As for configuration, it is impossible to really know without visiting the space. That said, there are some arrays that will give excellent results even if the results are not the absolute best possible (and thankfully nobody can compare after the fact!). ORTF will serve you well. You are probably aiming to fill the center 1/3 of the stereo field with your direct instrument sound with the outer portions having either the natural room ambience or any enhancements from reverb plugins. All of this is personal preference but listening to your favorite flute cds will give you the best idea of what is “normal”. Unfortunately I don’t record flute too often so there are better people around to advise if center 1/3 of stereo field is good. It certainly works for piano, guitar/lute etc. For chamber (more intimate), I use full stereo width.
You can experiment with DIN, NOS, EBS etc as well as spaced pairs of omnis. This is even before thinking about whether the flute could use a close spot as we discussed on the other classical thread.
It is very open-ended, there’s no one right answer and as stated, without experiencing the room, any judgment is meaningless. I can just give you a starting point (and others please jump in).
Ideally you have another flautist play while you walk around the space to find the “sweet spot”: a good mix of direct and ambient sound and make adjustments backwards/forwards/vertically up and down from there.
First of all, I hope you and your families are all right. We’re going through some tough times.
I’m sorry, but for various reasons I had to stop my recording project.
However, in the last few days I’ve had some time and I’ve resumed the project. I thought about buying a Zoom f6 recorder, but I also had to postpone the idea for a little later, so I’m continuing with my Audient i14 and the sE8’s.
I also tried to record in a couple of locations but it was a disaster. Constant noises (birds, cars…) made me have to give up, so in the end I’m still in my own house.
Here I leave you a link to almost half of the CD. I have also attached a loudness analysis file.
I’m trying to record at -12db, but I think the level is a bit low at the end. Some of the tracks already have about 4db added in the trim. For my personal taste it’s ok, I don’t want a too present sound for this CD, but I don’t know what you think.
I’ve not listened yet but from a quick glance at the loudness analysis I think you might just export to -1dBFS peak and call it good. That would add another c. 3dB of gain. It looks like you might have some wide dynamic action in the Capriccio?
You could try some “transparent” parallel compression a la Bob Katz. If you don’t have the formula it’s in his mastering book. Obviously you don’t want to harm the flute sound in any way but it might give you that little bit of extra presence without going over the top (and still export to peak at -1dBFS). Also, I read in an issue of Sound-on-Sound that one of the staff used Flux Syrah on classical solo flute with excellent results. Clearly, some nuanced compression or adaptive dynamics processing can be a good thing.
One other point: you should analyze one or two other recordings of the Capriccio and see where the loudness and peak levels end up. It’s always good to be in the same ballpark as other existing well-regarded recordings.
I’ve done absolutely nothing in Capriccio, it’s exactly the same as the other tracks.
My recordings are a bit low compared to the other recordings. The problem with equalizing all the tracks to -1db is that not all of them reach the same sound level in the strongest notes, that could alter the rest of the piece, don’t you think?
I’ve been looking for information about Bob Katz’s method, but I’m not sure how to do it, nor if compression would be a good idea.
I understand that Flux Syrah would work in Antix, but I would have to install Wine for it?
I’ve done an analysis of a Sharon Bezaly cd for solo flute alone. I always liked the sonority of this CD. Attached is the analysis:
I’m not suggesting you make every track peak at -1dBFS but over the course of the entire album
After selecting the session time span, in the export profile select the “Normalize” option and set the integrated loudness to -20 LUFS (typical for classical discs) and the true peak to -1 dBFS. The album will probably hit -1dBTP peak before the integrated so it will end up a bit quieter than -20 LUFS. Robin Gareus informed me that there’s absolutely no limiting happening…the export will be normalized to either loudness or true peak, whichever it hits first.
I’ve used Flux plugins via Wine successfully but you can probably use some native Linux plugins for the transparent parallel compression idea. Any decent compressor can achieve this (Martin Zuther’s Squeezer, for example). Here’s the recipe: Threshold: -50dBFS; Attack time: 1ms or less (as fast as possible); Ratio: 2:1 or 2.5:1 (Katz prefers 2.5!); Release time: medium length (250-350ms); Crest factor: Peak (vs RMS); Output level: -15 to -5dB works well for subtle compression.
Give it a go…you might be able to hit -20 LUFS without too much trouble. Note that the analysis of the Bezaly disc shows an album true peak of -0.1 dB. While this is fine for physical discs, streaming services would apply some gain reduction to get to -1 dB (or in a few cases, -2dB) true peaks.
Under “time span” select “session” (i.e. from your start marker to the end marker). Create a cue file along with the WAV and then you can use something like Fre:ac to create all your other files (FLACs, MP3s etc) from the WAV/CUE combo.
Or, if you want to stay completely within Ardour, use a loudness meter like the one in x42-plugins or Klangfreund multimeter (good because you can single click to conform to a particular true peak or LUFS value after playing the whole album through). You can then export individual files as you had been doing. Just be sure to not use any subsequent normalization during export…
Hmm…I think it’s good practice for classical albums to record into the same session precisely for this reason. For classical albums I’m always needing to think about gaps between movements and maintain room tone. I place both CD markers and ranges so that I can export the final CD but also quickly export single movements for clients to preview.
You can just import the already recorded files into a new session. If you’ve made lots of edits already, maybe export as 32-bit float files from the various sessions and import into your new “album” session. Assuming you recorded with the same gain settings on your interface you will be just fine! Adjusting the gain via a plugin or doing the normalization on wav/cue export will not affect the quality.
EDIT: So to be clear for future classical projects, create one session and record everything in that one session. Do all your edits and then use a plugin or export normalization to set the album loudness and/or peak levels. That way, any parallel compression (or other effect) is also affecting the whole album and you can make judgements about movements/piece spacings. Even though physical discs are on their way out (at a slower rate for classical!), mastering engineers will still use “CD” markers because it is a great way to think about albums as a whole. For live concerts, any editing out of applause or coughing needs to be replaced by some room tone or the effect of the concert is ruined. This is nice to do as you are editing…
Hi @anon60445789,
I still have a lot to learn. Fortunately, I’m making mistakes with my own work, not with other people’s…
I tried to use Martin Zuther’s compressor, Squeezer, but you it crashed my Ardour. In my Antix 19 partition, where I’m still working there is the Ardour 5.12 version, the MX repositories haven’t been updated to version 6 yet. In my PCLinuxOS partition I do have the version 6, I tried Squeezer but it crashes too.
I used the LSP compressor, I hope the parameters are ok. I used a bus for it.
I think I like more the version where I use the compressor, but I think it affects a bit, although positively, the sonority, I don’t know what you think.
Lovely stuff, @Aleph! You are definitely in the right ball-park now with those loudness/peak numbers! What confuses me is that the numbers on both loudness analysis htmls are the same. If you’ve applied some parallel compression I would expect the numbers to change a little. Also, I note that most of the tracks are exactly at -20 LUFS which seems odd. Are you sure you imported your 32-bit float files to your “album session” without normalizing for loudness? And is your final export now trying to normalize loudness for the whole album or still per track? Finally, experiment, if you haven’t already, moving the compressor output between -15dB and -5dB and see what you like best.
OK, great. Just double-checking that you didn’t normalize to -20 LUFS when you exported each individual 32-bit float file. How else did they all end up as exactly -20 LUFS… pure coincidence?
Well, I did it again, but I got a similar result. Maybe something’s wrong, but I don’t know what it could be.
Here’s the analysis of the individual tracks converted to 32bits before importing them into the final session:
And here are the WAV files with the analyses.
With Bob Katz compression:
No compression:
Now in the output of the compressor I only applied -7 db, I think it’s better, although at the moment I’m not sure either…
I add a screenshot of how I did the final session:
The loudness analysis you present shows 8 “ranges” which tells me that is not the analysis of the session WAV. The ranges appear for all the world to have been normalized to -20 LUFS or -1 dBTP (which ever comes first). That’s why 7 out of 8 hit -20 LUFS because their peaks are lower. The one track that doesn’t hit the LUFS value has high peaks so is normalized to -1 dBTP instead. You need to export/analyze only the “session” time span (and generate a cue file). Then, in fre:ac or similar, generate your FLACs, MP3s etc from that wav/cue combo.
If you want to generate all the individual files staying within Ardour, you really need to use one of the loudness meter plugins and add gain trim to your master bus to hit the desired LUFS or true peak for the whole album. Then export without any normalization!
maybe I tried it before and it clicked without me noticing? Ugh
