Recent additions to Reelsound but rapidly becoming favourites
are a pair of the Hebden
Sound 3010 omni microphones. These
are a really beautifully made pair of mics out of the old
Calrec stable and are now hand made in Sheffield The use of
a spaced pair of omni mics has often been cited as the purest
way to get a perfect stereo recording but being non-directional
the placement of the mic is critical in controlling what sounds
do (or don't) end up on tape and over the years I must admit
I have avoided using them. However the Hebden Sound mics have
proved a bit of a revelation both on location and in the studio
and in the right room with a well balanced choir or brass
band they can give spectacular results. Check out the recording
made recently of the Minster
Song School in York Minster Chapter House on our Choir
recording tips page
As recording gear has developed over the years so the recording
format has changed from analogue tape to digital tape and
now direct to disc recording. Digital editing on a software
platform has made huge advances and at
the heart of our mobile recording equipment we have two Pentium
4 2.8 GiG laptops configured solely for audio recording with
Steinberg Nuendo software giving us the finest recording standard
available up to 96K at 32bit . Often just recording in stereo
to two tracks on the computer gives a fantastic result.
However
larger projects involving orchestras may require the use of
more microphones and we have built up a huge
list of quality condenser mics over the years with models
by AKG, Neuman, Sure, Sennheiser,
Rode and recent additions by ADK, Audio
Technica and recently Hebden Sound.
Because
of the nature of our recording technique and software we can
record a jazz band for instance on maybe 16 or 20 separate
tracks and can actually edit across the multitrack keeping
absolute audio integrity at all times.
Back
in the studio everything is monitored on a pair of Rogers
LS3/5A speakers developed as nearfield monitors by
the BBC. |
