I am doing home recording of harp music & was thinking about have a modification done to my harp where they install 36 pickups. If you listen to the top sound clip at: http://www.gourd.com/amainframe.html?134A.HTML&2 you can hear a harp that is recorded with both mics & the pickups. This is a celtic tune/harp and has a very sharp tone. To my ears the notes that are recorded from the pickups sound as if the first portion of the note is clipped, so apparently the pickups have a threshold under which they do not have any signal. For a more natural harp sound I am trying to figure out how you would 'reclaim' the first part of the missing note so it would have less sharpness, and could then be mixed in with mic sound from the harp to exactly control how much note vs resonance (hard to do with the larger harps and thus the temptation in using pickups).
So going back to my book "Mastering Audio by Bob Katz" it looks like a compressor with a low ratio, slow attack, and slow release would be what would work for this. Alas, although I have improved my micing techniques greatly in the time I have belonged to this board, I have yet to do any compression or EQ to any of my recordings (currently equipment is Neumann 184 mics to Grace preamp to Tascam recorder).
So is compression what I should be considering for a more natural sounding note, or am I just way off base? Other suggestions? Or am I just too anal?
So going back to my book "Mastering Audio by Bob Katz" it looks like a compressor with a low ratio, slow attack, and slow release would be what would work for this. Alas, although I have improved my micing techniques greatly in the time I have belonged to this board, I have yet to do any compression or EQ to any of my recordings (currently equipment is Neumann 184 mics to Grace preamp to Tascam recorder).
So is compression what I should be considering for a more natural sounding note, or am I just way off base? Other suggestions? Or am I just too anal?