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Gear / Technical Help => Microphones & Setup => Topic started by: ccage on June 21, 2008, 11:50:29 AM
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Here's the deal....
I'm way up front tonight for moe. in ATL - section 102 row A. It's first row behind the Orch pit.
I think it may be too close but would like to try using the LSD2 in a Blumlein config.
Part of me says move back since it will be low attendance and may be open seats in better spots but part of me wants to run this up front since folks here say Blumlein works well up close.
I am inexperienced with Blumlein as well as my LSD2 so forgive me if this is a stupid post.
thanks in advance for any input.
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not stupid at all!!! We're two rows behind you and I think blumlein will be VERY nice up there. If it sounds bad for KW, you can always move back between sets (just a thought).
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KW can be your sound check. Not being a KW fan, it makes him serve a purpose in my view. ;D
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Blumlein more or less has to be used up close, because a figure-8 microphone admits as much sound from the back as it does from the front. You have to place the mike(s) where you'll get a good proportion of direct sound coming into the front quadrant, or else your recording will be swamped with room sound.
On the other hand Blumlein has a relatively narrow pickup angle--a tad less than 90 degrees total. In other words, from the microphone's "viewpoint," all direct sound sources have to fit completely within the front quarter-circle. If they don't, you'll get strange effects in the stereo image. (The front lobe of one microphone and the rear lobe of the other one will both pick up any outlying direct sound sources at the same time--but those two signals will be in opposite polarity with one another.)
So Blumlein isn't an all-purpose technique, unfortunately, since in the real world, you don't often have a place to put a Blumlein pair where (a) all the direct sound sources fit within 90 degrees, but at the same time, (b) you're close enough in to get a clear enough pickup.
Still, when the conditions are right for its use, it is the "most nearly perfect" two-microphone stereo recording technique there ever can be, in several fundamental respects. Dr. Stanley Lipshitz gave a very interesting AES paper about this some years back--OK, now I see that it was 23 years ago (shudder)--called "Stereo Microphone Techniques: Are the purists wrong?". (His answer, if I may paraphrase: Not at all.) It's available from the AES as preprint 2261 from the 78th Convention (1985).
--best regards
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Thanks guys
Sort of confirmed what I thought...especially part about using KW as the soundcheck ;D
I will be running 483's as well so will have a backup plan.
rowjimmy I'll see you, Kenny, Sam, Barren 4 and Marcus Flarcus down there.
Let there be Rock