Minimalist vs processed mixes for classical/chamber?

[roonsbane]

Also in terms of a P.T. "house sound" We always keep Fred on the same mic no matter where he is, and we have about twenty production rooms in this building that all have the same chain: Great River Pre/Great River EQ/and Crain Song STC-8 Compressor for all the host mics, even if they are on a digital broadcast console. Also, we try and keep all of the announcer mics as tight as possible even when they are doing a Performance chat in our large Neve room using gobos around hosts. When any engineer does a performance chat each of us is reaching for the same 88R-Pre/comp/EQ and 960 reverb sometimes with the same verb patches, but of course the goal is to sound "natural" and we each mic in our own way to reach that goal. There are huge variations in what we each do to achieve that goal. Also we all have our own opinion about how big the dynamic window should be, but we follow the two technical directors' leads on their show. Of course we expect them to do the same for us when they are subbing as technical directors for our productions.
Cameron

[Ozpeter]

The way the original post is worded rings alarm bells here.

i am starting to mix the first set of new recordings for a flute/pedal harp duo. the isntruments were recorded separately, at the request of the players.

This could mean several things, but possibilities include first recording the harp, then recording the flute mulititrack style (unlikely), or separately micing each instrument with no overall stereo mic / main pair.

If either of these scenarios are correct, I would contend that minimalism/realism has gone out of the window at the outset, as it's most unlikely that an acceptable stereo image can be obtained without a fair bit of mucking around.

In my book, minimalism in recording starts with a main pair and nothing else. If anything more is required, it should be kept to a minimum (definition of minimalism really). Following that approach, you have some chance of being able to do very little to it afterwards.

I guess the matter of limiting in post-production has already been covered but none the less I'll throw in a comment -

Also, there's no processor involved that can affect the overall sound. Most often only 3 to 15 samples are affected in each peak. No limiter I know of is that focused.

Even the freeware "Classic Master Limiter" would probably meet those criteria - though of course if you want to maintain individual control of each peak's processing, manually doing it is the the way to go.

It's very simple to test a VST limiter. Apply it to some suitable test audio with the kind of settings you have in mind. Invert the mixdown against the unprocessed audio, being sure to apply the same amount of gain that the limiter applies (as make-up gain). Any respectable limiter should give you silence for 99.9% or more of the result, proving that it's not doing anything to the overall character of the sound. Where its limiting function occurs, you should hear a very brief "spitch" of sound. Zoom in and if you want, count the samples in the "spitch" which represents where the limiter is limiting. I know some limiters which have such a slow recovery that you actually hear recognisable musical audio for a second or so. In my book, that's compression not limiting.

I've come across more than one case where an engineer has felt that a limiter is imparting a "sound" to the audio where the above test proves that it's not. The reason was that they're forgetting that the make-up gain's effect on the ear is to change the balance of frequencies (opposite of a loudness control on a hi-fi amp). It's not the limiter (assuming it passes the inversion test), it's the gain change, no different to turning up the monitoring level.

[Plush]

Originally Posted by roonsbane

Hi Plush,

You asked:

Well I will say that we have a producer that likes a big ambient sound. He is formally of Saint Paul Sunday. We also have a window we try and make our dynamics fit into. This way the on air processing is not doing the bulk of the work. Also each of us has a fairly similar template with plug-ins already loaded but bypassed. Usually that includes several different verbs. We also must work quickly since there are essentially two folks that are assigned to the show but must also run the show roll between the two of them. Then there are three of us that help when we can. This adds up to a third person for half a day on average Monday through Friday. It is a giant black hole.
Best!
Cameron

Thank you, Roonsbane,

My questions concerned only the music.

The reason I asked about a house sound is that your program has the unenviable task of going out to so many different air chains with such widely varying quality that I was curious how you all approached this situation. The program is not heard in Chicago so I cannot follow the doings on the show.

Who is your producer now?

I have done many tapings for the old regime when the program was in DC, but I am not up on the current behind the scenes staff. I do know Fred though. I am at WFMT Radio in Chicago where the Shure SM81 is the house mic. Here we let dynamic range breathe, but we don't go over -6 dBFS.

[roonsbane]

Hey Plush,

That's cool that you previously worked on P.T. We have two former NPR engineers that also worked on the show there as well. According to them we are doing more dynamics manipulation than was done in DC. I believe they only rode the fader at NPR. We are also just hitting -6dBFS on peaks but we are bringing up the lower level stuff in order to address all of the various air chains we play on. In general, we hear a lot of positive feedback about how P.T. translates. The same goes for Symphony Cast and Saint Paul Sunday which pretty much follow the same standard. Pipe Dreams' dynamics run "as is" Per Michael's insistence. On all of the talk shows we are shooting for levels hanging at -15dBFS with peaks at -6dBFS. Much of that leveling happens manually in ProTools before any compression gets applied.

I have a funny story about listening to Pipe Dreams in the car; So we leave a party and put Pipe Dreams on the car radio to wind down. We have a full car and during the quiet passages I crank up the radio in order to catch some kind of actual pitch or melody from the organ. The radio is practically full up and the quiet organ passages go on and on, barely being able to catch it. The organ blower and audience noise is just as loud as the actual pitches. Suddenly, "Crash!" ffff "Mine goes to 11" full on wide open organ, kicking the ass of a full carload or folks all mad and screaming at me. I don't think those kind of dynamics ever really translate well, even on a good system in your home.

Vaughn Ormseth programs most of the music. He has a solid choral background from Saint Olaf with a preference for the "listenable" stuff.

I will tell Fred that you said hello.
Cameron

[Plush]

Thank you, Roonsbane
I'm sure you guys are doing a good job.

May I correct one misimpression? I did not work for PT, I contributed many segments in the past and continue to send in things when I get an inquiry or a request.

As far as organ music is concerned I do a lot of that too.


Right on!

Plush

[jnorman]

i got to record marco granados (flute) and jovinto neto (piano) at the old church in portland, OR, friday night, and it is an appropriate application for this topic. the space was very very nice, an 1882 wooden gothic church of moderate size and excellent acoustic. due to audience access requirements, the mic stand placement was a bit off center, and very close to the stage lip, perhaps around 8' out from the players.

i ran a pair of ORTF km140s>lexicon U42s>ibm T61>reaper, and a spaced pair of DPA 4061s>forsell pres>forsell ADC>SD702. we also had marco's crowley&tripp ribbons but did not have the time to set them up prior to showtime.

the original tracks from the km140s are okay, but like usual, suffer from traffic noise, audience noises, etc. so, i applied some noise reduction, then a played around with EQ a bit, and i also woulnd up adding just a touch of T6000 medium hall reverb (-26dB). to my ears, the processed version is superior.