My arrangement isn't substantial enough to support heavy mics, much less chase off big snakes!
I also realize its less relevant than the other stuff in this thread for most folks including youself, but thanks for your interest. I do like talking about it.
Yes, Sure A81WS dual-layer windscreens on the five supercards. The center one also has the coincident fig-8 in there. The supercards are all small and lightweight lav-sized DPAs, but require that amount of windscreening outdoors. The omnis are DPA omni lavs, mounted in nerf-foam balls with thinner SM58 type foam windscreens on them. The largest and heaviest mic up there is the SDC fig-8.
The entire array retracts / folds up rather compactly for stowage and transport and remains pre-rigged and connected to the recorder which lives in a pocket on the storage bag. making it very quick to setup and breakdown. I can mount it atop a stand, to a fordable foot at floor height, to a clamp on a table, chair, rafter or whatever. Such pre-arranged simplicity makes a huge difference when the array grows this complex. I wouldn't / couldn't do it otherwise. It's certainly grown more visually intrusive over the years as its become larger, but still isn't bad considering the channel count.
Besides ease of setup, a couple big advantages as I see it are the flexibility it provides for accommodating different recording scenarios and welcome flexibility in crafting a stereo mix. I record pretty much all kinds of music performance with it- PA amplified stuff in bigger venues from further back, small scale acoustic stuff from up close, instrumental jazz combos from the stage-lip. You can sort of see how the geometry of it reflects recording for surround playback, which was a big part of my working it up, but a very cool part for me was the discovery that arranging things to work really well for surround output actually provided even more advantages for 2-channel stereo output flexibility. I actually haven't had a surround playback system setup for the last couple years, but retain that capability, both because I look forward to getting back to it at some point and because it works so well for crafting good stereo output. It does place a burden on needing to spending the time to create an optimal mix, which is both blessing and curse.
I hear you on the issue of mis-matched perspective between audio and video. That can be a real challenge and annoying once you become critically aware of it. Capturing a base-line stereo image that relies a bit more heavily on spacing rather than directional angling of microphones can help as the stereo qualities are then weighted more toward an open and diffuse stereo feel then toward about sharp, distinctive source location precision that may sometimes be in conflict with the visual image. Then you can pan your close support lavs as needed to better match the audio and video imaging.
Topic: Cool modular mic bar system... (Read 13438 times)