#rob baldock

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Live Sound Engineer - My Kit

I’m often asked about the recording set up I use. As a sound…erm…enthusiast, I’m always going looking at the gear that’s being used when I work on a show. So it’s sometimes been the case that while setting up at a gig, members of the sound crew want to see what’s in the racks or and in some cases interest has come from articles, such as these blogs I’ve been writing, it seems some people are interested to know why I’ve opted for the set up that I have and how it is all hooked up. I should warn you now that this could get geeky. I could talk about audio equipment for…well, I haven’t got bored of it yet! I’m not here to say that my way of doing things is THE way…it’s just what works for me. I’m still constantly learning new ways of working – and I love to discover new and different methods of doing things, but in terms of how I go about recording live shows at the moment – what follows is an explanation of what the equipment I use is and why I choose to use it.

On a recent visit to the Plasa show at the Excel in London, having a good look at all of the new live consoles – almost all of them now appear to be featuring the option to output multiple channels for recording or virtual sound-check purposes – whether this is via Dante, MADI or even USB or one of the many other systems that seem to be out there. From the Behringer X32 / Midas M32, right up to the newer offerings from Digico (I saw the Digico S21 at Plasa and it looks incredible for not much over £5k!)– it seems being able to make a recording of a live performance is at the tips of many engineers’ fingers way more than it ever has been.

I have used both MADI and Dante to make recordings on many gigs and those systems offer extremely high channel counts down just one or maybe two cables. In the case of the RME MADIFace USB – this is a tiny little unit that can handle 64 channels of audio! The Dante protocol even allows you to connect a cat5/6 cable directly to your laptop’s network input – making use of the Virtual Soundcard software to convert that data-stream into audio right into your DAW. In situations where I’ve not had a choice – either because it’s the only output offered OR we’ve not had much room – for example, I recorded a secret event a Labrinth event in Camden last summer with my buddies at LiveFi filming. It was a kind of flash-mob type event and so all the kit had to be as small as possible and hidden right up to the last minute. (https://youtu.be/S6LfrOy2iUQ).

Photo showing the RME  MADIFace USB – a tiny little device that can handle 64 channels of audio straight to your DAW.

It really is an easy set up with those digital, multichannel systems, and I do get asked why we don’t use these protocols on every recording. The main reason, for me, is control over my own input gains. If you take a feed down one of these multichannel formats, you’re receiving the gain level set by either the FOH or monitor engineer – maybe the broadcast engineer if you have one. Whichever way, it’s still someone else in control of the gain level and if they decide they want more gain on a particular channel during the show, their concern is not how it will impact on the recording! They need to be getting it right for their live show happening right then! So if their gain levels go up or down – so do the levels on our recording!

Also, there’s the sound of the actual pre-amps. You probably appreciate if you’ve read some of these blogs that I really do LOVE the sound of my Audient mic pres. They’re clean, and I find my mixes glue together better with things that have been recorded through them. They work for me…and they sound great! And they give me control over my gains when I’m recording...! The very expensive live desks that are out there from all the manufacturers you would expect obviously have great sounding mic pres – but the Audient range completely hold their own in this environment.

So that leads me on to how everything is set up now. I did touch on this on the original news item when I first got my 48 channels of ASP880 pres but from questions I’ve had, I thought it might be insightful if I explained how it is all hooked together.

My old rig was based around two Alesis HD24s. They were solid recording units for years and years…they still are! But the sheer size of the rig meant that it wasn’t as portable as it could have been! Pre-Amps were a mixture of Focusrite Octopre and Audient ASP – so, after a year of testing out the new rig, in July 2015 I decided it was time to shrink the whole rig down to a more modular and portable system.

Photo showing the old recording rig before switching to the new ASP880s and Reaper for recording.

Recording is handled by Reaper – I’ve waxed lyrical about this software enough. It’s solid, powerful and extremely reliable in a live situation. I’ve tried lots of others including Nuendo live…which crashed during a live show (we had a backup!) and I worked on a festival last year where another engineer was running the new Waves Tracks Live…and it crashed a few times – losing some of the gig! Reaper hasn’t let me down….yet!

Audio interface is one or two RME FireFace UFX (depending on how many channels I need – each one will handle up to 30 recording channels) into a single MacBook Pro via USB. My MacBook has a SSD drive for recording purposes but also, because Reaper allows you to record to two locations, I also record back out of the MacBook into an external FireWire drive (G-Tec – not sure of the model!). On top of this, the RME FireFace UFX also allows you to record full multitrack directly from the unit itself onto a USB drive. RME recommend the SanDisk Extreme range. They’re a little more expensive than some sticks but the speed they can read and write is what sets them apart. I’ve actually found, after some testing, that the 64Gb versions have a faster write speed than the 32Gb sticks! If you really want to know, the 64Gb write at 163MBps where as the 32Gb ones only achieve 86MBps. Compare that to my internal SSD drive that writes at 487MBps though and you can see that there’s no lack of speed putting data down on the drives! I did mention this would get geeky, didn’t I?

Mic pre-amps are – obviously – Audient ASP880s. I previously had 24 channels of ASP008s and 24 channels of Focusrite OctoPre. They served me well for years, but I wanted unity across the whole system and the Audient pres blew the old Focusrites out of the water in terms of sound quality. I have no bad feelings about the OctoPres at all – they’re great for what they are – but with the direct comparisons I did when testing things out, they just sounded more brittle and a little bit harder compared to the ASPs.

Photo showing the new rig

In a basic system – anything up to 28 channels – I can use 3 x ASP880s plus the four channels of mic-pres on the UFX. I can run analogue out of the first ASP into the line inputs on the UFX. The next 16 channels need to be input via ADAT Optical and so I have to run Word Clock through the whole system so I tend to use the UFX as master – BNC out to in on the second ASP via a T-connector and then link that out into the third ASP where I set the terminating BNC switch to 75ohms.

Photos showing the clock links

This is a GREAT new feature on the ASP880 that was a bit more fiddly on the ASP008s. On the older model, if you wanted to switch between allowing clock signal to pass through or to terminate at 75ohms, you had to open the top panel of each unit and adjust a small jumper switch. The fact that the designers at Audient have now just made a simple switch to do this process has made my life MUCH easier.

Photo showing the 75ohm switch

The set up is a bit more complex for running more than 28 channels – essentially when I have to bring in the second UFX…but perhaps that’s to be explained on another blog!

To complete my set up – there’s the monitoring. More often than not I’m on the side of the stage, at Front-Of-House – or even if I’m in another room, there’s very little or no isolation. I couldn’t handle the monitoring of these live recordings without my trusty ACS Triple-Driver custom made in-ear monitors. These things sound incredible and the level of isolation is amazing. There are three drivers in each ear-piece so you get great, full-range audio. They’re extremely comfortable – because they’re made of soft silicon, they warm up to body temperature so you just forget they’re there! The sound-stage is a lot wider than I expected – considering they’re shoved right inside your ears. I use these as my everyday earphones as well as for monitoring recordings. For when I have to leave the recording workstation but the gig is still going at full volume, I’ve got some ACS Pro17 filtered ear-plugs. I went a bit extravagant on these and had them coloured and lasered with company branding…couldn’t go to a gig without them though! Got to protect your ears!

I don’t really have a conclusion…after all that! I expect I will continue experimenting, expanding and altering the set up as I discover different ways of working – but for now, I love the modular set up and the flexibility it offers. I can take out a single FireFace UFX and one ASP880 and I have 12 mic pres, add another ASP880 and I’ve got 20 mic pres, another and I’ve got 28. Add another UFX and another 880 and I’m up to 36 channels etc. It also means if any part of the kit were to break down and require repair, it’ll be easy enough to just slot another unit in its place. I would love to hear from anyone that has any thoughts or anyone else that has a mobile rig. It can be really good to share ideas on set ups and I’m up for a geek-out any time.

Thanks,

Rob Baldock

[email protected]

[audientltd]

Experimenting with Variable Impedance - Live Piano

In the last blog, I wrote about recording the Ben Martin Jazz Quartet at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham. A couple of days later, we were back to record Lizzie Ryder (@lizsop20 on Twitter)– a Soprano vocalist with solo piano. 

The beautiful Steinway Model-D piano was played by Lauren Gregory (www.elgieschoolofmusic.co.uk). I’d hoped I might get the chance to experiment with the variable impedance function on the ASP880s while we recorded Ben Martin but unfortunately we just ran out of time. I’d heard that adjusting the impedance can have really significant impact, especially on older ribbon mics, and the BBC Coles 4038s we were using would have been really interesting to try.

While the camera crew were setting up for Lizzie’s performance, I took the opportunity to try changing the impedance setting on the pair of C414s I had on the piano. These are a set of factory-matched mics and I had them set up as a Blumlein stereo  pair just in front of the piano. I wasn’t expecting to hear such a change in the sound but actually there are some clear sonic differences even on these much more modern mics. So much so that I took a video as I was adjusting them. 

I’ve dubbed the recorded audio of the C414s alone onto the video so that hopefully you can really hear the changes. It’s not the most scientific test in the world – but check it out…

The video starts with a quick look at the equipment being used – both on stage and for the recording. Unfortunately there’s still quite a lot of background noise with the camera crew moving lights etc – but hopefully you can hear the changes well enough. The video was just shot on my iPhone so forgive the shakiness!

Watch in HD for the best quality audio and video.

Rob Baldock

Re:live Recordings

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Recording a Live Jazz Quartet

Re:live Recording’s Rob Baldock was working in Nottingham recently, so he didn’t have to take his live recording set up - which includes 48 channels of Audient ASP880 mic preamps - too far. This week, he tells us how he went about recording some jazz...nice.

We were asked to provide multi-track recording services for a series of live performances at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham for a pilot of a new TV show called ‘Sounding Out’ – featuring classical and jazz performances in a live setting.

Day one of the shoot was with the Ben Martin Jazz Quartet. A four-piece band with drums, piano, bass and sax. With everything being acoustic, and the beautiful acoustics of the Royal Concert Hall, I wanted to make sure I had some of the best mics I could get my hands on. Luckily for me, the film company shooting the performance, Spool Films, have some of the best sounding mics around! So I went with 2 x BBC Coles 4038 ribbons, 2 x Neumann M149 Tube, 2 x Neumann KM183 and 2 x AKG C414 matched pair.

These mics went straight to my Audient ASP880s and into my RME Fireface UFX – recording was handled by Reaper.

For anyone that hasn’t used Reaper before, you should really check it out. I’ve ended up using it for pretty much all of my live recordings because not only is it completely reliable (I’ve tried REALLY hard to crash it and it just won’t give up recording!) – but it also records to two destinations at the same time. So if one hard drive goes down for any reason, you’ve always got a safe copy on another drive! I’ve tested out all of the major DAWs for recording purposes and Reaper outdoes them all in terms of reliability.

I set the mics up as follows:

Kick / front of kit – Neumann M149 – no bass roll off set somewhere between omni and cardioid.

OHeads Coles 4038 x 2 – spaced pair. I started off with these a few feet above the kit but actually raised them higher because it was a little cymbal-heavy originally. I didn’t have a snare mic so wanted to capture the whole sound of the kit.

Double Bass Neumann M149 – I spent a little time doing the old  “moving one ear around” while the bass player played until I found a good sweet spot, which was relatively close but between the strings and the f-hole. I also took a DI straight from the amp which gave me some extended lower end which would be useful in the mix.

Piano AKG C414 Matched Pair – The Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham has a stunning Steinway Model D Concert Grand piano. It was tuned each day before the recordings and it just sounds wonderful. Mic’ing a piano can be an interesting challenge. Again, using the one-ear on technique, I found a couple of sweet spots. One at the far end of the piano to capture the low strings and the other nearer the keyboard end for the higher strings. Both mics were set completely flat and both on cardioid to avoid too much spill. That said, with it being completely live, some spill is unavoidable* / desirable* - *delete as applicable!

Sax KM183 – These beautiful sounding mics are really small. I wanted to go for something that would look subtle on camera but also that would sound great on Ben’s amazing sounding sax. The KM183 is the omni version of the series and, as far as I can tell, just sounds great on pretty much everything!

I also positioned two KEL HM-1s out in the auditorium to pick up some of the acoustics from the empty auditorium. Unfortunately it seems KEL are no-longer building mics under this brand. I bought a pair of the HM-1 back in 2006 and they sound amazing! I use them as ambient mics on pretty much every gig I do. They’re really clean and clear and also sound great as overheads. KEL was a Canadian company and they built some really nice sounding mics that didn’t cost all that much – especially with a favourable exchange rate. They have a new company called Vertical Microphones. They unfortunately no longer ship outside of Canada or the USA, which is a shame because if the KEL range are anything to go by, then the Vertical Microphone series I’m sure are great! I really hope I get to try some out soon!

The old cliché of getting a good recording by using great musicians, with nice sounding instruments, in a good room, through the best mics, into awesome pre-amps is completely true!  It certainly makes the mix easier!

I’ve uploaded a quick mix of one track - Surrey With The Fringe On Top – and I’ve isolated each instrument at the start, so you can hear the individual mics in their positions. Each section is highlighted with a comment marker for identification.

Check it out here: