Anyone ever tried a blumlein mic setup?

[LydonB]

Well, tonight for a class I have to record a brass ensemble concert and I think I am going to try a blumlein mic setup.

It seems like a cool technique if you can use it correctly. I really want to start doing more things with it.

Has anyone tried it or had any success with it?

 

[MarcusD777]

Yea I've used it on acoustic guitar and for room mics on drums... Its a pretty cool micing technique and gives you a nice realistic stereo spread that collapses well to mono... Should be cool to try out on a horn ensemble... Let me know how it turns on bro...

 

[Keiffer]

I have used a Blumlein mic config quite often and with very good results.

If you're interested I can post a short clip of a horn big band type in my studio recently... also here's my kit with a R84 pair out front in a Blumlein config.

Big and Loose Kit

Same with Samples

 

[Metaltastic]

I've never used Blumlein, cuz MS seemed to be about a billion times cooler and more effective (in that you can change the stereo spread after the recording), when I just recently used it on a string ensemble to great effect

 

[LydonB]

I might up a clip from the performance. The performance itself was okay. I think my mics were a little too distant. They were only 9 feet away from the 15 person ensemble. I thinking bringing them forward a little more would have been better.

On Saturday I am doing a classical guitar chamber recital. I'm gonna use blumlein on that one too. It should be interesting.

 

[LydonB]

I've never used Blumlein, cuz MS seemed to be about a billion times cooler and more effective (in that you can change the stereo spread after the recording), when I just recently used it on a string ensemble to great effect

On that note, I like MS as well, I just have not really used it a lot. I think I may try it out on an upcoming recording. Depends what it is though. I would really like to use it on a string ensemble.

 

[greyskull]

used in room and overheads before. pretty cool.
mid side is far too much of a mission.
fuck that

 

[Metaltastic]

mid side is far too much of a mission.

...?

 

[LydonB]

...?

I think what he meant is there is a little more to do than just pan the mics.

You have to use a proper matrix or just go into a DAW and flip the polarity of the side mic on another track.

It is easier doing it with a matrix. At school for MS we use AMEK 9098's. They are pretty nice and easy enough to use. We don't do multitrack with MS for our live recordings, we just go straight into an Alesis Masterlink.

In the studio I did a MS of an acoustic guitar and it turned out nicely.

 

[Metaltastic]

Copying the "Side" track and inverting the phase takes all of like 10 seconds, and we actually determined that it's more effective than a plugin because of latency by first sending it to an aux track where we had a simple real-time phase inverting plugin on, and then duplicating the track and actually inverting it with an Audiosuite processing plugin - when we panned them center and compared, the inverted pair completely disappeared (as it should've), while the Aux-send pair still had some sound left over, and more importantly as a result, the stereo field felt wider with the inverted processed pair. Haven't tried a matrix plugin, but I don't really see the point when you can just copy the "side" track, invert it, and group the two together.

 

[LydonB]

erk its not a plugin, its a hardware pre with a built in matrix.