Concert Audio

[Peter C.]

I'm recording a modest acoustic concert today, wind quintet in small venue (an old town hall). The colleague I'm covering this job for recommend me to not rely on their board audio because he has had issues. So I'll set up a my own mics as a backup. I have a couple of setups in mind: pair, of shotgun or dynamic mics at 45 degrees 6ft in front on mic stands or floor boundary mics. Are dynamic mics too weak for acoustic music that far back? It's not a high end job but I like to use the best approach.

 

[Alex H.]

Dynamics aren’t the first choice here. XY or ORTF with the shotgun mics may be your best bet.

 

[paulears]

All these things are options, but with the exception of boundary mics tend to make you unpopular as they look horrible. I've never had much luck with stereo from shotguns - the directionality increases with frequency, so the stereo image does odd things - the lower end tends to be very 'mono' while the upper end highlights certain sections (and with a choir, it will always be the person on row 2 who has that prominent, but unmusical timbre).

If they'd moderately loud as wind bands tend to be, a pair of dynamics in X/Y at the stage edge might be a good choice. Dynamics are not that less sensitive than many condensers to be fair.

Taking a feed from their equipment also means they need to have done their miking properly, and set a decent balance - which you have no control over, of course!

 

[Peter C.]

I went with the boundary mics on stage and stereo audio recorder off stage to get some of the reverb of the room. It worked well but had some other audio issues to deal with. Their PA system was locked up, so I improvised by placing a dynamic mic in front of the loud speaker to capture speaking sections.