OK, concert recorded successfully! Turns out there is a guy in the orchestra who is well versed in live recordings. He came to defend me when I was explaining to orchestra management at the dress rehearsal that I needed at least two seats reserved for me. Evidently, the guy before me put his boom stand right against the stage, so the boom did not block any seats, and there were no wires crossing the space between stage and seats. But I was not willing to put my mics right over the conductors head, and that giant A50 clearly impeded two seats. The orchestra guy supported my arguments, so management caved in, made some seat changes, and blocked two seats for all concerts going forward.
The dress rehearsal recording went well. My new friend in the orchestra volunteered to bring his own Zoom F8 recorder to the concert so that I would have redundancy, and he also had an ART passive mic splitter. So on concert night, in a matter of 5 minutes, we set up his recorder and sent my mics to both recorders (direct to my Steinberg MR816). Everything worked perfectly. One of the great features of the F8 is that you can replicate your mics to other channels, the purpose of which is to allow you to sequentially lower the input levels. In this case, my new friend set it up with four stereo inputs (two by mic cable and two by replication), and he set the inputs lower for each pair. This is a great technique for avoiding overages and distortion – if the first pair went over, you have three others to rely on. But I have not heard what his recorder picked up so I can’t comment on the preamps. Reviews online seem to indicate it’s a pretty good box.
My 10-year-old laptop captured everything, I had no moments going into the red (having determined the levels the night before), and the backup machine also recorded everything as far as I know. Once you get insurance, you don’t really need it!
I had people in the seats on either side of my two seats, even though the concert wasn’t sold out. Turns out the front row seats are the cheapest, and the hard-of-hearing like to snap them up. Not only do they have difficulty hearing the orchestra, they have difficulty hearing themselves. Including involuntary bodily noises. At one point, the person next to me began to hum one of the more popular melodies, and he couldn’t hear me when I whispered to him. And I have a pretty good idea what he had for dinner. But the A50 goes high enough that I can’t hear it in the recording. That’s at least one advantage to putting the mic up by the stage instead of by the seats, but, I can report that my recordings are much more alive and stereo than the last guy’s. Still, whatever these aging fans do, one thing they do is show up and pay, so lots of respect to them; this orchestra wouldn’t exist without them.
Actually, I’m pretty pleased with the overall stereo effect. Lots of coughs, though, further back. The mics were maybe 12 feet behind the conductor, who had his musicians around him right up to the edge of the stage. I had the A50 as high as it would go, so it was a little over the conductor’s head, but not much. I think I fit within the SRA of 96 degrees.
As I mix, I’m not so happy with the bass. There were four basses at the extreme right of the stage, but the percussion was put at the extreme left. The last piece, Scheharazade, features a lot of percussion. Turning up the bass (perhaps to compensate for my cheap mics) also turns up the low percussion. Still, I think I’ve got a good representation of what they did. Long live live orchestras!
I had another complaint (from one of the organization’s board members) that my laptop was too bright, and he wanted me to turn the screen toward the stage. Of course that would have meant I couldn’t see it. But I did realize I have to turn the brightness down. And this is yet another advantage to a dedicated digital field recorder. So I am thinking my next purchase is one of those (probably SoundDevices Mix Pre3), and the ART splitter has to go with that. Then, it’s better mics.
I had anxiety about the power cord, but fortunately nobody kicked it up. During intermission I stood on the cord in front of all the equipment to ensure that if the cord was kicked, it would come out of the slack on the other end. I also had anxiety about recording levels, and I began to wonder if there is a specific downside to recording too low at 24-bits. I think, based on my limited knowledge of LPs, that you can fit an orchestra into a 60Db range or so, and with 24-bits, you have something like double that, so even if you were 60Db too low, you would still be ok. Have I understood that correctly?
Thanks for everybody’s help on this project!