BISQC Blog:

Removing the blemishes

Posted by Jim Swanson
Saturday, 4 September 2010

”It’s like removing blemishes from a photograph with Photoshop,” says audio engineer Mark Willsher. “You find some clear skin on either side and paint over the bad spot. Similar algorithms are used in image and audio editing.”

Willsher, a San Francisco-based audio engineer brought in as guest faculty for for his second BISQC, is referring to the work he and his team do on the live concert recordings made during the competition. Contaminating the sound from the musicians are the sounds from the audience: paper rustling, coughs, clunks, and watches. “During one of the concerts we heard a marimba on a cell phone,” Willsher said.

Audio engineer Mark Willsher hunting down the sound of a cell phone. Click photo to enlarge.

The concert recordings are cleaned up immediately after the performance. The engineers keep notes of anomalies during the concert, then track down the problems and reduce them as much as possible. The resulting recording is sent to the CBC team on site, who extract and annotate segments for “Tempo”, where host Julie Nesrallah is discussing BISQC with Geoff Nuttall. A file is also provided to CBC in Toronto to place on “Concerts on Demand.”

Homing in on the problem.

The offending frequencies are smoothed over.

Setting the Stage

In setting up the theatre for the concerts and recordings, the first step is to arrange the stage to provide the best sound for the audience. After the musicians’ chairs and the sound-reflecting shell are positioned, the microphones are set up. There are six mikes in the hall during BISQC, four on the bar above the quartet and two dangling from the ceiling above the jury area.

On the Sunday before BISQ began, the audio technicians spent three hours in the Eric Harvie with the Calliope Quartet, BISQC’s Quartet in the Community. The microphones were positioned and the combination of the sounds from the six mikes was adjusted to provide the best mix for recordings, including a bit of ambient sound to give the feeling of the hall. There is not a lot of ambient reflected sound in the Eric Harvie Theatre, which makes it hard for the artists to get a feel for the way they are coming across. Willsher characterizes the hall as “raw.”

After this mix was determined, the settings were not altered for the rest of the competition.

The individual tracks from the six mikes are also retained in case they are needed for more careful editing of the concerts that will appear on the BISQC CD.

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