Wow, thanks a ton guys, really great to come home to all this feedback! (totally coincidentally, I just came home from seeing
this with my folks

) I've been back and forth about whether or not to give it some high-shelf boosting, but reading some of your suggestions has convinced me to give it a go! (either on the master bus or one of the stereo-pair buses, we shall see) And those clicks are indeed from the valves (and the breathing is indeed, well, breathing

), but these are period correct instruments with all rotary-action valves (rather than piston), so the clicking is par for the course I'm afraid! (although honestly, I don't see why it would be so hard to incorporate felt into a rotary design - but trust me, these guys don't fuck around, so if it were possible and/or historically correct, they would have done it!).
Ear-gasm dude! I know my boys in the FCBB are well represented in this mix!
Sorry again I couldn't meet up with you when you were down in this area. How's the rest of the disc going? Will it be out for purchase this year?
Thanks Andrew, and I'm sure there will be another opportunity for our paths to cross

The plan is for me to mail the master CD's to Heather by the end of this coming week, so it should be good to go by early December I'd say! And it's gonna be 17 pieces totaling 35 minutes recorded over two days in that auditorium (including the above piece), 3 pieces recorded live at Ford's Theater (used just the 414's in AB Omni and the John Hardy for that), and one that was recorded just last week by one of the assistant engineers at UMBC (which I will soon receive the files for, and will have to edit and mix as well arrgghhh

)
Very, very fucking GREAT WORK!!! Respect, Marcus

I also was asked to record a choir & orchestra..but I didn´t had the balls to do it then. Your work inspires me to try it, as well. Good deal with the equipment stuff...damn this idea was pretty good!
Thanks man, and yeah, you should totally go for it! I'm of course no expert, but if you want any help feel free to PM me!
The lead trumpet lines sound very nice and clean. Generally the difficulty with brass is that they are so harsh. They definitely do not sound harsh to me. Good job. The localization of the lead trumpet is fantastic as well. I can see exactly where he is sitting when I close my eyes. With live recordings of ensembles like this, I think that is really important.
Did you spot mic any of the percussion at all?
Thanks a lot dude, I have to say I think a big part of that lack of harshness was all that 2k vacuuming I mentioned above, I must have sucked out something like a combined 40 dB between all the mics

I really think the XY pair and that Decca setup really contributed to the localization; honestly, I wasn't planning on using all 7 of those main stereo mics (Decca, XY, Blum), but each added something that I liked when I mixed it in, so I kept 'em! And yeah, there was a KSM141 pointing in the general area of the snare head a couple of feet back, and a D112 on the BD maybe a foot back. Cymbals definitely didn't need any help being heard
