Question: recording live musicians / clipped audio

[Tony Scharf]

On 9/19/07, Tony Scharf <noisetheorem at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/19/07, The Dong <dong at f2s.com> wrote:
> > Tony Scharf wrote:
> > > 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.
> >
> > Good one. If one has a few sets of mics.
> > I thought it would take more than a binaural recording for an orchestra.
> > Depends..
> >
> > It might even be fine to simply pick one set, normalise + whatever other
> > fiddling you must do and that's that.
> >
>
> Actually..no..you only need on mic to use the above setup, provided
> you can somehow multiply its signal to multiple inputs (or at least
> multiple tracks).
>
> so, like, take one binaural set which is well placed, and route its
> audio to tracks 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, and 7/8 (or more inside your DAW).  on
> each set of tracks, setup different input levels and even perhaps
> compression, limiting and a pre-eq.  this should give you a LOT of
> material to work with in a mix..
>
> now if you have more mikes, you can capture more signals around the
> room in a similar manner to build up a suround sound mix if you
> wanted...
>
> Just a quick thought :D
>

as an additional-additional thought do all of this in the analog
domain.  use a mixer with a lot of headroom, and then use the busses
to send the audio to your recorder ready to record...

Tony