Katie Kildow, Pieper Rig Faves

My three favorite tests:

A compilation of all 3 tests put together


Test 4 Station 4:

Test 4 Station 4 has really clear dings and I am able to easily distinguish between the right and left ear. The nails get louder at the 11 and 1 mark because they are directly behind the microphones. The decay on the sound remains longer around 8-9 and 3-4 because the barn is shaped as a rectangle, and the mic rig is set pretty close to the center of the warehouse. The test lacks a lot of the depth around 2 o'clock, due to the person with the nails or the shape of the space.

Test 9 Station 9:

Like the previous test, you can clearly distinguish between the left and right sides. Also similar to the previous test, Test 9 Station 9 has a longer decay at 8, however it has a very muted decay at 4. Again, this is likely due to the space we were in. As Matt has mentioned, there was a corner of the warehouse occupied by fake walls and a Jaguar. With 12 o'clock being directly behind the "walls" of the rig, the sound isn't carried very well into the microphones. This gives you an idea of how these rigs are positioned in the warehouse. These rigs are also raised off the ground, appoximately as high as the person holding the nails behind it. This could lead to a muted sound, because of the way the sound has to travel to get to the microphones.

Test 6 Station 4:

I am able to better distinguish the left and right ear the best out of all three of the tests. Again, like the previous tests, I find the decay to linger more in 8-11 than 12-3, and again at 4. This test is in the same position as Test 4 Station 4, but since the mic rig is different, the decay at 12 is a really big change. I've put them side by side for comparison. I think when listening to this, it makes the blocky seem like a better mic rig for noises that happen behind the microphone.

Matthew Engel, Pieper Plant Rig Test

T02-14
The expression of space on the right side (within the parameters of 1-4) is perhaps the most profound in this recording because the parallel boundary makes for a soft division of both sides of the sound field. But the right side is the most dynamic because of the ample space for the sound to bounce off the wood surface of the walls to the mics as they record. Unlike the left side, which has a particular amount of dampening because of the car and out reaching square angled space, the left lacks a larger amount of reverb on the clank then the right. This boundary seems more able to define that there is something of an obstruction on the left then on the right. The same can be said of test 06 Station 9 which I have listed in this as another of my favorite recordings because of its forward position in the test. But this rigs center rear placement seems to be amply adequate to capture the defining space of rig test.

T06-09
As mentioned before about this rig, its placement farther forward then most of the other rigs, has put it in a sort of better but perhaps more deranged position of recording the space. I say deranged because it sort of distorts a bit the idea of what this place sounds like because of its unique positioning so close to the 12-point and its direction facing at 10/11 and ½ on the clock points. The most interesting point about this rig is that points 8 and 4 sound so seemingly distant then any of the other clanks making this truly sound distorted compared with the other rigs in the test. This test adds a greater dimension to the sounds space then any of the other rigs that it sort of helps to define something totally different then a lot of the other tests.

T03-10
This test was simply divided, literally as it has very little cross over sound appearing in both mics. It is very simply extreme left, and extreme right, thanks to the baffle. But these extreme channels come through so clear that it real helps to define the specifics of the space better then a lot of the rigs, simply because the sound decay is not a reverb of the sound hitting the opposite side of the room and hitting the opposite mic, it is simply side for side sound. So you as a listener are able to truly get the best feel for the space being recorded. Also it maintained the direct sound from the side it was coming from so it was a lot easier to judge the distance of the clank to the mic, which helps in deciding the distance from the very left to the very right.

Mike Jorgenson's favorites

(<- Test8-03)
(Test10-11 ->)







(<- Test10-02) (Test03-01 ->)








Mike Jorgenson
So after going through the sound tests I have found 4 favorite recordings actually. They are test 3, station 1, test 8, station 3, test 10, station 2 and 11. I found that all of these tests had good localization to my ear with about equal spacing (distance-wise) between strikes. However, I found that the test3-01 rig had a much better sense of the depth of the space than the other three, followed next by test8-03 and then followed equally by test10-02 and test10-11. In fact to my ear the last two mentioned have very little depth to them and it is hard to tell what kind of space you are in. This first movie is the 2 o'clock position strike of these tests so that you can compare the distance they are felt to be at. However, despite their depth problems they also had good clear sounds, better so than the test3-01 rig and the test8-03 rig. Test3-01 tended to blend in more with the background noise, followed by test08-03 and then about equally with the remaining two. This second movie is the 12 o'clock position of each test, the one I figured would come through the clearest on each rig. Through this test you can also tell the different noise ratios of the rigs, although this could be a result of equalizing the levels. However it would seem that test03-01 has the lowest noise level, followed by test08-03 and then the remaining two about equally. However, because of all these factors I would say that test3-01 has the best sense of the architecture and is in general my favorite. To me localization and depth plays most importantly followed closely by quality. I've thrown up some pictures of the rigs for reference. Unfortunately the file of the complete tests compared to each other is about 20 mb so I don't have that up here.