On the one microphone > one speaker stereo convention, the wisdom behind it, and carefully breaking it-
I've been out recording smaller outdoor patio gigs a couple times in the past several months before venturing down to Miami to record "for real" at an outdoor garden venue on Monday night. It was really good to see so many local tapers show up, and hello to anyone reading this who was there. There were folks I've not seen in years, and a couple new folks I met for the first time. Felt like things getting back to normal. Anyway, while listening to my recording directly off the recorder over headphones yesterday, I found myself thinking about the whole multi-microphone thing, the two original approaches to stereophonic recording originating in the 1930s, later panophonic-mix based stereo, and my own oddball taper path from stereo to multichannel and back around to stereo.. sort of pulling it all into perspective.
I realize that:
>Most people listen in 2-channel stereo, over headphones, in cars, maybe to a stereo at home.
>Few will ever experience my recordings played back in the way they were originally intended to be listened, using a 1:1 relationship between the microphones and multiple speakers properly arranged around the listeners.
>I don't even have a playback system setup to do that myself at the present time.
>Simple is often best, not as an end in and of itself, but because of the other things a simple approach makes less-problematic, more straight-forward, clear, or otherwise advantageous.
So, given all that, should I go back to recording just 2 to 4 channels all the time, perhaps with upgraded equipment based on a simplification of what I'm doing now?
Not personally, but I now know what microphone channels I'd use in doing that, which I'd eliminate in simplification, how things would differ, and why. And I feel I can objectively recommend a logical path forward for tapers with similar interests.
Does it make sense and is it worth it to me to continue to record using multichannel arrays that undoubtedly seem ridiculous to most folks?
Yes, yes, and yes.
Why? At the very least, I very much look forward to getting back to proper multichannel playback again, even if few others ever get to experience that. It is what really hooked me and I can't let it go. Further, I certainly hope others will eventually get to experience the enveloping, transportive 3-dimensional nature of it, perhaps by way of some sort of head-tracking binaural rendering over headphones. Yet beyond that, I decided I would still record using these multi-microphone methods even if I were to never have the opportunity to listen that way again, because I find it makes for better, more consistently-good 2-channel stereo output than I am otherwise able to achieve in taper recording scenarios. The taper recording scenario thing is our biggest constraint and what makes this form of recording different from other forms of recording. Ironically, it is not recording for surround but the adaptation of that recording method to 2-channel output that represents the point at which I break with the one microphone > one speaker purist stereo rule of thumb.. deliberately and a by lot. "All your base are belong to us."
^
That realization is the primary motivation for this post. I remember when it came to me, somewhat late and counter to my expectations. Previously I figured I was following a separate, distinctly alternate recording path, necessarily sacrificing 2-channel reproduction purity for something more correct in a multi-dimensional sense. Most folks including experts I acknowledge and admire seemed to feel that way (optimize the recording arrangement for either 2-channel stereo or multichannel playback, better not to attempt both simultaneously), the arguments for dong so were sound, the pitfalls clear, and who was I to question 90 years of collective stereo recording history?
Stepping back a bit, I took the multi-channel recording / multi-channel playback path early upon seriously getting into live music performance taping, and did so because I found it especially well suited to conveying unique aspects of the live music experience I was hoping to re-create. To explore this I was willing to sacrifice 2-channel stereo purity and accepted that as a necessary compromise toward achieving the greater goal. I was happy enough to find I was able to get my microphone arrangements designed specifically for multichannel playback to work nicely for 2-channel stereo as well, realizing that in doing this I was breaking the traditional one-microphone>one-speaker rule for good of thumb for good stereo purity. Perhaps it worked because I realized early on that achieving optimal channel separation was even more important for really good multichannel playback than stereo, was challenging to achieve across the microphone array, and that the same techniques helped avoid problems when combining multiple channels in a 2-ch stereo mix. I've posted in many threads here at TS about the complexities of running two microphone pairs with the intention of mixing them and how its not as simple as just putting up your two favorite stereo-pair configurations in the hope that their sum will be better than either alone. That's where channel interactions between pairs get complicated. Fortunately I realized that in doing so I gained additional degrees of control quite welcome in situations where tapers otherwise have little control. I found I gained more than I suffered with the additional channels, as long as their potential interactions were well considered and designed around, and as as long as I was willing to make the commitment to mixing it.
It was at that point I began to make revisions to my microphone arrays which had previously focused on multichannel playback above all else, doing things to optimize them for best 2-channel output in addition to discrete multichannel output. My hope was to develop a single recording method for myself that I was happy with regardless of playback modality. The revelation that followed was twin-fold: First that I was able to get it to work better than I'd hoped; secondly and more fundamentally that breaking the underlying one-microphone>one-speaker purity rule was not necessarily a road to perdition as long as it's done carefully with the focus on minimizing its potential problems in light of the potential benefits.
Here's the thing about it- With regards to multichannel playback I had been operating essentially in "purist recording mode" with each microphone feeding an independent speaker for the most part. That's definitely the case with the three front L/C/R channels, although the surround channels don't always follow a 1:1 microphone > speaker correlation. But in 2-channel output mode I'm definitely breaking the purity rule by mixing multiple microphone channels together.. not just a couple but five each side. I actually introduced one additional channel I use solely for the 2-channel stereo mix that does not get used at all for multi-speaker playback: a single figure-8 the addition if which turns the directional Center channel microphone into a Mid/Side pair. It is one of the channels I would not give up if I were only recording four channels for stereo output alone, and that makes for an ironic situation: My recording arrangement for 2-ch stereo output consists of one more microphone channel than does my recording arrangement for 7-channel discrete output.
Blasphemy I know, but happy to be the weird uncle on this one.