Assessment 2

The specific musical goal of assessment task two is to capture the authentic sound of a pitched acoustic instrument, acoustic ensemble or solo voice and recreate the illusion (ambience) of a concert hall or venue.

The three reference tracks I have chosen for assessment task 2 are the following:

The reason I have chosen these three songs as my reference tracks for Assessment task 2 is simply because they all use acoustic guitar, which is the instrument I used for each of my microphone techniques. I like the sound of all three guitar recordings and wanted to capture the same sort of recording when doing each different technique.

AB

• 2x AKG 414’s
• Spaced technique
• Omnidirectional
• Approximately 20cm distance apart
• Stereo width – The closer the microphones are, the less wide the stereo will be

In this image you can see that the two AKG 414 microphones are separated and facing outwards creating a spaced technique

Blumlein Pair

• 2x Royer
• Polarity: Figure of 8
• Placed in the same point and angled 90°
• Spaced technique

For blumlein you use a pair of directional microphones creating a figure of eight polarity placed in the same point and angled 90°

Decca Tree

• 3x AKG 414’s
• Polarity: omnidirectional
• Stereo is picked up through the time of arrival
• Distance is 120cm from each microphone
• Spaced technique

All three AKG 414 microphones are placed at the same distance apart of 120cm forming a triangle. A good way of measuring this is by using one of the XLR cables.

MS

• AKG 414 (MID) and Royer (SIDE)
• type (dynamic/condenser)
• Figure of 8 (Royer) and cardiod (AKG 414)
• Both microphones are coincident
• Its the only technique that looks directly at what is being recorded

MS microphone technique is the only technique that looks directly at the instrument that is being recorded.

Once you have set up MS in Pro Tools, an input that looks like the one below will appear:

As you can the lie is now horizontal. This is because it is playing in mono and playing completely out of phase. This means it will sound a bit strange in your headphones.

The vertical line that appears occurs because we have taken the stereo track and panned it to zero. Placing the pans to zero creates a mono sum.

If you un-mute all channels (Mid, Side+ and Side-) you will be able to see a circular motion formed instead of a vertical or horizontal line.

XY

• 2x AKG 414
• Polarity: Cardioid directional
• Condenser microphones
• Placed at a 90 degree angle
• Coincident

As you can see in this picture the two AKG 414 microphones are facing inwards and are almost touching.

Evaluation of Assessment Task 2

Much like the first task, this task was really handy learning new microphone techniques. But what was different with this task was that I actually got to practically practice more than one on each instrument. Decca Tree was my favorite because of the versatility of the technique and had a great amount of control of within the mix. I  will be using these techniques in the future especially the blumlein pair, I love how this technique picks up complete surrounded sound and sounds really different to me compared to other microphone techniques. I found this task enjoyable and interesting as a learning curve. I learned more technical microphone techniques and didn’t realise the amount of depth you could go into with recording live instruments such as using a MS Matrix. The MS Matrix to me was the most impressive, especially since it had a visual demonstration of how it was actually working too, and the fact that you had to adjust settings actually within Pro Tools too made me feel very satisfied with achieving this technique.