced to put my microphones outside the circle. As I realised later, it was a good choice, because this way I got nice, clear stereo image. If the mics were in the middle, the effect might get really weird and hard to mix in stereo.
I decided to put the mics as high as I could extend the stand, about 3 meters away from the edge of the circle. Putting them in some distance was crucial because otherwise the difference between people standing close and on the other side of the circle would be too big.
The NT5 were spread apart at wide angle (about 135 deg.)
Top view of the set-up
Another view of the set-up.
Equipment used
I first wanted to record using Rhode NT4 stereo microphone, but I was told in the studio that someone else had some problems with the left part of it, so I decided to take a pair of NT5s. I took the NT4 anyway, and after I set NT5s up and started recording, I set NT4 up as well.
As I was quite in a rush while setting up, I decided to use the recorded that I know - Marantz. I hooked it up to NT5s and recorded as stereo WAV files, 16 bit resolution, 48 kHz sampling rate.
Marantz control panel.
I was also offered a use of the brand new H4 digital recorder. I used it to capture sound from NT4, in 24bit resolution and 48 kHz sampling rate as well. The new recorder performed very well and I guess I will start using it now, especially that it has a stereo pair of microphones built-in.
First listen
I am not very happy with the stereo spread that I've got from NT5s. Although they were spread rather wide apart, I guess they just were too far away from the circle to get the full stereo image. NT4, although it gave me very nice signal in good quality thanks to H4, is not good enough to be used simply because I started recording it way later than on Marantz.
Anyway, there is a presence of spatial placement of different voices, and quite nice effect when they sing altogether. When listening on studio monitors, I had a feeling that the recording is lacking top frequencies. I will work on that in the following sessions.
The levels were set right. There was obviously some clipping, but as I checked it only occurred when they were clapping, which for me is acceptable. The background noise (especially people walking and talking outside the Recital Hall), so well filtered out by our excellent human hearing, got onto the recording with rather high volume, but still way quieter than the primary content.
