Sunday, June 27, 2010

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