Hi all,
First off, not sure I'm trying to play on the right playground... But seems like folks here would know what to do possibly... Anyways, here goes
I am trying to get a decent stereo image of our church's choir loft, the area being about ~50ft wide by ~15ft deep. The organ console is just to the right of center (facing the balcony) and the mic stand would be located right behind it. The entire "back wall" of the choir area is the organ pipes. Here's a pic of the area:
and a front view, from one of our webcasts:
As you may tell if you look close at the pic above, I have a temp pair of mics, each on a stand (Beyerdynamic M201's I bought back in the late 80's for field taping) and didn't know about stereo miking techniques (until I found this site and the good resources here!) so they are just in a random wide "V" setup as so:
Now I asked a local professional studio owner (who records choirs at different locations) as to what I could replace these mics with that would do a better job (never was that impressed with the M201's for this sort of thing, total n00b when I bought them back when...) and he suggested a pair of Studio Projects C4's, and his sales guy at Sweetwater said either that, or sE Electronics E7's (church is buying, and we are on a ~$500 budget for the solution.) In doing some homework and finding this site, I learned about Line Audio CM4's, which sound like possibly the best choice for my budget. So I have a quote request into J-P Gérard from NoHype for a pair. I'm now thinking about stands and mounts and all that sort of thing...
I think I'm restricted as to being slightly off-center (i.e. right behind the organ console as I am now) since center balcony is the choir conductor's space. My big question is, what type of a mic arrangement in this location for this space would produce the best result? I see
these stereo mic mounts suggested by user "voltronic"; thinking maybe the "WIDE ORTF" mount, but would like shock mounts (the wooden floor on the balcony with lots of folks up there makes for the thumps....) Anyone got a suggestion as to how I can make this work the best way?
Normal use will be for online broadcast audio, but since I'm going into a digital soundboard with recording capability (Allen & Heath Qu-Series) I'm going to be recording as well (48kHz 24-bit WAV).
Thanks for your kind suggestions, and like I said, hopefully I'm in the right place (if not, feel free to suggest a better venue, thanks!)