The Balanced Simplicity in a Classical Music Recording

The goal of a classical recording is of course to create a sound in a stereo that gives the listener the impression that he is sitting in that concert hall. The process goes though several steps, the major ones being recording, editing and mastering. I was talking to a Classical Music Master yesterday, and among other things he explained the ultimate recording setup: 2 microphones!

Apparently, one studio uses one microphone in each seat in a concert hall to make the recording and the result is terrible. The sound arrives in each seat at different times and in that way it becomes distorted. Furthermore, the mastering becomes really complicated due to all the channels the Music Master needs to work with. By having two microphones, you receive

Occam's Razor strikes again: "A solution to a problem should be as simple as possible, but no simpler." In the mastering process, the master reworks the analog recording to a digital piece. This is apparently a balanced analytical process and intuitive art. The master looks at the musical digital profile and listens to the sounds for impressions in an iterative manner. The master also needs to take into account that most listeners are using simple stereos that do not bring out the full quality of the music. So to summarize, a digital musical masterpiece is a product of fine balance of simple building blocks.