Only if you’ve got a microphone pointing at each of those individuals. Some
Companies do employ such multimicing techniques and manufacture the balance of
the Band later. Others employ zonal microphone techniques in which you can adjust
particular regions of the Band, and the rest record just in stereo and solely rely on the
Band to be self balancing.
The Producer of the recording generates an edit plot – this is like a map that says
which take to use where in the piece. The takes are then edited or ‘spliced’ together
and the edit listened to. Incremental improvements are then made before a preview
CD is sent to the Band for comment.
Real life acoustic performances can contain lots of changes in dynamic levels
– fortissimo is loud and pianissimo is very quiet. Some CDs have the extremes
of dynamic range removed so to an extent the recording becomes an ‘all purpose
mezzoforte’. These CDs will appear ‘louder’ than those which contain a fuller
dynamic range as the average (RMS) level is higher. KMJ Recordings’ preference is
to leave dynamic range intact – if you play with dynamic contrast it’s nice to hear it.
Similarly all material that is played on the radio is similarly dynamically ‘squashed’
(or compressed and limited) – so comparing a CD to a radio broadcast is not always a
good thing to do.