midside with mk4 vs mk21

[jerryfreak]

thoughts?

i was hoping someone would come on here and school me about the effects of each pattern on the resultant stereo image. i feel there would be more effect from the difference in the mk21 pattern than just a simple 'fattening of the bottom end'

in other words, would the lesser attenuation of the subcard at 90 degrees result in phase issues or other nasties?

[boojum]

FWIW -  Schoeps does it Mk4 + Mk8.  They must know something.  I am pretty sure they arrived at this combo as the result of extensive testing.

Also FWIW -  I use the Vocoder MS plugin as it allow fiddling with the amount of mid and the amount of side independently rather than having mid go down and side goes up and vice-versa.  Just a thought.     

[Əkoostikal]

FWIW -  Schoeps does it Mk4 + Mk8.  They must know something.  I am pretty sure they arrived at this combo as the result of extensive testing.

From the Schoeps literature - mk21: "The low directivity of this microphone type prevents it from generating large enough level differences for X/Y use, though M/S and near-coincident spacings are often successful." "When used as a spot microphone it must be placed somewhat closer to the sound source than a cardioid would be, due to its lower directivity"

- mk4: " When used for X/Y recording or as a Mid microphone in a Mid-Side configuration, it delivers exceptional results" "Due to its directivity, the MK 4/ CCM 4 can be placed 1.7 times farther from the sound source than a pressure transducer of equivalent sensitivity, while maintaining the same proportion of direct and reverberant sound"

so, schoeps does recommend the 4's for an M/S recording, and would probably work better further away from the sound source, where the 21 would probably work great in FOB placement where you are closer to the PA.

My personal preference from the tapes I have heard favors the 21's for sure...... I love the 21's sound and really love that extra kick in the pants on the low end. Maybe try to find tapes made with both and see which your ears favor. I would bet you will have sweet results with whichever combo you choose though.

Edit: A quick search on archive returned many results. http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=schoeps%20M%2FS

[NOLAfishwater]

just got an MK8. do I aim the red dot to the left (assuming the red dot is positive)?

[DSatz]

Hi--I translated and to some extent co-wrote the material quoted above. Schoeps isn't recommending one capsule type over another for the M microphone of an M/S pair. The MK 4 is Schoeps' best-selling capsule, and (for better or worse) most professional engineers tend to think of cardioid as more or less the "default" directional pattern for professional microphones in general. So it's no surprise that casual descriptions of M/S would use a cardioid as the cardinal example for the forward-facing microphone.

But that's only meant as a "point of departure"--as in, if a recommendation had to be made on the basis of absolutely no information about the recording situation, well then, cardioid isn't an extreme choice in any particular direction, so it's unlikely to produce really bad results due to the specifics of the situation (though of course anything's possible).

Truly, that's all that was meant. The fact is that M/S can be used with ANY pattern of microphone for the M microphone. Originally (early-mid 1950s) M/S recording was developed as a mono-compatible technique of stereo recording, and the idea was that the M microphone should be selected and placed as if one were going to make a single-mike mono recording (something which every engineer back then knew how to do). The choice of pattern and placement would naturally depend on room acoustics, the type of music to be recorded, the purpose of the recording and just plain subjective personal preference (e.g. how much do you value roundness and warmth vs. clarity?).

So the same is still true today.

--best regards

[jerryfreak]

hmm- omni+ figure 8?

worth trying?

i guess anything is worth trying...

[DSatz]

jerryfreak, omni + figure-8 for M/S is entirely possible, but again consider when you would choose a non-directional microphone for a single-mike music recording. It takes a large room that's nearly perfect in its acoustics (whatever that may mean to you or me).

For the average semi-distant or distant single-mike omni recording, the frequency response characteristics of the omni should be chosen with some care. The best sounding result won't usually come from a microphone whose high frequency response looks flat on paper, since such measurements are made in free-field ("anechoic") conditions, while you'd be very nearly in the opposite situation (a more nearly diffuse sound field). Typically you would choose a microphone or capsule which, in free-field measurement conditions, shows several dB rise in response at high frequencies.

For me the two classic examples are the Neumann M 50--which was developed for this exact purpose (as a pressure microphone for single-mike recording of music at some distance from the sound sources), and microphones using the Schoeps MK 2S capsule, perhaps with the accessory that lets you embed the capsule in the surface of a 40 mm sphere.

--best regards

[Alexandru Petrescu]

just got an MK8. do I aim the red dot to the left (assuming the red dot is positive)?

I'm not a specialist.  I'm tempted to say point the red dot to where the M's pattern points (if cardioid) and in the other direction (if supercardioid).  As in the following pictures extracted from the manual, hoping they're right.

[ghellquist]

Omni + fig8 in MS configuration gives a polar pattern just like two cardioids back-to-back. (Early cardiods sometimes was made out of two microphone elements in the same capsule, one fig 8 and one omni).

Cardiod+fig8 gives a polar patter just like two cardioids in XY with about 90 degrees between the capsules.

Mk21 + fig8 would be somewhere between that.

Gunnar

[DSatz]

ghellquist, the things you say would be true if the M and S microphones have exactly equal 0-degree sensitivity. Normally this is not the case, however; the figure-8 is often less sensitive than the other microphone in an M/S pair. So I prefer not to make such generalizations.

For me the whole point of recording in M/S is to actually record M and S signals rather than left and right, so that I can adjust the reverberation balance and the stereo image width in playback by independently varying the gain of the two recorded channels going into the matrix. Again, if you do that, then you won't get the X/Y patterns that you describe--unless by some coincidence you choose the exact difference in gain that compensates for the difference in sensitivity between the M and S microphones. But there's no reason to expect a person to do that.

--best regards

[ghellquist]

David,
    you are right. I should have qualified my statement as it was intended as an illustration on how you could think about what effect the choice of mid mic will have.

Gunnar