A recordists take on sound reinforcement

Once a year I do sound reinforcement for the ensemble wavegarden, recording the concert at the same time. The 2008 event, featuring guest musician Laraaji, appeared in my label as CD-A016.

Channel count is an interesting issue. As a recordist I'd have used four microphones as the main setup--central ORTF for good imaging while negating some of the audience noises plus two channels of uncorrelated ambience for a surround mix--, and two spots for the hang on the left and the flutes / singing on the right. In this case I used an extra 7 channels.

• Two headset mics for Carlos & LeAnn
• A close XY-pair to balance the small crystal singing bowls
• A mic inside a monochord
• Two lavaliers underneath the four waveharps

Naturally the room mics don't feed (back) into the PA system, consisting of four active speakers arranged 5 and 10 m from the stage. I placed a low-cut on the outputs and delayed them correctly so that most listeners wouldn't perceive them to be the sound sources.

Something I do, that is ingrained in me as a recording producer, is that I pan the sources according to their position on stage. Admittedly not as far as I'll do on the CD release, but significantly more than I have noted SR-people to do. I try to subtly reinforce the actual soundstage.

Last year a member of the audience approached me after the concert to comment on the fact that it was so nice that I hadn't used the speakers :-)