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[James Tan]

Hello!

I'm currently recording a string quartet inside an auditorium.
It's a slightly-sloping indoor auditorium with a stage and balcony.  
The auditorium is in a retangular shape...just a tad longer than it is wide.  

And so, the standing waves are creating an absolute mess in the recording.  There's so much buildup, especially around the 170hz area...that the cello becomes a resonating juggernaut in the mics...an AB stereo pair of Schoeps MK2 omnis.  

It appears that the recording must be made at this auditorium...and since I do not have any directional mic pairs the caliber of the Schoeps omnis...I'm probably relegated to keeping it AB.  There really is no budget for this recording.

At first they were situated on the floor in front of the stage...moving them onto the stage helped matters somewhat, but not nearly enough.  After a lot of positioning, I went with 10 feet out and 5 feet higher than their instruments...but the results are still unsatisfactory.  Next time out I'll try even more locations for the quartet...in the aisles...maybe stick the mics right over them...

Any tips?

[franman]

I feel you're on the right track.... keep moving things around until you get a respectable sound! There's not much you can do without time and money, to fixup the hall... so it comes down to "loading" the instrument (or ensemble) into the hall in the most advantageous way, and then moving your mics around until you find something that works! Lotsa work, but that's the way it's done!!

[Yannick Willox]

A bit late in the game, but we've done a recording in a nice chapel a few years back, which sounded quite warm. Of course this laid bare the bass problems of the chapel.
What we did was construct four big (1.4x2.4m high) MDF panels on wheels to move around (close to the mic position) to break up the standing waves around the mic. They were oriented in such a way that no direct sound was reflected into the mic of course.

[franman]

interesting idea...