SH Spotlight Distortion free trumpets in the 20s-40s. But BLUE NOTE? WHAT HAPPENED? RVG Evil Neumann mics?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Steve Hoffman, Feb 9, 2017.

  1. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    FWIW, I'm not sure Steve was suggesting that those Neumanns were "crappy microphones," hell, they're great microphones (he can correct me if I'm misunderstanding him), just that they were a lot hotter than what the engineers were coming from, and maybe mic techniques and signal chains had to be adjusted to deal with that and those adjustments weren't made in a lot of instances.
     
  2. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    Start a thread!
     
  3. It must have been something in the thread title that misled me...:)
     
    chervokas likes this.
  4. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    That was click bait, buddy. Didn't you read why a Neumann microphone wouldn't have worked well with American microphone preamps?
     
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  5. ATR

    ATR Senior Member

    Location:
    Baystate
    This is an interesting point, and one that I would like Steve Hoffman to respond to also. This theory about the mics causing overload distortion is attractive. OTOH, I find that in general the Van Gelder recordings done for Prestige sound far superior to the Blue Notes. I never mention it because the Blue Notes are generally so prized for their sound quality, but this seems like the perfect opportunity to do so.
     
  6. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    Once again, the microphones are fine. The mic preamps could not handle the Neumanns.

    A beautiful woman in a mini-skirt walks across the street in the crosswalk with a green light and cars crash all around her staring at her. Not her fault!
     
  7. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    My favorite sounding Van Gelder recordings have always been the famed Miles Davis Quintet sessions for Prestige that produced Cookin', et al., and the Sonny Rollins Worktime (which does have some of that reverb that I think Steve has sometimes commented on in RVG's recording), to name two sets of dates that always stuck out to me as sounding great. I think RVG was still using those mics then too but I don't remember that drum overload that often bugs me on those later recordings.
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2017
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  8. Tommyboy

    Tommyboy Senior Member

    Location:
    New York
    I read a post by someone on this forum who mentioned that Charles Mingus did not want to record with RVG. I'm not sure about the veracity of the comment.
     
  9. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Also, although we're kinda picking on Van Gelder here, it's not like there weren't problems on other records of the era. Even Roy DuNann, say Don Cherry's trumpet on Something Else, it's often nasty and edgy, the rest of the recording sounds good, but there's something not right about that trumpet sound, like at times he was playing louder or moving closer to the the mic than originally intended or set up during runthroughs or something (and you can hear him moving around too like on his "Chippie" solo, I dunno if they were using a single mic on Coleman and Cherry and the players were moving around -- I mean you certainly Coleman moving around on that one too -- but it doen't result in a great clean trumpet sound). But it's not like taking all the condenser mic signals into a preamp and regularly red-lining it, it's still the mics to attenuators to tape deck signal path, so you don't run across those problems a lot with those DuNann recordings, unless some other set ups. Even still the results were not always perfect even with the simplest signal path and a guy who was really concerned that the signal was hot.
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2017
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  10. BradOlson

    BradOlson Country/Christian Music Maven

    Dave Brubeck's "Time Out"'s horn parts are well recorded as what Steve said, the horns were gently compressed as this was a Columbia recording from 1959.
     
  11. Lemon Curry

    Lemon Curry (A) Face In The Crowd

    Location:
    Mahwah, NJ
    I've read right here on the forums that the mono mix was made to deal with stereo phase issues. Where those phase issues came from, and how they were resolved in the "radio" mix - no clue.
     
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  12. RatFarm

    RatFarm Forum Resident

    Location:
    NC, USA
    Can you imagine a world where Preze Prado was not distorted? It would never be the same. The drama is in the distortion.
     
  13. You need click bait? Really?
     
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  14. E.Baba

    E.Baba Forum Resident

    As I indicated I am personally in no position to know anything about the subject. Yes the guy telling me did name names as examples but since they were a random list of names unknown to me I didn't remember them. That probably won't satisfy anyone who wants evidence but that's bad luck.
    It was a casual comment on the way to something else. If I've wrongly remembered "A whole load", "Plenty" , or "Quite a few" extended somehow from "Some" then that's what you get on the Internet.
     
  15. It may look like the peaks are being restored, but there's no way the software knows if it was a double or triple peak or how high it actually goes. Look at the left channel clipped peak near the center -- that probably was a double peak, but Izotope adds a single mountain top. And the 3 left channel clipped peaks on the right -- after processing the smaller peak to the left is actually rounded off.

    I've experimented with clip restoration, too, but after hearing no difference or possibly even slight degradation by clip restoration, I just leave it alone and accept that there's nothing I can do to "fix" clipped recordings. Sometimes I just have to sit back and enjoy the music as it is.
     
  16. Hubert jan

    Hubert jan Forum Resident

    As a music lover what now ? Must I try to repair the CD's or Lp's I buy in the shop ?
    What a BS.
     
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  17. yasujiro

    yasujiro Senior Member

    Location:
    tokyo
    Discussed in this thread.
     
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  18. Tommyboy

    Tommyboy Senior Member

    Location:
    New York
    Thanks!
     
  19. OK, great. Thanks for playing. :righton:
     
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  20. Lemon Curry

    Lemon Curry (A) Face In The Crowd

    Location:
    Mahwah, NJ
  21. Bytor Snowdog

    Bytor Snowdog Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas
    I have found that about 35-40% of albums ive reviewed have clipping. So were not talking about isolated incidents.
     
  22. Bytor Snowdog

    Bytor Snowdog Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas
    Maybe its the software you used. But using Izotope RX, I hear benefit in every case.
     
  23. Jose Jones

    Jose Jones Outstanding Forum Member

    Location:
    Detroit, Michigan
    Interesting rant and explanation, Steve.

    I've noticed some distorted trumpet on some of Miles Davis' Columbia recordings, for example, the infamous Plugged Nickel album, and (especially) the Live at Carnegie Hall 1961 recording; were they using the same mics and preamps in their mobile recording console as Rudy VanGelder?
     
  24. misterjones

    misterjones Smarter than the average bear.

    Location:
    New York, NY
    Given what's been discussed above, I would like more recommendations for trumpet recordings on CD or LP. (I have a number of 78s, but I don't think I would like to buy any more at this time.) I assume Hep, Jazz Oracle and Frog lead the way, but which artists really shine through on these or other labels?
     
    ILovethebassclarinet likes this.
  25. I'm glad you can hear a benefit. I've used Cool Edit Pro for years and never heard a benefit trying to restore clipped peaks. I've always felt it was futile trying to add something back that is missing. Just my opinion.
     

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