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Started October 10th, 2008 · 3 replies · Latest reply by ebbixx 15 years, 10 months ago
I just got the Sony PCM-D50, which I'm using as a field recorder to capture audio from live high school marching band performances at the moment. Overall the recordings are good, certainly far better than the audio I was capturing from a video camera, high in the stands or inside or on top of the announcer's stand. However, I've noticed (as has the band director) that the percussion is very "hot" and not just when the drumline happens to be closer to the unit's mics than other sections of the band. Please keep in mind that, at present, I have no budget nor ready access to a qualified recording engineer. My options are mainly limited to placing the recorder on a tripod and finding a best compromise to record all audio from one spot that does not interfere with the band's marching. Right now that spot seems to be somewhere around the 30 yard line to the left of center (left as one faces the back of the drum major on his stand).
Video of one of these performances (including specific details of the filters already used to modify the raw PCM audio file) appears at http://www.vimeo.com/1916635 or vimeo.com. For anyone whose connection chokes on that particular video I am in the process of uploading to YouTube as well, under my channel, "ebbixx" -- the video should be transcoded in the next few hours. I'll edit this post or provide a specific URL once I know what it is.
My real issue, at this point, is to optimize the recorder (or MORE LIKELY doing something in post) to "cool down" the percussion elements in the raw audio. I'm such a recording noob that I'm not really sure where I should be looking online for discussions of how to deal with raw recordings where the percussion comes out a little too much in front.
So far I've tried compensating for the hot percussion by applying/adjusting the noise gate filters that pop up as a standard FX when I edit these tracks on a Vegas Pro 8.0 timeline -- the audio is intended mainly for use in video of the band in question. I have two raw audio sources: (1) (better, mentioned above) is the PCM-D50 track recorded from a tripod set perhaps 10 yards in front of the football field's OOB lines, off to the audience's left of the drum major and fixed percussion line (xylophones, cymbals, gong and such). Source (2) is the worse audio coming from the on-camera boom mic of a Canon XL H1 ... very decent sound for an on-camera mic, but the placement is clearly totally wrong unless I'm *looking* for crowd noise, audience member chatter, bored announcers shooting the breeze (if recording inside or anywhere near the booth) plus 60-cycle hum from light stand power supplies and other garbage sound.
Question is: what ARE the standard, proven ways of bringing down or slightly de-emphasizing percussion in a large band when you have recorded sound from a single point source, and perhaps a tiny bit of directional focus to separate the channels?
Looking at the video, I must say this looks like one hell of a difficult recording situation. You got the few static instruments at the front and then a LARGE space with distributed instruments all over the place. I'd tend to say that with one stereo microphone setup, this is going to be pretty darned difficult...
For the drums, try a bit of multiband compressor
I.e. like http://www.waves.com/content.aspx?id=323
But there are cheap versions of this as well, and I'm sure vegas has one built in as well...
Here are some free ones:
http://www.wavosaur.com/vst/multiband-compressor-plugins.php
Multiband compressors are quite hard to use, so you could also just experiment first with a sing-band (i.e. regular) compressor...
If you're not that knowledgeable about compressors, check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression
As a final note, you can apply all tricks you want, if the original audio doesn't capture the sound correctly you're going to have a hard time trying to fix the recording afterwards
- Bram
Bram
Looking at the video, I must say this looks like one hell of a difficult recording situation. You got the few static instruments at the front and then a LARGE space with distributed instruments all over the place. I'd tend to say that with one stereo microphone setup, this is going to be pretty darned difficult.......
As a final note, you can apply all tricks you want, if the original audio doesn't capture the sound correctly you're going to have a hard time trying to fix the recording afterwards
- Bram
Thanks a lot for the suggestions about compressors. That seems to help a lot in terms of downplaying the drums. I made the mistake originally (in the vid you looked at) of using the built-in compressors in what was probably exactly the wrong way, which only emphasized the drums more. Once I'd read up some, (and looked at the silly things I'd done) results got much better. Thank you so much!