How do you record the room for surround?

[edwinhurwitz]

I am doing some projects for local bands where there is video involved and they want 5.1 mixes. While one location is already done, what do you all do for the recording the room? When I put mics at the back of the room, I usually just get a lot of people trying to shout over the band, so I have taken to putting mics at either side of the stage facing the audience for room ambience. At least this way, the crowd noise I get is involved with what's going on onstage. My intention is put these in the rear speakers (out of polarity?) and see how that sounds. For the session I have already recorded, I did have an extra channel and I put up a LDC just for fun at the back, but just as I expected it's mostly people yelling about what they did last weekend, etc.

When mixing these things, for those of you who do surround, do you send reverb returns to the back to create the sense of space? This is the first time I have done this and I am realizing how many options there are and so I am wondering how other handle it. It also means a crash course in Logic, as PT LE doesn't do surround. If I can get it sounding great, I think this could be a good market for me.

TIA
Edwin

[seriousfun]

Keep acquiring the room sounds, even if much of it ends up on the cutting room floor. You may be able to convolve some impulses from this, etc.

Listen to some live surround mixes before you proceed. The Bonnie Raitt Road Tested mix by Ed Cherney is a great example.

Room or hall reverberation doesn't only happen from the rear in any real acoustic experience, it happens from the side walls, the back wall of the stage, etc., and these early reflections can be a key to a great mix try to acquire these with additional pairs of mics or synthesize them with delay/reverb.

[Legacy]

Hi Edwin,

Sounds like fun gigs. I have done a fair ammount of location surround but without audiences. I usually put a pair of cardiods fairly high facing into the back corners and tilted up a bit. Usually they are not that far from the edge of the stage (a few rows in ). Later in the mix you can play with the rear mic channel delays a bit to enhance the sense of space. With an audience I wonder what pointing 2 spaced cardiods straight up would sound like. If you could get them high enough above the crowd without getting close to the ceiling (needs to be a big space) it might give you something interesting - assuming any house sound speakers were not mounted high too.

I have also tried omnis pointing at the stage which can be nice but you run the risk of strange phase issues if you use them in the fronts much.

I have used seperate reverbs for the front and rear in mixing but only to enhance the basic surround reverb. It definitely helps to have a DAW or console with a surround panner and multichannel aux sends.

Best,
Silas

[Sound Sorcerer]

For specialized surround recording, You may want to take a look at the Atmos system...
But sience the Surround effect is mostly created at the mixing studio, you can probably just make it with some good software tools running Nuendo or PT...

[Biber]

For specialized surround recording, You may want to take a look at the Atmos system...

yess, i know that peter brandt the biggest german remote recordist uses one for all his music-dvd recordings.
what i´ve learned from him is to think in "stages"

first stage are the people direkt infront the stage (mostly hanging from the stage)
second is in middle, normally at FOH where he puts his atmos
third is the back of the audience

he does it all with the atmos, schoeps, dpa or neumann mics

the times i broke this down to low budget i did the following:

first stage: 3 beyer M201 hanging from stage poiting the first rows for LCR (i like to have at least 1 mic direkt for the cen, and no panning stereo mics
second stage 2 neumann KM 140 (ortf) pointing stage (i´d like to have some other mics for perhaps a OCT), feeding L+R
third stage 2 octava 012 poiting back (sometimes cardioid, sometimes omni) and putting them direkt to LS+RS
this give me a good image from the hall and i have a lot of options when mixing in in my nuendo setup at my small mixing suite at home
BUT one disadvantage is you need a lot of tracks and normally one HD-Rec with 24 tracks is not enough

best,