Violin Mic

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moresound said:
Wouldn't the figure 8 pattern of a ribbon microphone give the sense of a stereo recording of a violin in a mono recording?
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Sense of space, yes, but no phase information. Our brains localize partly by frequency response but mostly by phase.

Of course MS doesn't do that either, which is why I'm not a huge fan of coincident mic techniques.

And if your micing close then also micing with a room mic is this to be considered a stereo sense when listening back?
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Again, no left/right phase information. Try both ways and see, it's not a difficult experiment and it's not particular to any one instrument. This is like stereo recording 101: why ever record anything in stereo?

For me, even if I'm putting a violin in a mix I'd mic it in stereo and pan the stereo track. If I hate that, toss out one track and I'm back to mono.

When doing a live show nothing beats a plain old 57 about 8" above the violin pointing straight down on to it.
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I can think of lots of things that beat that. First, if you have a fiddler who likes to move around you need more distance. If they move around a lot, you need an instrument-mounted mic into a bodypack.

Second, I'd take an SM81 or SM94 over the SM57 even if they didn't move. Which is exactly what I used to do :)
 
Yeah, stereo is the way to go. A lot of recordings I do are with stereo tracks.
That way you can open or close the stereo field of the recorded track to give it it's space in the mix.

MSH what is the microphone model in the picture micing the violin on your web site ? And is that it's prime function or can it be used in other applications?



:cool:
 
Elvstudios, what are the approx dimensions and ceiling ht of your recording space?

Are you the violinist?
 
moresound said:
Yeah, stereo is the way to go. A lot of recordings I do are with stereo tracks.
That way you can open or close the stereo field of the recorded track to give it it's space in the mix.

MSH what is the microphone model in the picture micing the violin on your web site ? And is that it's prime function or can it be used in other applications?



:cool:
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Sorry you have to email me for that . . .
 
the ceiling height us about 10 ft and the room is pretty dead
 
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im also looking for a mic that can be used for other things if thats possible
 
OK, 12x18x10 approx, acoustically dead. You're probably not going to get a room sound that's going to help with classical violin. So I'd say just get a fairly mellow mic, position it really carefully, record mono and accept that it's not going to sound spacious. You can add reverb afterward, but with a small room type sound, added verb gets artificial sounding for classical music if you add more than just a little. Mic's I've used that are inexpensive and pretty mellow are: KEL HM1, Fathead II ribbon, Naiant omni.

If it were me I'd take the violin player, a portable recorder and a couple of Naiant omni mic's to an empty church and record there. If you ever try that I guarantee you won't ever want to record classical violin (or piano, or flute or trumpet, heh) in a small room, heh.
 
DavidK was the master of recording violin in way too small spaces, but he's long gone unfortunately. He tended to stack a *lot* of tracks though. He used something simple like an MXL for his first CD.

It didn't hurt that he is really good . . .
 
David's great. Total pro. Everything I heard of his was stacked tracks, like you said, simulating a violin section. He's probably the only violinist around who could use an mxl990 in a small room and not sound screechy, haha. I know he was trying to put together a mobile rig at one point - had a thread about it here. But I never heard anything he recorded in a hall except a live orchestral thing he posted once, and that was recorded by others.
 
I agree with XLR about recording in a large reverberant space. I have some Sennheiser e914 mics that I have recorded strings with (contemporary classical mostly), but seems to me that the single most important factor when recording classical violin is the acoustic space in which the recording is made. Even if it's far too reverberant from the audience position, this can sound great with careful positioning of the mics.

I've never applied a top reverb plugin such as altiverb to any recording of strings that I've made in a dryish space but have heard it applied to a piano recording I did in a dryish space. So far I've just used the AU MatrixReverb reverb which is sometimes better than nothing depending on what the recording is for.

I've got a recording coming up soon of my Duo for Violin and Viola. The two movements currently on that webpage were recorded in different rooms, otherwise the same mics, interface and players. For the new recording I'm wondering about applying the 3 to 1 rule using a 3rd and or 4th mic back from the main couple.
 
That's cool, violist. I listened to the first of the two recordings and it sounds really good.

The 3:1 rule (more of a guide rather than rule, really) doesn't apply in your case. It's for 2 mic's, each on a different source, that you want to be able to sum to mono with minimum phase cancellation between the two sources. Though you'll often see it inaccurately described online as relating to using mic's at different distances or angles to a single source. What you're talking about is using 2 stereo pairs, one somewhat close and one distant so you can add more natural reverb to taste later... commonly done. But it's not a 3:1 thing. You might want to time-align them also when mixing.
 
Generally one wouldn't time-align an ambient pair, that actually makes phase cancellation more likely and it's not the effect you want anyway. The goal is to have that minimum 40ms delay before reverberent sound, and to keep the ambient mics back enough in the mix that phase cancellation isn't troublesome.

Another technique is a coincident pair (often cardioids) flanked by a widely spaced pair (often omnis). Phase cancellation there is avoided again by mixing the side mics lower, and also the difference in response between the two types of mics--the omnis are picking up things the cardioids aren't.

Anyway, with ambient/side mics . . . turn them up until it sounds good, and if it starts to sound bad, turn them down.
 
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Thanks for that clarification XLR. So, if all 4 mics I have are cardioid, can two of them still be usefully employed as an ambient pair further back, and if so in what position?
 
mshilarious said:
Generally one wouldn't time-align an ambient pair
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I would say it depends. You might get what you want leaving it as is, just mixing levels, or you might find that things come into focus better or excessive echos are eliminated when time aligned, or near-aligned. I record a lot in a medium-size room and use 2 pairs occasionally, with the distant pair about 10 ft out, and always end up time-aligning them cause I like the focus.
 
violist said:
So, if all 4 mics I have are cardioid, can two of them still be usefully employed as an ambient pair further back, and if so in what position?
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Cardioid is good. Position? Depends. Personally I like ORTF (or variations of) because it gets the spaciousness of the time-arrival difference but still has good mono compatibility. If you had omnis you might try Jecklin disc also. But YMMV. You might start with your usual distance for the main pair, then walk around the hall while someone is playing and put the distant pair where the room sound is best. You might even find that the ambient sound is really good with the 2nd pair very near the first, but facing the back of the hall, haha. Record each pair of mic's to its own stereo track (or a mono track for each individual mic if you prefer). Maybe bring a very tall mic stand w/stereo bar but then you have to use some kind of monitoring to hear the sound the mic's are getting. And if you're also the performer, you might want to keep it simple.
 
will i really get a good sound out of those little naiant mics?

and won't the onmi pick up some room noise?
 
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