Special Projects

Mixing the Orchestra - A MARS Demonstration

Here's an interesting inside look at how an orchestra might be recorded and mixed. We use the word might because not all orchestral recordings would be done this way. The exact method chosen will depend on a number of factors including the music, size of the group and concert hall, hall acoustics, how the recording is to be used, and many other considerations.

This is an early demonstration package that we assembled well before a number of enhancements had been made to the MARS system. Sonically, these tracks might not be quite as alive as our more recent recordings, but they still serve to illustrate some "behinds the scenes" aspects of audio recording.

The group is the Salem Youth Orchestra (grade school, junior high, and senior high students), Larry Garrett, conductor. Recorded live during the Orchestra's 50th Anniversary concert. The narrator is MARS principal Frank Stearns.

You'll want to set up your playback system so that the narration is at a normal conversation level (approximately 60-65 decibels). You will most likely need to turn up your monitors to achieve this. Orchestra levels will then have an rough approximation closer to real life somewhere around the 10th row, with brief peaks around 85-90 decibels. The first time through, we suggest playing these segments in order.

  1. Introduction (spoken). (0:40, 1 MByte)
  2. Balcony (distant hall) microphones alone. (0:43, 1 MByte)
  3. "Outrigger" microphones alone. (0:42, 1 MByte)
  4. Stage solo microphones alone. (0:47, 1.1 MBytes)
  5. Introduction to the "mid" microphone of the mid-side stereo pair. (1:08, 1.6 MBytes)
  6. Adding the Side microphone. (0:57, 1.4 MBytes)
  7. Adding the outriggers. (0:39, 1 MByte)
  8. Adding the distant hall microphones. (0:55, 1.3 MBytes)
  9. Adding artificial reverberation to compensate for a dead concert hall. (1:24, 2 MBytes)
  10. Adding the solo microphones to enhance string clarity and listening to the final results. (3:00, 4.2 MBytes)
  11. Closing remarks. (0:41, 1 MByte)
Back to Gallery Summary List

Home