Bassy Recording

[D_S]

hi all. i recently changed my set-up to mz-n910 and the church audio b-99 binaurals and did my first concert recording w/those last night. i had the church audio mics clipped to my shirt collar connected to the radio shack attenuator which went into the mic-in of the n910. tha rec level was set 10/30. i didn't get any distortion (the signal stayed welll under -12db so i'm normalizing it) BUT all in all the recording is bass-heavy and a little muddy.. it lacks the clarity i would have liked.

oh i forgot to mention that i had forgot the mic sensitivity set to HI (which explains why the meters led me to use 10 as a rec setting). don't know if that contributed to the bassiness of the recording or who the culprit is along the chain. the thing is that i intend to record a few concerts at a festival next week and i would appreciate your opinions on the best possible solution w/the set-up i have at my disposal right now.

[A440]

You're better off with Low Sensitivity because then the mic preamp isn't working so hard and adding noise.

Also: Did you have volume on the attenuator all the way UP? Lower settings on it might muffle the sound a bit.

Have you used those mics before with a different setup, and have they been hi-fi before?

With that setup, you should basically be getting what's coming through the mics. You could do a test recording with your stereo and the same setup and see how the sound comes out, just to make sure the mics themselves aren't somehow bass-heavy.

The key question is whether the sound is significantly different from what you heard in the room. Lots of club sound mixes are too bass-heavy, or if you were up close to the band the PA might have been pointed over your head. Your brain does a lot of decoding that the mics can't do.

Is it possible something was muffling the mics on your shirt collar? A jacket or something? Or tall people in front of you? And if they were pointed sideways, left and right, you could also try pointing them more directly at the PA system. The higher you can get them the better, though the shirt collar has generally worked well for me.

There is always the option of getting a battery box with bass roll-off if it's a consistent problem. But if it's just a matter of too much bass and it's not distorting, you could also change the equalization settings on playback to lower the bass.

[D_S]

yes the rs gizmo's volume was all the way up.. i'd done some "studying" here in lurker mode. this forum is a great resource, thank you all!

i don't understand what you mean by "have they been hi-fi before?". yes, it was the first time i used these mics.. the concensus seemed to be quite favourable, that's why i opted for them. btw i've had many a bass-heavy recording before with my old sony ecm-907 mic. i'll do the test with my stereo tomorrow cuz i've got a hunch the neighbours won't be very understanding if i blast it now (post-midnight here)!

yes, the sound in the recording is much bassier than the sound in the venue and yes i was up front, no people in front of me or something muffling the mics and i'm pretty tall. the sound my ears were getting was not bass-heavy at all. actually, i was getting quite a lot from the guitarist's amplifier and i was afraid the recording would have turned out too cripsy BUT it was just the opposite, which makes me fear of what it will happen if the sound at the club is bassy in the first place! the mics were not really pointed upwards but more left/right. does that play such a big role to the extent that they are omnis?

getting a battbox in the next few days that i will be recording is not a possibility. i'll just have to make do with what i've got and i'm not a big fan of post-recording equalization. i abide by the gigo (garbage in garbage out) maxim!

do you think the hi sens setting has contributed to the bassiness/ muddiness?

[A440]

This gets more and more puzzling. It's possible that the Hi-Sens setting coupled with the low Rec Volume ended up muffling things, but odd that it would bring out extra bass.

I had wondered if you had gotten a different response using the same mics with the older recorder. But since they're new.....

Although they're omnis, where they are pointed does make a difference because (correct me if I'm wrong, someone) to my understanding omnis mostly pick up in front and behind rather than equally around 360 degrees. So if bass was somehow echoing off the side walls you'd get more of it. But so would your ears, so that's not much of a theory.

Anyway, test the mics with your stereo so we can see how they respond outside combat conditions. Try them with and without the RS, in case that's the culprit too.

As for EQ, it's a matter of taste. A bass roll-off will take away what was there, making it impossible to restore; EQ lets you compensate for problems. But as you suggest, it's much better to make a great recording in the first place.

[D_S]

ok i ran the test with and without the rs attenuator and w/different positioning of the mics on my collar.

1) in all scenarios the recording was bassier/muddier than what my ears heard so i have the feeling that the mics might be somewhat bassy OR at least bassier than my old sony ecm-907

2) when the mics were pointed directly towards towards the speakers, the recording was a lot more detailed and clear than when they were pointed upwards or sideways. now in the home stereo case things are simple but in a club setting where i'll be getting both the sound from the stage in front of me and the PA (probably above) things could be tricky. maybe i should point them sort of towards the stage but with a slight angle upwards.

3) wow the signal attenuation is huge when using the radio shack thingie. i had to drop the rec setting to 15 from 27 to get the same signal level. now maybe my ears are playing tricks on me but i think that the recording without the rs attenuator has a tigher low end and is generally more detailed. has anyone else run a similar test?? hmm if this is the case then the decision will be tough cuz i dread the overloading/distortion i might get without the rs gizmo... and if i had to drop to 15 w/my stereo i guess that would translate to below 10 in the club setting..

problems!

[A440]

Well, I didn't think of something basic. The specs on the Sony ECM-MS907 include a frequency response of 100-15,000 Hz. Your new mics are 20-20,000. So yes, they are bassier--they are picking up two octaves of bass below what the Sony was. If you've gotten used to the MS907 you've gotten used to a recorded sound with the equivalent of a bass roll-off at 100 Hz.

I go to a lot of concerts, and when I hear recordings with that much bass roll-off, they sound tinny to me.

So while they do sound different, your new mics are probably more realistic (unless for some reason they're biased to pick up more at the bottom end, which seems unlikely).

I haven't run the comparison with and without the attenuator because without the attenuator, even a modest amount of bass causes distortion from the preamp, and I seem to get clear bass with my mics (SP BMC-2, which use the same basic Panasonic capsules as yours do). With the attenuator, levels of 20/30 usually work fine for even the most blasting rock. I don't know what kind of display the MZ-N910 has, but your levels should be peaking about 3/4 of the way up to full.

Did you get bass distortion from the music on your stereo with the RS gizmo? If you didn't, and you were really blasting, maybe you can do without it.

Practically speaking, if I were you I'd carry the attenuator and a little pair of earbuds and try some opening acts with and without the attenuator and see what works. Recording a concert won't be like recording your stereo--there's a lot of ambient noise, and that's going to affect fidelity a lot more than the attenuator.

For club sound and pointing the mics, it's really a judgment call when you get there. Is the band getting most of its sound from onstage amps or from the PA? Do you care more about the guitars or the vocals? And how is the actual sound--not the feeling of closeness to the band, not reading the singer's lips--where you are standing? You may be better off back by the soundboard, where the guy doing the mix is judging by his own ears.

[dex Otaku]

I think the bassy sound might just be from the environment you were in. Fiddling around with a decent parametric / paragraphic EQ in your editor, adding either rolloff or fairly wide but mild notch filter at around the room resonance [obvious freq's to try are in the 150-200Hz and 400-500Hz range] should help to fix this. I've only skimmed this thread so far, and will read more later, so I might get back to you on this again.

[CHURCH-AUDIO]

Hi there my name is Chris I made your mics and I just want to say that using a headphone attenuator will degrade the signal quality of my mics. You should also be using at the very least a battery box that provides a full 9 volts, IE no resistor for the bias just a dc blocking cap in the output of the battery box of 2.2uf @ 16 to 50 volt, a nice film cap would be good we sell battery boxes. So do alot of good mic makers out there like sound professionals reactive sounds ect. Any one of these battery boxes made by me or any of the companys I mentioned will work great.

Second

One thing people have to realize with omni mics is you can not put them on your chest cavity or anywhere near your chest as the 'resonant frequency" of your chest will cause a bump in the low end you should wear a cheap set of headphones or a baseball cap and clip the mics as close to your ears as possible. OMNI MICS must have a boundry inbetween them in order to have good stereo seperation and to avoid phase cancellation. Your head provides a perfect boundry for these mics ( This is where the jecklin disk came from) There are a few eq tricks that need to be applyied in order to play the recording back on speakers with my mics a cut at 500 to 800 hz is good at 2.5 db with a Q of 1.4 parametric eq is good or a simple graphic eq. now if you intend to only listen on headphones you should have to do no eq at all

THE FIRST THING I DO WITH A LIVE BINURAL RECORDING IS LISTEN WITH MY HEADPHONES!! SONY MDR600 if it sucks in my headphones NO AMOUNT OF EQ WILL FIX THE RECORDING but.... if it sounds good in the cans as we say in the sound bizz then you have a good place to start with to make them sound good in speakers

the last trick is a simple one

I use a good sound editing program and seperate left and right and hard pan them hard left and hard right. This will help translate the sound into speakers much better. Remember with binural recordings the reason they sound so good thru headphones is because the sound stage is very seperated. You dont get image problems like you do with speakers, because the headphones are stuck to your ears you dont hear the left side of the headphones leaking thru to your right ear ( atleast I hope not ) :_) So with speakers you dont have the same type of sound field you do with headphones you do hear left and right coming at you at the same time with much less seperation of the stereo field. My trick of hard panning helps reestablish the left and right and make it more solid in the dimentional space that is your listing room.

I really hope this has helped you it might be of some use to you or maybe to someone that is just starting out in live recording its fun.

This is a sample recording done with one of my mic systems

Chris Church

Sound Engineer

hi all. i recently changed my set-up to mz-n910 and the church audio b-99 binaurals and did my first concert recording w/those last night. i had the church audio mics clipped to my shirt collar connected to the radio shack attenuator which went into the mic-in of the n910. tha rec level was set 10/30. i didn't get any distortion (the signal stayed welll under -12db so i'm normalizing it) BUT all in all the recording is bass-heavy and a little muddy.. it lacks the clarity i would have liked.

oh i forgot to mention that i had forgot the mic sensitivity set to HI (which explains why the meters led me to use 10 as a rec setting). don't know if that contributed to the bassiness of the recording or who the culprit is along the chain. the thing is that i intend to record a few concerts at a festival next week and i would appreciate your opinions on the best possible solution w/the set-up i have at my disposal right now.

[attachmentid=1055]

Just to let you guys know I dont use panasonic capsules I use primo capsules that have a frequencey response of 15hz to 40khz

Chris Church

Well, I didn't think of something basic. The specs on the Sony ECM-MS907 include a frequency response of 100-15,000 Hz. Your new mics are 20-20,000. So yes, they are bassier--they are picking up two octaves of bass below what the Sony was. If you've gotten used to the MS907 you've gotten used to a recorded sound with the equivalent of a bass roll-off at 100 Hz.

I go to a lot of concerts, and when I hear recordings with that much bass roll-off, they sound tinny to me.

So while they do sound different, your new mics are probably more realistic (unless for some reason they're biased to pick up more at the bottom end, which seems unlikely).

I haven't run the comparison with and without the attenuator because without the attenuator, even a modest amount of bass causes distortion from the preamp, and I seem to get clear bass with my mics (SP BMC-2, which use the same basic Panasonic capsules as yours do). With the attenuator, levels of 20/30 usually work fine for even the most blasting rock. I don't know what kind of display the MZ-N910 has, but your levels should be peaking about 3/4 of the way up to full.

Did you get bass distortion from the music on your stereo with the RS gizmo? If you didn't, and you were really blasting, maybe you can do without it.

Practically speaking, if I were you I'd carry the attenuator and a little pair of earbuds and try some opening acts with and without the attenuator and see what works. Recording a concert won't be like recording your stereo--there's a lot of ambient noise, and that's going to affect fidelity a lot more than the attenuator.

For club sound and pointing the mics, it's really a judgment call when you get there. Is the band getting most of its sound from onstage amps or from the PA? Do you care more about the guitars or the vocals? And how is the actual sound--not the feeling of closeness to the band, not reading the singer's lips--where you are standing? You may be better off back by the soundboard, where the guy doing the mix is judging by his own ears.

st2000.mp3

[greenmachine]

You should also be using at the very least a battery box that provides a full 9 volts, IE no resistor for the bias just a dc blocking cap in the output of the battery box of 2.2uf @ 16 to 50 volt, a nice film cap would be good we sell battery boxes.

While having the full voltage at the mics would be theoretically ideal, practically speaking, without bias resistor the output impedance and channel separation would be close to zero. A bias resistor is unavoidable. I had best results with resistors in the recommended 2-10kOhm range, anything significantly below or above degrades signal quantity and quality. Could you explain your thoughts behind your statement?

[CHURCH-AUDIO]

Man your right lol I was thinking of my new mics that use a three wire. I dont use a bias resistor for them. But for two wire you need one OMG but the other info was correct Sorry you are right to point this out.

Thank you.

While having the full voltage at the mics would be theoretically ideal, practically speaking, without bias resistor the output impedance and channel separation would be close to zero. A bias resistor is unavoidable. I had best results with resistors in the recommended 2-10kOhm range, anything significantly below or above degrades signal quantity and quality. Could you explain your thoughts behind your statement?

[kooterb]

Chris Church

Edited November 8, 2005 by kooterb

[greenmachine]

I am using Cool Edit Pro and I must not be doing something right as I can't get it done.

Thanks,

Fred

From the 'Effects' -> 'Amplitude' menu you can choose 'Pan/Expand...'

Raise the 'Stereo Expand' bar by a desired amount for the effect. Be careful not to over-process your recording. Through headphones the effect usually sounds artificial - for a headphones mix the recording should usually be left 'as is'.

[attachmentid=1059][attachmentid=1060]

[kooterb]

From the 'Effects' -> 'Amplitude' menu you can choose 'Pan/Expand...'

Raise the 'Stereo Expand' bar by a desired amount for the effect. Be careful not to over-process your recording. Through headphones the effect usually sounds artificial - for a headphones mix the recording should usually be left 'as is'.

[attachmentid=1059][attachmentid=1060]

Thanks GM, I'll work with this some more.

I personally like the 'as is' headphone sound of a BINURAL recording,

but sometimes like to listen to my recording on my home

stereo and car. I am always looking for a way to tweak the

sound some.

Thanks for your time,

Fred J. aka KooterB

[CHURCH-AUDIO]

its hard to do. You have to record left and right into multi track, then remix them into stereo using the pan knobs. Pan the tracks hard left and hard right. In Cool edit it can be a pain, but you will know it when you have done it correctly.

Chris Church

the last trick is a simple one

I use a good sound editing program and seperate left and right and hard pan them hard left and hard right.

Hey Chris, at the risk of my being dumb, could you please detail this trick a little more?

I am using Cool Edit Pro and I must not be doing something right as I can't get it done.

Thanks,

Fred

ACTUALY that is a simulated pan and will not work as well as actualy panning the left and right tracks hard left and right.

From the 'Effects' -> 'Amplitude' menu you can choose 'Pan/Expand...'

Raise the 'Stereo Expand' bar by a desired amount for the effect. Be careful not to over-process your recording. Through headphones the effect usually sounds artificial - for a headphones mix the recording should usually be left 'as is'.

[attachmentid=1059][attachmentid=1060]