Question: recording live musicians / clipped audio

[Tony Scharf]

the only solution is, unfortunately, very high sampling rate, very careful
mic placement, and very high bit depth.

if you dont have that, here is one solution..

If you have a standard 8 input audio interface you are using, then why not
use 6 stereo mics, and record each one at a slightly different level?   one
higher, one lower, and one right in the middle, for each mic placement (so,
yeah, your going to want to have a LOT of mics and a LOT of inputs..so its
expensive).   Then, if you have any sections that clip, you have a
(hopefully a sample and phase accurate) set of other tracks to crossfade
over to during the louder sections. conversely, if you have sections that
were very quiet and not capctured well on the low level recordings you can
swap over to the higher level ones without needing to normalize or do other
manipulations.

It seems to me the key to recording producing orchestral recordings would be
to do as LITTLE as possilbe to the recorded signal and definitely not make
it at  all noticeable.

Tony


On 9/19/07, The Dong <dong at f2s.com> wrote:
>
> Martin Naef wrote:
> > Yeah, that's all true, and part of the "tube magic" - except that we
> > want a *clean*, totally *undistorted* recording with the full dynamic
> > range still intact. If you hit the tubes hard, it may still sound
> > "nice", but you've lost the dynamic range that you wanted to retain in
> > the first place.
>
> The recording would be clean and undistorted, but if it does go into
> clipping once or twice in the performance, it might not be a total
> disaster. That is all I'm trying to covey. If you just rely on a -brick
> wall- limiter to stop clipping and set it up willy nilly, your going to
> lose a lot more than dynamic range from a performance.
>
> How much dynamic range do you want?
> How much dynamic range does an orchestra need to sound 'good'?
>
> 80dB ?
> 90dB ?
> 100dB ?
> 120dB ?
> 140dB ?
>
> Is dynamic range the most important factor?
> Or can reduction or neutralising of unwanted noise or artefact sources
> be much more important?
> Can the average consumer hifi even chunk out 80dB range?
> Can top hifi gear really reproduce 120dB range?
>
> Frankly, imho, in practice after connecting one piece of gear to any
> other piece of required gear it's not going to achieve anywhere near
> it's quoted dynamic range.
>
> Much of the gear churned out today quotes these really high dynamic
> ranges and freq. response on paper, but in practise it simply does not
> happen for one reason or another.
>
> If the conductor drops his baton or the lead violinist farts, that's
> 10dB and 20dB+ respectively up the spout already, hehe..
>
> "Don't cut that bit out!!"
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Shelter mailing list
> Shelter at lists.music-bar.org
> http://lists.music-bar.org/listinfo.cgi/shelter-music-bar.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.music-bar.org/private.cgi/shelter-music-bar.org/attachments/20070919/9e75d322/attachment.htm