Thoughts and comments appreciated.
Dig the wide split. This is why the kind of taping we often do (recording music where a large percentage of the sound arrives through a PA) is often a completely different thing than 'standard' recording techniques found in books and taught in audio engineering. All standard techniques evolved from either large scale classical recording or small scale studio mic'ing techniques. Nowhere in the 'standard' recording world is there an instrument which emits highly correlated sound through two very widely spaced speakers. The PA is a freak in the standard recording world, just as stereo reproduction is a freak of the natural sound world. Both, stereo especially, are contrived from the start to exploit human hearing tricks. Sometimes standard techniques apply nicely, but when you have widely spaced twin mono (mostly) sources, techniques no classical or studio engineer would normally even consider can work well. You'll never read about that in any standard book on recording, only between the lines.
Somewhat amazingly really, this 25' split is predominantly mid channel (mono) information, due to the moslty mono PA mix and presumably symetrical mic to stack placement on each side, but there is clear and distinct panning of the effects, jangly percussion stuff and anything else mixed in stereo through the PA. At the same time the room ambience and crowd reaction is highly decorellated by the spit so that portion is wide and ambient sounding. The result is sort of like a SBD/AUD matrix without any matrixing.. 'matrixed in air'.
Nice job Bob.. and thanks for the chance to blather on that one lurking in the back of my head for years now.