Time aligning audience mic's in a DAW / offsetting digital tape

[Jules]

Do you do it?

How exactly? (please describe method)

If so, does it sound better? (describe why)

[Sofa King]

Originally posted by Jules
Do you do it?

How exactly? (please describe method)

If so, does it sound better? (describe why)

Yeah I do it, it does help either in phase alignment or flat out echo removing from far room mics.

I do this,
I put all tracks into record and, get a couple snare whacks on tape.
During the mix, if im working with DA88s, ill offset the entire machine with the ambient mics forward in time enough for the mics in the back of the hall to be nearly in sync, although the other pairs are still out.
Then in the O2R, ill delay the all of the ambient tracks individually in sample increments [mix pair, balcony omnis, stage shotguns] acordingly, so that they are in sync as well.


The show im doing in Nov will be my first HD live experience, in this case ill still get the snare hits on all of the tracks, then just visually slip them around till all the peaks line up.

Hope this helps

Sean

[Jules]

What effect does doing that have on the final sound of a project?

Are there any pitfalls to watch out for?

Thank you.

[Sofa King]

Originally posted by Jules
What effect does doing that have on the final sound of a project?

Are there any pitfalls to watch out for?

Thank you.

The effect is that when we bring the the audience mics up loud a section where we need response, the drums arent flamming, the vocals arent slapping, and when the crowd is clapping, its nearly in time!

I dont know of any pitfalls, perhaps Steve could is aware of some.

Sean

[Steve Smith]

Deepending on where and how many mics are on the crowd, I generally put them " almost" in perfect time... I find I miss some of the " big room" vibe when they are all in exact time. Not allways do I get this feeling, but alot of the time..

[Remoteness]

Exactly what Sean & Steve said.

If applicable, I also time delay, bass DI's to the bass speaker, to get it a little bigger, fatter sounding.

Tom from TMI Engineering was doing that sort of stuff, way before DA*8's and DAW's made it much simpler to do.

[Hobbyist]

I do it just on the fast songs where the audience are clapping. The slow stuff I leave alone. It just sounds a lot bigger anytime you can leave the delay in there without it getting in the way. IMO you wind up having to synthesize a verb to create the bigness that you already have. At least in a DAW you can easily bounce back and forth with creative crossfades.

[Remoteness]

Originally posted by JYoder
I do it just on the fast songs where the audience are clapping. The slow stuff I leave alone. It just sounds a lot bigger anytime you can leave the delay in there without it getting in the way. IMO you wind up having to synthesize a verb to create the bigness that you already have. At least in a DAW you can easily bounce back and forth with creative crossfades.

Very good point.

Both approaches can work. It's really about what you're going for in the mix. Many times, people only time align the room mics and leave the rest as is. Sort of like, best of both worlds...

It's nice to have the sound of the big room without the extra delay. Time aligning everything to the instrument backline is the key to achieving this goal.

[Alécio Costa]

why not just nudge a few miliseconds/samples inside your DAW?

I ask that because I will be recording a Horn Band in the beginning of november and since I am afraid of loosing leads from the several instruments, so I shall end up miking many spots. I know phase shall be a trouble, but just to be in safe place when reaching mixing.
Anyone on this either?

[e-cue]

Originally posted by Alécio Costa
why not just nudge a few miliseconds/samples inside your DAW?

Only prob with just nudging tracks is that the low frequencies will not reach the source of the mic at the same time the hi frequencies do which can really screw things up. Sometimes you get lucky, but I usualy Mult the tracks 3 ways and eq each track 3 different ways: Hi, Mid, and Lo. Then I delay these differently until it sounds correct. A multiband compressor (like the McDsp one or C4) on a bus after all these can help smooth them out a little.

Thank god I haven't mixed a record with a crowd in a while. That stuff use to drive me nuts. (and I could never get the oxford to correctly delay that stuff as advertised without crashing)

[Alécio Costa]

E-CUE.... now you made me worry...
do you thinkthat the MASTER x, which ha 3 ban and 5 band mode shall do similar job?

I have previously sent you that jpg fie with all the mics and musicians topoly right? or did I send just to cedar flats?

Thanks,
hope to hear from you again!

[e-cue]

The Master X 3 and 5 are very useful tools. My one wish would be to come up with some time of "Multiband delay" inside this plug in. Keep in mind if you are using a large "look ahead mode" you'll get a much larger sample delay just from the plug in. So, to answer your question: No.
What you could do is hit the "solo" on each band after multing it onto several tracks, but there's no real need to use Master X to do that.

I thought the recording you sent me sounded pretty damn good.

[Alécio Costa]

Hi e-cue! Thanks for all your attention and precious minutes!
Did I send you mp3 file of my CD or from the Camerata project?
Nice tuesday!

[JayCrouch]

I think that the whole nudging/aligning this totally has to do with what you need out of your tracks...

When I use room mics in addition to my overheads/kik/snr/hat/toms - I usually use them to pick up a slight delay/room vibe to the recording that may sound more natural than a verb-in-a-box. For me, I usually bus my close mics down to a stereo pair, and bring them up next to my room mics on a stereo pair. Sometimes I will bring up my whole instrument mix on two faders next to my room mics, and balance the two to taste. This is also an easy way to flip the phase on one or the other to see what happens. As the standard phase flip is 180 degrees, sometimes it might get you partly there yet not where you need to be. I wish someone would design a Plug-In that was based on the Little Labs In-Between-Phase box, so that you could dial in the phase on one source to match the 2nd.

As for aligning tracks - if the mic is just for crowd, I can see the benefit of nudging the track forward so that the crowd comes up where it needs to be and doesnt sound like something slapping of a wall a 100' back.

[Greg Heimbecker]

My approach is similar to Jason's though usually in the classical realm. I'll usually have an ORTFish pair as my main pair, a pair of omnis for ambience and often an xy pair or single mic on a soloist. I'll generally take a couple of mic cases or tape boxes and stand in the soloists spot and give a good clap so I have an alignment spike to work with. I actually find quite often that I like lining up the soloists mics with the ambience mics and then slide the main pr back to taste. I almost always have live audiences so my main pr is often closer than I'd like (8' or so from stage lip) and my omnis behind the first row of seats. My balance ususally winds up favoring the omnis a bit and just pulling the main pr up to define placement. I usually just start slipping the main pr back, listening, checking mono, balance within the ens, impact of the big drums from the back of the stage, depth, etc. til it feels right. I'll usually find 3 or 4 offsets that feel pretty good compare and choose one. It may change from one piece to the next as I edit a concert also depending on what feels best for the piece/ensemble.

This method sems to be working for me as our orchestra has won Downbeat magazine's award for best college orch in North America 3 of the last 4 yrs.

[Alécio Costa]

Congratulations Greg! In fact I will have lots of people soloing!!!
I will use 16 mics, but will try to get the sound of 3 At4050´s ( Deca tree) along with the spot percussion mics...

16 mics is just to be safe in mixdown, although phase is a problem. any ideas?
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