Poorly Recorded - Chris Thile & Michael Daves

Thank You- Dusty for this review.
I have not picked up this CD yet.
Chris Thile made a disc last year w/ Edgar Meyer.

And yes, Thiel speakers are very revealing, warts and all.

I know nothing about this recording, but I saw Steve Earle with The Del McCoury Band at The House of Blues in Hollywood, and they performed into a single microphone. They were all playing acoustic instruments (guitars, upright bass, fiddle, mandolin, banjo), also being picked up by the same mic. They were positioned in a semi-circle behind the mic, approximately equidistant from it. When it was time for Steve to sing a verse of a song, he would move in closer to the mic, dropping back when the verse was over; when there were harmony vocals, the harmony singers would move in, then drop back when the harmonies were over; when there was an instrumental break, one of the band members would move in closer, dropping back when done. It was great!

@bdp24 I've definitely seen a lot of bluegrass like that, and I really enjoy it live. It takes the sound 'mixing' and puts it in the hands of the group, with them dynamically adjusting positions to add more or less of their sound to the single mic. It's a blast to watch, and actually adds to the performance!

Listening back on a high-end rig though...lackluster.

Dusty---I feel the same way about a recording engineer I worked with for a while. He was big on mic’ing a drumset with only two mics---a stereo one overhead, and one on the front of the kick. Without a mic on each drum, they were lacking in presence, sounding a little distant. Hitting the drums harder didn’t change that, either. Also, with the mic further away from the drums, it picked up more of the sound of the room in proportion to the direct sound of the drums. And the room was not a good sounding one; it’s dimensions were the dreaded square, creating large room modes at certain frequencies. The sound of drums is hugely affected by the nature of the room the are played in.