combined room & audience mics...

[Douglas Whates]

Hi,

I'm just back from my first live location gig and want to pick your brains about clapping levels.

The recording was of a guitar and violin duo in a (800 seater) hall and was a live concert. I set up a pair of schoeps omnis quite far back in the hall, around 4 meters up and spaced a few meters apart. There were also a couple of cardioid spot mic's on the instruments.

The omnis were positioned to best compliment the instruments and capture a nice ambience. As I was using omnis, I figured I wouldn't need separate audience mic's.

I set the pre-amp levels on the room mic's when the performers first came on stage at the beginning of the concert (i.e. when the audience first clapped) - is this normal practice? How else can gain staging be set for audience mic's? Any general rules?

Anyway, I've just listened back to the recording on my monitors and the recording sounds pretty good. The problem is that when I set the mix of the room mic's to be most complimetary to the spots, the clapping is really loud. Is this necessarily a problem? I know some ECM recordings have exceptionally loud clapping compared to the volume of the instruments. Also, I know it'd be possible to just bring the levels down for the clapping at the end of the pieces (it was a classical concert, so no applause during pieces!) but it seems to make the applause seem a bit fake - as if pasted on. I think this fakeness could be attributed to the obvious backround noise in the hall which disappears when you take the faders down for the applause.

Any tips? How do all you people using only one stereo pair for live recordings get the balance right? I assume it's a case of placing the mic's closer to the instruments and further away from the audience. Doesn't this compromise the room sound?

I think in future I'll use separate audience mics...

Cheers in advance for your help. If I'm brave enough I might even post some clips.

Douglas.

[zemlin]

I sometimes setup two tracks using the same room mic wav file. 1 for "room mics" and the other for "applause". I set the two levels where I want them and crossfade right when the applause starts. I can imagine that this might not work in some halls or if there is still a lot of music in the air when the clapping begins, but it has worked where I needed it.

[Douglas Whates]

Excellent tip - I'll give that a try... thanks for that!

Any other comments welcome.

Douglas

[jwh1192]

you could try bringing the omni's closer to the performers .... instead of far back make it more 1/3 to 1/2 way back ..... using the omni's you will not lose the feel of the room and the difference between the sopts and the audience may not be so dramatic ... a compromise is what i suggest ....

or .... if you have more tracks available to you ... add another set of omni's close to the performers and leave the original omni's where they were ...

option option options ...

best of luck

john

[Douglas Whates]

Hi John,

Thanks for the tips. Yeah - I'd say the mic's were positioned pretty much as you describe. I think it could be simply to do with the relatively quiet instruments. To be honest, the spots are fine; I don't really use them for the main signal, just to focus the image a bit.

If I was recording the same gig again, likelyhood is I'd use a couple of separate audience mic's, but hey - it's a learning experience.

Any more tips are definitely welcome, but I get the feeling I know what I have to do.

Douglas.

[jon daly]

if u are editing on a computer a trick i have used in the past is to copy the parts with clapping that is too loud and add some heavy compression to them and splice them back into the file with crossfades.

[Douglas Whates]

Heavy compression would probably be a bit too obvious.

Bringing the applause down by about 3 or 4 dB seemed to do the trick. A bit of low cut EQ to minimise some traffic rumbles etc. (man, those Schoeps really pick up *everything*) and that's about it.

Cheers,

Douglas.