5.1 orchestra session pix

[jon]

This morning was a surround orchestra tracking gig and I thought some of you might enjoy pix of the session, mics, musicians, and so on. The musicians are from the Opera de Paris.

You can see the L, C, R, SL, SR and stereo room mics in the first photo, which are CMC4/5/6s, KM184s and 4006s.

The U47 spot mic in the second pic is for the contrebasse (forgot what that is in English...double bass, contrabass?). The first violins got the U87s and there was a 414 or two on the English horns.

Any comments on the 5.1 mic positioning?

[jon]

**

[jon]

Standing left: composer Krishna Levy.

The conductor and musicians are all wearing headphones over one ear in this photo (talk about needing lots of one-sided headphones for a gig...). A number of sections were performed to a click for sync to picture.

[jon]

**

[jon]

In the CR: Didier Lize (engineer) and Nathalie Schmidt (film director).

The projection screen covers the center monitor. Anybody want to guess how that potential problem is resolved?

[jon]

Session group photo: (left to right) assistants Vincent Verdoux and Matthieu Dallaporta, composer Krishna Levy, engineer Didier Lize, composer Frank Gervais and director Nathalie Schmidt. Missing from the photo are assistants Olivier Catanese and Bruno Cappodagli.

[RaGe]

[groundcontrol]

Cool stuff!

[jon]

Thanks, guys! I'd enjoying hearing any comments on the mic positions. You can see the L, C, R, SL, SR and stereo room mics in the first photo really well -- would you do it differently?

[Jules]

I bet the center screen is made of a porous cloth that allows sound to pass through it like a speaker grill..

Do I win a baguette?

[jon]

Yes, Jules The screen is an audio-transparent model with little holes everywhere. It's not enough on its own though -- a little bit of EQ is needed to make up for the slight presence loss due to the screen so that the center channel sounds the same as the others.

[jon]

Part of the empty room after the session...with a good view of the surround mics.

[cajonezzz]

Jon, what are the dimensions of the recording room this was done in? I'm assuming it's your room?

[jon]

Yes, it's our room. I think it's 12 x 11 x 4 meters, plus two isos of 7 x 3.5 and 4 x 1.5 meters.

1 meter = 3.25 feet roughly.

[sonic dogg]

....EXCELLENTE.....and some people would question WHY we love gearslutz......

[Curious G]

Jon,

Forgive my ignorance but what are the CMC mics?

The 4006's are DPA's? Omnis?

What make /model are the one sided headphones? Are they a high quality phone or just for click/talkback?

Stupid questions but thanks!

[jon]

Hi Curious,

The CMCs are Schoeps. The 4006s are DPA omnis. And the cans are Sennheisers, not high quality, just for click/talkback. The best ones from what I hear are the Beyer orchestral one-sided ones.

Here is one last photo before leaving the studio tonight. These sessions were so enjoyable, I think I'm in love .

[Alécio Costa]

Hi John! I live in Brazil, have produced a few project Camerata/horn band Cds on here. Some of them have received very nice commnts. My gear is very simple, just a MIx system on a G4 800 with an 02R and microphones from AKG, AUdio Technica, GT and Shure.

would you please give me more details about this 5.1 arrangement?
I would be greatly thanked
Congratulations for the nice stuff

Alécio costa - Brazil

studiodp@terra.com.br

[Jules]

Who specified the mic positions? You or the freelancer?

Just curious...

Were you monitoring in 5.1 during the tracking?

"Live mixing" too?

What is the destination mix media / format / recorder?

Recording to 2" or PT for edits?

Did they take it in many different sections? (that what I have experienced)

If so when were (or will be) the parts edited together..?

[e-cue]

The composer in the 1st pic kinda looks like that Simon guy from "American Idol"...

[Beech]

Thanks a lot Jon for sharing your setup with us. A couple of questions: The mics behind the conductor look like the DPA 4006s, are these your stereo pair? What are the pair of mics just in front of the conductor? Could you tell us which mics you used for each of the surround fields please.
The only surround session I have done so far has been a live gig and I used the Soundfield mic recorded onto four tracks and later decoded with the Soundfield Surround Processor...it worked very well.

Thanks again,
DW

[jon]

Originally posted by Jules
Who specified the mic positions? You or the freelancer?

Were you monitoring in 5.1 during the tracking?

"Live mixing" too?

What is the destination mix media / format / recorder?

Recording to 2" or PT for edits?

Did they take it in many different sections? (that what I have experienced)

If so when were (or will be) the parts edited together..?

Hi Jules,

Yes, we monitored in 5.1 during tracking. It was mixed live to 5.1 plus stereo. The destination media was ProTools version 5.11 at 48kHz, 24 bits for the 5.1 and Sony PCM7040 timecode DAT for the stereo. The 5.1 mixes were verified downmixed to LTRT format. There was no editing and no section stems. At the end of the sessions, we converted the 5.1 ProTools audio files to a format compatible with DD1500 workstations for the film mix...which basically meant converting to PT version 4.3 mono-only files transfered to a Mac "HFS standard" format SCSI HD with a max partition size of 4go.

Hi Daire and Alecio,

Thanks for your questions. I'll get back to you soon.

[Alécio Costa]

hey, thanks for the notes but:
a) which microphones?
b) why 48k? why not 44.1k or 88.2k?
c) what was the distance between mics?

Hugs
Alécio Costa - Brazil

[Curious G]

b) why 48k? why not 44.1k or 88.2k?

Probably because 48k is the pro video standard.

[jon]

Originally posted by Alécio Costa
hey, thanks for the notes but:
a) which microphones?
b) why 48k? why not 44.1k or 88.2k?
c) what was the distance between mics?

Hugs
Alécio Costa - Brazil

Hi Alecio,

Thanks for your questions. The mics we used were the ones I list in the first post of this thread.

We used 48k because it is the standard that the composers and editing people used.

Forgot to mention that we tracked the 5.1 audio to a DA98 backup, as well as to PT, all in sync with picture.

I didn't measure the actual distance between the mics but perhaps you can estimate it closely enough from the photos and the room dimensions given earlier.

Jon

[Roland]

Looks like a really interesting session! The Schoeps are great for strings, can really help with getting a little bit of bite!

The only observation that I have is re the 5.1. What sort of reverb time does the room have? It might be interesting for you to put a call into the posting house when the final dub has been done. The only problems I have come up against when doing 5.1 is the rears. Usually it is not too difficult to get the fronts to work resonably well, but if there is too much definition in the sound of the rears or they are too close in sound to the fronts (small rooms, not enough diffuse field sound) you can get slightly undesirable location effects. Many times I have heard of post guys using just a stereo mix and sending a reverb only signal to the rears derived from the front stereo mix. This seems to be less of a problem in large halls where it is possible to back the rear mics off well into the diffuse field.

I would be interested to hear your opinions based on the session.

Regards


Roland

[jon]

Some 480L verb was definitely used to give some space to the sound in the rear speakers (guess which patch... ).

I have to re-mix one of the orchestra tracks at 9am tomorrow morning (I wasn't the original engineer, so this will be my first orchestra mix in 5.1). I'll post more thoughts on this after that experience.

[C.Lambrechts]

Cool project Jon.

And thanks for sharing it out here.

[Alécio Costa]

Many thanks Jon!
Have a nice job friend!