Mixing the Messiah

I had 2 days in P63, so I loaded all the files up on Pro tools and had a listen. (for the report on the recording process seee this post...click here

Here was my dilemma - the spaced omnis sounded better in stereo and MS pair sounded better in mono. And we broadcast in mono, but will podcast in stereo, and when we go to digital radio soon we will be stereo. So which do I use?
I ended up using the MS pair and lushing it up as much as possible. It was a lot drier than the omnis, so I added some Lexicon 224 rich chamber. I boosted a bit of top end around 5k upwards. And added a bit of bass.
The only spot mic I used in the mix was the double bass.
And then I mixed in the choir mics, which doubled as soloists mics. These had to be mixed in to varying degrees as the different soloists were not all the same loudness. It was interesting how little of the vocals came through the main stereo pair. They were there, but nowhere near enough clarity and level, so it was good to have the vocal mics there.
I listened to several different recordings of the messiah. I heard one really awfull one where they mixed the vocals so up front it sounded like they were in a small studio. I wanted mine to still sound like they were part of the same acoustic space as the orchestra, so i turned up the mics, but no so much that they took over.
I put some light compression of the vocal mics, just to keep a bit of control, but apart from that, being a classical recording, I let the dynamics of the music do their thing.
The only other adjustments i needed to make were the few sections the timpani played in. I had flatten the bottom end out because it was too full on with the timpani. Oh actually i did compress the orchestra little bit in these sections too.
I recorded the stereo mix back onto protools. Basically I just let it run once i got my balance right, stopping occasionally to fix levels if needed.


Piccies below - this first one is the stereo bar.
The 2 outer mics are the MKH20 omnis.
Working your way inwards, the next 2 are the MKH40 cardioids. See how their capsules touch the omnis so that you could wind some of these signals in with the omnis and not have any phase problems. This could give you some more directivity if the omnis were sounding too washed out. But I didn't end up using these at all. If I had gone with the omnis, I wouldn't have used any of the cardioid, because the room was surprisingly dry for a big old church.
Then in the middle, you can't see so well, there is MKH30 fig8 sitting on top of MKH40 making the MS pair.




You can see the 4 mics across the choir. That's not all of the choir members. The spacing looks a bit strange from this angle.
That's the harpsichord in the middle infront of the conductor.


You can see the chamber orchestra in this one in front of the choir.