PlayClassics master file giveaway for CA members

[francisleung]

Hi Mario,

May I have the rock track please.

Interested to hear how the cymbal sounds in front of the drummer this time.

[esldude]

Hello Mario,

 

Would love to try the Rock recording you are now giving out.

 

Thanks (again)!

[firedog]

Just listened to the Rock track. Interesting: doesn't sound anything like what I'm used to hearing.

 

First, I had to increase the volume about 12 to13db - acc'd to my volume knob - to get the volume I used to with Rock recordings (and my usual listening volume is about 75 db at my listening position).

 

Second, it does sound like a band playing in a moderate sized space - from the "audience" perspective. Not what I'm used to hearing, even from producers like Barry Diament and Cookie Marenco who have what I consider natural sounding recordings.

[pdvm]

I'd like the rock recording too!

 

Thanks

[francisleung]

Thank you Mario for the track. Will listen to it during the day.

[odelay]

+1 for the rock samples Mario!

 

Could you give me new codes for the sample rate download too? (My internet crashed downloading it...

 

Really enjoying your samples. I've not heard any recordings like yours. Very special.

[LarryLegg]

I would love to try the Rock sample please.

[semente]

Hi Mario,

 

Could I please get the code for the rock sample?

 

Cheers,

Ricardo

[Jud]

Listened to the rock recording. First, very skilled players. Second, obviously a very accurate presentation. Third, to my taste at least, for future such recordings the bass must be louder with respect to the other instruments. In the couple of sections where the guitar and drums held back, the bass playing was beautiful, but when the guitar and drums were full out the bass got somewhat lost in the background. I don't know if this would require the guitar and bass to play at unrealistically low levels in order for the bass not to overload the room. And finally, I understand why there were no vocals - it's hard to imagine even an opera singer being heard very well against that background.

[Jud]

Listened to the rock recording. First, very skilled players. Second, obviously a very accurate presentation. Third, to my taste at least, for future such recordings the bass must be louder with respect to the other instruments. In the couple of sections where the guitar and drums held back, the bass playing was beautiful, but when the guitar and drums were full out the bass got somewhat lost in the background. I don't know if this would require the guitar and bass to play at unrealistically low levels in order for the bass not to overload the room. And finally, I understand why there were no vocals - it's hard to imagine even an opera singer being heard very well against that background.

 

Sorry, in the above it should be "...require the guitar and *drums* to play at unrealistically low levels...."

[esldude]

Listened to the rock recording. First, very skilled players. Second, obviously a very accurate presentation. Third, to my taste at least, for future such recordings the bass must be louder with respect to the other instruments. In the couple of sections where the guitar and drums held back, the bass playing was beautiful, but when the guitar and drums were full out the bass got somewhat lost in the background. I don't know if this would require the guitar and bass to play at unrealistically low levels in order for the bass not to overload the room. And finally, I understand why there were no vocals - it's hard to imagine even an opera singer being heard very well against that background.

 

I have listened to it and largely agree with your comments Jud. I do think perhaps more separation between the musicians would have helped. Also perhaps having the bass on the side opposite the drums and the guitar in the middle. That might have helped the bass to stand out more without needing any adjustment in loudness.

[Mario Martinez]

to my taste at least, for future such recordings the bass must be louder with respect to the other instruments. In the couple of sections where the guitar and drums held back, the bass playing was beautiful, but when the guitar and drums were full out the bass got somewhat lost in the background.

 

Something similar happened with the flamenco samples:

The purpose of our setup is to record the musical event exactly the way it happened, it is a documentary approach. This type of recording is very demanding on the musicians. Here the artists are responsible for the balance between instruments, just like they would be in an acoustic live performance without any amplification. Once we capture that performance, there is nothing we can do to alter that balance. The artists have to be able to control their dynamics to balance out the performance for themselves.

 

Classical music artists are used to doing this. They do it at every performance. But what happens when you try to record other genres?

 

Flamenco is usually recorded using close miking techniques. They are used to having the engineer balance their performance at the mixing table. They were here for just one hour trying things out. They ended up making the recording this way to try to compensate for the fact that her voice was not so big and the guitarist sound was big. So the sketch is correct, the singer was closer to the mics and the guitarist was further back. Had they been here long enough, I am sure they would have been able to balance themselves to be able to sit next to each other on the stage.[/Quote]

 

For the rock sample, I think this bass problem could have been fixed by experimenting with the gain and eq settings on the bass amp. The amp allows for low, mid-low, mid-high and high frequency adjustment. The sample you are listening to was recorded with the settings they always use for their gigs. If we were to record an album we would need to take time to adjust the settings to get the bass to sound just right on our hall. By what I have seen and learned with this experiment, I think they could easily achieve this. It would just take a little time for them to get used to this approach.

[francisleung]

Mario, please read No 156 in thread MQA at CES.

I prefer the sound of your Iberia track.

[Sal1950]

Sorry for late report, had a couple issues here while remastering my linux server packaging. Hoping to be able to distribute it one day but right now I've got a ways to go getting the livecd and install program to do my bidding. LOL

Listened to Rock track a few times this evening. Don't have much to add beyond what Jud and esldude said but I think your right. Some tweaking at the bass amp might help. Drums and guitar were very clean and crisp with beautiful ringing on the brass and sharp rimshots. To me the bass didn't just suffer in level but even when almost solo it seemed to lack drive and definition. Just was missing attack and sounding very soft, something was stealing it's edge, it would be easily lost when there were others in the mix.

But hey, what do I know, I'm no producer. LOL

Happy New Year All

[Mike Rubin]

I am coming to this thread quite late, but, if the original offer still is open, I would love to have the Cabrera Debussy album. It's a hard call, because I love both Albeniz and Debussy, so I tossed a coin. Thank you.

[Mario Martinez]

I am coming to this thread quite late, but, if the original offer still is open, I would love to have the Cabrera Debussy album. It's a hard call, because I love both Albeniz and Debussy, so I tossed a coin. Thank you.

 

Thanks Mike, yes, the offer is on, I just sent you the code. Enjoy!

[Mario Martinez]

Thank you all for the feedback on this rock sample.

 

I have been talking to the musicians and they too feel this same way about the bass.

 

The point of the experiment is to find out how rock sounds when recorded on a documentary manner. The bass does sound the way it did live on the hall, but since I have no experience with how rock "should" sound I was not able to advice them on this respect while they were recording. Now that they have heard the recording for a few days they do wish it had sounded different.

 

If this was a fantasy recording we could just try to fix this on the mixing or mastering stage, but since we are all about documentary we can only try to fix this on the live performance itself.

 

I think we might have to re-record this sample in order to complete the experiment

[Pneumonic]

Sounds interesting, Mario. I too would love to try out Iberia if possible.

[Jud]

Thank you all for the feedback on this rock sample.

 

I have been talking to the musicians and they too feel this same way about the bass.

 

The point of the experiment is to find out how rock sounds when recorded on a documentary manner. The bass does sound the way it did live on the hall, but since I have no experience with how rock "should" sound I was not able to advice them on this respect while they were recording. Now that they have heard the recording for a few days they do wish it had sounded different.

 

If this was a fantasy recording we could just try to fix this on the mixing or mastering stage, but since we are all about documentary we can only try to fix this on the live performance itself.

 

I think we might have to re-record this sample in order to complete the experiment

 

All right then!

 

Edit: And if there's an album, I'd be happy to make a contribution in return for downloading it. They're very good players.

[Sal1950]

Thank you all for the feedback on this rock sample.

 

I have been talking to the musicians and they too feel this same way about the bass.

 

The point of the experiment is to find out how rock sounds when recorded on a documentary manner. The bass does sound the way it did live on the hall, but since I have no experience with how rock "should" sound I was not able to advice them on this respect while they were recording. Now that they have heard the recording for a few days they do wish it had sounded different.

 

If this was a fantasy recording we could just try to fix this on the mixing or mastering stage, but since we are all about documentary we can only try to fix this on the live performance itself.

 

I think we might have to re-record this sample in order to complete the experiment

 

Hey, it was fun, enjoyed participating. Thanks for letting me be part of the "experiment", any time I can be of help just holler "Yo Sal".

Cheers, Sal

[semente]

Thank you all for the feedback on this rock sample.

 

I have been talking to the musicians and they too feel this same way about the bass.

 

The point of the experiment is to find out how rock sounds when recorded on a documentary manner. The bass does sound the way it did live on the hall, but since I have no experience with how rock "should" sound I was not able to advice them on this respect while they were recording. Now that they have heard the recording for a few days they do wish it had sounded different.

 

If this was a fantasy recording we could just try to fix this on the mixing or mastering stage, but since we are all about documentary we can only try to fix this on the live performance itself.

 

I think we might have to re-record this sample in order to complete the experiment

 

Hi Mario,

 

I have just listened to the rock track and agree with Jud's comments regarding tonal balance (louder bass).

Dennis mentioned that the recording could benefit from increasing separation between the musicians but I think that what he dislikes about it is the lack of "presence" and the excessive room sound which will not be solved without close® mic'ing and even some EQ.

Placing the guitar between drums and bass might help a bit, though.

 

Although interesting, this kind of documental approach drains a bit of "life" and "raw energy" from the performance; in this case, or better yet for this musical genre I think that Cookie Marenco's approach is a clear winner.

It sounds very different from commercial recordings, even those of "live" performances...

 

I also feel that some dynamic compression could be beneficial even though it's quite probable that each instrument will require a different amount of compression; in any case, it would be interesting to listen to a sample with some compression as it might make the sound more "impactful"

 

Cheers,

Ricardo

[bkinbk]

Hi Mario,

 

Can you send me the rock track as well?

 

Thanks.

[les pako]

May I have the code for the rock track?

 

Thanks,

Les

[Mario Martinez]

Thank you all for the feedback on this rock sample.

 

I have been talking to the musicians and they too feel this same way about the bass.

 

The point of the experiment is to find out how rock sounds when recorded on a documentary manner. The bass does sound the way it did live on the hall, but since I have no experience with how rock "should" sound I was not able to advice them on this respect while they were recording. Now that they have heard the recording for a few days they do wish it had sounded different.

 

If this was a fantasy recording we could just try to fix this on the mixing or mastering stage, but since we are all about documentary we can only try to fix this on the live performance itself.

 

I think we might have to re-record this sample in order to complete the experiment

 

 

We have re-recorded the bass so we can now continue with the experiment.

 

The bass has been recorded on the same position, the only thing that is different is the fact that this time the bass player did use the eq settings on the bass amp to "try" to get the bass to produce the sound he wanted.

 

I am saying "try" because he admitted to me that this was the first time he was using this settings. I did not understand why so he explained to me that whenever they play (they never record they only do live gigs) there is always a sound tech with a mixing table that fixes everything for them so he did not have to worry about it.

 

I will send this new version to all of you who have already downloaded the old one. (If I miss someone, please tell me so) To those of you who are new to this sample I will send you both so you can see how the experiment proceeds.

[Sal1950]

We have re-recorded the bass so we can now continue with the experiment.

 

The bass has been recorded on the same position, the only thing that is different is the fact that this time the bass player did use the eq settings on the bass amp to "try" to get the bass to produce the sound he wanted.

 

Some improvement, specially in the definition, though I would still like more level. The early solo at about 1:40 still way down in the mix. The second at 2:15 is better and the last at 4:25 sounded best of all. Don't know if it's the notes he's playing or the pick technique he uses but that last solo sounded much better, level wise than the earlier pieces. If the whole piece sounded like that I'd be happy but still might ask for a little more level, but then I might be called a bass head. LOL

BTY that was on the Senn 650s.

See what the others think.

 

For a nice comparison check out the bass levels on James Taylors Today Today Today

Don't know how the youtube will stand against my 24/96 download but should be good enough.