live mic stereo recordings of quad concerts & the SM

[Electric Moo]

I stumbled onto a fascinating thing the other day: I was listening to a stereo recording of a live concert I am pretty certain was in surround. Still looking for info on the show, it was Tangerine Dream live at Sheffield 1974. A music review mentioned a surround PA but I have been unable to find details on what they used for shows back then.

Anyway, I decided to feed it through the surround master & I was blown away at the presentation! It sounded like I was sitting in the audience.

If it was recorded with a stereo mic, vs multitrack/soundboard, the mic would pickup phase & timing info from the 4x PA speakers. Which would enable the SM to recreate the room ambience & quad presentation (?!!)

I am curious if anyone else has experienced this? Am I crazy, or does that all sound plausible?

And if so, any other great live stereo mic'd quad recordings to check out?

Fyi that particular recording is available from the "tangerine tree" archives

 

[jimfisheye]

I'd suggest that the result you got sounded good but was not any kind of reproduction of an intentional quad soundstage. I mean... it could be! There are encoded quad recordings out there. That kind of thing is mixed and produced in quad and the final result encoded. Perhaps the encoded signal is monitored during mixing to "work" with or around the limitations of the encoding.

I don't think a stereo field recording in a venue would preserve rear emanating sounds. It would all blend together folded down into that stereo image in that location in the room. The encoded stuff that actually decodes into something controlled and intentional needs to be encoded with a few tricks to pull that off.

If it sounds right, it is right! I don't think you're decoding anything though. Just finding a processed effect that sounded good.

 

[Electric Moo]

Yes, I was mulling that over. However if the same 4ch PA room sources were picked up by the mic channels, they would have differences LR that may feed the decoder?

And if the mics were hung a fair distance apart it may help? Or maybe it's more accurate to have them close? I can't find any info on how that show was recorded, but it sounds like a mic ( or two? ) in the audience. Not multichannel mixed afterwards, I suspect.

 

[Electric Moo]

Yes, thinking about this some more: it must just be good LR separation in the room recording that's translating to excellent Front/Back surround.

Whatever it's doing, it sounds bloody great!!

 

[chucky3042]

My experience is the simpler and dumber the recording, the better in terms of accidental phase encode.

 

[Electric Moo]

I am pretty good at simple & dumb!!

 

[kfbkfb]

For one Delos classical music CD, a Dolby Surround encoder was not used, the producers just monitored the stereo recording thru a Dolby Surround decoder and adjusted the stereo recording parameters for reasonable decoding.

Dolby Labs allowed Delos to state that it was Dolby Surround encoded based only on the monitoring procedure:
https://dbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/DE3196Dbook.pdf#page=23

Kirk Bayne

 

[MidiMagic]

I have done it.

I used two supercardioid mics in a binaural setup to record live music. The backs of the supercardioids pick up out of phase to the fronts. So sounds to the side that were behind the mic placement were "encoded" as back sounds in QS.

 

[kfbkfb]

That could be a new market for the Surround Master decoder - Recording Studios - Promote the SM decoder as a way to add a surround effect to regular stereo mixes (no encoder needed), just monitor the stereo mix thru an SM decoder in QS mode.


Kirk Bayne