I just recorded 12 Wind Instrument Concerts in the same philharmonic venue.
The Spot Mics (4-6) had to move for almost every band.
I was thinking that AA2 might be a choice to cope for the different timing issues. I usually do this manually. For one concert it is easy to document the distances or record claps but here it was just not possible. I had downloaded an AA2 trial in the past but did not really understand how it works and if there is any manual adjustment that you need to do and the figures I was seeing were a little puzzling.
If anyone has used AA2 with success in such a recording please let me know.
I cannot test it any longer since my trial period ran out but I am more than willing to pay for the plugin if it works.
If you’re interested in a trial extension, just shoot us an email at [email protected] along with your iLok account ID, and we’ll take it from there
Auto-Align 2 doesn’t require any manual adjusting.
However, if you’re interested, there are some additional features you can explore. For instance, you can compare different correlation points by using the next/previous option.
You also have the option to manually group tracks instead of Auto-Align’s automatic grouping.
I hope this helps. Feel free to reach out if you have any further questions.
Hello and thanks for the 2 weeks trial extension. That is a really nice gesture.
Here are my findings as far as orchestral music in a large reverberant concert hall is concerned.
Autoalign2 is probably not a tool for these kind of settings.
First of all A2 chose an outrigger microphone as the reference point. No way to tell it, or so it seems, that the stereo ORTF is the main pair and should be the reference. AA2 then put a slight delay on the Left vs the right main pair microphone which is of course a no-go.
The delays on the spotmics were also not consistent with the distances I had measured while tracking.
The sound didn’t change all that much, not for the better not for the worse.
I then decided to manually align the spotmics and then use AA2 for the finetuning. On that session A2 put a delay of 17ms on a spotmic that was as good as aligned.
I believe the natural reverberation of the hall to be the cause of these results. Dryer studio signals work better.
Thanks for taking the time to share your insights on Auto-Align.
I wanted to offer some clarification on a couple of points:
If you want to preserve the phase relationship of your ORTF pair, you can select both tracks, right-click → Track Links and then choose “Phase Lock” or “Stereo Link”.
This will ensure that both tracks will be assigned a single Time Offset value and any Phase Alignment will be applied identically to both tracks.
If you want to set the ORTF mics as Key Time, right-click one of them and choose 'Set as Key Time".
After selecting a new Key Time Track, all of the Time Offset values will automatically
update accordingly.
