I've been out of town and haven't had time to comment here yet but that Bethel Woods show sounds great Rock!
To my ear, nothing conveys the same depth, warmth, and a the same sense of "big, natural sounding there-ness" like a good wide omni spread. Totally agreed with the "snap into place" comment. The center pair really nails down a solid center anchor along with upfront midrange articulation and clarity.
I realize that I tend to think of and describe this stuff from a point of view that's the opposite of how most tapers tend to think about and approach it - for me the omnis are the primary foundation and the center pair improves things by reinforcing what is needed but to some degree already present in the omnis, just weak. Most tapers probably think of it the other way around, considering the center pair as the primary pair and the omnis a the "nice to have addition" which improves the center pair. Does that conceptual difference matter in any way? Probably not. Mostly just a philosophical difference I suppose, but I do wonder how that plays out in how folks approach taping. Looking at it from the opposite perspective, is the stuff the omnis provide that the center pair lacks on its own already there in the center pair but just weak? Some of it sure, but I do think one fundamental difference is that the spaced omnis provide good diffuse field decorrelation, or rather, achieve sufficiently low
diffuse field correlation (..which is what non-taper acousticians and recording engineers associate with the contraction DFC. It doesn't read as Dead F****** Center to them) responsible for much of the perceived depth, warmth, and a the sense of "big, natural sounding there-ness" of the room ambience and audience portrayal. That isn't just weak in most near-spaced or coincident center pairs, its not really there at all.. maybe it is in a Blumlein pair, but that's more of a special case, and in a Blumlein pair the balance of that stuff verses the direct sound from the stage and PA isn't adjustable afterward in the same way that it is in a OMT4 arrangement.
So cool!
8' seems like a lot, did you listen to just omnis much before mixing? Jim and Doug used to run a spread that big or larger outdoors at the Greek and Frost, with nothing in the middle, and we loved'd the sound, so I'm curious about how yours sounds...
Nice work!
As I've probably speculated about too many times already in the OMT threads and elsewhere (apologies for repeating myself too much), outside of the microcosm of concert taping, recording a PA from a position in the audience presents a very strange acoustic scenario. I think a wide omni pair is capable of working alright on its own in that situation, without necessarily producing an egregious hole-in-the-middle as would be expected in a more typical recording situation, partly because of the unusual geometric relationship between two wide spaced PA arrays and the wide-spaced omni pair, combined with having a large degree of correlated mono content through the PA (the solid center stuff). The mono content from the separated PA stacks positioned on opposite sides of the stage reaches each omni on the same side in a phase coherent way, while the cross-path from the PA on the opposite is delayed by some milliseconds. While the non-mono decorrelated stuff through the PA (there is probably more of that than panned correlated content) is further decorrelated to both omnis. That's a very unusual acoustic situation that will only occur with a wide spaced PA and a relatively wide-spaced omni pair centered and oriented parallel to it.
I think that's why wide omni splits can work for tapers while they otherwise wouldn't elsewhere, even though it's almost always better with the addition of a center pair (or SBD).
If all this reads as Greek, just ignore it!
Topic: Oddball microphone technique (OMT) - part 4 (Read 18109 times)