Mixing down classical music...near field monitors?

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pixeldustfilms

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Hello all,

My first post, so thanks for having me aboard. We're a small film company and we're starting to film live classical music recitals. We have a small set of M-Audio DX4's which really aren't servicing our growing need, and would like to purchase something that gives us a fairly accurate picture of what we're recording (we're going straight to the camera, HDV format, and then pulling the footage into Final Cut Pro, where we do the edits...audio sweetening is pretty close to the end of our workflow).

Anyway, we're looking at a pair of KRK V8 speakers, and although I know it makes the most sense to go listen to a pair (which we will), I was wondering if trying to mix classical piano on speakers such as these is overkill? We are also mixing down voiceover, doing voiceover with audio beds, and other mixing audio in Soundtrack Pro. We're not a recording studio, so we'll never be recording live drums, guitars, etc. It's pretty much what we capture on film, which, by the way, is usually done via a pair of AT 4050s...

Any thoughts on buying something like the KRKs for such a highly specialized application as classical music?

Thank you very much in advance!

Gino
 
didn't mean to double post, sorry

I hit submit and my computer freaked, and I hit submit again...sorry!
 
I don't think the V8's are overkill for classical music. If you will be doing future projects that involve different types music you have made a wise investment. In the future you can purchase the v series sub woofer to accompany the V8's for bass heavy material.
Let me say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to monitors. One person may love the krk's and another genelec. Definitely listen to them and compare notes if you will be working with others.
 
I'm more concerned about you recording into the camera than what you are playing back on. I think a more important improvement would be to record the music to a digital recorder synced to the camera, using good preamps and converters with those mics.
 
My posts in that other thread were better than my posts in this thread.
 
I think most classical recording engineers would say that just about nothing is overkill. They tend to use very high-end equipment.

Thomas
 
barefoot said:
I think most classical recording engineers would say that just about nothing is overkill. They tend to use very high-end equipment.

Thomas
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It's true. With classical music everything is very exposed, you can hear every flaw in a recording very easily.

For this reason, great monitors are very important. You need to be able to hear exactly what is going on with the recording. I think great monitors would also make you aware that recording into your camera is probably not the thing to do.

It depends if your clients care more about seeing themselves or hearing themselves. If these classical recitals are student recitals then you might be able to get away with it. But if they are artists putting on paid performances, then I think you'll want to go with a separate recording system, i.e. quality outboard preamps and converters going into a dedicated recording device that is synced to the camera.
 
SonicAlbert said:
It depends if your clients care more about seeing themselves or hearing themselves. If these classical recitals are student recitals then you might be able to get away with it. But if they are artists putting on paid performances, then I think you'll want to go with a separate recording system, i.e. quality outboard preamps and converters going into a dedicated recording device that is synced to the camera.
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There's no reason of course what they can't both see *and* hear well by using a seperate recording chain.

To be honest, though, as much as I am an advocate of house sync, if they are recording video to a digital format (Digital8, MiniDV, DVD-R) and also recording seperate audio to a digital format (DAT, HD, DAW), the need for true synch is not really all that present. I regularly do A/V recordings of live performances from weddings to business conferences to live band gigs using seperate digital audio and video recording chains, and then edit and mix it all together in Vegas all the time without the use or need for synching TC.

As long as there is some kind of audio/visual cue one can use to line up the clips in the tmeline, the playback accuracy is quite good enough for performances of up to 2-3 hours to remain in damn good sync (I haven't tried anything longer than that yet.)

And as far as a cue to use, nothing works easier than using the soundtrack from the camera as a sync cue. Just import the cameral audio along with the video from the camera, line up your "good" audio tracks with those video soundtracks, and then just mute the video soudtracks; viola!, you have video with separate audio micely lined up and well-synched.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
And as far as a cue to use, nothing works easier than using the soundtrack from the camera as a sync cue. Just import the cameral audio along with the video from the camera, line up your "good" audio tracks with those video soundtracks, and then just mute the video soudtracks; viola!, you have video with separate audio micely lined up and well-synched.

G.
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this is exactly what I'll be doing in a few weeks {{hopefully if I get the gig}}.
A band is being asked by a record company's A&R guy to produce a live video shoot of their concerts so they can see how they perform live. A buddy of mine will be shooting it with a three camera setup and we'll be tracking the audio into a Pro Tools HD system. That way we have it multitracked and already recorded with better gear. We won't have any sync device most likely so we'll just have to line up the camera audio with the tracks in PT later.
 
bennychico11 said:
this is exactly what I'll be doing in a few weeks {{hopefully if I get the gig}}.
A band is being asked by a record company's A&R guy to produce a live video shoot of their concerts so they can see how they perform live. A buddy of mine will be shooting it with a three camera setup and we'll be tracking the audio into a Pro Tools HD system. That way we have it multitracked and already recorded with better gear. We won't have any sync device most likely so we'll just have to line up the camera audio with the tracks in PT later.
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Multi-camera shoots of a live band performance are the most fun to edit (for me, anyway), especially if it's a tight band with good musicians playing a disciplined arrangement. It's also interesting (and fun) how the addition of video can alter the audio mix somewhat.

Sometimes choosing which audio track to use as the key sync track in such instances is not instantly intuitive. It'd be nice to use one of the pure, seperate audio tracks and align the all the video to that, and when possible that's what I'd recommend. That depends, though on the condition and availability of the audio-only mix when it comes time to edit the video. Also, watch for any instance where a camera might be a signifigantly different distance from the sound source (probably the PA), enough to cause a noticable delay in sound reaching it's mics. In those cases, you need to make sure you sync the video and not the audio.

All in all, though, it should be a fun project; have fun with it. And let me know how it goes :)

We now resturn you to your regularly scheduled thread programming...

G.
 
There will be some drift between digital recording devices, as there is a reason why digital devices are word clocked together, after all! But not enough to be noticable in most workaday practical situations. It's not like cassette machines, which could be 10% off and were useless for anything that needed synching.

I think the advantages of recording to a dedicated digital record over the camera far outweigh any other factors.

Creating a synch point could be a little difficult though. A finger snap or other sharp short sound wouldn't be acceptable in a hushed concert hall.
 
SonicAlbert said:
There will be some drift between digital recording devices, as there is a reason why digital devices are word clocked together, after all! But not enough to be noticable in most workaday practical situations.
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Agreed on all counts. To reiterate and to expand a bit, I've been able to record 2-3 hour-long Digital8, MiniDV and full DV video with simultaneous and seperate audio recording to ADAT (42min) and more recently to PC HD without sync with no humanly noticable drift issues. Granted that's a little misleading in that the videotape needs to be switched out after an hour or so, so really it's only guaranteed synched for an hour at at time. But then again, because of the tape switching, it only needs to be synched for that long anyway.
SonicAlbert said:
I think the advantages of recording to a dedicated digital record over the camera far outweigh any other factors.
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Again, agreed 100%.
SonicAlbert said:
Creating a synch point could be a little difficult though. A finger snap or other sharp short sound wouldn't be acceptable in a hushed concert hall.
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Not really a problem. One usually doesn't need to create any sync points at all, it's easy to use existing materail for that. Several examples include:

- the already mentioned method of syncing the dedicated audio to the video audio by playing them back together at first. It's a pretty simple matter to line up the timeline waveforms to match up, combined with listening to them together as you do it. Once they are synched up, one can either just mute or cut the video soundtrack; thougsh it's usually a good idea to keep it and just mute it so you still have it if you need to go back and re-sync later on in the editing process.

- fast-attack video events such as camera flashbulbs (great when doing wedding videos) or dynamic stage lighting cues are great ways of lining up video clips in a multi-camera shoot. Remember, the cue doesn't necessarily have to happen at the beginning of the clip/track. This is especially true when one is well into the editing process and is B-rolling partial clips together.

- similar fast-attack audio events such as the drummer counting off the beat with his sticks at the beginning of a song, or even distinct snare hits or cymbal crashes in the middle of a song, or the lead guitarist snapping off a power chord on the one, etc. all work fine as both video and audio cue events. It's a little tougher when doing orchestra pieces, but one can still use cymbal crashes, tringle hits or tympani hits if available.

It can be tough to find good cues in something like a string quartet because of the usual lack of fast attack sounds, but there one can fall back on the syncing of the audio with the video sound tracks with little trouble.

And remember, just having a clock without reference timecode only really helps with drift issues; it's still not automatic to actually line up individual clips with simple control clocking without having a common time base value to go by. Using actual reference non-drop time code to lock everything to is obviously the best of all worlds, and feels as luxurious as driving a Mercedes versus the Chevy of non-TC usage, but they all will get one from point A to point B at the speed limit just fine and quite comfortably if one keeps their eyes and ears open.

G.
 
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