For Audiophiles
This
recording was minimally mic'ed using a simple pair of laboratory-grade
Earthworks M30BX microphones. This specific pair was hand selected
from a production run after extremely careful analysis by the company
owner and are matched to within as close as he could achieve using the
measuring gear they have at their facility. It took approximately
eight hours of trial-and-error placement in various positions and
angles to achieve the best balance of initial attack, tonal characterizes
and imaging. The room itself is quite large, with a ten foot high
ceiling and acoustically treated with heavy drapes, carpeting on the
floor and strategically placed RealTraps acoustic panels.
The recording device, the Tascam HD-P2, captures
audio in very high resolution and allows me to provide FLAC files at 24-bit/96kHz. There were no moving parts, other than the microphone's
pickup device, as the Tascam records to a solid-state memory card. For
XLR microphone cable duties i chose Cardas 2 x 24 M for their known
balanced sound and excellent characteristics in tonality and harmonics
in this specific application.
During my many years as a critical listener i have
felt that using electricity from a wall outlet has compromises. While
the power into my home studio is quite clean and have dedicated
outlets plus a recording studio quality balanced power device, the
choice for using 100% battery power made the most sense. The
microphones have their own internal build-in amplification and the
Tascam HD-P2 also operates from battery power.
Overall, the goal was to achieve the utmost purity
in capturing everything from the extremely delicate and quiet
uppermost frequencies of the Treeworks chimes to the nearly woofer
destroying high SPL levels of the Tama gong bass drum. Tonal harmonics
is of great importance and the accuracy of recording various
percussion instruments is a great challenge when using only a simple
pair of microphones. Most commercial music releases use a minimum of
six microphones on a drumset, with a complete set as captured here
probably 'needing' upwards of at least twelve! While no recording is
perfect, the sound you hear on this album is amazingly precise and
honestly offered to you the listener. The benefits of this recoding
technique is stunning imaging, great depth and perfect phasing due to
no 'conflicts' of mixing a vast multitude of sound sources and assembling
the many signals together.
Thank you for purchasing this album and i very much
look forward to hearing from you! If there is enough demand i am open
to releasing a follow-up album or two. As this is the very first
release, a choice was made to cover a very wide verity of styles.
There is so much more this complete percussion and drumset has to
offer! Please let me know your favorite tracks and the next album
could provide a more narrow selection of styles in a variety of ways.
Music is indeed a lifelong journey and i hope THTST
is able to transport you to many wonderful aural places. Of course in
the end what really matters is that you...
Enjoy the Music,
Steven R. Rochlin
