Przemysl concert: working on the sound

1. Compression

All three tracks were compressed in a very similar way. To make the concert sound more natural and to transfer the live feel of the event fully onto the record, I kept the compression to minimum. The threshold is therefore set just below the RMS value of the loudest passages, making the compressor act only on couple of occasions. Even such minor compression enabled me to raise the overall loudness of all channels.

2. Processing the stereo track

Because the internal microphones were set to 110 degrees and the recorder was not too far away from the performers, the stereo track sounded a bit too spread. I compensated for it using the Direction Mixer.

EQ: Although the sound was quite good, I still applied some corrections, mainly to remove messy resonation from the lute and from the vocal.

3. Other editing comments

Both lute and vocal tracks were treated with gentle EQs, mainly to cut off any noise and to clear out the sound. Adaptive limiter was applied to the main output to make sure that no samples will be clipped, especially during applause.

I discovered a minor time difference (3ms) between close mics and the stereo track. I compensated for it by applying a sample delay on the stereo track. It cleared the spatial feel of the record quite a lot.

Arrange window of a sample track

Mixer arrangement

Compressor and EQ on the stereo track

Direction mixer

Compressor and EQ on the lute track

Compressor and EQ on the vocal track

New material to work on

2 weeks ago, I recorded a concert given by my dad, my sister and their friend. My dad plays lute, my sister sings and their friend plays violin.

Although I'm very busy at both jobs, in spare time I want to have this concert edited and burned in fair quality. I don't expect this to take longer than a couple of sessions, as the material (although lengthy) is very simple.

My sister having a quiet moment before the concert

Set-up

I used a Zoom H4n recorder with two microphones attached to it. Zoom's stereo array was set to 120 degrees. I used my preferable quality settings: 24 bits, 48 kHz sample rate.

One of the external microphones was set up with the lute (the AKG C214) and the other one (a vocal dynamic AKG, sorry for no model number) with the vocalist.

Microphone setup