Jake Niceley and David Farrell used SoundField¹s Mark V for Deacon John¹s Jump Blues Project mixed at Nashville¹s Seventeen Grand. NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE: Determined to authentically convey all of the excitement and nuance of Deacon John's Jump Blues concert, engineers Jake Niceley and David Farrell used a SoundField Mark V point-source microphone to deliver six channels of phase-coherent surround sound. The concert was the culmination of eighteen months of work on the Deacon John's Jump Blues Project - an ambitious combination film, studio CD, and HDTV concert. Held at the historic New Orleans Orpheum Theater, the concert featured New Orleans fixture Deacon John Moore along with Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Tricia "Teedy" Boutte, The Zion Harmonizers, and host Bernard "Bunchy" Johnson. Cyril Vetter of Vetter Communications created the project to pay homage to the "jump blues" of 50's and 60's New Orleans, and three selections from the concert will end up in the project's final 35mm feature length film. Vetter hired Niceley, co-owner of Nashville's Seventeen Grand recording studios, and Farrell, engineer at New Orleans' Ultrasonic Studios, to record the concert with impeccable fidelity. Niceley mixed the project back at Seventeen Grand. In addition to the feature film cuts, the entire concert will be available for HDTV broadcast and DVD. "When Cyril explained his concept for this project and his intended release formats, I knew we had to keep fidelity as high as possible," Niceley explained. "The studio recording was recorded to 24-track analog and mixed to the R-1 at 24-bit 96k for a possible DVD-A release. The HDTV concert was recorded multi-track directly to the R-1 at 24-bit 48k using 48 channels of Millennia Media HV-3 microphone preamplifiers. Both the studio recording and the live recording were mixed in 5.1 surround and stereo simultaneously. The use of multiple hi-res solutions will facilitate almost any release format." Of course, all of that attention to storage mediums would be for naught without a stellar input. The team positioned a few audience microphones to fold into the final surround mix, but in addition, they needed to capture the stage ambience and imaging to deliver a believable final product. They could have hung a number of microphones all over the stage, but the SoundField Mark V microphone with accompanying SP451 Surround Decoder offered a much more elegant solution. \The Mark V and SP451 produce six discrete channels of information derived from the microphone's point source capsule. Niceley suspended the microphone directly over center stage, defining the audio equivalent of scaffolding on which he positioned spot microphones in the final mix. He noted that the natural imagery and ambience of the SoundField system was far superior to artificial reverbs and delays. Moreover, all of the channels were perfectly phase coherent - in sharp contrast to the problems associated with spaced microphone configurations. This made downmixing to stereo trouble-free. Niceley is familiar with SoundField products through his work at Seventeen Grand in Nashville, Tennessee. The studio owns an older ST250 that is frequently called into service to record string sessions, orchestras, location recordings and other large ensembles. The mic used on this project, the SoundField Mark V, is a studio version of the portable DC powered ST250. The Mark V goes beyond the capabilities of the ST250 in that it delivers integral mono, stereo, M/S manipulation, plus higher signal to noise ratio and headroom. Both units deliver stellar fidelity and peerless imaging. He noted the Mark V has a very high output, is very quiet, and conveys a balanced, natural frequency response. Just as "Jump Blues" devotees will have reason to celebrate the Deacon John Jump Blues release, so too will surround sound and audiophiles! SoundField's point source surround imaging defines the state-of-the-art and is several leaps ahead of the next comer. |
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