Bigus Dickus
New member
OK, so this isn't exactly a mix. 
I started to just post in the mic forum, but this seems to be the place where people listen and give advice, so here goes.
This is a recording of 22 different mic placements (well, 11 with and without an acoustic damping "tent") for a grand piano. A vocal cue helps keep track of what placement you're listening to.
The music is the opening segment of Chopin's Premiere Ballade, and yes, I changed pedaling somewhere during this process... don't ask why, don't know why. Even though it's a simple passage, I only did one take at each placement, so don't knit-pick my playing too much.
The track is straight stereo recording, no gain/eq adjustments, no panning, no compression, no effects. The only thing I considered doing was adjusting gain so that the left and right channels were equivalent volume for each position, but I decided against it. Yes, there is some clipping on two or so placements - I left the preamp gain the same for each position, and though I tried to avoid clipping apparently some positions produced a hotter signal than the one I used for gain setting. It's annoying (it's only in a couple of spots though), but hopefully you can still make use of that segment anyway.
While I can pick out my "favorite," I'm very new to this, and I would certainly appreciate any and all comments. Perhaps there are things you can hear that would be a concern during reverb effects for example that I wouldn't even know to listen for. Also, comments on the general quality of the recording are more than welcome. I very easily could have overlooked something, or you might have suggestions on ways to improve the sound.
My personal opinion of most all of the positions is that the lower range doesn't seem to "sustain" well. Can't think of a better term for it, but maybe you'll hear what I'm trying to describe.
This is a 6" Baldwin in a smallish room with acoustical treatment on the walls and panels in two corners to try and remove as much parallel surfaces as possible. Odd tracks are recorded with the piano as is, even tracks are the same placement as the track before it with the addition of an acoustic damping "tent" over the piano. This tent was a very large, very thick and heavy down blanket, and it did quite a job of isolating the piano from the room (judging from the drastic reduction in volume produced).
Equipment:
Matched pair of soundroom Oktava MC012's with cardiod capsule and no pads.
DBX386 stereo mic preamp and A/D converter
A/D set to 24 bit 88.1 kHz, recorded using 32 bit floats
M-Audio DiO 2496 taking SPDI/F signal through coax.
Cubase SX
I have a list of precise mic positions, but I'll refrain from posting that until you have the chance at listening without the distraction of knowing where the mics were.
http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=2316&alid=-1
I started to just post in the mic forum, but this seems to be the place where people listen and give advice, so here goes.This is a recording of 22 different mic placements (well, 11 with and without an acoustic damping "tent") for a grand piano. A vocal cue helps keep track of what placement you're listening to.
The music is the opening segment of Chopin's Premiere Ballade, and yes, I changed pedaling somewhere during this process... don't ask why, don't know why. Even though it's a simple passage, I only did one take at each placement, so don't knit-pick my playing too much.
The track is straight stereo recording, no gain/eq adjustments, no panning, no compression, no effects. The only thing I considered doing was adjusting gain so that the left and right channels were equivalent volume for each position, but I decided against it. Yes, there is some clipping on two or so placements - I left the preamp gain the same for each position, and though I tried to avoid clipping apparently some positions produced a hotter signal than the one I used for gain setting. It's annoying (it's only in a couple of spots though), but hopefully you can still make use of that segment anyway.
While I can pick out my "favorite," I'm very new to this, and I would certainly appreciate any and all comments. Perhaps there are things you can hear that would be a concern during reverb effects for example that I wouldn't even know to listen for. Also, comments on the general quality of the recording are more than welcome. I very easily could have overlooked something, or you might have suggestions on ways to improve the sound.
My personal opinion of most all of the positions is that the lower range doesn't seem to "sustain" well. Can't think of a better term for it, but maybe you'll hear what I'm trying to describe.
This is a 6" Baldwin in a smallish room with acoustical treatment on the walls and panels in two corners to try and remove as much parallel surfaces as possible. Odd tracks are recorded with the piano as is, even tracks are the same placement as the track before it with the addition of an acoustic damping "tent" over the piano. This tent was a very large, very thick and heavy down blanket, and it did quite a job of isolating the piano from the room (judging from the drastic reduction in volume produced).
Equipment:
Matched pair of soundroom Oktava MC012's with cardiod capsule and no pads.
DBX386 stereo mic preamp and A/D converter
A/D set to 24 bit 88.1 kHz, recorded using 32 bit floats
M-Audio DiO 2496 taking SPDI/F signal through coax.
Cubase SX
I have a list of precise mic positions, but I'll refrain from posting that until you have the chance at listening without the distraction of knowing where the mics were.
http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=2316&alid=-1
I tried to keep the passage short, but by the time I had tried all the major placements I could think of it had piled up a lot of time.
