Klarinet Archive - Posting 000410.txt from 1997/11

From: "Benjamin A. Maas" <bmaas@-----.net>
Subj: Recording the clarinet....
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 02:31:08 -0500

There has been much writing about recording and there is a bit of
misinformation being handed out.

In any recording, the sound will only be as good as your weakest link. It
is true that if you use a bad microphone (IMO anything that costs $100 or
less), you WILL sound bad on your recording. The first pair of mics that I
used that sounded even remotely decent cost about $400/pair. Now, I use
mics that cost over $1200/pair (still cheap in the realm of studio
recording....) You don't have to use $1000 mics to record, but in sound
equipment, you get what you pay for.

The next thing is the medium of your master tape. In just about any
situation, Digital will sound better than analog. DAT (even MD, although I
don't like the medium) will sound better than cassette or cheap reel-to
reels. Of course a high end reel-to reel deck will sound very good, but I
doubt anybody on this list will be using such a setup.

When it comes to cassettes, a good cassette deck will obviously sound
better than a bad deck. The problems mentioned with wow and flutter are a
result of heads and motors being out of adjustment. With a low quality
deck, it becomes very difficult to bring the azimuth into alignment. Even
with a good deck, if your heads aren't cleaned and demagnetized and motors
are not in alignment, your tape will not sound good. I just spent $150
getting my heads rebuilt, motors realigned, etc.... on a $500 cassette
deck. The reason: all of the tapes I was making had a major wow and
flutter problem. Even with the good stuff, this is the nature of the
beast.

The other thing is the actual cassettes you use. If you want a good sound,
DON'T use Type I tapes. Use Type II, CrO2 cassettes for recording. There
will be a major difference in the sound of the recording. As far a lengths
go, anything under 90 minutes should be the same thickness tape. I order
hundreds of tapes at a time and the difference is length (tape in the
shell) only. There is one length with a thinner tape, however. That is
the T120 tape. Because it is so long, the manufactures have to use thinner
tape. There should not be a difference between 60s and 90s, however.

I hope I haven't confused or pissed anybody off. If you have questions,
please feel free to respond. I am also happy to answer questions directly
mailed to me.

-Ben

Benjamin Maas
Clarinetist and Digital Recording Engineer
Student, University of Southern California
Executive Director, Digital Renaissance Consort
bmaas@-----.net
bmaas@-----.edu