Recording Classical Music

CHAPTER 5 Stereo Microphone Techniques

Phase integrity obviously bears directly on recording in stereo, and over the decades audio engineers have developed a number of successful strategies for producing realistic stereo images, some of which use principles of time lag to achieve the desired effect.

Stereo miking allows engineers to replicate the way listeners hear individual instruments or ensembles in concert and recital halls, and recordists often employ just two or three microphones to capture the soundwaves emitted by the instrument/ensemble. When reproduced on a stereo playback system, the transduced sound energy generates phantom images at various points between the two loudspeakers. These images simulate the locations of the instrument(s) ...