I was so impressed that I bought the mic. I bought the millennia mic pre as thinking it was the best fit. I’m happy to see I made a wise choice without knowing till now what preamp John actually used. The position of the players in the stereo field made perfect sense when I listened to John’s recordings with good headphones. This series has got me away from building tracks with overdubs to trying to capture the essence of a performance. Amazing engineering John. Inspiring!
I'm recording a weird ensemble soon... violin, cello, clarinet, glockenspiel, drumkit, upright piano... this channel gives me hope that it will be possible with just my Royer SF-12.
john, very inspiring. i love not just the live aspect of it but also the natural sound and minimalist approach. would love to try this on my next album sometimes. cheers mate
This is brilliant, and your recordings are sublime! Quick question...did you have your HV-3C modded with the ribbon DC-coupled input and 70db gain boost, or are you running it stock? Thank you....trying to decide on an input chain.
I thought a pair of cheap ribbons in stereo X/Y or A/B could maybe do it : www.thomann.de/nl/the_tbone_rb100.htm?sid=4e808e6874a27dfe03da71fdfa45db10 But I didn't try it yet, so can't tell you for shure
By the looks of things, it seems like you arrange the musicians the way they used to record on wax cylinders: loudest instruments at the back, lead instruments at the front. Obviously, this is a little more sophisticated. Looking through your videos, tho, it seems to mostly be folk and country bands. Would you conceivably be able to do the same for, say, a punk rock band? Or a metal band? Or a synth pop band (assuming they didn’t just plan to backing tracks on a virtual workstation)?
@1:00 "...and then apply some gentle mastering" What does that mean? Is it necessary? How does that change the sound from its original, purest, condition?
My goal is to make a 2 channel recording as close as possible to a multi-track. Mastering is part of that process. Some compression, EQ and whatever else it needs. As with any piece of art it's done when the artist says it is.
@@onemic-theminimalist This probably explains why the sound quality of your recordings, although all are good, they still differ. For example: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VlLeZpeQ00U.html ...sounds very, very good. Whereas, ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JLPNR5FwrPg.html ...is not as good, sound quality wise (to my ear on my stereo in my room). And I have taken great strides to keeping my stereo neutral sounding, and my room nearly echo free (but not too damp or too dead -- I think I found the right balance). Do you have any recordings that have zero compression? Any recordings that I could hear direct from the microphone to your analog -> digital converter? Every recording that is released by record companies always has mixing and mastering and who knows what else. I would like hear at least one professionally made recording raw, processing free. Can you make it happen? Thank you.
@@NoEgg4u I think you are confusing what I do as some sort of audiophile project. Although I use my 40 years of recording experience to produce good sounding audio, my videos are about the singer, the song, and the process of capturing this one moment in time.
This audiophile obsession with purity is so unnecessary. John's method is to capture the best sound with one mic and he absolutely should take liberty to massage/fix/enhance whatever necessary in post-production. All the tracks in this channel sound good to my ears, including the ones noted by Perhaps. Keep up the good work, John!
What condensers will you recommend to buy? Not very expensive... Can you make a tutorial sharing tips about your technique? Position of singers, acoustic instruments, amplifiers? I hace a focusrite 2i2; do I have to change it? It has 2 mic/inst inputs and 1 headphone output and 2 line outputs
John, is the mic oriented so that the singer is singing into the center "overlap" of the left front and right front ribbons - so it gives the effect of being in the centre of the stereo mix?
Hey! Could you recommend a budget ribbon mic? Im looking at the TBone RB 500 or the one up from that TBone RB 770 - around the £1-200 mark? I am planning to use it just for me and my guitar or uke. Maybe a couple of sessions with friends - mostly folk. Your thoughts would be appreciated...
Hello! Question about reverb; you mention adding it during mastering, however in listening to your mixes, it doesn't feel like it's strapped across the entire mix (ie. the reverb often still feels focused on the vocal). Are my ears deceiving me? Or are you applying some technique to facilitate this (ie. only sending certain key frequencies in the vocal range to the verb or something). Thank you for this awesome work!
The Townsend is a fantastic mic (I own one and use it every day in the studio and in live recording situations), but it won’t give you the same precise stereo imaging, nor the full, flat frequency response that the R88 gives. The Blumlein configuration is particularly adept at this recording style because of the arrangement of the microphone’s lobes at a 90° angle to one another, both front and back, allowing for precise arrangement within the stereo field, and the minimal off-axis coloration of the ribbon design provides for a very smooth, natural sound almost regardless of the angle of incidence. The Townsend in its stereo configuration picks up extreme left and right, leaving a spot in the center of the stereo image that will tend to suffer from the kind of very noticeable off-axis coloration typically inherent in condenser microphones.
Aaron Meier I purchased the AEA 88 and It’s amazing! We went to Sun and the guy setting up the mics had no clue what he was doing. The only tracks that were completely blown out and distorted was the AEA stereo mic in the middle of the room.
Aaron Meier the “ engineer” Was putting RCA 44’s from the 1940’s two inches from a kick drum and RCA 77’s an inch from a my guitar amp. I Kept explaining the ribbons were gonna get blown. He wouldn’t listen. He was pretty pilled up, then the official Sun-tape slap back machine kept breaking. Finally he showed me there was a computer hidden in the tape machines. It was all props! A thousand bucks for five hours to record old school Elvis style and it was all props and plugins. He had no idea how to mic a room to record live like in the 50’s. Unbelievable! I pushed a Tree audio roots one console and some ribbon mics. I’ll figure out how to do it home.
@@Simbelun My series has 30 videos and all but a few have full bands wherein we would normally use 20 or more mics. I also want to point out the term "minimalist" doesn't mean cheap. It means I use the least about of gear possible but it still sounds like a modern recording.
