At 1:28 AM -0400 7/19/09, Richard L. Hess wrote:
>
>
>At 04:39 PM 2009-07-18, Rob Danielson wrote:
>>I took a Zoom H2 out with me to 4th of July weekend happenings to
>>test the built-in mics on robust sound sources-- a parade, street and
>>bandstand musicians, a baseball game crowd and a dunk tank and
>>fireworks. All of the subjects came out better than I thought they
>>would considering how easy it was to use the H2.
>
>Hi, Rob,
>
>Did you use the 120-degree or the 90-degree mic pair in the H2. I
>much prefer the 120-degree pair for most applications.
>
>Richard
Hi Richard--
Yes, I was hopeful that the internal mics would be sufficient based
on your enthusiasm. I'm accustom to rigs which employ head-like
spacing and head-like barriers/boundaries which probably differ even
more from X-Y than the M-S reference pair does in Matt's test.
I experimented with both the 90 degree and 120 degree pairs on most
subjects. With the medium and distant subjects I recorded, I felt
both images were short on depth and lateral spread. The difference
between the ocket recorders approximate X- Y array and the spaced
pairs I'm used to was pretty dramatic over speakers.
Most recordists establish preferences in their stereo micing options
often falling on one side or the other of the coincident/spaced
distinction. With spacing on the order of a few inches, I guess the
pocket recorders are not "true" coincident arrays. I've heard a lot
of recordings made with Rode NT-4's and it seems that coincident
capsules does help with depth cues.
I've read and heard directly from people such as James Boyk at
Caltech who has studied stereo micing techniques extensively that
human stereo "processing," at least from artificial sources like
speakers and headphones, varies considerably between people.
Based on my experience, it seems there's a very good chance that as
we use a certain stereo array over time, we can "train" our
ears/brain to detect more spatial "cues" from the signals. I think
this may be especially true if one has a set-up where one's "hunches"
about where a sound source is actually located can be tested over and
over. With continually moving/changing subjects, nature recording is
a great practical testing ground. Rob D.
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