naturerecordists
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [gear] preamps for field use

Subject: Re: [gear] preamps for field use
From: "Dan Dugan" dandugan_1999
Date: Thu Sep 7, 2006 5:53 pm (PDT)
Walt, you wrote about recording M/S:

>I hardly ever use the decoder routinely anymore,
>mostly just monitor the mid in mono when recording M/S. The trouble with
>monitoring the stereo is you are too tempted to fiddle with the gain to
>adjust the stereo to your liking, which almost always means a weak
>recording on one channel, usually the side one. It's more important to
>get a good recording of both channels.

I'll give the argument for doing it the other way. There's a similar
situation in recording multi-track music. Some engineers record all
the tracks at the optimum level for the individual tracks, and adjust
the monitoring for a pleasant mix. Others keep the monitor faders in
a row, and vary the recording levels of the tracks so that a
first-draft mix is, as it were, printed to the multi-track master.
They know they can still make adjustments to that mix later, but it
won't be anything drastic.

If you're recording something that has a main source, like a bird
singing in front of you, of course your M channel will have
considerably more level in it than your S channel. Your S channel
isn't under-recorded; it should be lower. With digital recording you
have dynamic range to burn, and throwing away 10-20dB in this way
costs nothing, that's what it's there for.

I think a pre-balanced recording has better legs for the future. When
in a hundred years someone punches up my original recording from the
universal nature sound library, I'd rather it sounded good out of the
box, rather than needing a major adjustment.

Different strokes...

-Dan Dugan




<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the naturerecordists mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU