Yeah I know what you mean about the sound recording conditions but at the same time what my clients hire me for first and foremost is the video aspect. They expect to get great footage out of it, but they're never thinking they'll end up with a studio quality sound to go along, and the reason why that is is I always make it very clear from the get go that we are not working with studio like conditions therefore the sound quality will be highly dependant on the room accoustics and options.

I always offer an extra audio package where I'll bring in a dedicated soundman, if not crew, and mic and record every single instrument independently to then mix it in post exactly the way they want, but so far they never chose to go for it, mainly because the visuals is what they're after. They're not selling they're sound with my product, they're selling their image. If they want to sell their sound, they should (and usually do) go and record a demo album in a studio with proper realisation.

Of course I'd love to eventually provide a full high-end audio-video package, but I'm not ready yet for that to be honest, as I'm still learning the job even after one year of operation and possess only rudimentary audio knowledge (which I'm trying hard to develop by speaking with people like you on these boards). So in the meantime I'll concentrate on getting great footage with anything from acceptable to good audio to go along, always pushing for it to get better of course.

Guess I'm dating myself then firmly as a geezer then <grin> - I'm old fashioned enough the think a band is hired primarily based oin their musical ability and not so much on their appearance. Were I a band leader or their manager, I'd first and foremost want a demo video to showcase the music and have the look and field of broadcast concert footage. Shows what I know about the contemporary music scene ROFL.

Well maybe we're just dealing with different types of clients. I'm sure there are some out there that will want a video made with the music coming first and footage 2nd, but I haven't had a chance to work with those. Even worse, maybe my almost exclusive video background and limited audio knowledge has kept me from getting hired by those that will value the sound first and foremost. It's just that speaking from what I've seen so far, clients that priorize sound make a studio demo. The ones that are already somewhat established make a music video to go along, and the ones still trying to make a name for themselves shoot a live video to show first their presence on stage, crowd interaction, dynamic, etc. and then how good their sound is. It's kind of silly when you think of it but that's the way it's been so far for me. And I still feel like I'm keeping the doors open for those clients that both have monetary means and a real concern for audio by offering an extra sound package.

BTW, still looking for those mics, I've been told that small diaphragm mics have a hard time getting a rich sound up to the very low frequencies but keep a very clean sound in the higher notes (which based on experience I would say seems true), while large diaphragms (with which I have no experience) are much better at getting a rich full sounding sound in the lower frequencies but from a distance can make the sound muddy and not so bright. So based on that, I was wondering then, shouldn't a mid-side audio setup with a large diaphragm figure 8 mic and a small diaphragm cardoid give me a richer, fuller sound when decoded back to stereo? If that was the case, I think I'd narrow down my potential selections to either a couple C4 and a C3, or a couple NT5 and an NT2. Or would an ORTF setup maybe with 2 medium 3/4" diaphragms like the XML's be a good compromise for getting rich sound in both ends of the spectrum? I must say I always had trouble getting rich basses with small diaphragms so I was wondering if that might be a good workaround.

I've heard of using a pair of selectable pattern large diaphram mics like the Rode NT2-A or large diaphram mics from AT, AKG, Neuman etc like that - in a vertical line with the the capsule ends almost touching each other and both set to cardioid for X-Y or one set to cardioid and the other to figure-8 for M/S. Would be insteresting to hear an A/B comparison of large diaphram and small diaphrams used on the same piece. I tend to think of large diaphrams as basically vocal mics and small diaphrams as instrument mics. Mic's aren't like speakers and their diameter doesn't influence the frequency response the same way a speaker's does. Small diaphrams have a smaller mass to accelerate and so can follow sharp transients and attacks like drum hits or piano better.

So would I.

So you think there is nothing to gain in the lower frequencies detail and depth by using a large diaphragm mic? Because that's pretty much the only thing that concerns me, getting good deep bass out of the mics I'll be buying for my stereo setup. I don't want thin sounding mics.

I would also be interested in knowing if using a LD mic as figure 8 and SD mic as the cardioid in an M/S config might be a good way of getting the "best" of both worlds while negating the worst or at the very least, if it's a viable solution when you want to do an M/S config and only have small diaph cardoids and a large diaph figure 8 mic (which in my case could also serve for voice-over purposes).

I heard someone say that the Studio Projects LDS-2 is
quite impressive in M-S. It also does X/Y
and Blumlein. Can be had for under $500.
This is a large-diaphragm mic.

I don't know - would be an interesting experiment.

One way to avoid a "thin" sound is to use an omni for the mid mic - omnis tend to have a richer sound than do directional mics and while cardioids are usually used for the mid, an omni will work as well.

Thanks for the tip. I'll take this into account when finally settling for a kit. I guess all that's left for me is to try and hear some mic samples of the ones I'm considering most. I'll feel more comfortable in my decision that way (that's how I chose my MKH416 and I never regreted it).

Correction: the model is the LSD-2.

So much information exchange of experienced people in this thread.
I cannot resist and step in with my 'newbee' question:

Is there any cardioid pair available in the market which could match quality of the AT3031, C4, NT5 and others mentioned here at a similar prize but which does NOT require phantom power?

For me 'ultra porability is of outmost importance and I'd love if I could avoid using a phantom power supply. I'd record directly into my GS400 or an iriver H120 or an Roland R-09 which I am considering to get.

thank you for any sugggestion.


and that stereo bar Steve House mentioned after Dave Largent asked for one, can be seen here:
http://www.taperssection.com/referen..._ShureA27M.pdf

Andreas, you might want to consider the battery operated AT822 stereo microphone for $250. It has a pair of cardioid elements in one housing. This would fit into your requirement for "ultra portability" and eliminate fussing with the set up of two mics.

Andreas, off the top of my head, if you wanted
to use some non-phantom cardioids with a
stereo bar such as that Shure model, I'd
maybe look at the Audio Technica Artist line
for some battery operated mics.
Maybe not as good as 3031 and NT5
but that's about the best I can think
of that don't use phantom.
Maybe someone else would have some
thoughts on this.

thank's Fred for your fast reply.
edited: and Laurent..your post appeared while I was writing this:

about a weeks ago I bought an AT822! and I really like it - my first 'real' mic!

I want the ability to record audio only as well and therefore just also bought an iriver H120 and had planned to add a socalled Denecke AD-20 preamp+A/D to go optical in on the iriver. Later I got word though that the AD-20 does not sound to good and I also realized that this set up would be quite bulky. Therefore I may change my audio recorder to be an Edirol R-09 - specially if I get confirmed that it's built-in preamp would even be good enough for ambience recording which would make the external preamp obsolete.

Now I do want the ability to record audio to my GS400 and to my audio recorder simultaniously, hence the need of another mic. - preferably one which adds variety to the AT822 and therefore thought of cardidoid or omni pairs, preferably ones which have interchangeable capsules.

In another forum I just got pointed to those:
http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cg.../item/SP-CMC-4
if loud or quiet sound coupled with:
http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cg...item/SP-SPSB-6

seems like a quite good solution! Those mics house AT853 cardioid capsules, if I understand right the capsules are changeable to house omnis as well. They seem to perform alright even with plug in power and if powered do with just 9 Volt.
Is this something like you, Dave, were pointing at?

I also wonder if, in case I get the Edirol R-09, the onboard mics could even be sufficient.
( I am buying too much stuff lately...)

Not necessarily. You could send audio from one set of mics to both the camera and the audio recorder with by using an inexpensive mixer or mic splitter with multiple outputs.

Sorry, I havent had time to read all the posts,
but I use Shure SM81's. 1 far left, 1 far right, and a set in the XY setup in the middle. It covers nicely, prefrb. not more than 10 feet away from the stage, unless it's run through a sound reinforcement system. If it is, I try to get an output from the sound tech, if not mic the speaker cabs with a dynamic (Shure SM57 and AKG D12) mics. I tend not to put a condensor on a speaker cab, it comes in too hot.

For high end stuff, I use Neumann KM140's (cardioid head), on the same pattern, and the Crown Stereo PZM (MKII?) mic in the middle behind the XY pattern.

What do you think of those plug-ins
that are supposed to turn your
XY recordings into M-S? There's
got to be something here that is
not the same as M-S? There's got to
be some compromise?

obviously!...though not for me, I had never thought of this...

I am planning to document a 10 day long art and music festival in south India. I won't have any help and will do all myself. I thought to set up a separate audio recorder, and shoot videos + AT822 but not only from a tripod, but also at times to carry the cam to get other angles, close ups etc. I want to put all on a DVD which features audios of individual musical performances at 'full length', but videos which rather show the variety of musicians then covering full lenght individual performances. I guess in this case a separate recorder still would be good.

you say: 'inexpensive mixer or mic splitter'...that makes me very curious though...could you please point at one specifically, e.g. brand name, model name..?

thank you ( - and please tell me if my postings disturb in this thread and I rather stopped posting here )

There are a number of ways to split a single mic signal for two destinations. Here's a couple of examples of simple splitters, The Whirlwind Splitter-L
http://www.whirlwindusa.com/split.html#splitterl
and the SP1X2 and SP1X3 right below it on that page. For stereo micing you'd obviously need 2 of them, one for each mic line. HOWEVER, in my previous post I overlooked the fact that you were using the the AT822 and I'm pretty sure these won't work with it. They are designed to split a mono, balanced mic to feed 2 or 3 inputs. But your AT822, while it does use an XLR output, is wired so it sends two unbalanced stereo channels on the XLR and a splitter designed for balanced mono will do very strange things to the signal even though the connectors are compatible- very likely you'd hear nothing at all on the outputs.

You said you wanted to record the audio continuously and move around with the camera catching different angles etc. For good music recording the mic needs to be fairly precisely positioned and should stay in that one place. As I think about your project, I'd use the 822 on a stand to feed your recorder that becoimes the program's audio and the in-camera mic to record a "scratch track" with the video to aid you in lining up the two in post. The quality of the audio in camera is immaterial in that case since you just using it for reference and it won't appear on the finished product.

I'm a little confused though. Are you planning on using the 822 or in a previous post you also mentioned you were looking for a pair of seperate cardioids. Is this an either one or the other or are you planning on going with both?

If you're by yourself, what are you doing about security for your stuff as you move about the crowd? Call me distrustful but I don't think a pocket-sized $400 recorder and $250 mic are going to last 2 minutes in a crowd if you move away from them to get a closeup of the performers.

Your posts are just fine, keep 'em coming - we're all just users helping users. If you have a question that you think might go too far off-topic in a particular thread, just post it as a new thread.

interesting...I believe that I will not need a splitter anyway though. I am even happy that the AT822 does not have ballanced cables, because little volume, little weight, easy to set up are essential to me.

Yes, I was planning to set up the audio recorder fixed with it's mic near to the sound source. Why I was thinking to get another mic, or rather a pair of cardioids or omnis ( best interchangeable ), is that I thought I wanted to have decent sound from both the cam and the audio recorder, the AT822 using shockmounted on the cam. But you are very right, I could just drop wanting to have 'useable' audio from the cam, only use it's onbopard mic's sound as reverence.

No, I don't worry. At the festival I am thinking of I would not have any security concern. I believe that the audio recorder would be way up in front at the front edge of the stage for everybody to see, nobody would touch it. Very likely I'd even get help like electrical current set up ( besides: India does have some inexpliable sides: e.g roadside shops in Mumbay just wrap their goods for the night with some plastic cover, and there will be many poor homeless sleeping next to it without touching it )

thanks

Interesting question to ponder. I come up with "yes, there is a compromise."

Short form explanation:
The M-S works with three polar patterns, the XY with two. Over the coverage range of 180° in front, the XY pair has about 3/4 of each of two lobes in the field, for a total of 1 1/2 lobes. The M-S has one lobe to the front and two half-lobes to the sides for a total of 2 lobes. Without doing actual computations, my sense is that there will be more sounds more off-axis with the XY than with the M-S, with resultantly more coloration.

Long form explanation:
Placed at the same point in the room, both M-S and XY arrays are subjected to the same sound pressure information. In post, the mid and side signals from the M-S array can be mixed to form left and right channels, where L = M + S and R = M - S. And in post, the left and right channels from the XY array can be separated into mid and side signals. M = L/2 + R/2, S = L/2 - R/2.

[Side Note: This simple math is not a trick or an approximation invented by audio engineers, it's solid math and physics and has many parallels in the physical world. Any quantity with magnitude and direction is indistinguishable from the correct pair of perpendicular components added together. For instance, a crate on a floor being pulled by a rope to the northeast is the same as the crate being pulled with two ropes, equally to the north and east. And a million ropes pulling on that crate in a million different directions with a million different amounts of force would have the same net effect as one rope pulling in one direction. And finally, that one rope's force could be broken down into two perpendicular components. Such is is that all the frequencies and amplitudes of all the sounds in a room at a point can be represented by variations in pressure coming from the front plus variations in pressure coming from the side. Don'tcha love it?]

So yeah, the XY pair is, in a perfectly real sense, also recording the mid and side signals in both channels, and they can be retrieved later.

The question then becomes, does any given XY pair record the same mid and side signals as any given M-S pair? For any real comparison of particlar makes and models it's easy to see that the answer is no. There would be differences in the frequency responses of the elements and all that.

But let's rule those out and say that we have built arrays with identical cardioid component elements; two elements for the XY and three elements for the M-S. We know that we get off-axis coloration with cardioids. Let's say we have a musical sound coming from the front right. In my estimation there would more off-axis coloration with the XY than with the M-S. That's because for the M-S array, the sound source is 45° from the front and from the right side. The third element of the M-S is going to contribute very little signal to the mix. But for the XYs at 110° separation from each other, the sound source is 100° from the left facing mic and only 10° from the right facing one. Cardioids are irregular shapes so when all this is added up to mid and side signals, they would be different for the two arrays.

Which one will sound better? Hell, I don't know. [Edit-- But my guess is, other things being equal, that the M-S would sound better. All that said, I think I'll stick with ORTF :>) ]

the plug in-s that convert x/y to m/s are meant for post work - the idea being that you then have two channels, and lowering one fader gradually reduces the apparent width of the image. Hand when matching perspective in video shots. You know, you have perhaps a really wide 16:9 shot of a cathedral. The full stereo image (let's assume an orchestra playing) gives a fair bit of separation between left and right. You want a slow zoom to the conductor. You have the choice of leaving the image wide, as it was, and for music I stick with this, but if the visuals need the soundscape to shrink to match them, as the camera zooms or tracks in, then the normal process would be to shift both x/y channel pan pots in from their fully left/fully right positions in to the middle. Any small slips in the tracking between them produce image shifts, and these are very obvious on headphones. Lowering a single fader is much easier. A single mono feed is also easy to arrange, just sending some of the M channel.

The converter isn't trying to reproduce the 'sound' of an m/s pair - that's not what it is for at all, it is just the matrixing that is being fiddled with. The sound of an m/s pair is very different to any discrete two channel technique - but the benefit is the ability to 'play' afterwards!

Yes, we know that. The question then became "if you can do that, then is there any real inherent virtue in the M-S mics we've had our eye on?" In what way are they different? Is the M-S better? Specifically, what M-S pair(s) and two channel technique(s) have you compared?

David,

When recording a performance, you really only have one option and that is to record off the board. The reason that there are so many lines in is that to make the audio sound good, you need to ISOLATE each channel. The isolated channels make it to the board and are then mixed to output a good sound mix to the audience. It is important to note that this is not STUDIO sound. The tech is making it sound good through the board to compensate for accoustics, crowd and effects. What sounds good to you live may not sound so good on tape. If you took your 4 channels from the board preprocessed, you could do the mix yourself. Many artists won't like that either because you are now changing their sound. If you are trying to use this footage to promote a band, you owe it to them to get the sound off the board. Any other setup does no service to capturing the sound as it is meant to be and imo, you are just wasting your money on equipment that's not necessary. Try sending a few beers to the soundman and see if that doesn't get you on the board.

SOmething that I invested in for about $1100 is http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/Produc...4MTRE3_content. It's a wireless monitor mixer from SHure. It comes with a transmitter, a mixer and a bodypack receiver. I plug my 4 outputs from the board into my monitor/mixer. Then I sent the 4 signals into the transmitter. Then I output the stereo signal into the bodypack receiver and with a mini to stereo XLR, into my Z-1. I can move all around and always have the best audio possible short of micing the entire show myself.

This is just my opinion which you didn't really ask for but I think getting anything with seperate mics just won't give you good sound.

Jeff

Jeff, I'm curious as to what four outputs you're taking from the board.

I would like to know more about how the
true M/S differs from "XY converted in post".

Fred, I only use 4 channels when there are only 4 channels to the board. If there are more, I just take a stereo mix. If there ar emore than 4 channels and I want to record them all, I use my alesis 24hd to record them and then mix them in post.

Jeff

Are you taking mic direct outs, submix outs, or tapping into the main outs? Wondering what the 4 channels actually are .. tapping into the main outs, for example, would only be two channels, L & R, not 4.

I actually split the signal before it gets to the board when I intend to record a show. They are mic/line inputs. One side goes to my recorder or monitor/mixer. The only reason I mentioned 4 tracks was because the original thread suggested that he only captures four tracks. Again, another reason I use the wireless monitor mixer is because I can send 4 tracks through to the receiver and then with a mini to stereo xlr, I can send two channels mixed to right and to left or however I want them. The monitor mixer allows you to balance the signal to two seperate channels or anywhere in between.

Jeff

That's what threw me because depending on the nature of the performance you might have a lot more than 4 mics in use. If you're tapping between the mics and the main board you could have 5 to 7 or so separate mics on the drum kit alone plus lead vocal, backing vocal, keyboards, guitars, etc, the list could get quite lengthy. The topic is particularly timely for me today because if the truck has arrived at the local Long & McQuade store, I'll be picking up a Mackie 1642 on my way home from work this afternoon. Issues of how many channels to look for in a mixer and for what have been in the forefront of my mind for the last few weeks <grin>.

Congrats! Good luck with the recording

I guess that my post #60 above is as good as it gets on this. I figure that there is probably less off-axis coloration with M-S than with XY. Other than that, if elements of the same characteristics are used for both arrays, it has to be the same information recorded by either arrragement. The only difference would be that mid and side are already mixed in fixed proportions in the XY, but that can be undone with the plug in.

Thanks - after months of reviewing specs, browsing in the showrooms, etc, my desktop is home to a new Mackie 1642 this morning and I am a happy camper with a new toy. Ohhh the buttons, the buttons!!!!! Blinky Lights and Knobs and Faders - Oh My!! <grin>