How short? I find it hard to believe that if there is a mic bar flown in a hall, that they would bother with one shorter than 60 cm.
It was surprising to me as well.. the spacing of the mounts in the large hall is only 4" and the handmade bar is about 12" long.
It turns out that anyone who records anything serious brings in their own rigs and gets much more time/support than I'm getting.
Regardless, I've rigged it for ORTF with KM84s as planned as I knew I could do it quickly. With more time I know I could attach another bar
to the existing one and mount omnis. But I'm doing several different audio jobs for this client and do not have time to experiment at all unfortunately.
If I work at this location again, I will certainly know my options and be able to prepare in advance if I do want to try spaced omnis in the large hall.
I hung the 41s in the small hall and have not heard a single note yet. I have a feeling not much will get recorded in there.
The hang is so close to the conductor that I would love to try spaced Omni's in there and plan to rent or borrow some in the coming days.
How are the acoustics in the larger hall? If it has greater reverberation time, perhaps use the 41s there?
The Larger hall does have a greater reverberation time. Since this hall is getting the majority of the playing time, I felt it would be safest to use the ORTF KM84s in there as the stage and size of Orchestra is much more spread out.
Fortunately it looks like there is another event coming up soon in a totally different environment where I will be able to use stands and rent some mics and not have to deal just with what I have on hand. At the very least I will get some experience listening to the various stereo setups even if in totally different environments
More omni inspiration, this time from a professional classical recording engineer. Mic 2 in these samples is a pair of DPA 4006 omnis in exactly the arrangement we're talking about.
The recording you linked sounds amazing and inspires me to consider spaced omni's whenever possible.