I recently recorded a friend’s trio (piano, violin, and cello). The recordings were made during one of their rehearsals in an empty church. Time was limited, so the mic arrays used were mainly determined and setup ahead of time, with little to no time to fine tune placement. I was limited to 7 preamp channels. The quality level of the channels varied quite a bit; the piano tail pair and organ mics, preamps, and converters, were of lessor quality compared to the violin and cello mics, preamps, and converters. The layout of the group changed several times over the course of the recording.

I’ve included a one-drive link to six of the songs, which should be playable from the cloud or downloadable. Each song is a different solo / duet / trio configuration, and each has a slightly different mic array used.

Originally, there were some errors and omissions in this post. See post 4 for a description of the songs and the mic setup for each.

Thanks in advance for any time you could take to listen and comment.

EDIT: I removed the original mix of recordings and have a new link supplied in post 6 below.

It would be much more informative to those who listen, what the spacing was on the various spaced pairs.

I disagree...the ratio of which mics in the Straus Paket pair were used more, to become his primary, is of greater interest....and he's telling us it's largely the omnis

I'd be happy to share info on the mic setups.

First off there were some errors in my original post. I used a Boojum / Norman array on the violin and cello when the trio was playing (i.e. Wondrous Love). I used a Straus Paket spaced pair array for the violin and the cello on other songs. Sorry, I posted too much from memory. The corrections, with spacings, are below:

Wondrous Love: This is the trio playing. An omni tail pair was used on the piano. Mic spacing was 12” and they were back about 4’ from the tail. The violin and cello were mic’d using a Boojum / Norman array. The omnis were at 50 cm angled out slightly to point to instruments and the cardioids were EBS. The mic array was angled down about 45 degrees from horizontal and was about 6' from the instruments. The omnis were the primary.

Prelude from Suite No 2 in d minor: This is a cello solo. The cello was mic’d using a Straus Paket spaced pair, with 12” spacing. The mic array was angled down about 30 degrees from horizontal and was about 5.5' from the cello. The omnis were the primary.

Sicilienne: This was cello and piano. An omni tail pair was used on the piano. Mic spacing was 12” and they were back about 4’ from the tail. The cello was mic’d using a Straus Paket spaced pair, with 12” spacing. The mic array was angled down about 30 degrees from horizontal and was about 5.5' from the cello. The omnis were the primary.

Comfort: This was a piano solo. In the latest mixes a near-coincident cardioid pair out in front from the well was used. The cardioids used an EBS array and were out about 6’ from the piano at a height of about 5'.

Invocation: This was the violin and piano. An omni tail pair was used on the piano. Mic spacing was 12” and they were back about 4’ from the tail. The violin was mic’d using a Straus Paket spaced pair, with 12” spacing. The mic array was angled down about 60 degrees from horizontal and was about 5.5' from the violin. The omnis were the primary.

Elegy: This was the violin and organ. An omni spaced pair was used on the organ. Mic spacing was 40”. The violin was mic’d using a Straus Paket spaced pair, with 12” spacing. The mic array was angled down about 60 degrees from horizontal and was about 5' from the violin. The omnis were the primary.

I meant it would be more informative to state the distance the pairs were spaced, than just saying 'spaced pairs' - not that the distance of the spacing was more important than other info he gave.

Thanks - perfect!

I updated the mixes that I provided earlier (primarily the piano in the mix). Hopefully this is an improvement:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!ArPFBNX3leKChDVX...UAoXp?e=HzKFTp

I'm assuming you used a Straus Paket array (ie 4 mics, 2x paired Omni and cardioids) because you didn't have access to wide cardioid mics...or you wanted the flexibility to variably blend between AB Omni and AB cardioid at mix time ?
All were Gefell mics ?

I used the Straus Paket spaced pair array for individual instruments (violin or cello) for a somewhat narrow stereo image (mics spaced at 12") and to have flexibility during mixing. I didn't have time to optimize mic distance during the recording of this rehearsal and I wasn't familiar with the space. I ended up using the omni mics as the primary and the cardioid mics were down about 10dB. Omnis were Gefell M296S and cardioids were Sennheiser MKH40.