I've assembled a little PDF booklet intended to be an visual introduction to OMT which graphically illustrates suggested OMT setups for microphone arrays of 3 to 8 microphones.
Find it attached below and let me know what you think. I'm hoping the graphic illustrations will make the OMT microphone setups easier to understand for some of the more visually oriented folks interested in it. We've thrown plenty of words around in this thread, time for some graphics. All of the microphone setup illustrations are shown in "bird's eye view" perspective as if looking down on them from above (as standard stereo microphone setups are typically drawn), with the stage located at the top of the page and the audience located around the sides and bottom of the page.
It was fun to put this together. Info-graphics are cool.
[edit]- (ironically adding yet more words here, in support of the booklet of illustrations)
What is OMT? I started this thread almost exactly 10 years ago, with the original intent of discussing any unusual (oddball) microphone technique folks here at TS had found useful. However it quickly became focused primarily on my own exploration of open recording techniques, combined in such a way as to achieve the goals I found most important in making the most believable and enjoyable sonic recreation of the event I could manage, within practical constraints.
OMT is designed specifically for location live music recording from an audience or stage-lip location, intended to convey a natural sense of being there surrounded by that space and audience, without sounding overly distant or reverberant but with good up-front presence and apparent proximity to the source. It is not a microphone configuration intended for studio recording in smaller spaces close to the source, or even in controlled live music hall conditions where one has more control and can listen then carefully readjust things before recording, although I believe it would work well there. It's designed with the intent of quickly setting it up and letting it roll at the event without having to strategize too much on the spot, collecting the appropriate signals which allow one sufficient freedom to mix and manipulate those signals afterwards, arranging and fine-tuning things after the recording was made. In that way the efforts go into the initial design behind these microphone arrays and what one does with the resulting recordings afterwards. Making the recording at the event has enough distractions and pleasures without overly complicating that part of the whole undertaking with second guessing which microphone arrangement is appropriate. Besides describing OMT setups visually, what the booklet does is allow you to pick from just a few variants based primarily on how many channels you are willing to record and how many of the appropriate microphone types you have on hand.
I now define OMT setups as live music recording microphone arrays which have these common traits-
> A multi-microphone array technique using more than two microphones
> Generally incorporates and builds atop a foundation of spaced omnis
> Is capable of being supported by a single taper-style microphone stand (typically a repurposed light-stand)
> Has a primary aim of producing a believable sensation of being in the space in which the recording was made
> Aims to emphasize the good qualities and minimize the bad qualities of the live sound, such that the recordings are capable of sounding better than it did live
> Does so by analyzing and determining what is important about live and reproduced sound, and designing the microphone array to specifically address those phenomena
> Splits the workload between sub-units optimized for each role, rather than searching for the best compromise intended to serve all roles - the sum is greater than the individual parts
> Provides for greatly increased flexibility and choices during post-processing and mixing
> Provides some welcome redundancy (should one microphone channel go bad) without detrimental overlaps between microphone channels
> Excels at all three primary forms of playback via different post-processing technique decisions, from the same OMT source recording- Binaural (headphones), 2-channel stereo, and multichannel surround reproduction
[Edit 2]- The illustrated OMT booklet is available in sections linked below, because when combined they exceed the site's 750MB upload limit. This is currently a work in progress and I'm updating these sections as I revise things. If you have already downloaded this, please check the edit date on this post. If I've edited the post since you last downloaded, please re-download the newer corrected, revised version. Once complete, I'll reassemble the entire document and ask the admins to host it.