Bremen’s Dub City Sound Studio, with its owner Finn Halle, is well known for all kinds of different projects. Finn himself has worked in the studio with Gentlemen, Bogus Brothers, and numerous other artists, but he is also renowned for his live recordings of choirs and orchestras.

"During summer 2005, at the Michaelskirche in Neuenkirchen (Bremen), we recorded a whole range of ensembles including children’s choirs, individual performers, small groups, organ, church and chamber choirs, trombone choirs etc. In order to capture the three-dimensional sound space of the church, we used a combination of main stereo (Neumann SM69), "roof" and room/ambient mics (AKG 414). This necessitated a 6-track audio recording, plus some additional audio and MIDI keyboard recording in certain items. We used an RME OCTAMIC – RME´s high-quality microphone pre amp, needed to emphasize the finer details in quieter items, and to bring the natural ambience from the room mics up to a useable line level in order to generate a non-coloured, noise-free master level. Our good results can be attributed to the OCTAMIC’s wide dynamic range. We had to record 70-strong choirs, in addition to soft children’s voices and instruments. The clarity, transparency and ambience of the recordings was totally convincing. As well as being used on location, the OCTAMIC is also in regular use in the Dub City Studio as a stand-alone pre amp, e.g. for keyboards. Many thanks to RME for perfect engineering achievements!"

Equipment:

Powerbook G4 with Logic 6.4 und RME Digiface, Apogee AD8000 (for its softclip-function), RME Octamic and Neumann SM69 Stereotubemic, AKG 414 remote mics etc.