Press

 

01.08.2001 - OLD LYME, CONNECTICUT

Neumann and Sennheiser microphones share the stage

With Neumann and Sennheiser microphones at the front of a pristine signal path, eminent sound engineer Tom Lazarus recorded famed sitarist Ravi Shankar's "Full Circle-Carnegie 2000" performance. The Angel Records release celebrates 80-year-old Shankar's lifetime contribution to classical Indian music and his role as ambassador of its virtues to the West. Shankar first graced Carnegie's hallowed stage when he was just 18 and was joined by his 19-year-old daughter and virtuoso sitarist Anoushka Shankar for this year's Full Circle performance. Lazarus boasts a comparable fame within the recording industry for his twenty years of impeccable work with such talents as Vladimir Horowitz, RenŽe Fleming, and Yo Yo Ma. He currently co-directs Classic Sound, Inc., one of the world's preeminent classical recording, editing, mixing, and mastering companies.

Owing to the importance of the event, Lazarus and Mr. Shankar's producer, Hans Wendl, decided that they should take advantage of the highest quality microphones, processors, and recording equipment available. Despite sagging commercial interest in the format, Lazarus elected to record the performance in surround sound. "While we certainly have to consider market demands, I still try to record everything in surround. It simply sounds excellent. Moreover, I wanted to envelop the listener with Ravi's music in particular. It's part of the complete experience," explained Lazarus.

The stage was set to maximize aesthetic as well as acoustical beauty, with Shankar and his daughter front and center, seated on a rostrum draped in Indian blankets and supporting incense. On either side of them were inward-facing tabla players. Two tamboura players sat behind everyone else.

Most classical Indian music calls for just one player on each of the three instruments so the "Full Circle" configuration was a little like two amalgamated string quartets. However, Shankar and his entourage didn't simply double parts, they harmonized and expanded the scope of their repertoire.

While microphone selection and placement would have the greatest impact on the quality of the end product, Lazarus was careful to select only the premier preamplifiers, converters, and recorders. He used remote-controllable Grace microphone preamplifiers hidden under the rostrum on stage and Mytek 24-bit, 96kHz converters. The Mytek converters were custom made specifically for the "Full Circle" recording.

With little time to set up or experiment with microphone placement, Lazarus wanted all of his options open and demanded sixteen channels at 96kHz. Four synchronized Tascam DA-78-HR machines interfaced with Mytek converters provided those tracks. Limited set up time also meant that once Lazarus chose and placed his microphones, he wouldn't have a chance to move them. Based on decades of experience and a trustworthy trove of Neumann and Sennheiser microphones, his initial choices and placements were spot-on.

Lazarus used a matched pair of Neumann KM 150s on each of the tablas (four microphones in all). Time constraints meant that he would use the same model microphones on each pair of instruments on the assumption that performers of their caliber would match one another timbrally. No timbral balancing via microphone response would be necessary.

Beyond their excellent transient response and notoriety for capturing everything sonically beautiful in a drum, he chose the KM 150s for their hypercardioid pickup pattern. As was the case with the other instruments, the tablas are relatively quiet, and stage monitoring bleed became a prominent issue. The
KM 150s tight pattern minimized the problem, even as monitoring levels crept up during the performance.

With the ready agreement of the house mixer, Lazarus placed the microphones inches away from the tablas in an X-Y configuration (his refined sense of imaging results in his using few, if any, mono spot microphones). While careful not to compromise the timbre, he was exacting and neat with the appearance of the microphones, their st ands, and their cables in congruence with the "air" of Carnegie Hall.

Lazarus captured Shankar and his daughter with Sennheiser MKH 30s and MKH 40s oriented in an MS configuration. He only recently introduced the MS technique into his repertoire with the advent of the MKH 30, the first "really good" figure-8 pattern microphone that he had ever heard. "I couldn't use an X-Y configuration on the sitar because so much of the instrument's color would end up off-axis," remarked Lazarus. "Moreover, a sitar recorded in X-Y doesn't have a natural image, it ends up with an exaggerated stereo spread. It's better to have an excellent cardioid like the MKH 40 aimed at the sweet spot and then to 'stereoize' that sound with the MS. Additionally, using MS allowed me to adjust the stereo width in mixdown as opposed to risking error in the short amount of time we had to set up. It's like recording with a variable zoom lens."

Beyond the facility they bring to MS, Lazarus cites, the very "attractive" sound of MKH microphones on strings, a quality that is accentuated with Grace preamplifiers. He frequently uses the Sennheiser MKH 20 on orchestra strings and other sounds that are shy on transients, describing the microphones' sound as spectrally balanced.

Lazarus recorded the MS signals discretely and subsequently decoded them on the Sony DMX R100 used to mix the session. "Today's digital mixers do a fantastic job with MS signals," he opined. "I was able to configure the input modules so that they were linked. With a judicious amount of digital delay, I brought the signals into absolute phase coherence. At that scale, digital delay really acts as an equalizer, and I was able to fine-tune the timbre of the sitars."

In addition to the above-mentioned microphones, supplemental microphones were included in the mix. Lazarus used cardioid Neumann KM 140s on the tambouras and hung four KM 130 diffuse-field equalized microphones from the ceiling. Two Sennheiser MKH 70 shotgun microphones facing out towards the audience from atop the speaker stacks rounded out the collection.

Thorough planning insured that both the stereo and surround mixes were first rate: "Initially, I mix everything in stereo. Once I'm happy with that, I flip the board around for surround. Then I reestablish reverbs, EQs, bussing, and fader moves. Because, in this case, Carnegie Hall was sound reinforced, I wasn't able to use as much of the house sound as I would have liked. It was included to provide a sense of space, but I relied on a TC Electronics M6000 to deliver the bulk of the surround material."

All of Lazarus' attention to detail paid off, as the CD has received critical praise from audiophiles and the public alike. Interestingly, the accomplished engineer owes part of his recording acumen to long-time Neumann innovator Juergen Wahl. The two shared ideas and swapped equipment for several years at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado. Lazarus even had the honor guest lecturing a few of Juergen Wahl's classes!


NEUMANN
1 Enterprise Drive, Old Lyme, CT 06371
(860) 434-5220, Fax (860) 434-3148
http://www.neumannusa.com/

CONTACTS
Karl Winkler, Director of Marketing
kwinkler@neumannusa.com, (860) 434-5220
Antoinette Flosi, Publicity
tflosi@aadvert.com, (847) 998-0600