How leakage saved my arse...

[Remoteness]

Trying to find a flaw in this line of thought?

There are plenty reasons why leakage sucks. What if it's all you have?

Hard rock festivals can be grueling recording ventures. Tons of acts with jet engine SPL levels on stage. A non stop performance schedule, no soundchecks (for most of the bands) and not enough time to make it right, is all part of the task at hand. The first song (if you're lucky) is usually your only soundcheck. That's not so great when you're recording the event.

When you're on your game, you can greatly limit the potential technical issues. Line checks are helpful, but they're NO soundcheck. About 6 or 7 songs into one of the bands set, I noticed that one of the sampler outputs (that hasn't played as of yet) was not showing up in the truck. The sampler outs were coming to us via a submixer which was shared with FOH and MON. They had the feed, but our aux feed for that particular sampler output was not present.

I never thought I'd be grateful for the near jet engine monitor levels. Man, the keyboard sampler track sounded as if it was a direct input. We used the lead vocal mic (KMS105) as the only track for the intro keyboard line until we secured the proper feed from the submixer during the first verse.

When I play the track for people, they never notice the difference. Thank goodness for monitor leakage (at least this time).

Rock & roll!

[Steve Smith]

live rocks huh?

I was doing a live date with a singer songwriter type of artist (very JT) that was a christian event. These records are very dependent in the ambient sound of the crowd clapping, singing, whatever it can get fun making sure the phase and delay works...

Anyhow, He comes out, the tapes are rolling and the last 8 track recorder completely loses it.. and i lose all 8 crowd mics (another lesson as to why you never let someone else do your sync connections on a DAxx recorder .. " you mean I have to screw those thingys in???" ) I got the machine up literally seconds before the first chorus and the 5000 member audience started singing along.. big sigh of relief right.. not quite.

We get to mix, and everything rocks, except the fact that there is no ambience for the first minute of this sone.. unacceptable. Enter the cello mic that had been left up from the previous band .. into PT we go.. double, eq diffrently, double again.. apply diffent amounts and types of M3000 verb..et cetera.. you cannot tell the diffrence on the master, and think, the show director was furious that the previos bands gear did not get struck.. one lazy stage hand saved my ass big tie that night!

God, I love remote work!

[Remoteness]

Great story Steve,

Anyone else have a story about getting saved by a screw up? Or how about, "How bad mic'ing technique made your day".

Let's hear them all!

[Steve Smith]

Gawd.. if we are going to talk about bad mic technique... I could just show you my diary..

[Steve Smith]

This is what I like to refer to as " musical arranging through preventive engineering.."

[HEDDcase]

Originally posted by Steve Smith
This is what I like to refer to as " musical arranging through preventive engineering.."

LOL I'm writing that one down so I never forget it!

[Steve Smith]

take it as your own my friend!

[Remoteness]

It's funny...

I just received a few KMS104s for my mic locker and I remembered this thread.

We used a KMS105 for the lead vocal with a single monitor wedge...

I bet it wouldn't have been as easy to reproduce those tracks if I had a KMS104 handling the task since the KMS104 works much better with a single monitor than the KMS105 does.

KMS105s work well with dual wedges setups.

Crazy stuff!

[bishopthomas]

I have a 105 and love it. I've wanted to try the 104. I assume you get the same sound out of it, just in the cardioid pattern, right? That may be the next mic on the list.

[Remoteness]

Yes!

[aussie_techie]

my story of leakage is your friend was for a jazz recording. for some reasons the drum overheads hadnt gone into record enable for the second set so the first song only had close drum mics. when it was time to mix it simply turning up the high end in the paino mics did the trick and the difference was never noticed. this was after i spend so much time trying to minimise the bleed in the paino mics.

[quincyg]

arse and leakage are usually not a good thing when combined in the same sentence, but glad to hear it worked out

[Remoteness]

Originally Posted by aussie_techie

my story of leakage is your friend was for a jazz recording. for some reasons the drum overheads hadnt gone into record enable for the second set so the first song only had close drum mics. when it was time to mix it simply turning up the high end in the paino mics did the trick and the difference was never noticed. this was after i spend so much time trying to minimise the bleed in the paino mics.

This happened to me in reverse...

I mixed a popular Jazz artists record. It was originally recorded by one of the largest remote recording companies in the USA. The convinced the client that they had to record this artist with 48 tracks and a bunch of vintage mics.

Well, this recording was terrible. A (almost) complete disaster. Most of the tracks were muddy or distorted. The U47 that was on the artist's horn was unusable, but the good old SM58 that was set up as his talk mic was right next to him. That sounded better the the U47. Anyway, I found eight or nine tracks that were usable and had all the information to completely mix this act.

The drum overheads were horrid, but the piano tracks had an insane amount of cymbals in there so, I ended up getting the best piano sound I could then listened to where the cymbals sat and blended in the drums. I also time delayed the piano and drum tracks so the sounded phatter.

The mix sounded awesome with eight (or nine) tracks out of the 48... Crazy stuff, Right?

Before the client asked me to mix this recording and during the live performance they asked the recording company (in between sets) why there was so much leakage and why is it so muddy. The client told me that the engineer blamed it on the club and never offered to move or change any of the mics or their positions.
IMO, that's so over the top. It's that "my sheat don't stink" concept in full throttle.

[Remoteness]

Originally Posted by quincyg

arse and leakage are usually not a good thing when combined in the same sentence, but glad to hear it worked out

Yeah, butt if a person is addressing their doctor about anal leakage it not really that bad... Is it?

[bishopthomas]

So, Steve.... Do you sometimes find it difficult to swap out the sound company's or musician's sm58 for something better (like the 105)? I'm always met with opposition when I try to use a high quality mic. Usually the muso wants the familiarity of a piece of crap in their hands. Sometimes I can talk them into trying it (and of course they love it), but most times they walk on stage, unplug the $800 mic, and stick their beat up 58 in saying, "This is the mic I always use and it always sounds good."

[Remoteness]

Good question...

About swapping out the sound company's or musician's SM58 -- well, the answer is yes and no...

If it's a tour usually I'm met with resistance. To tell you the truth, I totally understand where they're coming from. Everything is set and dialed up. Why would they want to change things out for a night or two then change it back again? If its a few nights and it's for an important DVD or other type of recording they usually understand and comply. I don't even ask when it's a one off date, but if it'd the first or last day of the tour you know I'm going to be selling that concept as hard as I can.

It's not just the familiarity of a unit it's also about all the dialing and setup their engineers do for their FOH sound, MON feeds and such.

[Jim vanBergen]

Days you lose:
For example, the time I swapped out the house SM58 to my beloved Audix OM7, just to have the lead singer POUR A BOTTLE OF FRICKING POLAND SPRING on it?

Um, yeah. And to make it worse, the exec producer screamed at me about the quality of the vocal mic. I calmed myself and asked him to screen 21:39:00 on the master reel, and to then process my invoice for rental & services + damaged equipment.

Days you win: recording Bjork's vocals with a pair of Sennheiser Sk50s transmitter & mke-2 lavs clipped on her famous "Black Swan" dress, then into Millennia Origin twin topo preamps. At afternoon rehearsal I asked her to sing as loudly as she would for the evening show, she said she would, and afterwards she said that she had. I set the backup for -9dB of the main xmitter (down 1 click , -6dB on the xmitter) and down -3dB on the 'spare' Millennia Origin vocal pre.

Come showtime, she totally overs BOTH the main and spares. I flip. The producer flips.

I send the producer to her at the end of the show. She comes back apologizes to the crowd, and does the first number over again for us.


JvB

[woomanmoomin]

I am definitely one of those people who don't want to hear about anything involving leakage and your arse.

[Jim vanBergen]

Originally Posted by woomanmoomin

I am definitely one of those people who don't want to hear about anything involving leakage and your arse.

"Side effects include anal leakage..."

YIKES!

I deal with enough *ssholes every day already, thanks.

[Remoteness]

You know, the funny thing is, I would have been bagged if I used the newer Neumann KMS104 mic...

The vocals would have sounded right, but the leakage would not have saved my arse!