Klas Strandberg wrote:
> In 1982 I made an experiment:
>
> I recorded a Redwing in AB stereo:
> In the background you could easily hear traffic sounds from the city and
> airplanes from the airport.
>
> When people were presented the recording in stereo, with headphones, they
> all looked happy, smiling, saying things like "it is so natural, how can =
you
> do this?"
> Nobody commented the traffic sounds.
>
> When presented the recording in mono (one of the omnis) people didn't loo=
k
> as happy, no smile, but they said things like "it is very good quality".
>
> When the recording was low frequency filtered, they all said things like =
"it
> is a pity that one can hear so much traffic noise.
>
> So, in mono, when filtered, people took more notice of the traffic. I
> concluded that mono doesn't trigger the "brain filters" good enough,
> especially not when you have manipulated the mono sound.
It is exactly for this reason that I've gone virtually entirely to
stereo recording. You can, with care, filter stereo recordings without
losing this effect. But you have the brain's own filtering to help, so
don't have to filter as much.
I do not believe that constructed stereo (multiple mono channels mixed
to sound like stereo) works near as well at this. I've noticed the slow
loss of the stereo effect in music as more and more it's mixed
multichannel. Sounds kind of like stereo, but does not give the same feel.
I also don't like the trend that two mics in any random configuration
are called stereo mics. Many, many of these configurations don't
recreate the full space of a true stereo field. Only pick up a
suggestion of it. Getting the true stereo field is more challenging. I
definitely have a long way to go in my own skill level at this. There is
plenty of room left for experimentation in mic setups for stereo, but
make sure you understand what you are getting.
I work on visualizing the space I'm recording, it's shape, it's
dimensions and so on. Within that space the stereo mic setup will vary
in how well it's recreating the sound. Knowing these variations takes
lots of recording and listening. Then you can get into placing your
callers in that space, like actors on a stage. Watching Lang Elliott set
up mics was a real education in all that and first got me seriously
thinking of recording space in that way.
> In 1995, I made a stereo recording (Telinga PRO5 + stere DATmic) of a Rob=
in
> sitting on a car antenna at Trafalgar Square, in the middle of London
> afternoon traffic.
> That is not a recording of a Robin, and should not be judged as a "very
> noisy recording of a Robin." It is a recording of "a Robin at Trafalgar
> Square traffic jam," and the traffic sounds are not noise, but part of th=
e
> recording.
This is a good point, noise is more sound that's not where you want it
to be, in a different setting it may be central to the recording.
Walt
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