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If you are a using bit of camera mic for room reverb, consider adding reverb post production (i.e. in Audacity, Pro Tools etc) and muting the camera mics altogether.

This is a bit late, but might be worth considering . . .

One thing we (and you) don't have, is a _raw_ (unprocessed) recording of what's being picked up by the M5 mics, and delivered to the computer from the output of the Scarlett 2i2.

That recording should be made by Audacity, and made _with no other software running_. I'd even disable the WiFi / Ethernet adapter.

. . . Go back to your original bit rate / buffer size / gain settings -- the ones
. . . that gave you trouble.

. . . Don't do FLAC encoding, limiting, or anything else.

Audacity uses an internal, 32-bit floating-point sample format. It is essentially perfect, _if_ the CPU can keep up with the incoming audio data.

If you can get something that sounds like overload, export _that section of the recording (and a few seconds before and after)_ to a "WAV" file, and make it publicly available (e.g. put it in public "cloud storage"). I will look at it, and so will some other keeners here.

If you get "clean" recordings, you can eliminate the Rode mics, and the 2i2, as the source of the trouble.

If you're happy to just get good results with the new buffer / bitrate combination, and don't want to explore this any further, I'd understand that perfectly.

. . . That was really nice Brahms!

@Hakki I did order 4i4, and plan to get NT5 as well. I have a big recording session coming soon, some in the Music Hall with Steinway D!
Thank you for all the useful information, including these videos!

To Charles Cohen, thank you for your suggestions. I am happy with the result for now. I will turn off wifi etc. next time. I do need to digest all the information first before trying new things.

I'd reiterate what Charles and others said: Go back from where you started out, because you already have a level of complexity added at your starting point that made you lose focus on the audio only part of the recording.

Buying a new set of microphones won't magically solve any problem, but multiply your level of complexity in a way that will make it even more difficult to troubleshootif the result isn't what you and a musician would expect. A session with a 150k piano where a pianist obviously wants to preserve an important event is something that should be prepared diligently with a proven set up which the pianist has listened to beforehand and given his OK for the quality of the audio part.

The NT5 is a nice, very good microphone, but the big difference compared to your current M5 is not higher dynamic range or finer resolution, it's simply the feature that you can buy additional capsules (NT45-O) to quickly switch from cardioid to omni patterns. Deciding which ones of those two patterns is something that comes with experience and once you'll have mastered setting up a stereo configuration you may want to start playing around with additional microphones to add ambience or record other instruments like in chamber music.

At this point, however, I'd strongly recommend not to invest money into new, supposedly better microphones and a 4 channel audio interface. I'd rather look at an additional fallback solution that has proven to yield reliable results for piano solo recordings consistently. Go one step further from what Charles suggested and detach the audio part of an upcoming recording session with a Steinway D and buy a dedicated audio recorder with a pair of XLR inputs, something like a Tascam DR44-WL. It can't get any less complex than this, but done right, the result will be satisfying for you and the artist.

And once you have got an audio part from that minimal set up, you can easily transfer this to the computer and do further editing with the video software that you are familiar with. Until then it's a pure audio file without any bells and whistles, no compression, normalizing, cleaning, mixing or anything. This should be your starting point for decent audio, not complex equipment. Ignore any video at this point, just focus on recording audio with two microphones - and you'll find even then that recording a piano with stereo microphones is hard enough to produce good results.

Hakki has already mentioned ORTF as a standard to record solo piano. What we see isn't quite ORTF, because the angle between the microphones is 90°, not 110°, which in turn is called NOS. Both are acronyms for European public broadcasters who had enough time and budget to play around with tons of equipment and came up with a set up that produces very good results, reliable, consistent and reproducible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOS_stereo_technique

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORTF_stereo_technique

Different from your microphone arrangement, both techniques have a fixed angle and position of the microphones on a stereo bar. This eliminates the necessity to play around with two microphone stands, which usually lead a life of their own. Start from there, because both techniques are proven to work and are still widely used by audio engineers all over the world.



This is what one of my typical microphone configurations looks like in a nice concert hall with a Bechstein D 282 concert grand. Pair of NT5 in ORTF on a stereo bar about 1.6m from the center of the piano. So far this has proven to produce decent audio results. Never mind the video; I lack every capability of even knowing where to start when it comes to the video part. And I started out as described: A dedicated audio recorder and this pair of microphones and video added later.

That's a good idea. If the recording level is set right on the audio recorder, there's not much that can go wrong.

Setting the recording level means asking the pianist to play his loudest section, at full volume, and giving him 6-10 dB of headroom. A limiter in the recorder (set up like that) won't hurt. Think of it like an airbag in a car.

I've had very good results using a Tascam DR-100.
There are various placements I've used - but one that works very well is to position the mics about 5' off the floor about 4' from the open piano as seen in OE1FEU's picture.
I strongly recommend using either Ortofon or X-Y with your cardioid microphones.
You can get a stereo "bar" to hold the mics in position for less than $30 for a simple one, and a few hundred for the one from AEA which will give you the capability of being VERY precise with your distance between capsules and the angle of the microphones in the horizontal plane. (This is also makes your setup repeatable which is, I think, an even bigger benefit. Just remember to keep a record of how high your mics were from the floor and distance from some point on the piano as well as the settings for your flash recorder).
Use the highest sampling rate, highest bit rate setting on the flash recorder.
TEST before a recording session.

PS - best to isolate the mics from floor resonances. I use elastic suspension mounts for that purpose. Not sure if you've got them, but they really clean up the sound.

Don't forget that an extra mic pointing directly into a corner a fair way from the piano adds alot of air.
Nick

I'd say he should forget exactly something like that, because right now all he should do is focus on getting a 2 channel stereo recording right, not adding another layer of complexity with a multi-channel set up that created the problem in the first place.

Thank you everyone for the wonderful suggestions. I already ordered a stereo bar and want to test out ORTF and NOS. I will print out a template and try my best to set the angle distance correctly. I like the suggestions of going back to basic audios, I want to learn more and understand the fundamentals. My only constraint is time with a different full time day job.

OE1FEU, however, since I already have M5 and placed order for NT5, do I still need Tascam DR44-WL? What is the purpose for that. Also from your recording sample and a comparison video shared by HAKKI , NT5 obviously has the best quality. I am thinking to stick with NT5 in future.

Frankly compared with how much we have invested in video equipment, the budget for audio part is not concern. If there is any additional suggestions, I am happen to listen to.

When you order the NT5 anyway, the I would suggest that you order the additional omnidirectional capsules as well (NT45-O) as well. This gives you another level of flexibility, because you can quickly change and basically have completely different microphones to play with.

My suggestion to get a separate audio recording device was directed at having an audio source completely detached from your current mix of audio and video. In addition to that, it can always serve as a reliable and proven fallback solution that can be set up within minutes and later be merged with the video track.

As to microphone quality: I'd rather listen to a cheap pair of condensers placed right than to an ultra-expensive pair of Neumann U87 that are placed in a way that the sound image isn't representing either the piano or the room it was recorded in.

You're on a good way in getting a stereo bar and trying out both ORTF and NOS set ups as a starting point. No need to reinvent the wheel and both are proven solutions. If you're adventurous, you can try both configurations with omni microphones. I did this as an experiment in the Rachmaninoff and love the result.

Here is a recording I made using the OMNI NT45-O capsules on the NT5 mics.

https://app.box.com/s/mj4ci5zyp2zv78318952c0u3kpy04d7i

Hakki, beautiful recording! natural and genuine grand piano sound! May I ask your mic positions, is this in a studio? What is the major advantage of using OMNI capsules?

OE1FEU, points well-taken, thank you for helping me establish the right concept and taste for recording, very much appreciated! I will try out the things you talked about.

This is me playing in my living room. I like the open sound of the OMNI mics. The recording is as is, without any processing.
Here is how the mics are positioned. The piano lid is on full stick. The reflections from the lid blend well with the sound from the piano. The bottom mic is hard panned to the left channel and the upper mic to the right channel.
The picture is illustrative, I don't own a Bosendorfer, just a Kawai RX-2.

The mics are parallel to the floor.

Typically, the omni mic can have a flatter frequency response, more "open" character.
Here is a comparison of 2 mics from Line Audio, the OM-1 (omni) and CM-3 (cardioid).

and a more recent one


I use two OM-1 mics myself and recommend them as natural and somewhat sweet sounding.
Hakki's spaced pair configuration can certainly work well.
I put my pair on a Schoep's disc - similar to a Jecklin disc.


More grist for your mills.

I had hoped the OP would come back and post an update on his progress.

Anyway, I have to profoundly thank him for bringing back the Brahms Op. 117 to my attention. Had always wanted to play the cycle, but somehow felt intimidated by the perceived complexity of No.2. But now, 30 years after discarding the idea, I've finally found the courage to play the piece and record it with a super simple set up: Static camera position with an Olympus OM-D E5MarkII and a cheap pair of dynamic mini capsules directly fed into the camera and bypassing its internal microphone pre-amplifiers:



The piano is an 1886 Steinway B.