Digital Media from Sonic Sense updated 03/05/01

Microphone placement techniques

If you have come to this page in order to read about the most popular stereo recording techniques, you have picked the wrong page. While the likes of ORTF, X/Y, A/B, and NOS are all great placement arrangements for recording in an ideal setting, we are going to focus on approaches that yield pleasant results in unfavorable settings. For the standard techniques, please visit the Microphone University at dpamicrophones.com. While there, please take note of the standard stereo techniques they present and note that the do NOT address recording from a PA system at a live concert. These techniques are what we will address.

With all due respect to the folks at DPA and all other recording industry professionals, we do not find that many of the standard techniques work particularly well in concert recording applications where the recordist does not have a choice in where to place the microphones. Techniques like ORTF and X/Y originate in symphonic recording and in studios. They produce fantastic results that portray a stereo image beautifully.

Misapplication of the right technique can still lead to unfavorable results. A pair of microphones in ORTF position do portray accurate stereo imaging but they can be riddled with the negative impact of the room.

As concert tapers record in environments that many professionals would never even consider, tapers must realize that we are on our own. We must find out what works best for us in our own unique situations.

Identify the goal of the recording. If the recordist intends to capture the sound of "being there" just like it was, then a ORTF, or a stereo pair of omnis could be perfect. In a pristine recording environment, this is wonderful. However, as many of us want to make a recording that sounds great in our living room, and maintains a balance between the concert hall feel, and the presence of a studio or soundboard recording, we must begin to compromise.

Now, with the aforementioned 4000 hours machines, we have NOT had to replace heads, or even clean them more than about every 20-30 tapes. While we do clean by hand with chamois swabs and head cleaning fluid, NOT with head cleaning tapes very often, not even of these machines is showing need for head replacement. Error counts are still as low as the day we purchased each of them.

While we are NOT advocating the use of 90 meter DDS tapes, the math speaks for itself and while the machine manufacturers and the tape manufacturers DO NOT recommend DDS tapes for audio recording, our experience shows that they are NOT problematic. Consequently, we are happy to offer 90 meter and DDS tapes to help our clients save money and expand their music collections.

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