Organ Recording (at home)

[Guest]

I am experimenting with home organ recording using a Roland R09 digital recorder as recommended by NYC Farmboy. This gadget is a super device and easy to use but there are some issues with using it. My organ speaks into an entrance hall which has a 14' ceiling. The sound comes into the listening space wher the console is located through a standard height archway which is about 6 feet wide. The sound to human ears is fine in approximately the center of the listening room which has an angled ceiling. Three locations have been tried to date.
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Recording in the entrance hall in front of the shutters gives strong resonances in the 8' bass range and the organ tone is pretty raw. The 8' diapason has a very strong resonance about the middle of the low octave.
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Recording with the R09 sitting on the console gives a better blended sound but room resonance is obvious in the recording. Somehow the human ear seems to filter out the room resonance so audibly the sound is fine.</p>

Recording in the center of the organ room or possibly closer to the chamber wall gives a better balanced sound. Question - How should the device be supported, table, sitting on a chair, or what? How can the room resonance effect be reduced while retaining the richness of the sound?</p>

Does anyone have suggestions for recording to get better results? I have noticed that professional recordings are sometimes made with the microphone suspended in mid-air. Does this help the room resonance problem?</p>

Recording in the chamber has not been tried as the sound level is too loud for human ears (unless the ears have attended a lot of rock concerts).</p>

My experiments have been limited so far due to lack of time. Setting the device on the console works well enough for the purpose of recording so that I can review the results and improve my playing. One pecular effect is that recording makes me as nervous as having a live audience, maybe this is a way to get over nervousness.
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[fredy2]

Re: Organ Recording (at home)



In a few words: DIRECT CONNECTION</P>


Microphone just isn't going to cut it very well.</P>


Depending if your organ already has audio outputs, if it does USE THEM !</P>


If it doesn't you can install some. Depending on how many channels you have, you might have to bring out each speaker and then run into a mixer if you have more than one. Prepare to also put a grapicEQ to filter the sound, as your speakers do a bit of this for free. Some direct connections will contain a bit of digitizing noise.</P>


You can make simple isolators using radio shack audio transformers to bring the speaker output to 1/4 inch jacks without picking up hum.</P>


You cna build a resistive mixer to merge all these to run to your recorder or buy a small audio mixer that allows several inputs to be control for volume and merged. No more picking up noises of dogs barking, airplanes, etc on microphones either... Just the music as you play it.</P>

[fredy2]

Re: Organ Recording (at home)



Now if that is a pipe organ, of course you will have to use microphone. Preferably a "condenser microphone" (Note thatcondenser mikesusually require Phantom power)... You could also try a pair of PZT microphones. The output of the microphone preamp should then be run through a many channel graphic equalizer so that you can fine tune the responses. Most of the consumer-ish microphones just won't do a very good job... some may saturate or self resonate if you have a pipe organ... The condenser mikes are pretty good... They do cost a bit... But that is what it takes to get good reproduction at times. The vocal mikes, even the high quality ones probably won't do that great as they are optimized for close vocal work and have particular pickup patterns such as cardoid...</P>


I would try a studio grade condenser microphone. Since this will probably cost $150 or more, what I would suggest is to rent one to test before buying... In fact a music store might loan you a rental unit and preamp to test before you buy...</P>


There are some microphones that cost upwards of $10K but you don't need that... You should be able to get a decent set of mic and preamp for about $300 together...</P>
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[Guest]

Re: Organ Recording (at home)

What about microphone placement?

[Havoc]

Re: Organ Recording (at home)

Bit difficult to troubleshoot from a distance. I took a look at the R09 and assume you are using its internal mics.

- since it isn't spec'ed what type of mics this are, they probably are omnidirectional, meaning they capture sound equally well from 
wherever side it is coming. It also means they record low frequencies pretty well and maybe better than your ears. So first check if the "resonances"
you hear in the recording is not the mic amplifier that is clipping. For that load the file into the pc, open it with a wave editor (like Audacity) and see if the peaks are not clipped (if they are, they look "flat", like as if there is a piece clipped off (there is in fact a piece clipped off, hence the name)). If so, there is nothing you can't do unless the R09 has a "pad": it let you put an attenuator before the mic amp (check the manual). Otherwise, try to record at a lower volume of the organ.

- Also possible is that you are overloading the AD convertors. To check for this, lower the recording volume if possible or switch in the "auto-gain" feature (if it has this, check the manual). This will make for a quieter recording but first try to get the quality better.

- if you really have a resonance, then the best would be to kill it. Try hanging some duvets behind the mics (like in the archway). That will stop reflections from the back. This is a trial and error job, specially the latter. 

- regarding placement: if you go closer to the organ, the direct sound gets stronger and the reflected/reverberant field gets weaker. A recording will always sound more reverberant than your ears, so get closer than you would when you listen. Don't place the mics halfway floor/ceiling or front/back. It will be a nodal point and very likely give you trouble. Try to raise the mics as high as you can. And make sure they can't rattle. Sadly the R09 doesn't have a attachement point to put it on a stand, try to improvise with some rubber bands. You could experiment with some absorbant behind it, like a pillow or duvet.

- it also mentions the R09 has effects. Make sure they are not active so you don't jump to wrong conclusions.

- above the advise is give to record using an equaliser: don't do it. Better to record straight and equalise afterwards when editing. You will have more flexibility that way. You can always add more EQ later, but never undo EQ that was recorded.

- speaking of EQ, how did you determine that you had a resonance? More spcific, how did you listen to your recording? If you recorded an organ at high level with onmi mics, then the low frequency content can be high. Are your speakers up to it? Try listening with some LF roll-off, start at 20Hz and slowly raise the frequency to 80Hz. If you have a sub-sonic filter try that as well.

- also try to change the angle of the R09 with respect to the direction you record. Like standing it straight up, or pointing it towards the organ.

Mic placement and gain chain setting is really a lot of experience and depends a lot on the gear used. So don't think you are having a problem if it takes a lot of time to get it right if this is something you never did before.

[telemanr]

Re: Organ Recording (at home)

Just in case anyone is wondering...the R-09's effects are not active during recording.

[fredy2]

Re: Organ Recording (at home)



With a good omni mic, place the mic where your ears hear what you want it to sound like... If you can't find a place that sounds right, then a mic just won't pick up anything different, no matter what type you use. The condenser mics really do a good job. You might have to have more than one if your acoustics are bad in your facility. If the acoustics are bad, you might have to put some sound control panels or wall hangings.</P>

[soubasse32]

Re: Organ Recording (at home)

[off-topic] Havoc, I am always impressed with your command of the English language. What language do you speak on a daily basis?

[Havoc]

Re: Organ Recording (at home)

I expected the effects not to work during recording but didn't have time to read the manual. Sadly there is not much you can do to experiment with the gain staging. You need to maximise the output of the mic amplifier, the first gain stage has to be the best and give the largest gain possible. But there is much that can go wrong.

I took a look at the pictures of the R09 and this gave the following ideas:

- you can set the mic sensitivity to "high" or "low". If you set it to "high", then if there is a loud noise it can overload the mic amp. Since organs tend to be on the loud side it might be safer to put it on "low". This will probably be comparable to adding a mic pad in a not integrated setup.
- there is a "AGC" (automatic gain control). Mixed blessing, but in case you are not sure and experimenting, try to see if that makes a difference. In this case there is piece of circuitry added that prevents the AD convertor from overloading. It doesn't help ifthe mic amplifier overloads because it is behind that one, to prevent the mic amp from overloading you need the pad.
- try the low pass filter: organs can put out a lot of low frequencies, not all mics and preamps handle them gracefully. It isn't because there is a quoted frequency response going down to 20Hz that this is a meaningfull spec.
- then slowly bring up the recording volume and try to find the best setting. This is the one that gives you the most recorded volume without distortion, clipping etc.
- record in 24bit and better leave the recording a bit on the quiet side. Bring the volume up later on the pc.

There is a large difference between what mics capture and what you hear. Just try it out. After all this is what the thread starter is complaining about. I'm right now editing an organ recording in a church that is a bit to reverberant to my taste and even while we went about 1/3 closer than the best place to listen to the organ there is still a bit too much reverbation.

Adding mics in a bad acoustics environment will solve nothing. Due to phase problems it will make it harder to actually use them.The PZM mics mentioned might be useful in that case. Going closer and record a more direct sound and adding reverb later might work as well.

[OT] SB, I use flemish daily. But since the flemish tv in Belgium isn't dubbed and english series are prominent everybody here has a very early exposition to english. Added to that that my interests and studies have always been technical so a lot of the course material was in english. Having a real englishman as neighbourgh that had the same taste in books as I had helped again (Woodhouse, Sharpe) and you pick up some vocabulary fast (not sure if Woodhouse is a suitable style to emulate on the net). Keeping it up with working in a job that requires english communication, reading job related magazines etc. 

[telemanr]

Re: Organ Recording (at home)



[OT but]</P>


Havoc, do you mean Tom Sharpe of "Blott on the Landscape" etc.? Viscious at timesbut delightful stuff. </P>


Do you mean Woodhouse (and if so, which one) or do you mean Wodehouse (Jeeves &amp; Wooster). I very much enjoy the BBC Jeeves series with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.</P>


And then there's Jaques Brel. I used to practise French dictée writing down the words to all his songs since I didn't have any of the lyrics. The Flemish was a bit beyond me but I love the sound.</P>


Rob</P>

[j reimer]

Re: Organ Recording (at home)



Havoc, you said, "low pass filter", but the context suggests you meant "high pass filter".</P>


John Reimer</P>

[Havoc]

Re: Organ Recording (at home)

Yep, that Tom Sharpe and Wodehouse indeed, sorry for the confusion. Not a fan of Brel myself (or chanson in general).

Indeed, it should have been a high pass filter. Looked as if I made a fine mess of that last post. Almost doing an impression of Lord Emsworth...

[NYCFarmboy]

Re: Organ Recording (at home)

Here are my settings I use on my R-09:



On the back are 4 toggle switches. I set them as:




AGC: OFF

EXT MIC TYPE: STEREO (but I don't use external mics)

LOW CUT: ON

MIC GAIN: LOW





I find the results are unusable if I have the LOW CUT in the OFF position. and the Mic Gain needs to be low otherwise the organ just blows it away on powerful registrations. I record with levels that are about maybe 1/3 of what the meter shows as being "max".



After I record I use Garageband to tweak the sound levels to get the audio to what it sounded like in person.



I strongly recommend using external mics. I always use external mics and a completely different system for recording my home pipe organ but when I"m out doing recordings at churchs and have my hands full with tripods and cameras the little R-09 is perfect. But does require a good post production software application like Garageband to convert the files to MP3 etc.

Email me a file (raw is fine)...and I'll see what I can do with it oK?

John
:)