Cheap headphones for choir recording

[Han]

Imagine you have to record a choir with 40 persons, with a band and you decide to record the band first and the choir later.

What I do or did so far was putting the music on a pair of speakers, play it as softly as possible and record the choir with some ten LDC's.

But you will have quite some bleed anyway, so I was thinking of getting some 50 cheap headphones and guess what I found, a headphone that costs only €1.98 and sounds pretty good, it sits pretty comfortable on the head as well and ik looks good. With a 6 meter wire it costs €2.89.

Today I got two headphones in the mailbox, one that costs only €0.70 and the one I was talking about of €1.98. I think I'm gonna get 60 of them and the next time I have to record a choir, everyone will wear a headphone with one of the cans on the ear and the other one next to the ear so they can hear eachother.

Look here for the HP113 headphone, it may solve one of your problems.

I realize this may look a bit like spam, but that was not my intention, I didn't know that there are headphones so cheap.

[Corran]

Here's a trick: play the recording back and record it, then record the choir with the playback at the exact same level, and then phase-reverse the first recording. Should cancel out the bleed, in theory. Has to be exactly the same though, so no choir shuffling (maybe record it beforehand).

[Corran]

oh and how were you going to amplify 60 headphones

[Han]

Originally Posted by Corran

oh and how were you going to amplify 60 headphones

The headphones are 32 ohms, so a decent amp can handle 8 of them and I do have plenty of hi fi amps. I will have to make some cable and boxes though.

[zemlin]

Originally Posted by Corran

Here's a trick: play the recording back and record it, then record the choir with the playback at the exact same level, and then phase-reverse the first recording. Should cancel out the bleed, in theory. Has to be exactly the same though, so no choir shuffling (maybe record it beforehand).

I've done this and it works well. Keep the singers in place though - that many bodies impacts the acoustics enough to have a significant effect on the cancellation.

[Corran]

Originally Posted by zemlin

I've done this and it works well. Keep the singers in place though - that many bodies impacts the acoustics enough to have a significant effect on the cancellation.

Never thought about that...good info.

[John Willett]

Cheapo headphones will be the "Open" type and as much sound comes out of the back as goes into the ears.

So the loudspeaker method mentioned above will be the better option.

[Han]

Are you serious?

[Remoteness]

Originally Posted by John Willett

Cheapo headphones will be the "Open" type and as much sound comes out of the back as goes into the ears.

So the loudspeaker method mentioned above will be the better option.

I agree with John on this one.

Try it both ways and see for yourself...

Proper placement of the transducers is the key to a successful capture with minimal (bad) leakage.

Originally Posted by Corran

Here's a trick: play the recording back and record it, then record the choir with the playback at the exact same level, and then phase-reverse the first recording. Should cancel out the bleed, in theory. Has to be exactly the same though, so no choir shuffling (maybe record it beforehand).

The trick Bryan mentioned works well when the technique is addressed correctly.

[David Rick]

If you do it with speakers, you might consider not aiming them at the choir. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but it can work well in a situation with the right acoustics. You aim the the speakers away from the microphones (which is mostly away from the choir), so the sound they hear is all reverberant field and doesn't have any hot spots, so leakage is manageable. When we did it, we actually aimed the speakers into stage corners. The reverberant sound was sufficient to keep them on pitch, and the conductor was responsible for keeping them exactly on the beat. I don't guess this would work if the acoustics are either very dead, or have lots of distinct echoes, but it did work for me.

David L. Rick
Seventh String Recording

[Remoteness]

I've used the technique David just mentioned and it worked well for us.
The room acoustics truly makes the difference on whether or not it will produce the desired affect.

[matthewd]

We tried the loudspeaker method and it didn't really work that well. We reckoned on getting about a 10dB reduction in the spill but when mixed down, the backing track was much less defined -there was no doubt it suffered.

Choirs can be fussy lots and if they can't hear the backing track exactly how they want it, they don't perform well. We ended up playing back, rehearsing and then doing short wild takes and syncing it up afterwards. This had many benefits giving perfect separation in mixing, the ability to double track (which duplicates the spill problems above otherwise) and the ability to occasionally pitch shift the whole choir. Sometimes we give the conductor the mix or a click which would mean there would be less trimming and stretching in post production because the timing would be virtually there.

It is really the call of the producer on a session like this to quickly evaluate the situation and work out what is going to be the quickest method that will reap the best results. The engineer meanwhile needs to make sure the room is geared up for every eventuality at the drop of a hat.

At Abbey Road they use the Beyer DT100 one ear headphones with custom headphone amps - we couldn't afford this but cobbled something together with a bulk lot of Audio Technica headphones (sorry can't remember which) a stack of Behringer 8 way headphone amps and a load of 8 way looms and extension cables. We drive it from a Mackie 1640 desk with a separate AUX driving each headphone amp meaning the woodwind say can have a different mix to the percussion - however, it does mean people who want similar mixes need to sit fairly close to each other.

To be honest it is always a bit of a nightmare. Might be better to book your orchestra and choir on the same day and just do it!!!!

Matt

[Han]

The problem is that our Dutch men and women don't sing as loud as a real gospel choir with black people. :D

[Corran]