notesdontmatter

Audio Arts – Week 2 – Multi Micing Pt 2 – 11/03/08

I am somewhat undecided on the virtues of the Decca Tree technique. While initial forays into the exercise provoked resistive feelings stemming from a ‘pro-stereo’ mindset, as I listened intently to the product of our efforts I deduced there may be some value to its employ. This potential benefit lies in the areas of time saving and capturing organic spatial realism. Yes, one can just pan individual sources to wherever they like in a 5.1 mix but that leaves the realism inherent in the end product entirely in the hands of the engineer. Further still, my own experience in the area of post production would suggest that any system that reduces the time spent tweaking parameters in the studio is worth considering.

I think detraction from this approach begins with the realisation that 5.1 mixing can only produce pseudo-realism. Listening to the spoken word improvisation that our group recorded while walking clockwise in a circle of slowly reducing diameter as a stereo reduction emphasised this. As the numerous voices panned independently from left to right I deduced that this result, despite its instant complexity, would be perceived as no more realistic as independently recorded individuals panned manually following a screen image. The latter would only suffer from excesses in the area of Hyper-realism at the hands of an immature engineer or producer.

Click here to link to online folder containing a Zip file of MP3 highlights.

Reference:

Grice, David. “Audio Arts – Week 2 – Multi Micing Pt 2.” Lecture presented at EMU Space, Level 4, Schultz Building, University of Adelaide, 11^th of March 2008.

posted by David J Dowling @ 8:31 PM