I love Greg Sommons post:
" According to him, at Decca the 'Tree' was simply a pragmatic matter of
using three omnis. Two spaced spaced wide by necessity (one over the
violins, one over the celli), with a centre mic to fill in the gap
and
give some focus to the winds and/or violas. He was adamant that there
was none of this measuring and so on, it was all adjusted by ear."
So perhaps there IS NO SPEC! Just copycats of the original sessions...
And AES paper said:
"The stereo microphone array commonly referred to as the =93Decca Tree=94
was originally conceived by the recording engineers at English Decca
Records.
It utilized three omnidirectional microphones situated at the ends of
a large
T-shaped fixture. The spacing between the left and right microphones was
approximately 2 meters, and the central microphone was in front of
these by
about 1.5 meters. Placement of the array was generally a few feet behind
and about eight to ten feet above the conductor=92s head.
(verbal diagram deleted)
The three microphones are panned Left, Center, and Right
respectively. Although it is tempting simply to aim the mics straight
out
from their support braces, it is preferable actually to point the
principal axes
of the microphones inward and downward, toward the soundsource; this is
because omnidirectional microphones always tend to become more
directional
as frequency increases."
And about MS: and will put out my VP-88 and see how a car passing by
sounds. I've always felt that MS is best stereo, but that may be only
my personal preference. I've never even used omni mics myself; thus
my comments are merely theoretical, so feel free to discount my
arguments.
Is your diagram supposed to show the center mic offcenter and a tenth
of the distance between the sides? If not, I'd stop making inaccurate
ascii attempts. This looks to me as though the sides are two yards
apart, and the center just six inches forward and off to the right by
maybe four inches (sorry I don't do metric in my head)... That is not
an equilateral triangle! But then neither is the AES description.
<L>
On Aug 30, 2008, at 9:40 AM, Kim Cascone wrote:
Lou
as 'spec'd' the Decca Tree spacing can be from 70 - 100 cm from A ->
x ; B -> x and C -> x
------------C
------------|
A----------x----------B
and nothing in the 'spec' states that there need be a pipe involved
there are probably other ways to arrange three omni's in the field
that don't involve plumbing skills ;)
and unless you can point me to an M-S recording that is properly'
decoded ' I think Scott was spot on when he observed:
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