If you are recording a live event with no second takes, i would recommend redundancy -no matter how good the gear is.
OK, getting ready for the local pro orchestra this weekend. I did buy the QuickLok A50 in the meantime, so at least that issue is solved! Man, that thing is a heavy beast! I think someone would be more likely to break a shin than to knock it over.
I took a look at “The Stereophonic Zoom” pdf, and I think I have a better understanding of the SRA (I hope) so I’ll set up my ORTF to keep that in mind – basically by moving the stand back a row or two if necessary. I still have no redundancy, which is unfortunate, but the orchestra management is not too worried since this is just for archive, and nobody seems to have listened to any of the archives in years! I am truly appreciating the advantages of battery power, so maybe before the next one, I’ll be there.
One consideration that occurred to me is that while I’m recording in Cubase, I don’t have to sit there with my headphones on – I can see the wave forms as they come in, so I know if anything has gone wrong. With a portable digital recorder, I suppose the operator really must wear headphones the whole time?
Another thing I’m wondering is if 32-bit float would provide even more headroom. I’m using 24-bit now. But if I used 32-bit, wouldn’t I be able to take in a very low signal and still have tons of headroom? I know it takes more disk space, but that’s not going to be a problem. At least in this particular instance, I’m going to be able to record the dress rehearsal, so I should have a good idea of the peaks.
I’ve listened to the recordings of the orchestras from around the area, and I’m not too fearful. I think my mics are not going to be the weak link. Redundancy definitely is. But the ORTF approach, subject to consideration of the SRA, should provide a decent recording. As far as I could tell, the last guy who did this job used one stereo mic, and I assume inside it’s an X-Y array (what else could it be), so maybe I can do something a little better, I hope, if the laptop keeps running.
Love to hear anybody’s advice at this point, thanks.
Glad you got the A50. I’ve had mine for many years and it’s still going strong. As I get older, I ponder how long I can keep carrying that thing around. It is a beast.
Portable digital recorder question - nope, you don’t have to wear headphones the whole time. Meters indicate signal being recorded, conceptually similar to wave form drawing you look at in Cubase. I don’t wear headphones much when recording live events.
Bits question - 24 is enough as it picks up plenty of detail while leaving a lot of headroom. I haven’t recorded with 32, so I can’t comment on this based on experience. Maybe somebody who has used cubase to record at 24 and 32 bits can weigh in.
Mic point - you’re right. Stereo mics are often XY. You’ll do much better with your ORTF array.
Redundancy - you’re right here too. This is your weak point.
-Tom
Was thinking of the bits question. I’ve never seen or heard of an AD converter that operates at higher than 24 bits. Maybe a 32 bit converter exists, but I haven’t seen it. So if the converter is at 24 bits, would it make any sense to have cubase recording at 32 bits?
Thanks Tom… I’ve recorded in 32-bits float (a project that was passed to me). In general, I guess it’s overkill. But if, as you think, the converter is working at 24 bits, then I can’t think of a reason to record higher than 24 bits. Anyway, 24-bit is huge headroom as it is, so I guess I’ll stick to that. Wish me luck!
You know, I was wondering, as a sort of side issue, what makes one pre-amp better than another, assuming they’re solid state. I know lots of people want tube pre-amps for coloration, but that’s clearly not applicable for a live classical performance (I think - maybe somebody feels it’s a subject to discuss). I am wondering what an expensive solid state preamp has that an inexpensive solid state preamp doesn’t have. I can only say from experience that my Steinberg MR816CSX seems to have a better recording sound than the unit it replaced, at MOTU 8-pre. I still have that unit, but I only use it to record additional percussion tracks!
This is great thread. Thanks for all the good advice and ideas.
It may be generally a quiet forum, but there are a lot of smart and genuinely helpful people here!
OK, concert recorded successfully! Turns out there is a guy in the orchestra who is well versed in live recordings. He came to defend me when I was explaining to orchestra management at the dress rehearsal that I needed at least two seats reserved for me. Evidently, the guy before me put his boom stand right against the stage, so the boom did not block any seats, and there were no wires crossing the space between stage and seats. But I was not willing to put my mics right over the conductors head, and that giant A50 clearly impeded two seats. The orchestra guy supported my arguments, so management caved in, made some seat changes, and blocked two seats for all concerts going forward.
The dress rehearsal recording went well. My new friend in the orchestra volunteered to bring his own Zoom F8 recorder to the concert so that I would have redundancy, and he also had an ART passive mic splitter. So on concert night, in a matter of 5 minutes, we set up his recorder and sent my mics to both recorders (direct to my Steinberg MR816). Everything worked perfectly. One of the great features of the F8 is that you can replicate your mics to other channels, the purpose of which is to allow you to sequentially lower the input levels. In this case, my new friend set it up with four stereo inputs (two by mic cable and two by replication), and he set the inputs lower for each pair. This is a great technique for avoiding overages and distortion – if the first pair went over, you have three others to rely on. But I have not heard what his recorder picked up so I can’t comment on the preamps. Reviews online seem to indicate it’s a pretty good box.
My 10-year-old laptop captured everything, I had no moments going into the red (having determined the levels the night before), and the backup machine also recorded everything as far as I know. Once you get insurance, you don’t really need it!
I had people in the seats on either side of my two seats, even though the concert wasn’t sold out. Turns out the front row seats are the cheapest, and the hard-of-hearing like to snap them up. Not only do they have difficulty hearing the orchestra, they have difficulty hearing themselves. Including involuntary bodily noises. At one point, the person next to me began to hum one of the more popular melodies, and he couldn’t hear me when I whispered to him. And I have a pretty good idea what he had for dinner. But the A50 goes high enough that I can’t hear it in the recording. That’s at least one advantage to putting the mic up by the stage instead of by the seats, but, I can report that my recordings are much more alive and stereo than the last guy’s. Still, whatever these aging fans do, one thing they do is show up and pay, so lots of respect to them; this orchestra wouldn’t exist without them.
Actually, I’m pretty pleased with the overall stereo effect. Lots of coughs, though, further back. The mics were maybe 12 feet behind the conductor, who had his musicians around him right up to the edge of the stage. I had the A50 as high as it would go, so it was a little over the conductor’s head, but not much. I think I fit within the SRA of 96 degrees.
As I mix, I’m not so happy with the bass. There were four basses at the extreme right of the stage, but the percussion was put at the extreme left. The last piece, Scheharazade, features a lot of percussion. Turning up the bass (perhaps to compensate for my cheap mics) also turns up the low percussion. Still, I think I’ve got a good representation of what they did. Long live live orchestras!
I had another complaint (from one of the organization’s board members) that my laptop was too bright, and he wanted me to turn the screen toward the stage. Of course that would have meant I couldn’t see it. But I did realize I have to turn the brightness down. And this is yet another advantage to a dedicated digital field recorder. So I am thinking my next purchase is one of those (probably SoundDevices Mix Pre3), and the ART splitter has to go with that. Then, it’s better mics.
I had anxiety about the power cord, but fortunately nobody kicked it up. During intermission I stood on the cord in front of all the equipment to ensure that if the cord was kicked, it would come out of the slack on the other end. I also had anxiety about recording levels, and I began to wonder if there is a specific downside to recording too low at 24-bits. I think, based on my limited knowledge of LPs, that you can fit an orchestra into a 60Db range or so, and with 24-bits, you have something like double that, so even if you were 60Db too low, you would still be ok. Have I understood that correctly?
Thanks for everybody’s help on this project!
Great to hear your experiences mate 
Yep i’m still enjoying this one…
I’m glad it all worked out and it sounds like you asserted what you needed. I also think it was very smart to have a backup recording and the overload protection on the backup tracks is a very wise move.
Maybe you’ll post something on “made with cubase” eventually for us to hear a bit of?
Good luck with future projects.
Hi Stephen, maybe I can do an extract. Going to deliver the mix tomorrow, so let’s see what the management thinks!
Here’s an extract of what I recorded and mixed on Saturday. As mentioned earlier, this is a pair of very cheap AT-2020 mics in an ORTF configuration into the Steinberg MR816CSX interface into a 10-year-old IBM laptop into Cubase. I did my best mix within Cubase, which consisted primarily of equalization and loudness processing. I also added a touch of reverb – the dress rehearsal didn’t seem to need it, but the concert night was full of warm bodies. Some of them were humming, but the mics didn’t pick it up. But a lot of them were coughing – waiting for the quiet parts, apparently. The loudness processing is through Ozone 5. I did have redundant recording, but I didn’t need it since the main path caught the whole thing. It could be that the other path had better quality, but I’ll never know.
https://soundcloud.com/incontinentals/scheherazade-extract
Would love any comments before I take it down!
It sounds excellent to my ears. Nice balances of the parts, very clear and clean sound, no harshness, good dynamic range, good imaging. Very listenable and enjoyable. You worked really hard to make this come out so well and it really worked.
Thanks Stephen, it was an interesting project. You can hear a lot of audience in the quiet parts, but you can also hear the conductor stamp his feet at certain moments! He was quite enthusiastic, by the way. Talking to the musicians, they were happy and energized by the performance.
Hi Early,
Nice work. Imaging is great. Sound is balanced. You should be happy with that recording.
I had to chuckle when I read your comments about people talking and coughing. Welcome to live recording! It happens all of the time. Hiking the mics up helps, but nothing really cures it. You also had the benefit of using directional mics with the dead side of the cardiod pattern pretty much to the audience. Another benefit of the ORTF technique and is part of the reason that array almost never sounds bad. It picks up what it’s aimed at without pulling in much of the room sound.
Over the years I’ve had to deal with sounds from coughs, doors being closed, sneezes, talking, phones ringing, babies crying, and more. Usually I let it go and don’t try to edit it out as its part of a “live” performance. However, if it’s really bad, I might try to do some editing. I usually accomplish this using spectral editing in Wavelab. It’s tricky to do, but can be effective. The goal is to minimize the offending freq without messing with the sound. Sometimes if the noise is in the same freq as key elements of the music, you’re simply screwed and have to live with it.
I’ve been sorely tempted to leave a bowl of cough drops out at the entrance for people to take to reduce coughing.
-Tom
Ha, good idea about the cough drops! Thanks for listening and commenting.
A sharp, swift blow to the back of the head with a large, dense pointy object works best! 
But then you need a scream filter on the mix.
I once recorded a group of Tu Van throat singers with a Schoeps CMC 6 MK/21. It was very good at minimizing the audience noises. Another time I added basketball bouncing because an interview had started without anyone on the court and during it, the players came out and started warming up – bounce, bounce, bounce. So, we took that as “room tone” to put under the earlier quiet part of the interview – sometimes worse is better. 
I’d also consider handing out a little slip or even making an announcement explaining that a recording is being made tonight – so please try to keep things quiet, particularly during softer parts of the music.
I’d like to see some screen shots of the Project just to see how it all looked inside Cubase. It really is a nice recording. I’m glad to see the positive comments about it.