Mike Pappas, chief engineer at Denver’s KUVO PublicRadio 89.3 FM and president of American Digital Recordings will be conducting real-world demonstrations of 5.1 recording techniques at Demo Room 306B at AES 2002 in Los Angeles. His presentation will focus on 5.1 surround sound recording applications using Neumann and Sennheiser microphones. The presentations start every hour on the hour with a question-and-answer period following each session.
Pappas will feature his 5.1 recordings from the Count Basie Orchestra at the University of Michigan Power Center and the recent San Jose and Vail Jazz Festivals. “All of these recordings used Sennheiser MKH 800s, Neumann M150s and a Neumann KU 100 in various combinations,” explained Pappas. “AES attendees will listen to the tracks and learn exactly how the mics were positioned during the various recordings sessions.
“Take the KU 100,” Pappas continued. “There are so many ways to use this mic, ways that most people wouldn’t think of. It’s an expensive piece of equipment, and unless you’ve really had an opportunity to learn about it from a different perspective, one might never consider it.”
Pappas will also demonstrate how he uses Neumann’s M 150 small-diaphragm tube microphone to record the LFE channel. “This technique is somewhat unique to the way most people create the subwoofer channel, which is tofilter off the left/center/right and rears below a certain frequency,” noted Pappas. “That method penalizes recording engineers using full-bandwidth speakers on all five channels, plus it tends to introduce phase shift and some other artifacts that muddy the recording. My answer to this problem is to use the M 150. This mic really delivers low frequency! It’s an elegant way to solve the LFE without compromising the rest of the recording chain.”
In addition to Pappas’ 5.1 recordings, scoring mixer Casey Stone will be playing some cues from Christophe Beck’s score for The Tuxedo. The cues will be presented in 5.1 surround from the master 24-bit 96kHz source. The material was recorded at 20th Century Fox’s Newman Scoring Stage and was mixed at O’Henry Studio B.
Other equipment used in the demo includes Avalon Acoustics mixing monitors powered by a Balanced Audio Technology’s 6-channel amplifier, a Genex Research Limited GX 8500 DSD recorder with EMM Lab DSD converters. “By overlaying these 6-channel recordings over the entire recording system, attendees can witness exactly what we did to achieve these effects,” Pappas said. “This is truly a ‘come see how it’s really done 5.1’ learning experience.”
Co-sponsoring the 5.1 recording seminar with Sennheiser are Balanced Audio Technology, Cardas Audio Ltd., Genex Research Ltd., Grace Design and EMM Labs.
