    
Lucid's Philosophy on Acoustic Musical Recordings
To put it in a nutshell, Lucid's passion is to make
recordings that sound so real, so lifelike, that you almost don't realize you're
listening to a recording. However, these recordings must also be very
musical, enjoyable, and involving. We want listeners to be able to close
their eyes while listening on a good sound system, and almost feel that they are
'palpably present' at the venue where the recording took place. We
want them to be pulled into the music; into the sound of the music as it floats
around them. In order to sound 'real' the recording must provide the
listener not only with the clear sound of the performers, but with the ambience
and 'sense of place' of the recording venue.
Musicality and accuracy/realism are the competing
factors in our philosophy. We utilize carefully selected equipment and
recording methodologies to balance these two, often opposing, goals. The
results speak for themselves.
Achieving the Goal: Musical Virtual Reality
Musical Virtual Reality is the real goal. We want
to take a real, live acoustic musical event, and transport that musical event,
or an 'idealized' version of it, to the ears of a listener. The goal is
for that 'virtual' reproduction of the live event to be as musical and realistic
sounding as possible. But how do you get there?
Following the Chain
How do you take the sound in a performance hall, and
transport that sound into a user's ear in a listening room (or with
headphones)? The path from the original 'performance' of a musical
event to the 'virtual reality' of that event being played back to a listener
goes through many steps. There are many 'links' in that musical
chain. Every step along the way is another link in the chain that will
effect both the musicality and the accuracy of what the listener will
hear. The original musical event must pass from the original
instrument/voice to the air and acoustics of the venue where its being
performed, to the microphones, into the recording electronics, through all of
the post-production processes, onto the CD, into the listener's stereo, into the
listener's room via the speakers, and finally into the listener's ears.
Whew! That's a lot of steps! And each of those steps is often broken
down into a lot more steps. As you can see, there are many links in the
chain.
The Chain - From the Performers
to the Listener at Home
The level
of 'realism' the listener hears is only as good as the weakest link from the
instrument/voice all the way to the listener's ears. At each link in the
chain, the sound is modified in some way. Each link can damage the sound and
as a result, can damage the level of accuracy and/or musicality.
How Does Lucid create 'Realistic' Sounding Recordings?
At Lucid, we do everything within our power to ensure the
best possible 'musical virtual reality'. We use excellent studio/audiophile quality
equipment that has been selected for the right balance of accuracy and
musicality. We use our experience and knowledge to set up the equipment
to capture the most realistic and musical version of the performance
possible. We carefully choose microphones and their positions to clearly
capture the performance, but also to capture the ambience of the performance
acoustic space. And in post-production, we perform any necessary processing to ensure the musicality of the final
master recording without sacrificing accuracy.
Without getting into a lot of detail as to 'why' these
things make recordings sound realistic, here are many of the factors that Lucid
employs to ensure that our master recordings will sound as real as possible,
while still sounding very musical. Of course, we don't always have
control of all of these factors. Sometimes, compromises are
required. But this is the list that we strive for.
- Use a Purist Philosophy - The purist philosophy
applies to many things; not just to sound. Another
common term for this philosophy is KISS: Keep it Simple,
Stupid. As
mentioned above, the end sound that the listener hears is only as good as
the weakest link. So step number 1 is to keep the recording chain
simple and pure, with as few 'links' in the chain as possible. No
filler or artificial coloring. No gizmos, wingdings, potions,
gimmicks, etc. to mess with the sound. Use only the best real
ingredients. Keep it simple and pure. Ask any good chef, and
they'll agree.
- Record in acoustically excellent venues. What
a 'good venue' is varies depending upon the music and the performers, but
for most acoustic music, the best venues do not require amplification of the
performers (or perhaps only the soloists). The venue should have a 'live' ambient character
that is not too dark or too bright. It should allow the performers to
easily hear each other. And it should allow the audience (and the
recording microphones) to hear an open and clear presentation of the performance while
adding the venue's ambience and environment as a major contributor to the beauty of the
sound.
- Whenever possible (for stereo recordings), use a
single matched pair of microphones as the main sound recording source to capture the sound of the
performers. Use ORTF, XY, MS, spaced omnis, and Jecklin disc
microphone arrangements, so that the listener will be presented with a
realistic 'spread' of sound from speaker to speaker that provides a virtual sonic
soundstage 'image' of the live recording. This is the Purist / KISS
approach.
- Choose microphones that match the character you are
trying to achieve. Small diaphragm omnis and ribbons are technically
the most accurate; however large diaphragm condensers often have a sparkle
and clarity that sounds more musical and provide an enhanced reality and
clarity that sounds even more real to many people.
- If necessary, consider the use of additional microphones to pick
up soloists, quiet instruments, hall ambience, or for making surround sound recordings. This is
getting away from KISS just a bit, but if it is used correctly and
judiciously, it can
result in enhanced recordings that adds to the perceived realism and
musicality rather than
detracting.
- Arrange the performers the way you want the listener
to hear them. Set up the microphones to capture a good balance of the
performers and the ambience of the hall. Adjust positions of
performers and/or microphones until a balance is achieved that provides a
proper and natural 'sense of place' for the listener.
- Use only the highest quality equipment known for
musicality, clarity, transparency, and neutrality. Each piece of equipment is a
'link' in the chain, and all of this equipment must achieve a high level of
accuracy and musicality. Ideally, each piece of equipment doesn't
alter the sound, or if it does, the modification enhances the perception of
reality and musicality. Most equipment should also follow the KISS
principle in its own design.
- Use the best wire you can find, and keep it as short
as possible. We use WireWorld Atlantis Microphone cables, Canare
StarQuad cable, and Mogami cables and snakes. These cables are known
for their clarity and transparency. They let the music
through.
- Use clean power. Noise on the power line can
add not only noise, but fuzziness and lack of clarity to the
sound. Lucid uses the excellent Furman IT-1220 to provide clean
transformer-isolated balanced power
to our equipment.
- Once a signal is converted from Analog to Digital,
do NOT convert it back to analog until you get to the listener's audio playback
system. Every Analog to Digital or Digital to Analog conversion adds
noise, jitter, and distortion. Lucid performs all post-production work entirely in the
digital domain at 32 bit floating point resolution using very high quality
post-production digital tools and plugins.
- Use little to no equalization. Lucid uses absolutely no EQ during
the recordings. Most of our equipment doesn't even have the circuits
to perform these functions (KISS). However, while use of no EQ may sound like the 'ideal' way of
ensuring 'accuracy' in recording, the truth is that judiciously small amounts of top-quality,
time-coherent digital
equalization can actually enhance the musicality a
good bit. It can even enhance the 'impression' of
reality, as it can adjust for weaknesses in other areas, such as hall
acoustics, or microphone frequency response. In post-production, Lucid
uses the smallest amount of EQ possible while still using
enough to achieve the desired results.
- Use little to no compression. Just as with EQ,
Lucid uses no compression during
the recordings, and most of our equipment doesn't even have compression circuitry in
it (KISS). However, high quality
compression, limiting, or gain adjustments are sometimes needed on the loudest passages
so that the quiet parts are not 'too quiet', or so that applause between
songs doesn't 'tear the listener's head off' (depending upon microphone
positions, clapping is often much louder
than the performance). In post-production, Lucid
uses the smallest amount of compression possible while still using
enough to achieve the desired results. Often, we use no compression at
all.
- Avoid amplified instruments/voices whenever
possible. House PA systems are notoriously unmusical and artificial
sounding. If house sound must be used, try to record the
instruments/voices up-close, so that the recording microphones capture the original
'live' sound - not the sound of the loudspeakers. Then create an
'artificial' hall ambience without the sound of the PA system in
post-production using quality digital reverbs. This is definitely an
'idealized' version of the original event. The recording will most
likely sound significantly better than the live event.
- Similarly to amplified performances, if a performance is taking place in a
hall with poor acoustics, try to record the artists/musicians 'up close' to avoid
picking up the sound of the hall. Then, at post-production, add in
artificial hall ambience to provide an idealized recording in a better
'artificial' hall than the original real hall. The recording will
sound better than it did live while still retaining the characteristic
of sounding legitimately 'real'. Use only the best digital modeling
reverbs. Lucid has many excellent digital reverbs that produce very
realistic hall acoustics.
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