by Bobby Owsinski
Last issue we talked about the latest in surround
miking; the Holophone. While it's one thing to read
about a piece of gear, it's quite another to
actually use it yourself. Plus, since the demo
material that I'd heard didn't involve any source
material that I was used to, I was especially
eager to find out just what the unit would do recording
instruments that non- classical engineers encounter during
a typical session. Not only that, I wanted to try to
use this mic in a close-up fashion as well as in
the ambient field, something that even inventor
Mike Godfrey hadn't yet tried. So I scheduled an
informal get-together with Godfrey and his
Holophone at Front Page Recorders to see what
would happen.
HOLOPHONE OVERVIEW
In case you
missed the "First Look" article on the
Holopohone, here's some details on the unit. The Holophone
is actually an entire system rather than just a microphone.
The focal point of the system is a 7.5 by 5.7-inch
fiberglass epoxy ellipsoid that looks something
like a giant teardrop. This ellipsoid holds seven
Sennheiser MKE2-5 omnidirectional microphone
elements; five in the now standard multi-channel
fashion with the front center element at the tip of the
teardrop, plus one on top for height and an element internally
mounted in the ellipsoid for the LFE. The mic
elements from the ellipsoid can either be
connected to seven Sennheiser UHF wireless
transmitters that can be worn around a belt by a
person holding the ellipsoid, or wired directly to
a custom designed preamplifier control module (we used the
wired version).
The 2 U, 19" rack mount PCM-7
control module provides several functions unique
to surround sound. There is the prerequisite
front panel gain trimming for all seven channels,
a built-in headphone amplifier with channel selection for
monitoring each channel individually, and a 10 turn precision
pot that enables the height channel to be
precisely mixed into the remaining channels. Then
there's the seven LED status indicators arranged
in a cluster that represent the physical
location of the microphones, with the brightness
of the LED's correlating to the sound pressure level of
its respective microphone.
THE SETUP
The demo took place at Front Page Recorders Studio A, which
is equipped with a 64 input SSL G+ and a fine selection
of analog and digital storage mediums to choose from.
In this case, we decided to record the
performances on DA-88 for ease of playback (and
interchangeability) later on. The monitor system
consisted of five Tannoy AMS-8's along with an
M&K MX5000THX subwoofer. Even though we had a
sixth AMS-8 available for the height channel, we weren't
able to devise a way to actually get it in the air (there's
a need for a new product here), so we ended up using
a considerably lighter NHT M-00 raised
approximately four feet above the mixers head.
Monitoring was controlled with a Martinsound
MultiMaxx utilizing the 7.1 configuration in order to accommodate
the monitoring of the height channel.
Because
of the constraints of time and non-standard connectors
(some really hard-to-find mini-DIN's connected to the mic
elements of the ellipsoid), we were only able to use the
PCM-7 control module for microphone amplification
(but I sure would be curious to hear it some
time with a compliment of Neve's, API's,
Avalon's, Hardy's, or the like).
FIRST UP - Acoustic Guitar
We started with Latino Bluesman Beto Lovato playing a Yamaha
acoustic/electric guitar and singing at the same time with
the Holophone placed about three feet in front of
him with the unit pointing midway between the
guitar and his mouth. Although the guitar was not
a great sounding acoustic instrument by any
means, the realism surprised us all. It actually
sounded better that it did in the studio. Without using
the usual buzzwords like big, full, warm, etc., the best
thing that I can stay that it was REAL! And when he sang
along, it was even better; just like being there
with him only bigger.
After another take with
some different level settings, we asked Beto to
walk around the mic as he played and sang. Again,
what we found was a true sense of spaciousness as
he did about three minutes of 360's. This didn't sound like
audio trickery at all, it was just a clean representation
of a musician moving in a soundfield.
ELECTRIC GUITAR
On the Holophone demo tape sent to me, there were no examples
of anything close-miked, so I was most anxious to try the
unit on a guitar amp. Beto cranked up his Tele
into a nice silver-faced Super Reverb and we
started with the Holophone placed about 6 feet
back from the amp. What initially struck me was
the low end that the mic reproduced. One of the toughest
things to capture is the low end of a guitar amp, but the
Holophone did it very well indeed. Not hyped, just the
natural bottom of the amp. We then moved it 12
feet back and the response was, of course, more
ambient as the Holophone heard more of the room,
but still full and detailed.
As an experiment, I stuffed the
mic directly into the cone of one of the speakers
just to see what would happen with this sort of
typical placement. Even though the mic pres of
the PCM-7 glowed on overload (there's no input pads),
it still sounded great and again, what bottom.
ACOUSTIC PIANO
We then moved the Holophone into the piano room and placed
it about 6 inches away from where the high and low strings
cross. For Rock and Roll, the results were amazing.
Clear and in your face, yet natural; sounding
just like the Yamaha C-7 that it is. But, for
solo piano aficionados, this placement is
probably a little too close so we then moved the mic
away in steps until the correct balance of piano to room
was achieved. What we did notice was that stereo and mono
compatibility was not as good as the mic was moved
back from the source, though.
DRUMS
But what I most wanted to hear was the Holophone on a set
of drums. We set the unit 4' in front of the kit about 4'
high and sat back as session drummer extrodinaire
Ronnie Ciago went through his paces. Wow, what a
sound! And the kick was huge. And all this from
just one mic no less. Essentially, the balance
was the same as if your head was placed 4' in
front of the kit. We then pushed the mic back a bit to get
more room, and that worked as well for that Bonham type
of open, ambient sound.
As an experiment, we
then placed the mic behind drummer about 7' high.
This seemed to get a great balance of everything
except the kick, which seemed a bit distant. This would
probably be my first choice for placement, however, with
a separate mic on the kick since a tremendous sense of
depth was achieved by this placement. We also
lowered the mic to just over right shoulder of
the drummer, and while this worked pretty good in
terms of balance, we lost a bit of the depth
that was so appealing with the mic placed higher.
PERCUSSION
We tried a lot of different percussion setups during the
session. Usually the Holophone was just placed 3 or 4 feet
from the player and he would play the mic with the
particular instrument. What was particularly cool
was when playing assorted hand percussion items,
he ran his hand with the instrument around the
mic. This actually didn't sound as artificial as
it would seem. Pretty neat, in fact. On Djembe
and whistle, once again the low end was magnificent and
the contrast between it and the highs of the whistle once
again brings the word "real" to mind.
Finally,
Mike Godfrey himself played percussion on one side
of the unit with Ronnie Ciago on the other in a version
of dueling percussionists. In this case, not only did you
feel the sense of spaciousness but also true placement
of the players in the room. A very impressive
grand finale.
YEAH, BUT WHAT DO YOU REALLY THINK?
In every
case the Holophone exceeded any expectation that I
had for it. Up close or in the ambient field, it not only
worked but worked well. All that being said, I do have some
overall observations.
1) The low end - The
Holophone gets the biggest, most natural bottom
I've ever heard from a microphone. One of the trademarks
of engineers is their ability to record low end, and each
one has their own set of tricks and techniques. The
Holophone seems to do it for you automatically.
I'm not quite sure how the LFE element on the mic
(which is located inside the ellipsoid) actually
works, but the resultant low end is huge without
seeming artificial. I'd buy one just for this
alone.
2) Downmix compatibility - Downmixing to stereo or mono
was quite good; excellent even, depending upon
the placement. The closer the mic was to the
source, the better the downmix.
3) Electronics - As I stated
before, we only got a chance to use the included
PCM-7 mic amp/controller unit and never had the
chance to experiment with other popular high quality
mic amps. That being said, the PCM-7 performed very well
under all the conditions that it was exposed to. It was
both quiet and free from any noticeable colorations
and sounded pretty good even when overloaded. An
input pad and a phase reversal switch would be
nice in the production version of the unit,
though.
4) The Height Channel - Of all the unique features that
the Holophone provides, perhaps this is the
best. When we couldn't find an immediate way to
place a height speaker in the air, we were forced
to use the Height Mix function that allows you
to dial in some of the height mic back into the
main five. This proved to be most satisfying, maybe
even better than using a discrete speaker/channel! While
just a bit (10% or less) goes a long way, the added sense
of realism that results from this addition has to be
heard to be believed.
I've listened to
the tape that we made of the session many times
since and each time I marvel at the detail, clarity
and overall realism attained by this unit. And, not only
would I like to have it for all my surround sessions, but
all the stereo ones as well (even though they're few
and far between these days). The Holophone is
truly the next evolution in microphones. Now just
imagine consoles and storage devices needing 7
times as many channels as a result. For more
information, contact the web site at www.theholophone.com.
This
article written by Bobby Owsinski appears in the December,
1999 issue of Surround Professional magazine, pages 64-67.