…and finally acquired a top-quality piano microphone for the Stuart piano. Whilst I have done a number of recordings both at home and at the Stuart & Sons factory, and the results were, considering the equipment I was using, quite good, there seemed to be something missing – something that prevented me from being satisfied with the outcome from a sound point of view, no matter how well I though I played.
The main issues were not so much the quality of the microphones I was using, which despite their relative inexpensiveness were nonetheless quite reasonable, but also the placement of the microphones and the acoustics of the room(s) I was recording in. My music room at home is in fact quite small, and the acoustic is ‘dry’ – i.e. not very much reverberation. On the other hand, the ‘White Room’ at the factory has very good acoustics with a satisfactory but not overwhelming reverberation – making it very good from a pure acoustic performance viewpoint. And this is where the placement of the microphones is critical because the sound close to (or even inside) the piano is different to that in the wider acoustic in the room. Too often too many microphones are used and that runs into problems in the mixing phase since one is never sure of the actual sound one wants to get.
The sound that the pianist experiences is the one that he/she uses as part of the performance feedback loop I’ve spoken about before, and that sound is ideally the one that should be captured. Try as I might, I’ve never been able to capture that sound, and even professionals with exorbitantly expensive equipment don’t seem to be able to catch it either. That is not to say they get a bad sound – far from it – but it is always not close enough to the actual sound to my ears. Then of course one has post production, equalisers, limiters, phase analysis etc etc
ad nauseum and when one hears the final result quite often the essential sound of the Stuart piano has been compromised. In my view, most professionally produced recordings of the Stuart piano are compromised in this way. What I wanted was something that captured the essence of the Stuart and required no post production fiddling whatsoever – just a simple stereo mix and that’s it.
And now I think I’ve found it. The Earthworks PianoMic system.
I’ve used this before at the factory, and have been very impressed with the results. It has a range of 9hz – 40kHz, significantly greater than the standard 20hz – 20kHz of the microphones I’ve using to this point. And, most importantly, it sits right inside the piano. The two tiny but extraordinarily effective random incidence pickup microphones sit about three inches above the dampers, and capture as close as anything I have seen or heard at this point the actual piano sound. I’ve done a number of test recordings using my Boss BR-1600 (recording at 16bit/44.1kHz, CD quality) and the results are quite amazing. There is a presence and depth to the sound that is missing from just about everything I’ve done to this point in time.
I suppose it serves me right, to an extent. After having acquired a superior quality piano and recording with less than superior quality microphones, it is not surprising that the results did not really match what I wanted to achieve. I don’t have that excuse anymore. Now all I need is 24bit/96kHz recording.
Hmmm…….