Topic: 17cm vs. 20cm vs. 30cm and others

[Brian Skalinder]

My point is,  if you are only worried about minimizing crowd noise than William's paper isn't much use.  Just point and shoot....

On the contrary, the SZ paper will help you understand how best to minimize crowd noise while also preserving a stereo image.  They're not necessarily mutually exclusive.

[DSatz]

skotdee, please consider that the farther apart you splay (spread) the microphones, the narrower the total angle they'll cover as a pair. That alone should make it clear that stereo recording doesn't work in terms of "where the microphones are pointed."

If you're looking for a method of visual imagery that will help you to understand this, consider visualizing the area of overlap between the patterns of two microphones. That overlap becomes less when the microphones are spread more widely apart (or when the microphones themselves are positioned some distance apart), and it becomes greater when they are more nearly coincident and/or parallel to each other.

I strongly recommend not just reading Michael Williams' publications, but trying out many different setups and observing what he describes. My hat is off to that man--I had been recording for over thirty years and had already won my Grammy award before I read his writings, and as soon as I started applying what I learned from them, I became very much the better as an engineer.

--best regards

[datbrad]

skotdee, good question, but when you record in stereo the pair of microphones functions as a unit. Thus it can be quite misleading to think in terms of "pointing" the microphones of a pair "at" any particular sound source. Together the two microphones cover a certain angle; in this type of use they don't (individually) "point" at anything.

--best regards

As the old saying goes, " mics are not flashlights "

[KenH]

I had been recording for over thirty years and had already won my Grammy award ...

Care to elaborate ?   

[grtphl]

So if I run PAS, how should I gap my mics?  17cm?  30cm?  ... presuming PAS from that location can't be spaced to run a sloppy version of another configuration.