Recording Orchestra and Other Classical Music Ensembles

5

The Hall, and How to Deal with It

The concert hall or recording studio should be thought of as one of the instruments in classical music recording, as the most common techniques capture the sound of both the instruments and the room as one audio source. It is important to assess the sound in the hall before listening to the resulting sound coming over the microphones, so that the engineer has a mental snapshot of the acoustic “signature” of the orchestra in the hall. The goal is to replicate in the recording the sound of the musicians in the room, with the intention of improving any shortcomings of the space through the careful placement and balancing of the microphones. In extreme cases, the hall itself might be physically altered to improve ...