Matisyahu
The Boathouse
Newport News, VA
March 15, 2018

Duration: 2hr, 03min

01. Intro >
02. Reservoir
03. Exaltation >
04. Back To The Old
05. Black Heart >
06. One Day >
07. No Woman No Cry >
08. One Day >
09. Jerusalem
10. Smash Lies
11. Blue Sky Playground
12. Thunder
13. Carry Me
14. Close My Eyes 
15. Sunshine >
16. Lord Raise Me Up >
17. King Without A Crown
18. Driftin >
19. Live Like A Warrier

The Band:
Matisyahu
Aaron Dugan
Rob Marscher
Stu Brooks
Joe Tomino

Source: Schoeps CMMT30/M934B (Cardioid) > Sound Devices MixPre-3
Conversion:  SD Card > Audition 6.0 > CDWave > FLAC
Recorded and Mastered: Tonedeaf (stevetoney1@hotmail.com)

Technical Notes:  Sound quality on this recording is excellent...great sub-bass and up front and detailed vocals.  Matisyahu travels with their own PA system, which is much better than the current house system so this recording is better than most that would be made at this venue.  People with higher end systems with subs should enjoy the low end on this recording.  If you don't have a high end system, you might want to back off on your bass control since the sub-bass on this recording might dominate or even distort lower end speaker systems. 

For the sound and recording nerds, this is an interesting recording.  First off, the mics were positioned dead center sweet spot between seven and eight feet high and thirty feet from the stage.  As mentioned, this has very good sound with a IMHO fantastic soundstage.  I also believe it provides an accurate rendering of the sound experienced at the venue.  However, if you listen with phones, you'll notice that the higher end frequencies are biased to the left channel.  Middle and low frequencies are well balanced, as evidenced by the stereo/echo effect bouncing back and forth between left and right channels (as can be heard about fifteen seconds into Track 2).  For those that have been to this venue, you may have noticed that the stage is located in a corner spot of a large low-ish ceiling room.  Facing the stage, on the audience left is a wall.  On the right and behind is the rest of the room.  Therefore, PA speakers are correspondingly located where the left PA speakers are within five to ten feet of the aforementioned wall, while the right PA speakers have no close walls.

Sound techies know that low frequency sound carries more energy than the higher frequencies and therefore, tend to absorb and penetrate hard surfaces more readily than higher frequencies.  That's why at shows you attend you typically hear the bass at longer distances from the stage or say when you're in another room.  Higher frequencies are lower energy and tend to reflect more from walls and ceilings than low frequencies that absorb and penetrate.  Therefore, when you're at a show and you're in the back of the room, the higher fequencies tend to be predominant in the room reverb...and therefore broken up and less homogeneous than the lower freqencies.

On this recording, as noted previously, the higher frequencies are biased to the left channel, which makes sense considering the close proximity of the left PA speaker to the left wall, while the right PA sound does not have a corresponding bounce effect.  I tried applying 10 and 20 band EQ on the right channel at the higher ranges, but I wasn't happy with the result which sounded artificial to me.  Perhaps others with DAW software might play around and see if you can get better results than I did.  If so, please email me details.  


