Rec Set For Ecm-ms907

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Boy I'm glad I found this forum! I just bought a MZ-NHF800 recorder and a ECM-MS907 microphone to use for live recordings of my children's musical performances. My daughter is a vocalist often accompanied by acoustic piano. My son plays acoustic and electric guitar. I have learned from reading this forum that I should set RECVolume manually. What are the optimal settings for MIC AGC (Standard or LoudMusic), and MIC Sens (High or Low)? What about the Directive Angle setting on the mic (90 or 120 deg)?

I also have an Audio-Technica AT822 stereo condenser microphone that I could set up for special occasions. Should I use different settings for this?

Pardon me if these questions have been asked many times before. I did a search on this forum and could not find answers to these questions.

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When you set the volume manually, then AGC (auto gain control) is off and Standard/Loud doesn't matter. Remember that you have to go through the menu with the disc on REC/PAUSE each time you start recording to set manual volume, and then if you hit STOP it will revert to AGC. So use PAUSE if you want to pause during the performance.

Low Sensitivity is almost guaranteed to work best. High is for very quiet sounds, and adds more noise from the preamp. The Low Sensitivity setting will stay that way once it's set.

How spread out are the performers? If they're in one spot, or performing solo, use 90 degrees. If they're further apart, use 120.

You'll have to experiment a bit on how high to set the manual volume, and it will probably be slightly different for each of your mics. To be safe, you want the loudest music to peak between the two little dashes on your level meter. If you can record a warmup or practice and test the recorder on various levels, that would be ideal.

Manual Volume of 9/30 or 10/30 is probably playing it pretty safe if you can't do a test.

Placement of the mic makes a difference. Here's an interesting thread on piano recording.

http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7295

For voice accompanied by piano, you want to get the same balance the performers are trying for, so try to place the mic where you'd ideally like to have a listener's ears.

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Thanks for your very informative response.