{"id":230,"date":"2024-08-13T12:58:16","date_gmt":"2024-08-13T12:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/?p=230"},"modified":"2025-11-08T13:30:03","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T13:30:03","slug":"microphone-positioning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/2024\/08\/13\/microphone-positioning\/","title":{"rendered":"Microphone positioning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I have some free time. Sometimes I make recordings of trombone quartet concerts or of myself playing, and I&#8217;m aware that I don&#8217;t know much about positioning microphones, except that <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">it makes a huge difference<\/span><\/strong> to the sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I went to a local church for an hour and played around a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What I learned:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>It&#8217;s not surprising that I can&#8217;t get a good sound in my study &#8211; you need 3m at least<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>As expected: on-axis (pointing straight at the bell from in front) is harsh, trebly, and you hear all the breathy fuzziness.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>90 degrees off-axis (pointing at the bell but from the side) is too muffled, lacks life, a bit thin &#8211; but at least there isn&#8217;t all the breathiness.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>My favourite sound was from a pair of omnis (and a Jecklin disk) about 7m away, and 60 degrees off-axis. This of course depends on having a beautiful room.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I play very differently in a lovely, big church. It&#8217;s wonderful to enjoy the sound!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Detail, and some clips<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Angle<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I placed three identical (SE8 cardioid) mics 3m from the bell, at 90\u00ba, 60\u00ba and 30\u00ba off-axis. (None directly in front of the bell). This is three simultaneous recordings of the same event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/axis6.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">3m distance:  90\u00ba then 60\u00ba then 30\u00ba<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If the difference isn&#8217;t clear &#8230; then (a) this article isn&#8217;t for you, and (b) this should make it clearer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/axis-repeat.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">One note: 3m distance:  90\u00ba then 60\u00ba then 30\u00ba<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Distance<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Simultaneously I had another cardioid SE8 at 30\u00ba and 7m away. Moving further away seems to make the sound a bit &#8220;fuller&#8221; &#8211; maybe because there&#8217;s a lot more &#8220;room&#8221; relative to the direct signal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is 3m and 7m at 30\u00ba:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/axis-distance.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">30\u00ba first 3m, second 7m<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>For interest, the loop of 3 mics from earlier, now with the fourth, more distant one at the end:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/axis-4short.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">One note (3m 90\u00ba) then (3m 60\u00ba) then (3m 30\u00ba) &#8230; then (7m 30\u00ba)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally: Jecklin pair<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is (obvs) a stereo signal and the others are mono. Here&#8217;s the pair at 7m and on-axis. It&#8217;s quite harsh, and it&#8217;s the reason you shouldn&#8217;t play brass instruments <em><strong>at <\/strong><\/em>people!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/axis-Jecklin0.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Jecklin pair on-axis, 7m away<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s 7m and 60\u00ba off-axis. It&#8217;s a different performance because I only have one Jecklin pair. Much less aggressive. I think maybe 45\u00ba might be a good compromise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/axis-Jecklin60.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Jecklin pair 60\u00ba off-axis, 7m away<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Conclusion?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s so much more playing around to be done here, and I&#8217;m not sure I want to spend the time, but it turns out that the most pleasing configuration <em>that I tried <\/em>on this one-hour session was a pair of SE8 omnis separated by a Jecklin disk, at 7m and 60\u00ba off-axis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have no idea whether the JD made any difference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Result<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Well: I played a sonata twice: with the Jecklin pair at different positions, and I much preferred the sound of the second. <em>Unfortunately <\/em>I didn&#8217;t press &#8220;record&#8221; on the video camera the second time (and the phone camera that I had set up had gradually slipped, so it just recorded the organ pipes above me). So, here&#8217;s the first session. I took the nicest of the mono signals (haha: an AKG 414B-XLS in hypercardiod mode, co-located at 7m and 30\u00ba) &#8230; and shoved it through a Lexicon reverb, to give it a bit of stereo! Sounds pretty similar to my &#8220;favourite&#8221; configuration, above but lacks a bit of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Telemann Fantasie No.2 for Trombone\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/43rTMNU5oOA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Further work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>With the off-axis thing, it&#8217;s tempting to think that the difference is spectrum occupancy (filtering), in which case it could be equalised using &#8230; equalisation. I have yet to try this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jecklin vs omni pair? &#8230; or cardioid pair?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve had mixed experience with digital reverb. If the source is completely clean (e.g. close-mic @ 0.1m) it works well but IMHO doesn&#8217;t reproduce the sound in a real room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have some free time. Sometimes I make recordings of trombone quartet concerts or of myself playing, and I&#8217;m aware that I don&#8217;t know much about positioning microphones, except that it makes a huge difference to the sound. I went to a local church for an hour and played around a bit. What I learned: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recording"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273,"href":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phil-c.com\/wphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}