Met live in HD.... Amazing!

[king2070lplaya]

Ok, my wife and I are watching some Of the Met operas "HD" clips from last years season, and are blown away by the quality of the vocal pickup for a live opera. Does anybody know how they get such terrific pickup for the singers onstage?

[fifthcircle]

Most operatic recordings at that level use a combination of directional mics across the front of the stage, planted mics in the sets and lav mics on the leads.

If your area mics are planned correctly, though, you can get some very good pickup from quite a distance. When I was doing opera regularly, we'd use Schoeps across the front of the stage going through Grace 801 preamps. Then there would be Sennheiser 8040 mics in the proscenium and a few other plants. The main stage mics, however, gave us good clarity to about 20-25 feet away, though. The proscenium mics usually were used to fill out the chorus sound.

--Ben

[rumleymusic]

I have always been impressed by those HD presentations also. Those guys at the met sure have their routine down. And they do it LIVE!

[boojum]

We had Aïda today, from the Met, broadcast over Oregon Public Broadcasting. Beautifully staged and broadcast. The sound was good.

[Robobo1]

fifthcircle is correct... it's a combo of mics across the lip and lavs. I'm sure it depends on the production.

I also think the Met must carefully take mic placement/vocal projection in to account when working out their blocking.

I saw part of Faust in the theater on Saturday and it sounded to me that most of the leads had lavs... but one (Faust himself) did not. Or atleast this was the case during Act II. I didn't see the rest. Perhaps they were having issues.

I was lucky enough to watch Jay Saks mix two years ago during a broadcast. The man is a beast... he was reading the score while mixing, not relying on anyone else. It's one thing to do that in an orchestral setting... but this was over the top... so much going on. Very cool.