Three Stereo Mic Arrays Compared

What good is a "look at me play guitar" video if the sound of the guitar isn't captured well? It's a lot more enjoyable to watch a performance if the sound is clear and clean, and even better if the music envelopes us and makes us feel like we are "there." One of the ways to achieve this is a compelling stereo image.

There are lots of ways to arrange mics to capture stereo, so I set up to compare three different stereo arrays: coincident XY, spaced ORTF, and spaced omnidirectional AB. I used the XY module of my Zoom H6 recorder, then connected a pair of Schoeps CMC64 cardioid mics in an ORTF configuration along with a pair of Shure KSM141s set to omni and spaced 15 inches apart for my AB setup. The Zoom H6 makes it easy to grab all these configurations at the same time.

I pulled all the tracks into Edius, made small adjustments in the levels and the panning to level the playing field as much as possible. With these different mics there will definitely be differences in frequency response which means the tonal balance will be different for each array, but if possible try to hear the effect of the stereo capture. Listen for differences in image width, sense of space, sense of envelopment. Hopefully one of these configurations will sound "just right" to you.

You can find the uncompressed WAV files for each array along with a bit more info at the Homebrewed Music blog: http://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2017/04/07/three-stereo-mic-arrays-compared/

This video was captured on a Lumix GH4, the guitar is a Tony Yamamoto OMY, all editing was done in Edius.

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