HarpDoc, three things if I may. One is that yes, there's usually a range of plausible mike placements. But each one still creates a different sonic impression, and there's a limit (even if it has vague and stretchy boundaries) to the placements where you can get satisfactory sound according to any given set of criteria.
"Too close" and "too far" really exist, in other words, just as "too far to the left" and "too far to the right" exist. Trying your best is honorable, but don't expect there to be a satisfactory technical way to compensate for any and all bad recording conditions. Some days you get the bear; some days the bear gets you. Some problems can be solved with extra effort, persistence and sneakiness. Others are best solved by giving up and walking away; whether you choose to mutter under your breath as you do so is a matter of personal style.
As a second thought, or maybe it's a further part of the first thought: The closer you get your microphones to a set of sound sources, the more they tend to spotlight the players or singers closest to them--the less of an equal overall balance you will pick up. Also the more distant sound sources are picked up with more reverberance while the closer ones are picked up "dry." I really need a napkin so that I can make a drawing ... it's the only authentic medium for such discussions.
OK, see below. The "X" is the position of your microphones. Note that in the first drawing (with a reasonable miking distance), the path lengths "a" through "e" are roughly equal. Notice that in the second drawing, with the mikes in close, the path lengths "f" through "j" are extremely unequal. That's an unavoidable side effect of closer miking. At a certain point you lose the overall perspective, your mikes start to act like spot mikes, and the recording starts to sound as if you were listening to two selected tracks from a multi-track recording.
Stereo recording with two microphones--especially a coincident or closely-spaced pair--is based on the premise that there's a good balance of sound at the miking position. In situations where that premise isn't true, the two-mike recording approach becomes questionable and even Superman wouldn't be able to change that, so don't blame yourself.
The last thing is that many people, when they talk about "increasing the microphone angle," mean "spread their microphones farther apart." But increasing the angle between two microphones narrows the angle that you can pick up with them. It could be seen as a kind of paradox, or you could say that when people are talking about coincident or near-coincident setups, it is just misleading and wrong to think of aiming the individual microphones at anything, because that's really not how this type of stereo recording works.
It's the common area between the two microphones that makes the stereo recording--the stereo effect works because both mikes pick up all the direct sound sources, but they do so in differing proportions (and/or with different sound arrival times). It's essential that all direct sound reach both microphones, or the sound source will seem to be in one or the other of the loudspeakers, which spoils the effect. Of course it's also important for the sound sources on each side of center to be more prominent (in amplitude or arrival time or both) in the signal from their respective microphone.
Quite possibly you're aware of everything I just said. If so, my apologies for spouting, but I'm sure there are some people here who didn't realize one or the other thing.
--best regards
Topic: Compensating for being too close or too far from stage (cardioid) (Read 7200 times)