I wasn’t able to record the second concert by the Khachaturian Trio myself, since that was the day I went into hospital for my eye operation and the hospital wanted to keep me in overnight just to make sure things were OK, which they were. So my son David did the honours for me, and did an excellent job into the bargain. So we ended up with quite a bit of material – 65 gigabytes of sound files.
What was immediately apparent was the quality and clarity of the sound coming from the two PianoMics. It was almost as though it was a studio recording – which of course is to expected given the proximity of the microphones to the pianos and the minimal ‘bleeding’ of one piano into the second piano microphone. For the two piano works, the stereo split for each PM40 was quite clear, and I was able to mix the two pianos left and right to great effect.
What was also apparent was that the two Neumann microphones capturing the stage and ambient sounds were nowhere near as clear. As would be expected, the stereo split was much less apparent, and the clarity of the sound compared to the PM40s was much less. That’s not to say it wasn’t good – for a stage sound it was quite acceptable but compared to the PM40 sound it wasn’t. In fact it turned out in practice that mixing the Neumann and PM40 sounds did not give good results. I suspect there were at least three reasons for this.
Firstly, the microphones have vastly different frequency ranges – the Neumanns from 20Hz-20kHz, but the PM40s from 9Hz-40kHz. Secondly, the Neumanns were recording ambient sound which has more reverberation than the close-miked sound of the PM40s. Thirdly, the PM40s capture a very clear stereo split for each piano (this is inherent in their design) which, directionally, is from the back of the stage to the front. The stereo split of the Neumanns, such as it is, is from left to right across the stage. So you have two totally different recording paradigms and sound characteristics from the PM40s and the Neumanns. What I found was that trying to mix the two just didn’t work at all.
Mixing the Neumanns into the PM40s destroyed the clarity and positional characteristics of the sound. Mixing the PM40s into the Neumanns resulted in an uncomfortable closeness of the piano sound which was totally at odds with the ambience of the Neumann sound. It was suggested to me that perhaps one could mix a small amount of the PM40s into the ambient sound, and that may well be possible although my attempts to do this didn’t seem in my view to improve matters much.
So effectively for the piano works (solo, duet and two pianos) I only used the PM40 sound. For the piano trio works and also some soprano voice performance which was part of the second concert, I only used the Neumann sounds. Not very satisfactory I suppose, but anything else would have seriously compromised the sound and that was something I didn’t want to occur.
The solution, I suspect, lies somewhere in the middle. There is no doubt that the best piano sound comes from the PM40s – that was what they were designed for. For any other acoustic instruments, then these should be miked as closely as is possible without distracting the performers or the audience. I would love to try the Earthworks QTC50’s, which run from 3hz-50kHz (!) but that will need to wait for a while. The whole setup will need some careful thought and experimentation but it has distinct promise, and will enable, uniquely one suspects, as close as is possible a studio quality recording from a live performance venue.
More thought is required, but I’m sure I’m on the right track.