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Recording/Engineering Practices

I have a recording of a duet of Ron Carter and Houston Person titled 'Dialogues' on Blue Note HCD7072. I do not know who engineered the recording.

From a physical 'sound stage' one might think you couldn't ask for more. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling. Amazing, involving. Warm. Nice music too!

However it only too a couple of seconds to realize in real life you had two instruments on stage side by side with equal prominence. On this recording you had Carters bass centered and life like, but Person's sax encompassed the entire stage with some emphasis on/in both corners.

I suspect this effect was as much as the result of two tracks laid down separately and then mixed with the tracks of the bass in phase and the sax out of phase.

Anyone have any thoughts or knowledge of recording practices that would clear this up for me?
newbee

Showing 1 response by arh

arh
366 posts
 
This was recorded at Rudy Van Gelder studio in 2000. This would have been a typical studio recording with one mike per instrument. In the stereo mix each instrument can be placed anywhere left to right in the sound field. Also each instrument would get its own reverb and this is used to again create the overall sound field. There is no playing with phase going on. Rudy Gelder was one of the best engineers out there
Alan
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