OneMic recordings, hear what the band heard in the studio! 

I'm here to answer any questions.

I love this. I hope it becomes more and more popular. Many of the best classical recordings were made in the 1950's and early '60's using one or two mics (the two mics being two mono mics put together in the center of the room at 45º angles to each other to create a kind of stereophonic effect). The musicians find the balance themselves and you hear what they heard on the recording. The recording of classical music went south in the 70's and 80's when more and more mics were used and the "balance" was created in the studio after the fact by the sound engineers. Crappy, crappy recordings that created music that even the composers, themselves, would not recognize. Even today, bluegrass bands can amplify their sound effectively utilizing just one mic with soloists stepping in and out closer to the mic. The jazz and swing bands of the 30's and 40's and 50's could also effectively work with few mics simply by having soloists move closer to the mics when soloing. A big part of being a musician is listening to the other musicians and finding your own place in the overall sound.

He has made me realize that my favorite music was recorded much like this. He’s brought the living room back into music. It’s very intimate sounding.

Love it! It really forces the musicians to be actual be musicians rather than relying on tech to make it sound good. Meybe this is what the music world needs to bring themselves back from what they have lost.

Would be great if you could do a series of videos interviewing various audiophile recording engineers and asking them about their process and what’s important to them, the challenges they faced and favourite recordings of theirs and others (from a technical perspective) and why they’re special.

No auto tune, no compression from hell, no surgical EQ on each of 48 or more tracks. Talent is all that is required.

I used to record bands' direct dual-mic set up binaurally. I could capture that live sound the energy and soul musicians have when they play together.

I love the idea of one mic recordings. Being a purist myself that whole process of one take recording session brings life to the fantasy I have when listening to music, which is that the artist is performing live in front of me. I would imagine it would give a whole new level of personality to each recording which I would love to hear.

That’s what made The Smiths so great. Maybe not one mic but generally one take. And you can hear that, whether it’s vinyl or The Complete (24bit / 96kHz digital, which I bought on Chesky’s HDTracks, incidentally). In the over engineered 80s, it was a thing to behold! Still one of my favourite bands to LISTEN to...

Good concept. When recording my band practice, we all use our cell phones. Which is like having a random person in a random spot In the room. These phones don't flatter, not do they lie. And if that doesn't sound good, it usually a matter of compositional intent.

Ok I’ve been over there to listen. It’s very very special. If you love music and wish recordings were better, you need to go over there and support OneMic. Even if it’s not your kind of music, I can’t get my head around you not liking the recording. It’s honest and beautiful. And how many things can you say that about? And this is the first time I’ve made a second comment on a video. I went to listen and felt compelled to do so. Seriously. Go LISTEN!

It's a little rock swinging around a very average star, but it's also a huge planet, with more than 7 billion humans spread over it's land masses. Lots to see. Thanks for passing this on, Steve!

I have been making recordings this way in my home studio up until I stopped when I moved two years ago. I have a Folk band and recorded my own group as well as several others using a point source mic and never had any complaints about the sound, and many compliments. It sounds so "real". My band (2-3 musicians) has also done many live gigs using a single mic as well.

some of my favorite classical reference albums are from BIS (Robert von Bahr) and Meridian (John Shuttleworth) from the 1970's and 1980's. Just a pair of mics, either spaced or single point stereo (a tube AKG C24 for Meridian). I'd also recommend checking out recent recordings from the Hazelrigg Brothers. They use two of the AEA R88 Blumlein mics to record a trio, one on the piano and the other shared by acoustic bass and drums.

I did so poorly in studio engineering school because I always wanted it to sound like our rehearsal space. Always full live takes, didn't care about mic bleed, no dubs, minimal effects. This was during the glam metal era, everything super clean and reverbed out. If I had stuck with it for a couple more years, I would've made a mint as a grunge engineer! I respect great studio bands like Tool that can create a crafted masterpiece like Fear Inoculum (you should give it a spin for something different, it's brilliant). But my thing was always about live performances. It's so organic and present.

Thanks for letting us know about this channel!

Back in the early 1970s a band asked me to record some demos for them. I helped out the guy who rented them the sound reinforcement gear they used when they played gigs, shared a flat with the bass player and was having an affair with the trumpet player’s wife. That and my audiophilia were my only qualifications. I borrowed a mixer, and several mikes from the sound reinforcement guy and we recorded to my newly acquired hi-fi compact cassette deck (Marlux). After two hours of fiddling with the mix and mike placement I still wasn’t at all happy with the recordings and on a whim decided to just try a crossed pair of mikes in front of the stage. Magic! The result was just so much better. I learnt a lot of respect for recording engineers that day and also decided that wasn’t a good career move for me. While my advice on changes to the balance of instruments was highly valued by my musician friends, I hadn’t a clue how to achieve even a marginally acceptable recording through a mixing desk/mike placement.

Thank you for promoting this channel! Been listening to these recordings for a couple of days now. Love it!

Hello Steve and audio community. My claim to fame is recording a 70 piece college symphony orchestra in a large church with a Zoom H4n with a Shure VP-88 !!! Simple, and the results speak for themselves! Firebird Suite and a grand piece for ORGAN and orchestra were on the play list. Sounds wonderful with Parasound and Marin Logan on playback bringing it all together ((O: (my guests and fellow musicians have heard this and agree!)

Thanks for recommending OneMic channel Steve! its crazy good recording & performance! fantastic sound!

I listened to one - it sounded quite nice. It drew me into a song that I normally wouldn't listen to. I wish it was normal for recordings to have so little done to them. The way most music is made these days sucks the life out of it - especially when everything is mastered too loud.

Thanks for this. Love the concept of where the music is kept true and pure. Oh, and keep those great shirts coming :-)

I always believed that removing some unexpected noise like chair crack under piano player will also remove fluency and natural sounding from the recording. I hope we could get these kind of recordings in the future. One take recordings without editing. Marko Lerota - Audiophile Linux.

Wonderful stuff, I love the Blumlein ribbon combo for live recording

I 'm sure OneMic knows about these programs I'm about to mention. Steve, if you haven't seen these, check them out. Both absolutely fascinating & educational documentaries. There was a PBS 3-part documentary series, "American Epic" based upon the first recordings of roots music in the United States during the 1920s and their cultural, social and technological impact on North America and the world. It is a three-part award-winning documentary film series with a book & ten album releases. American Epic is widely considered as the definitive portrait of the musical era, and one of the best music documentaries ever made. Then a spin-off from that documentary, "The American Epic Sessions" is a documentary film in which an engineer restores the fabled long-lost first single MIC electrical sound recording system from 1925, and twenty contemporary artists pay tribute to the momentous machine by attempting to record songs on it for the first time in 80 years. The recordings of these sessions are available on CD.

Recordings of this type (to include Binaural Recordings) are the reason I made Audio my livelihood, as well as my "hobby". Thank You John Cunberti ... Thank You, Steve ! ;-) btw - Has Anyone, Seen or better still Used the "new" Zoom Recorder; That uses a "scaled - down" version of the "old" - CALREC " Soundfield " Microphone ??? It's of additional interest to me, because the Late Michael Gerzon was a friend. We met thru another friend Alan Rhode, at the Carnegie Deli, during the 1986 AES Convention, in NYC. Michael and I shared a Pastrami on Rye. Before He gave a presentation on 'Ambisonics'. ;-)

Well, there goes my productivity the rest of the day. Thanks for sharing, this is a fantastic resource of good music that is well recorded / produced.

Thanks Steve, for turning me onto OneMic recordings, I'm hooked!

Thanks Steve!

personally appreciate these kind of posts and plus your suggestions on well recorded albums..Comfortable with my meagre set up (yet interested in how the other half live) All about the music for me, always looking to expand the appreciation of it with the gratitude that comes with being here and able to hear it..Keep on keeping on.

Strongly recommrnend - 'Don't look back, Boo Ray' - and Eskimo Brothers Fire it up - in the One Mic series! ❤

Thank you Steve. Lovely.

Nice shirt Steve! Thanks for your videos. I just own a humble system but I love your channel and your advices to improve the sound quality for free! Keep going. A french subscriber.

This is very interesting

Thanks for this introduction!

Steve, thanks for the heads up about, One Mic. I'm in musical bliss!

First of all, thank you! I would have never discovered this on my own. Coming from Kentucky. I listened on fire stick feeding Schiit Modi from digital out on my plasma Sanyo tv through AVA amp and preamp to Naim Arriva speakers. I’m astounded and wonder how good these recordings would sound at 18 bit. Thanks for this Steve, love your channel.

I think this is a good example of "less is more". I don't use the term organic lightly when describing recorded music but this technique may be an exception. There are many other recording labels e.g. Water Lilly and my favorite, Maple Shade to name a few that have the ability to portray the original event beautifully in my listening room. Not sure exactly what recording techniques they use but I know these companies are dedicated to reproducing music in a realistic way that I haven't heard very often. Many of the Maple Shade recordings took place in Pierre Sprey's Maryland mansion with special mic techniques that produced stunning results. We need more recording labels whose philosophy is to re-create the sound of the original recording sessions in the most realistic presentation possible.

Must recommend this disc Tiny Island - Tiny Island (Opus 3) Using the natural acoustical reverberation of an old stone church, recorded with a stereo microphone adjusted to crossed figure of eights (The Blumlein techniquel ) Listen this track " Vaquero " but the whole cd is amazing

I'll have to check it out thanks 👍

spot on totally cool and not the but certainly an excellent way to record music! Absolutely thank you for sharing!

I have a set of ALTEC LANSING. RAN THROUGH A PIONEER SX 3900 AND ITS LIKE PETER GREEN IS JUST JAMMMIN. THANK YOU.

Awesome!

I read somewhere that Andrew Bird's "Hands of Glory" was a single mic recording. Not sure if that's true, but it's a brilliant sounding album none the less.

Folk musicians do this frequently, I love this trend!

Love this. He should do an album and call it...One Track Mind.

There is also the concept of using a "stereo co-incident pair" to achieve a similar simple result.

Reminds me of the American Epic "Sessions" film, which used one (mono) mic and recorded to 78 RPM disc using 1920s Western Electric tube electronics. If you haven't watched it, it's a must see.

Emerson Lake & Palmer’s “Fanfare For The Common Man” off WORKS VOL. 1 was reportedly recorded in one live take using a single stereo mic in a rehearsal room. This suggests that the Yamaha flagship GX-1 synthesizer would have been running through its matching powered speaker cabinets.

I checked out the channel. Recordings are of very good quality, and they have that live recording mood. The musicians are excellent, however, the music itself is folksy, not within my wheel house. I respect the Blues, Country, folk music, but I'm a 60 year born a raise in NYC. I'll take Jazz (all types), classic R&B, Soul music, classic rock, even Broadway Musicals, Classical. That is to say, some sort of orchestration, or complex arrangement is required to be of my liking. Nonetheless, One MIC One Take concept, love it.

Back then didn’t they record with one mono microphone? “Louie Louie” by The Kingsmen recorded with one Shure 545, 1963.

It's recorded using a "Blumlein Pair" - two uni-directional mono microphones at 90 degrees to each other (but since they are in a single casing I guess you COULD call them a "one mic" recordings.) The best way to listen Blumlein Pair recordings is to have your speakers pointed to you in exactly the reverse of that 90 degrees the mics were pointed at. And you can make your own very cheaply, with the Zoom H1n Recorder. The main reason these recordings are so different is because they do not have dynamic range compression or limiting applied - a common feature/requirement of all modern recordings thanks to the Loudness Wars. But they require first class acoustics - which many don't - and so can sound much worse as well. Blumlein Pair recordings are very different to the Binaural recordings - now also popular on RU-vid as ASMR experiences - designed to be played back over ear- or head-phones. Don't confuse the two! Blumlein info on Wiki en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumlein_pair Zoom H1n Recorder on Amazon www.amazon.com/Zoom-H1n-Handy-Recorder-Model/dp/B078PTM82R/ref=sr_1_21

This is so timely. I was just listening to a classical piece for two voices. And it was so obvious that one singer is weaker than the other but through the magic of sound engineering they were both evened out. It always detracts from ones enjoyment when you become aware that singers aren't projecting and merely relying on microphones. This looks like good setup to solve that problem. I listened to the samples and it sounded so natural. Curious to know if it's been tried with classical works.

I can recommend Sound Liaison who makes one mic recordings... go listen to Carmen Gomes Inc. “ dont you cry” it is so good ... you can also see the video here on RU-vid 👍😄

Steve, right now OneMic has 3.6K subscribers. Let's we see in one month...

*One Mic* is a good lede. The bigger factor seems *No Editing.* The *biggest factor* is getting all of the performers in one studio, at one time, getting one good take, and running with that. Eh? That is a throwback to the days before DAW's and all the contrivance that brought with it. Agree?

Cowboy Junkies did it in 1988 with The Trinity Session. It sounds infinitely better than their latest (boring) album which sounds like TOTAL CRAAAAP.

Nice shirt, Steve.

Great series of videos. I've watched them since the channel's inception. Less is more!

Steve, you are always looking for new music. I just discovered the Gaddabouts on Spotify. Fun group. The guitarist is Andy Fairweather. Maybe you saw him in a Cameo singing Gin House Blues on one of Clapton's Guitar Festivals. Hard to pigeonhole the music. Just nice sometimes funny songs. Lovely voice on the lead singer. Kinda folky, kind of... I don't know what to call it.

There is some magic in unprocessed recordings. Reminds me of the binaural recordings from Franko Russo, worth checking out.

Steve, can you provide any information on the where about's of Sid Marks who covered the Mercury Living Presence and RCA catalog for TAS back in the day. I have not found any information about him on internet. He would be a good person to feature on one of your interviews. Thanks.

Steve, I appreciate this information. It looks like it has great potential, which I will be listening to this weekend. I have two questions: 1) Although youtube content, when recorded properly, can sound really good, it is still coming from an .mp4 file (youtube stores their videos as .mp4 files). .mp4 files are basically .mp3 files that support video. And we all know that .mp3 is the devil's audio format, because it literally throws away samples of the recording. So as good as I expect the OneMic recordings are going to sound, I suspect that if the recordings were made in, perhaps, the .avi format, then those "master" .avi files would sound even better. The next time you speak to John Cuniberti, from OneMic, would you please ask him what format he initially records in? And if it is a lossless format, please ask him if he would consider making them available for downloading. 2) Do you know whether or not John processes his recordings, in any way, before uploading them to youtube? Or are the youtube videos direct uploads from his master recordings? ----- Ideally, I would like to bypass youtube if possible, because they process files uploaded to them, and in a bad way. I tested a small .mp4 file that I uploaded to them. The file is 1.6 megabytes. I then downloaded that file from youtube, and it was 1/3 the size of what I originally uploaded. The video resolution was reduced, which could account for the much smaller file size. But why would youtube stop there? They probably also throw away audio samples. So it would be great if we could download the original masters from John / OneMic, and not go through youtube. Hopefully, John would be amenable to this, since he is pursuing sonic excellence, and would want his fans to hear all that his fine work contains. It would be pointless if after making such high fidelity recordings if he limits their availability via a third party (youtube) that puts quality as an afterthought, behind saving file space. Thank you.

Thanks, Steve. Will check it out. Is this also known as live-to-tape?

Have you ever heard the legendary Didrik de Geer mics? Any opinions on them? I managed to get hold of 2 of his amplifiers and they are the most amazing thing i've ever heard.

I want your beautiful shirt !!!

Wich one is the best mic for outdoor acoustic perform? Condensor, ribbon, shotgun, or shootout?

Steve you should have Todd Garfinkle on your channel Ilove his recordings and what a great guy and wow he is tremendous musicians.

Most of my cd's are close 2 mic 1 take recording. I feel theres a better représentation of the instruments ,especially the piano and drums.

I checked out one video, looking for one with drums. It sounded like I thought it would, they are leaning into the mic trying their best to get a balance, but the drums are overpowering the voices and other instruments, distracting from the lyrics. Works better with fewer players, more acoustic sounds. It’s basically a live recording, just in a room versus a stage.

I just want to echo and support the comment made by Val (and the whole sense of Steve's talk too) concerning classical LP recordings. I am buying and selling more and more classical collections - and what I am finding our is that the PERFORMANCES which impress me are those of the 50s and 60s. And the ones which irritate me the most are later issues, many from the pre- eminent conductors, orchestras and labels - Von Karajan/ DG is a particular example - from the earlier days of digital intervention. Never mind the performances, most of the the 'leading- edge' digital mucking about resulted almost uniformly in wavering soundstages and 'odd' results. The sort of thing that makes you jittery, jump up and go to find something else!

Another label that's doing this - and making the results for sale and available in hi-res: www.soundliaison.com/ Also for classical look at www.playclassics.com/ They have a unique recording setup that results in the most natural real sounding recordings you will ever hear. Read on the site about their unique setup.

Cowboy Junkies did this exact same thing on the Trinity Session in 1988. The single mike picked all the ambient noise...

Check our the one mic recordings done by Sound Liaison. Superb.

I saw a show on TV that showed how Louie Louie by the Kingsmen was recorded in a small studio that had one microphone mounted in the ceiling. The singer had his head tilted back to aim his voice st the mic. That was the explanation for the strained voice and bad pronunciation.

A stereo microphone is two microphones.

The Dave Grisman pieces are very good. The point is the live take. The one mic idea is a little bit of an artificial constraint. After all, nearly all records were live takes until the sixties where overdubs became normal and they often used more than two mics for live takes - a stereo mic is two mics truthfully. The right amount of microphones for the job are the appropriate number. Not too many, and not too few.

Steve - Don't you think that the government should be supplying free high end audio systems to any citizen that wants one?

When did you go to 4 days?

Even more impressive in sound quality but with the exact same approach, are the one mic recordings from Sound Liaison. They use a different microphone though:ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-92h_GJnHiGI.html

Lo-fi is even better, just turn on an old tape recorder when your band is playing.

Why only one mic ,,, I have two ears. Or is this an early form of Stereo to Mono conversion. Should I unplug one speaker when I listen to this recording too.

So not a fan of prince albums then eh? Lol. Nothing “natural” about man doing every instrument but damn its awesome

Tape... Quaint 😉😏🤣

One mic. But we have two ears. So I'm not seeing the genius idea here.

Sometimes, i wish these anti-progress stereo boomers would go back under a rock and 5.1 SACDs become the norm from every artist. That would be a glorious day.

Wich one is the best mic for outdoor acoustic perform? Condensor, ribbon, shotgun, or shootout?