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Drag Race Recordings

Shaun Farley has published a very detailed article about a recent drag race recording session he had. He discusses a lot of things about the location, the cars, how he used his microphones, and also gives some sound examples.

Last month I convinced the owner of Old Dominion Speedway (in Manassas, Virginia) to let me record sound effects during one of his races. Every time I do something along these lines, I like to sit down and do a little post-mortem: what went well, what could have gone better, and just generally make sure I walk away with a few lessons to improve the next job.

The setup was relatively simple. My coworker, Kevin, and I had two shotgun microphones (a Sennheiser ME66 and a Schoeps CMIT5U) positioned near the starting line, and a Sennheiser MKE-44P (single point coincident stereo mic) approximately 20 meters ahead of the starting line to catch stereo passes. These were feeding into a Zaxcom Deva 5.8. There wasn’t a lot of space between the race track and the return track. So, we had little leeway in terms of positioning vs. SPL levels.

Full post: Post-Mortem: Drag Race Recordings

Miguel Isaza M

Listener, speaker.