OxRecs DIGITAL

Specialists in Classical Location Sound Recording


Services offered

Location Sound Recording
OxRecs prefers to use a limited selection of high quality microphones carefully positioned to give both equal preference to whole soundstage, whilst capturing the natural ambience of the building acoustic. It is the role of the conductor or director is to balance the sound not the engineer! Several microphone configurations can be used, of which two are favoured. The first is somewhat unique in that each unit has a different pickup characteristic using either a Sennheiser MKH 30 (figure-of-eight) for left/right signals, plus a Sennheiser MKH 40 (cardioid) for forward pickup. The signal from both these microphones is processed and matrixed such that the two channels may be adjusted to allow the image to be altered from mono to a very wide stereo perspective. Alternatively, two spaced DPA 4006 (previously B&K) omnis are used. Most of our recordings are made using a combination of the above and supplemented by further DPA 4011 DPA 2006 or AKG414 microphones as necessary.

For location work we record at 24-bit resolution on an Edirol R-88 8-track recorder. Backups can be made on DAT or minidisk recorders if required. Headphone monitoring is performed using Sennheiser or Beyer headphones. PMC TB1 monitors are used on location and PMC IB2 reference monitors at home for critical editing and listening.

Digital editing, P/Q encoding and CD mastering
Digital editing is carried out using Steinberg Nuendo (multitrack) and supplemented by SoundForge or other tools as necessary. For mastering we use SONY CDArchitect.

Typesetting & Design for CD booklets, inlays, promotional material, and catalogues
Design and typesetting from rough draft to PDFs is all performed in-house a mainly using Adobe InDesign, plus a selection of specialist graphics applications. All our titles are now barcoded.

Sound Restoration, audio processing & vinyl to CD
A Ferrograph Logic 7 (half-track) and Sony TC-377 (quarter-track) for the transfer of reel-to-reel tapes (3.75, 7.5, 15 ips), and a variety of sound restoration tools are used to aid tidying of old recordings (de-hiss, de-crackle). A Sony PCM-500 DAT recorder (32khz, 44.1khz & 48khz), and Nakamichi 580ZX cassette recorder is available for other digital & analogue transfers.

One-off promotional CDs
If you just want to have a concert recorded for a special memory, or maybe need a promotional CD for your music group?

Music typesetting
We use Personal Composer (16 staves) for typesetting scores and manuscripts.