Recording - April 2015 - 8

Note to faithful writers: When sending your letters by email,
please remember to include your name and where you hail from.
Fiddle Fiddle Big And Little
Hi Paul Stamler: I'm just starting a recording project with a 4piece Irish traditional band. I found your online article on
recording fiddles (http://is.gd/FiddleBigAndLittle) very helpful.
I'm just wondering how old the article is and if there are
any newer, better options. Cheaper options are always nice
but I do want to make sure we have the right tools for the
job. I appreciate any direction you might be able to offer...
Thank You,
Brendan Carr
Cleveland, OH

Paul J. Stamler replies:
Hi, Brendan. I wrote that article in 2003; I just went
back and reread it, and it's remarkable how few things
have changed in the intervening dozen years. I have only
two real updates, both of which happen to pertain to the
little Oktava mic (which is now called the MK012).
First, I've found that the hypercardioid capsule works
better for fiddles than the cardioid, as it has a flatter high
frequency response, both on- and off-axis.
Second, in the article I strongly recommended against
the trick of wrapping a mic in foam and shoving it into the
tailpiece/bridge of a bass fiddle. I've changed my mind
-but only if the mic is an omni. Omnidirectional mics
have no proximity effect, which is the reason most mics
sound too boomy in this position. One of my former students, Boris Golynskiy (now on staff at Webster University)
discovered that the wrap-and-stuff technique works fine
when he used a Neumann KM 130 omni mic. I've had
equally good results with an Oktava MK012, using its
omni capsule.
The rest of the article has held up remarkably well. Not
that many things have changed since 2003; the instruments are the same, and the problems they create are the
same, so it stands to reason that the solutions that worked
back then still work today. Peace-PJS
Spreading mono into stereo with time delay
Hi Scott Dorsey-I read your article "Recording Live To
2-Track... But Not The Way You'd Think" (August 2014)
and had a quick question. This article perfectly described
some of the scenarios I've had in my attempts to record a
few bands around here.
Concerning the part about running the microphone feed
through a fake stereo effect-I was wondering if Channel
Tools in Cakewalk SONAR will serve this function? Thanks,
Charles Silverman
via email

Charles, allow me to jump in before quoting Scott's
reply. Channel Tools doesn't specifically offer a "mono to
stereo" widening feature, but you should be able to get the
effect Scott describes in the article by using the plug-in's

ability to separately delay the left and right channels by a given number of milliseconds.
The Haas Effect, which is named for experiments performed by Helmut
Haas in 1951 (although it was previously well understood as the "precedence effect"), is a perceived widening of the stereo image if one channel is delayed by a tiny amount, 1 to 5 milliseconds. If you delay more
than that, the effect will change to a perceived shift of the mono signal
"toward" the undelayed side of the soundstage. When you get beyond
50 to 100 milliseconds, you'll start hearing the delay as slapback echo.
Scott wrote, "I don't know anything about the Channel Tools kit in
SONAR, but I would be surprised if there wasn't something available
as part of the DAW's plug-in set. If Channel Tools has a "stereo synthesizer" that makes things sound wide and diffuse when you apply it
to a mono file, and which doesn't change tonally when you flip the
mono switch on your amp and listen in mono, that's the right thing."
Try duplicating the mono signal and running it as a stereo input to
Channel Tools, then tweak the delay of one channel with respect to
the other by a tiny amount, listening for the widening effect. As Scott
recommends, check your results by summing to mono and making
sure the effect doesn't vanish. Do not use the plug-in's polarityinversion buttons; they'll give you a wide-sounding stereo effect, but
when you sum a signal and its inverse back to mono, you'll get
silence. Good luck!-MM
A little extra math
Dear Mike Rivers: I really enjoyed the first installment of your new
series "Specs: Removing The Mystery" in this issue of Recording
(February 2015). However, I was a little confused at first about the
formula of dBV = 20 x log (V).
I expected 10 to convert from bels to decibels, but not 20. A little
Googling soon revealed that power is proportional to the square of
the voltage, and hence becomes 2 x 10 in the formula. Other readers might like to know this.
Larry Seiler
Los Senderos Studio, LLC
lossenderosstudio.com

Mike Rivers replies:
Larry-I can understand why that might look a little confusing. In the
article, I did mention that the formula for expressing power ratios uses
10, rather than the 20 that we use for voltage ratios, but I didn't go
into why.
You're on the right track, though. Power is the product of two parameters, voltage and current. If you know resistance, you can apply
Ohm's Law and get P=(V2)/R or (I2)xR. When you take the ratio of
two powers, the resistance drops out and you get the ratio of the
squares of voltage or current... and you can square a number by multiplying its logarithm by 2.
When Mike edited my article, he decided that he didn't want to
scare away readers with too much unfamiliar mathematics, so we
opted for just including the formulas that are the most useful for interpreting or validating a device's specifications. But I'm pleased to hear
that the article prompted at least one reader to dig into the math a little further.-MR

Write to us at: Talkback, Recording Magazine, 5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301
Or save stamps and send email to talkback@recordingmag.com
8

RECORDING April 2015

http://www.is.gd/FiddleBigAndLittle http://www.lossenderosstudio.com

Recording - April 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - April 2015