Crown CM-700 manual Letters From Crown Mic Users, PZM Piano Miking, Reply, On next

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PZM Piano Miking

I am a pianist, but totally new to the recording process; my unique situation is that I need a very portable solution because I have to record from a piano at a local music school. I have a Minidisc recorder and I wonder if it would be possible to make a decent recording directly into the Minidisc using the kind of micro- phones you've described. Could I input two microphones into the Minidisc player itself, or do I need to invest in some kind of pre-amp also?

Please offer some input if you would about how I could mic a piano decently (not professional by any means) while under- standing I am not in position to haul around a lot of equipment. I'd appreciate it very much.

Thank you,

Gerard Cox

Reply:

You should be able to make a very good piano recording using one or two PZM-185 micro- phones and a MiniDisc recorder. The PZM-185 is an inexpensive Pressure Zone Microphone that is powered by an internal battery or phantom power. Since you want a very portable system,

we'd recommend using the bat- tery rather than phantom.

Figure 1 shows some suggested places to tape a PZM mic to the underside of the raised piano lid. For a mono recording with one mic, tape it in the middle of the lid, a few inches horizontally from the hammers. Raise the lid on the long stick. For a stereo recording with two mics, tape one over the treble strings near the hammers, and one over the bass strings near the tail, as shown.

Figure 1. Some suggested mic

placements for PZMs on a piano lid.

The kind of sound you will get with this miking is up-close and clear, with little or no room acoustics. It might be suitable for pop, jazz, ragtime, or folk music. If you are recording clas- sical music and you want to include the room acoustics (such as in a recital hall), you should place the mics several feet from the piano. Either place them on the floor about 4 feet apart, or mount them back-to- back on a mic stand, aiming the edge of the plates at the piano.

The PZM-185 has a high-fre- quency rise for speech clarity. If you want to flatten the response to get a more natural sound, obtain a microphone foam wind- screen. Cut off a 1/4" square about 1/8" thick and insert it into the gap between the mic and the plate. The thicker the foam piece, the less high frequencies (treble) you'll hear.

How do you connect the mics to your MiniDisc recorder? Check the manual that came with your recorder. It describes the input connectors. The recorder should have a mic input, so you won't need a mic preamp. Prob- ably the mic input is a single mini phone jack that is wired for stereo. If so, you or an electron- ics-savvy friend would need to make an adapter cable (Figure 2, next page). On the mic end of the adapter cable is a 3-pin female XLR connector(two for stereo). On the recorder end of the adapter cable is a mini ste- reo phone plug.

The mini stereo phone plug has three terminals to connect to: tip, ring, and sleeve. The tip ter- minal is the small one that goes to the tip of the phone plug. The ring terminal is a little longer, and goes to the ring of the phone plug (the metal cylinder just behind the tip). The sleeve terminal is the longest, and it goes to the sleeve or long cylin- der part of the phone plug.

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