Surround Sound Recording with Sing in the City

andrewscorgie
May 16, 2017
2 min read

Having made contact with Kirsty Braid the Musical Director of Sing in the City, it was arranged so that we could conduct a Surround Sound recording with the Professional choir the Aw Blacks, who have performed live during tours with former runners up of The X-factor, G4, a Classical Crossover vocal group.

The location for the recording was in the rehearsal room they have at Pilrig Church in Edinburgh and for this, the aim was to achieve two surround sound setups of the choir performing, with the choices involving the Fukada Tree, which was tested on Friday and the OCT Surround, a method myself and Tasha had visited before Christmas.

Having spent the time on Friday going through the setup of the Fukada tree, this allowed for a smooth setup on the evening in Edinburgh having already experienced the spacing requirements, mic placements and aware of potential slips and trip hazards, thus routing the cables out of harms way where possible and where not, then these were taped down securely so that they would not be caught on anyone's feet if they needed to cross an area where the mics were placed

The Fukada Tree setup was very similar to what was tested on the Friday with a slight change to the Mics. The Square section retained the u87's that were used originally, as did the side Omni mics maintaining the use of the AT4050's. The Center Mic was changed to another AT4050.

The OCT Surround setup is quite different in its setup, where it consists of 5 mics, for which the Cardioid U87's were retained for the rear and a cardioid 4050 retained for the front center.

Where the mic choices changed, related to the front left/right, where the requirement for a pair of hyper cardioid mics were needed. for this a matched pair of Se 4400's (which were pointed at 90Deg/270deg to the sides) were used as they matched that requirement well.

The other part that is different regarding the OCT Surround setup is that the mic placement is very close, with just 90cm of distance used for the front left/right on width, with the rear limited to a max distance of 100cm for the width. While the front center mic was limited to just 8cm in front of the front left/right mics.

Session wise, three pieces were successfully recorded, two using the Fukada Tree and One with the use of OCT Surround.