I'm very curious to know what a pzm would sound like for music. I've only used it for non-musical application, and only 2x. Can you post anything here to listen to, Jim?
Try any of Bob Cogswell's recordings
Thanks Keith. I believe Bob uses a special stereo PZM mic made by crown. It looks really weird, kind of like a cross between a brick and a hat, and it works well being placed on the stage floor DFC.
Moe's Alley in Santa Cruz has an in-house matrix rig set-up for patching with artist/engineer permission. They use a pair of Realistic PZM mics mounted above the stage. I patched out of this set-up a couple times with Alfred Howard and the K23 Orchestra and Delta Nove, though as a part of a larger multi recording. Here is a recent sample of that matrix set-up someone else patched from at a Garaj Mahal show:
http://www.archive.org/details/gm2007-05-22.flac16I'm not the best one to give a run-down or explain how PZM mics work, but the gist to my understanding is that they are a type of boundary layer mic and they take advantage of being mounted on a large reflective surface (ceiling, stage floor, etc.) to achieve an omni-directional response above the boundary.
Copied/pasted from the Crown website (
http://www.crownaudio.com/mic_web/mic_faq.htm):
The PZM has a hemispherical pickup pattern when used on a boundary like a floor, wall, ceiling or tabletop. Another way to look at that is to say that it is omnidirectional above the boundary plane. This makes sense when you consider that it generally can't pick up sound from behind the boundary.
I think they tend to sound on the 'dry' side to my ears and do not have the monsterous bass response I typically associate with omni mics, but they do share a generally 'natural' balance across the frequency range to my ears (though with some low roll off and a bump in the cymbal range of the upper frequencies). For stage/ceiling mount use, I really like them. However, I don't think they're practicable for AUD taping unless you're willing to carry a boundary with you. Some folks have done this, however, with large sheets of plexiglass on a stand and the mics mounted to the plexiglass. I remember seeing a pic on the TS here of a set-up like that at some point.
If I'm not correct, isn't there be a set number for delay based on cable lengths (if he'll be doing onstage recordings) that he could use to do his matrices.
Delay is a function of mic distance from the sound source - approx. 1 milisec/foot. The delay from cable length is so negligible (unless your running 100s or 1000s of feet of cable) that it should never really come into play with audio. There's another thread that addresses this in more detail here:
http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,79601.0/all.html
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