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Old 04-25-2012, 03:33 PM   #4
DVDdoug
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Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Silicon Valley, CA
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Congratulations on getting a good recording! This can be VERY difficult, depending on the genre/style, and the PA setup. With a "simple" 2-channel recording, mic location is "everything".

Often, the PA is only used for vocals and acoustic instruments, and you don't get a good-mix with the mic in front of the speaker. You can end-up choosing between (relatively) close-micing with a poor mix, or more-distant micing with a good mix, but too much room-sound.

Usually what sounds good 'hitting your ears' live doesn't sound that good when the same sound 'hits the microphone' and is played back later on a smaller system in a smaller room...

It can be very hard to find the best mic location, and sometimes the best mic location still isn't that good...

Quote:
...and the use of auto-gain control.
If it works, I can't say that's wrong... But, usually with music, auto-gain really fouls things up! The gain gets cranked way-up during the quiet parts (or between songs), which just boosts the noise. Then, when the music kicks-in, you've got full-gain for a moment and you get a burst of distortion 'till the auto-gain settles-down again. That can be really nasty and impossible to fix.

And even when it works right, auto-gain is a type of slow-compression that takes the dynamics out of the music. You'll probably want to use some compression i post-production, but there you can tweek it or un-do it. You can't easily un-do whatever auto-gain the Zoom is applying. (I don't have a Zoom, and I don't know how well it's auto-gain works... So, like I said, if you are getting good results, I can't say you're doing anything wrong.)


Quote:
I could only set and forget the recorder, no break between songs, but I could stop and start it on breaks.
Good! That's why we have editing! The more you have to work with the better... You can copy crowd noise/applause from one song use it in another spot, if that helps.

Quote:
...then edit the leading a trailing edges for proper start, and fade. Sometimes fading into the song when it was a lead-in with talking from the band, and/or patrons yelling out songs they wanted to hear.
Those are artistic decisions. Usually, you'll want to "tighten it up a bit" (less time between songs than the actual performance). Nobody wants to listen to a minute and a half of crowd noise between songs. When I'm making individual tracks, I usually like a short crowd/audiance fade-in of about 2 seconds before the song starts (or before the song introduction). I like the fade-out to more like 15 or 20 seconds. 20 seconds is probably too long, but to me a longer fade-out sounds slightly more natural.

If I only have a few seconds between songs, or for some reason I don't want to use whatever follows the song, I'll "steal" some applause from somewhere else and cross-fade it in. You can usually get-by with using the same applause on more than one song, especially if you blend it with whatever's already there, and vary the fade-envelope.

FYI - Most "live" CDs don't fade-out completely between songs. But, if you are distributing individual tracks, you'll need to fade.

Last edited by DVDdoug; 04-25-2012 at 03:52 PM.
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