MicBud: Stereo Mic Array Modeling For Tapers

[auxren]

I made myself a tool to play around with mic configurations and understand what affects what.

https://taper-mounts.com

Give it a look. The field guide at the top can give you a detailed rundown of what is what.
It's got a selection of mics you can choose from. The mics are modeled from traced published specs.
There is a small selection of venues. The goal is to try to model various mic setups in venues and provide reference shows from archive that are taped in that venue with the same mics so you can hear a preview of what to expect.

Open to feedback!

[papabliss]

Nice. Can you add the KA300 to the MBHO section?

[voltronic]

Marking.

This is really interesting! Would it be possible to make this work for those of us who do purely acoustic recording? Maybe a toggle to set PA to 'none' and decrease the distance to stage to 0 m?

[auxren]

Marking.

This is really interesting! Would it be possible to make this work for those of us who do purely acoustic recording? Maybe a toggle to set PA to 'none' and decrease the distance to stage to 0 m?

Added!

Nice. Can you add the KA300 to the MBHO section?

Added!

[voltronic]

Marking.

This is really interesting! Would it be possible to make this work for those of us who do purely acoustic recording? Maybe a toggle to set PA to 'none' and decrease the distance to stage to 0 m?

Added!

Nice. Can you add the KA300 to the MBHO section?

Added!

Wow, incredible! Thanks!

OK, since you apparently can do this rather quickly, could you put in the large-diaphragm Gefells? (M 930/940/950/960)

[Thelonious]

Marking, this is cool!

[rocksuitcase]

Very cool.
I know you can;t do all mics. Several older, dynamic Beyers were used often in the GD days- Beyer M160, Beyer M201, Beyer M88
THANKS for thinking this one up and presenting it to us

[Gutbucket]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this.  I'll play around with it a bit, check the guide, and come back to discuss.  Forgive me if any of the following is covered in the guide, and if so feel free to simply let me know it is rather than waste your time on a more detailed reply.

A few preliminary questions:
In tailoring it to specific microphones do you import the published frequency response and polar diagram?  Any other data specific to the microphone? What happens for microphones lacking good published graphs? And how are differences in how those graphs are presented by various manufacturers handled?

Helpful to include specific microphones commonly used by concert tapers.  Many are already there.  And good to see the suggested additions being incorporated.

[VibrationOfLife]

Very cool.  Can you add a meter/foot toggle switch for us heathens?

[auxren]

 MicBud update — a big round of changes (https://taper-mounts.com)

  A lot of this came straight out of reading threads here, so thanks. Summary of what's new:

  New stereo techniques & physics
 

 
• DINa (17cm/90°) and Olsen (17cm/135°) presets added alongside ORTF/NOS/DIN.
• Baffled arrays: Jecklin/OSS disk, sphere (KFM-style), and SASS — plus a continuous "Baffle" control and a disk/sphere toggle. The baffle is modelled
    properly: omni in the bass (below ~c/πD) and directional up high, and a sphere also adds the around-the-baffle delay (dummy-head ITD).
• Recording-angle (SRA) solver: dial a target angle and it solves the splay, or hit "Match PA width." Fist-at-arm's-length ≈ 10° tip included.
• Room-aware advisor: nudges you toward DIN/DINa's narrow 90° in reverberant rooms and ORTF's wider angle in good rooms.
• "Hole in the middle" warnings for hypers at ~90° and omnis spaced past ~90cm, with 40–67cm guidance on the omni spacing.

  New mics
 

 
• Microtech Gefell M 930 / M 940 / M 950 / M 960 (M900-series LDCs)
• Beyerdynamic M 160, M 201, M 88
• (now 105 capsules across the brand list)

  Signal chain & placement
 

 
• Rig builder: pick a preamp/battery box (Aerco MP-2, Naiant IPA, Sonosax, Church, Lunatec...) and recorder/ADC (MixPre, Zoom F-series, Tascam
    DR-680/701D, Sony PCM-A10, SD 7-series...) and see the dominant noise source + headroom.
• Placement presets: stage-lip/boundary, head height, 8ft, 13ft — with floor-bounce and stand-stability notes.
• Low-cut/roll-off with a venue-suggested corner (~96Hz outdoor / ~107Hz indoor).
• Acoustic (no-PA) mode, quick venue-shape presets (club/theatre/arena/outdoor), and a stealth-friendly capsule filter.

  Quality-of-life
 

 
• Save/Load setups as a small .txt you can keep or share.
• Imperial/metric toggle.
• Fixed the manufacturer frequency/polar graphs not loading (now hosted locally).

[morst]

Holy ned, this is approximately mind-blowing.
I doubt it will affect my throw-and-go approach, but it sure is interesting!!


Great going putting this together, and thanks for sharing.

[auxren]

Some updates from the past few weeks:


 

 
  Physics accuracy pass
 

• Localization now uses the published Williams/Wittek/Sengpiel curves (the level-vs-time trade the SCHOEPS Image Assistant
    uses) instead of a linear approximation. Recording angles now line up with the accepted values — ORTF ≈ 98°, NOS ≈ 83°. Heads-up:
    some wide arrays (coincident cardioid XY, wide spaced) now correctly read "wider than ±90°," which is the real Sengpiel convention —
    if your recording-angle number changed, that's why.
• Baffled arrays got a proper model: the disk/sphere shadow is now frequency-dependent — omni in the bass (below ~200 Hz,
    matching Jecklin's measurement), directional up high — and a sphere (KFM) adds the around-the-baffle delay a flat disk doesn't. The
    Jecklin OSSv2 (36 cm / 35 cm disk) is calibrated to the published ~81° recording angle.
• Validated against the literature — directivity, diffuse-field coherence (Cook 1955), image-source reflections (Allen &
    Berkley 1979), and the localization model are all checked against the source papers.

 
  More real mic data
 

• 33 capsules now show their actual measured frequency response (up from ~9), traced from the manufacturer graphs —
    Schoeps, DPA, Austrian Audio, Gefell, Line Audio, MBHO and more. So the frequency plot shows a mic's real tone (presence lifts, the
    DPA free-field bump, etc.), not a generic flat line.

 
  Quality-of-life
 

• An About/contact panel (the "i" button, bottom-right) with a way to reach me directly with questions/suggestions, plus
    links to my tapes and a tip jar if it's been useful.
• Fixed a wavefront-viz bug someone here caught (thanks — the label was right, the drawing was tilted the wrong way).

 
  As always, feedback welcome — a lot of the best changes here started as posts in this section.

[Gutbucket]

I still need to check this out and really hope to find time to do so this week!


Minor comment on the earlier update-

• "Hole in the middle" warnings for hypers at ~90° and omnis spaced past ~90cm, with 40–67cm guidance on the omni spacing.

A coincident X/Y pair of hypercardioids at 90° is not likely to produce a hole in the middle problem on playback.  The classic Blumlein configuration specifies coincident fig-8s at 90°, and fig-8's have a faster sensitivity fall-off moving off-axis than hypercards, making that configuration even more likely to cause a perceptual hole in the middle.  I do sometimes to hear a bit of hole in the middle with Blumlein at 90° (more like a slightly weak center), and so generally prefer a slightly narrower angle of around 75-80° for coincident 8's.  True hypercardioid pattern microphones are rare but should actually be close to stereophonically ideal around 90° X/Y.  Supercards more like 100-115°, cardioids 120° and up.

And hole in the middle become more difficult to predict when recording PA amplified performances from a location in the audience using spaced omnis. At some point, other aspects can become more important than the accuracy of positional imaging, such as how the ambient sound, reverberance, and audience reaction is portrayed.

Relatively minor quips. I suppose the warning is to be careful of casting an overly broad net in offering specific recommendations.

[VibrationOfLife]

I use hypers at DIN (90 degrees) and don't notice a hole in the middle.

[Gutbucket]

^ And that's with the microphones spaced apart 20cm.

As most members here know, I'm a big proponent of adjusting the microphone configuration to the particulars of each situation, since its effective and one of the few things that we have a lot of control over.  And I frequently suggest tapers try the Improved PAS microphone pair technique which entails adjusting both the angle and spacing between the microphone pair. That's a simple technique can be modeled using this tool, but it does require the ability to adjust both angle and spacing.

So partly to simplify things, I keep the angle between the primary pair of directional microphones at 90° most of the time.  That angle is easy to see, setup and maintain, and generally keeps the mics oriented close enough to on-axis with the sound source that the direct/reverberant pickup ratio from a decent recording position works out nicely in addition to the image distribution, which is fine-tuned via the spacing between the pair.  Adjusting the spacing is what modifies the resulting Stereo Recording Angle.  If I'm also running a center microphone or center coincident pair, the spaced directional pair remains angled 90° (making the angle between the center and the adjacent microphone to either side 45°) and to compensate for that the microphones get spaced about twice as far apart than they would have if used as a straight stereo pair on their own.  That makes for a good practical application of this stuff.

But unfortunately with most mic-bars its easier to adjust the angle between microphones rather than the spacing between them, and I'm doing just the opposite.  Tapers really need access to mic-bars that are capable of going wide enough and provide more easy control over width!