Unique Mic Placement For Vocal Trio

[Murton]

so, I was talking with a friend when brought up the issues he was having with spill when recording a vocal trio who insisted on being in the same room at the same time to sing their partd when recording. Then the idea of setting up three figure 8 microphones up in a triangle pattern and then place an omni in the centre and reverse it's phase. Bring the level of the omni up to dictate the amoint of spill between the mics. Im not sure how the panning would have to be to pull it off, but i think a hard left, right, centre kind of thing would do it. Im very interested in seeing how it would sound and whar panning is required to make it work phase wise. I know its not truely remote, but it is classical and not high end or low end. Has anyone tried anything like this before?

[Audiop]

Hi!

You'd get plenty spill I think (drawing a pic in my head only) from behind of a triangular set up. Three 8's in an arc might work better.

I also don't get the omni thing. Do you mean a very close placement of the 8's and the omni in the midst of them? I can't see how that would work and polarity flip would not reduce the spill really (if I'm thinking right) but the actual direct sound from all singers to respective mic.

Possibly I misunderstood, it seems to happen every now and then!!


/Peter

[Matti]

Actually the 8´s come more like cardioid with this

Matti

[Audiop]

Yes but then the mic's would need to be coincident and the polarity should not be flipped..!


/Peter

[Murton]

Yeah, I'm just interested how it would sound is all, I recently did I MS recording on an acoustic guitar which sounded great. I've been thinking of other possible mic placements where phase is taken into account with some flipped to create a certain effect.

[Audiop]

An omni and 8 in phase would give something like a cardioid response but the fact that the sound from one singer would enter the other two 8's from behind it won't turn out well. Reason for that is the different pick up off axis of the omni vs. 8's.

Also a spread (triangle) of the 8's would mean that there would be phase issues (combfiltering) between all four mic's.

Try it and see what it gives but I would expect strange results.


/Peter

[James Lehmann]

I'm no expert at this so feel free to ignore my comments and skip to the next post, but wouldn't this seem like a good opportunity for an M/S array with one mic pointing at the centre singer and the Fig8 picking up the other 2?

[Matti]

Wich is usually 2 cardiods like xy but with variable angle ( MS )

Matti

[kstrauss]

Why don't you have them sing into one mic, or if you want a stereo spread, an XY or Blumlein pair?

[SpeakUpStudios]

hey... I just recorded a vocal piece with 4 singers. I used large diaphram mics on every individual and set up a large flat baffle right in front of them. I used slightly heavier pop screens and had the vocalists all face the baffle in a line and sing very close to the mics. I used cardiod patterns on all the mics and had VERY limited bleed. however, they were not insistent about eye contact with each other during the recording. Later when i recorded the larger 6 piece vocal group I put them in an enclosed tight space as a semi circle. On the open end of the semi circle i put up a crown pzm microphone to capture the "choir stereo image"... this worked well and helped blend the bleed of the microphones into something more natural and coherent.

hope it helped!

[7rojo7]

I've tried 'triplein' a few times and it is certainly an effect. The josephson stereo mic is an xy over an omi with 3 outputs which you can nring to separate channels for mixing, I do this also with 3 CCM5lg or 3 Brauner Phantom V
the only thing I can think of though is: why do you need the isolation, if they make the sound together, they're mixing and making 'their' sound. too many mics spoil the broth

[Larry Elliott]

Originally Posted by kstrauss

Why don't you have them sing into one mic, or if you want a stereo spread, an XY or Blumlein pair?

You’ll get the best blend that way - assuming the singers can create a natural blend