# Recording and Mixing an Orchestra for Separation and a Cohesive Soundstage



## AudiocRaver (Jun 6, 2012)

While listening to a recording of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony a while ago, on headphones, I realized that the soundstage seemed chopped in two. I listened with different headphones and checked settings on my music server to make sure nothing was wrong there. I finally brought up Voxengo's SPAN spectrum analysis plug-in (free) on my server to analyze the recording.

SPAN includes a stereo correlation meter with a range from -1 to +1. With a good stereo recording, this indication of correlation between left and right signals will bounce around in the positive zone between .3 or .4 and 1, indicating high positive correlation between left & right (a mono recording would give a constant +1 reading). It might briefly go negative once in a while, but never stay there longer than a fraction of a second - unless some strong phasing effect is in use. With the Beethoven, the correlation meter was constantly bouncing around zero, spending as much time on the negative as on the positive, indicating that the recording had a left side and right side and NO CENTER.

I have two other recordings of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, other conductors and other orchestras. Trying them out, the correlation meter showed the same result - of course they had the same soundstage problem - good left and right, but no center, soundstage chopped in two. It is like the orchestra was divided up, sent to two different rooms, recorded perfectly in sync, and then mixed so that there would be little to no interaction between the two sides of the recording. And that is how the recordings sound.

Other recordings on the same albums did not have this problem. It is almost like there was a plot of some sort to make sure that there would be no nice recordings of the Seventh with a cohesive soundstage on playback. Listening with speakers, you get enough mixing of channels in your room to take care the problem. With headphones, these recordings are just not going to sound right.

It is no secret that successfully recording and mixing a Symphony Orchestra is not a simple thing. There is a lot involved in getting separation between sections. But ending up with a recording that sounds cohesive, like ONE ORCHESTRA, should not be that big a challenge.

Anyone involved in recording and/or mixing orchestras or larger groups run across these challenges before? What techniques do you suggest to guard against and/or overcome them?


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

*Re: Recording and Mixing an Orchestra for*

Im not an expert but I have recorded as well as done live mixing for years on our churches Singing Christmas tree. We used a live 40 piece Orchestra and I defiantly found that placing mic's at as many of the individual, instruments as possible gave me the best recorded mix. Yes I know a whole bunch of work and a huge challenge. For our live house mix we used our 40ch Heath & Allen board with a 12 channel aux board linked to the main board for the choir mic's.
There are two thoughts to recording an Orchestra, one being area mic's with the odd placed up close mic.
And as I mentioned mic's at every position. 
The difficulty in recording is trying to get the "live" fee without having too much stereo imaging that will contradict what the "live" sound is like with all its reflections. I think what you may be hearing is that someone decided to use area mic's as well as up close and the two images are fighting each other.


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## joebertin (Jul 21, 2013)

The recording may also have been "stereo enhanced" with different delay times on each channel. It's a widening technique, that messes with the center image.


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## AudiocRaver (Jun 6, 2012)

Good point, that would certainly do it.


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