Urgent -- Mono OH Choice for Klezmer Session

[wshaw]

Forgive this long post. I need advice about whether I ought to buy a Beyer m160.

I'm doing a recording in my 12 x 15 music room, next week. It's going to be klezmer. Instrumentation is drums, electric bass, electronic keyboards, clarinet, vox. The vox will be overdubbed later and the bass and keys will go direct, so the only two "live" instruments will be drums and clarinet.

The ceilings are 9 feet high.

My room is carpeted, with auralex foam covering about 30% of the walls. There are about 12 LENRDs in the corners plus one Ethan Winner bass trap in the corner. There's another one on the ceiling over the mixing area. I will shortly be installing a 2 x 4 panel over the drums (not one of Ethan's, but similar).

I'm mainly concerned, of course, with leakage of drums into the clarinet mic, and vice versa. I'm the drummer, and I'll be playing pretty softly, so if anything I'm more concerned about clarinet leakage into the drum mics than the other way around. The clarinetist plays pretty loud.

The kit will be very small--basically a bass drum, a little 5 x 10 snare, and a ride with a crash stacked on top, next to the hi hats (which I won't be playing, probably--the music doesn't need it). No toms. The cymbals will be struck VERY softly, and rarely.

The quality of the snare pickup is the paramount drum issue. There'll be lots of shading--soft closed rolls and little buzz strokes. The cymbals and BD are secondary. That's how it is with klezmer.

I will only have 2 mic pres available for the drums. They're good ones--an SCA A12and a Hamptone JFET. I figure one OH and one FOK mic ought to work pretty well. I'll put my CAD VX2 in the FOK position, runing into the A12, about 2.5 feet in front of the kick, about 3 feet high. That will pick up the kick and the bottom of the snare, with some space around it.

The issue is the OH mic. The available choices are:

--Oktava mc012 w/ cardioid cap
--Crown cm 700
--AT 4047
--CAD e-350
--Neumann kms105
--Royer sf1
--Oktava ML52 w/Lundahl transformer

Sonically, my first choice would probably be the Royer for OH. The issue is leakage: how much benefit would the hypercard pattern of the Beyer m160 be over the Royer's figure 8, or the other mics' cardioid patterns?

The clarinetist will be about 2 feet in front of the bass drum, about 3 feet to the right of the drums. He'll be facing at about a 75 degree angle away from the drums, and towards a pile of foam LEDNRDs and other absorbtive materials. I'll put tall baffles (i.e., blankets on boom mic stands) behind him and to his left. I'm going to mic him with another Royer, about 2 feet away from him, placed so the null faces the drums.

I'd rather not spring for the m160, but I will if I have to.

So--do I have to? Waddaya think?

THANKS!

[just.sounds]

If you position the clarinetist in the 0 of the royer and maybe absorb a little on the back youre in the clear i think. But don't let me stop you from buying new gear But with two "life" instruments. Why not try to mic it with a main pair?

[wshaw]

Right -- Just to be clear, the hypercard pattern doesn't mean there's MORE rejection in the null area, it simply moves the null area from about 90 degrees off axis to about 115 degrees off axis, right? So if I aim the null of the clarinet mic at the drums, and the null of the drum mic at the clarinet, along with some baffling and soud absorption, that oughtta work OK.

Sounds promising. My only confusion is understanding the null of the OH mic: the OH mic will be point almost straight down, so the null will be parallell to the floor, rather than perpendicular to it. Does anyone know how wide the null is on a Royer, top to bottom (as opposed to the usuallt visualization of a ribbon, where the null is a front-to-back question).

Hope that's clear. Thanks.

[wshaw]

I just called Royer, and spoke with Rick, the President(!)

He told me that the null is almost almost completely consistent all along each side axis.

Good to know, and I must say that I've always gotten a very friendly and helpful vibe from Royer. They seem like real good people!

As of this moment, then, there doesn't seem to be a strong argument for the Beyer.

Anyone disagree?

[wshaw]

Originally Posted by just.sounds

But with two "life" instruments. Why not try to mic it with a main pair?

The reason I'm not going to use a main pair is that the ambient sound they'd capture wouldn't have any bass, or piano, or vocals in it, and I'm concerned that adding all those instruments to an ambient-sounding environment would be difficult to glue into something cohesive. I think I'll have better luck if I take more a spot-mic approach to the drums and clarient, seperately, and then try to create an environment for ALL the elements later.

In truth, I WOULD do a main-pair setup if I had enough mic pres available. Given limited resources, I think the odds are better with spot-micing than main-pair micing.

Of course, feel free to chime in and disagree.

[Jimbo]

Originally Posted by wshaw

Right -- Just to be clear, the hypercard pattern doesn't mean there's MORE rejection in the null area, it simply moves the null area from about 90 degrees off axis to about 115 degrees off axis, right?

Hi WShaw,

I'm not sure this is correct. The null will not only move around, but it will not be evenly "null" across frequencies. At 90 degrees a fig-8 null is an honest-to-god NULL in that no frequencies leak in. However, most hyperdardiod nulls aren't even across the spectrum. I'd be willing to bet that the freq response for the m160 is not also not consistent off-axis....I'd have to look at the freq plot on the Beyer site.

I'm not sure what voodoo Beyer is doing to get the hypercardiod pattern from a ribbon mic, but they are the only ones doing it.

If you have tall ceilings you can get a great sound from the fig-8 overhead while providing isolation from the the clarinet. I don't know how well 9' ceilings will work, but the way you describe Klezmer drums sounds like you could drop the ribbon pretty low down to the kit and capture the important components (i.e., snare).

I think you ought to give it a go.

BTW, I think that you and I might be the only people on the planet who own both a Hamptone JFET and a CAD VX2.

[wshaw]

VX2 + Hamptone =