I've got some audio, from one of our concerts, with my bigband, but i'm not really statisfied with them. It's a live recorded 2ch mix, of our concert, and i've picked 6 songs, to upload to the interwebs for kind of reference about us.
First of all, let's take apart from the quality of the band's performance please, we are not professionals Also, the miking wasn't super-duper, but we rarely recieve records of our concerts, and these are the best, we got until now. BTW I hope i can change this side of the things in the future, because I've taken the "sound guy" role in the band.
The recordings are below
I'm not a pro audio engineer, but i think this mix, and master is not the "award winning" type.
Also, I'm not excepting a miracle, but i think they could sound better with some re-mastering.
The first, and main thing i would like to change, is that the Alt sax is panned out to the right (since i uploaded the recordings to sondcloud, the stereo sides are switched... ) (and everything except the rythm section is panned all the way to either side, which i also dont like), and its very loud. Any advices on changing this?
I have a decent soundcard, monitors,and DAW capacity of course.
It's easy enough to narrow the stereo field. The horns are super loud, as one might expect, but there's not much you can do about it. You may be able to tame it a little with split-band compression, but not much and it will harm other elements in the mix. There's a really annoying one-note resonance that's easily handled by a notch filter.
Here's what I'd do if I were in the situation. Tame the resonance with EQ, narrow the image a little and call it good. It's not unlistenable and you can spend days trying to transform a stereo source, not really making much improvement over what you got done in the first five minutes. This is a learning opportunity. Next time, work a little more on mic placement and getting the mix or bring a multitrack recording system of some kind so you can remix later. The performance is the most important aspect by a long shot and I'd take a great performance over a great recording of a mediocre performance. Mic placement is 90% of what remains. I recently mixed a big band from ADAT. I could do anything I wanted with those eight tracks and still didn't have a great sound in the end because the mics weren't right. On the other hand, I have a quite decent recording of a similar group that I got by feeding a couple of AKG C535s that were in front of and over the band into a Zoom H4 that needed no real manipulation.
Back in the days of the Big Band era, they typically would use maybe 4 mics to balance the band's instrumental sections and the vocalist. Once it's mixed down to mono or two-channel, you're pretty much stuck with what you've got.
If you convert the 2-channel (XY) to MS (mid-side), you can adjust the center balance/projection and also modify the stereo width, and then you have to convert (re-matrix) it back to XY. Danner used to make a stereo perspective controller that would also allow you to adjust/skew the angle of the stereo image as well as changing the width and center balance.
I used to dabble a little bit with live 2-channel recording, and you always hope that you get it right!
Here's what I'd do if I were in the situation. Tame the resonance with EQ, narrow the image a little and call it good. It's not unlistenable and you can spend days trying to transform a stereo source, not really making much improvement over what you got done in the first five minutes. This is a learning opportunity. Next time, work a little more on mic placement and getting the mix or bring a multitrack recording system of some kind so you can remix later. The performance is the most important aspect by a long shot and I'd take a great performance over a great recording of a mediocre performance. Mic placement is 90% of what remains. I recently mixed a big band from ADAT. I could do anything I wanted with those eight tracks and still didn't have a great sound in the end because the mics weren't right. On the other hand, I have a quite decent recording of a similar group that I got by feeding a couple of AKG C535s that were in front of and over the band into a Zoom H4 that needed no real manipulation.
Here's what I'd do if I were in the situation. Tame the resonance with EQ, narrow the image a little and call it good. It's not unlistenable and you can spend days trying to transform a stereo source, not really making much improvement over what you got done in the first five minutes. This is a learning opportunity. Next time, work a little more on mic placement and getting the mix or bring a multitrack recording system of some kind so you can remix later. The performance is the most important aspect by a long shot and I'd take a great performance over a great recording of a mediocre performance. Mic placement is 90% of what remains. I recently mixed a big band from ADAT. I could do anything I wanted with those eight tracks and still didn't have a great sound in the end because the mics weren't right. On the other hand, I have a quite decent recording of a similar group that I got by feeding a couple of AKG C535s that were in front of and over the band into a Zoom H4 that needed no real manipulation.
+1 to all this.
I mix a big band on a fortnightly basis, and for a 15 piece band with 2 vocalists i'm running a grand total of 8 channels I think, + a few channels of effects if I want them.
If my mic placement is off by a couple of inches for my instruments, it becomes a massive issue. Would be much worse in a recording situation. I almost think that mic placement is even more important than mic quality in this case.
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....Here's what I'd do if I were in the situation. Tame the resonance with EQ....
OP didn't mention anything about resonance! He said the problem was that the sax was "panned out to far to the right", which has nothing to do with resonance.
The first, and main thing i would like to change, is that the Alt sax is panned out to the right (since i uploaded the recordings to sondcloud, the stereo sides are switched... ) (and everything except the rythm section is panned all the way to either side, which i also dont like), and its very loud. Any advices on changing this?
I have a decent soundcard, monitors,and DAW capacity of course.
Also, any advice is welcome, regarding the topic!
Cheers, L
I think it could sound great. Mid side gain/eq/compression adjustments would do it. I use the Alpha, you can use a plug or two. Best to hire a pro.
__________________ Brian Lucey Mastering Engineer
6 Grammy nominations in 2013 and 4 winners
OP didn't mention anything about resonance! He said the problem was that the sax was "panned out to far to the right", which has nothing to do with resonance.
No, but he said the mix is bad and wanted advice on mastering it. That problem was one of the first things I noticed and as a mastering engineer, one of the first things (and easiest) I'd work to fix. I also said work on the stereo image, which would fix the sax pan.
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Also, the miking wasn't super-duper, but we rarely recieve records of our concerts, and these are the best, we got until now. BTW I hope i can change this side of the things in the future, because I've taken the "sound guy" role in the band.
