Hi voltronic, wow, tuning those glasses is some kind of job. I've seem them doing this in backstage, next to a drinking fountain. This male choir is among the best in Taiwan, started as an alumni choir of a high school, and this is 20 years after.
The taste of direct/ambient ratio is always vary according to personal taste, and I do understand this. I tend to record more direct sound for in case they want more ambient, I can add easier than taking out in case they want more direct sound.
That is also the reason why I choose to use my VR Ball later on, for as simple as mixing, direct/reflect ratio can be changed easily, and even during the music, I can alter it without any artifacts in the audio.
Here is another piece by the same composer, in another auditorium:
Only in sleep
https://youtu.be/_5F7_NPdRlgRecorded by the VR Ball microphone for the choir, a spot mic for the solo soprano.
Hello, choir director here. I am very familiar with this piece, having performed and recorded the original SATB version several times myself (and been in charge of tuning all of the glasses - not an easy or quick process). You don't hear the men's arrangement very often, so this was a treat to hear. I think this choir is excellent, with particularly good intonation.
Clearly these are excellent mics, but I wanted a different ratio of direct vs diffuse sound to balance the voices more evenly. I would have chosen to set my array several feet farther back from the choir, and/or to reduce the level of the mid mic. I hope you don't mind the constructive criticism. I have run into the same exact problem before when recording a chamber choir with a Schoeps Mid-side array, where I was forced to be much closer than was optimal in order to avoid an audience walking path.
The glasses get lost in the mix whenever the choir rises above a soft dynamic, but that is due to the choice of using lower-octave glasses, which do not project as well as higher ones. This is something I discovered when choosing glasses for my choir. The conductor may have done that to better match the register of the men's voices, which is understandable. It's just a problem of physics.
Thanks for sharing this with us.