Newbie working on children's choir recording

[MOTUski]

I am working on a fund raiser CD for my son's choir. We received mechanical rights for several songs, recorded them in a church, and I am now mix/mastering. I used a MOTU 896HD at 96/24bit with 4 large diaphram condenser mics. I have DP 5 for my DAW with the standard plugins. I have since cut down to just two of the mic tracks for the choir and one for any solos we did.

If anyone is interested in helping a newbie. Please listen to my before and after files at the following link:

http://idisk.mac.com/kwilinski-Public

So far I have panned, volume balanced, cleaned up noises, EQ, and a little compression on the piano freqs. Unfortunately, I did not mic the piano separate--- lesson learned .

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Regards,

MOTUski

 

[Mistral]

The beginning with the piano panned left sounds unnatural. keep the piano spatially the same way it is behind the choir, and it will sound 10x better.

you hear noise from people breathing or whatever, pops and such every now and then.. try to use some noise removal tools such as those in cool edit pro to clean those up a bit wherever they stick out.. don't apply it to the whole track, just to any problem areas.

the main task to me is "cleaning up" the audio and making it sound glossier, more "perfect". aside from that I am not sure how much more you need to do with it.. it sounds like a true representation of a church choir which is the main thing.

maybe try to make the end fade out smoother and longer, maybe using some careful delay on the last chord of the piano... just some ideas..

 

[NYMorningstar]

The piano does sound quite unnatural panned. Any processing you do can end up sounding quite unnatural with a choir.

There is too much floor noise. Fading in and out will help hide some. Try using a few dynamic mics and use condensors from some sweet spots to mix in the room. Maybe try running this through a de-esser but be careful of the unnatural sound.

Posting this in the clinic will get you more replies too.

https://homerecording.com/bbs/forumdisplay.php?f=15