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Re: SA-CD SURROUND

I cannot speak for Telarc, but Michael can and did in a very clear way. Multi-miking or the purist approach (2 microphones for stereo?)?? There is no clear division. I agree with what Michael says and that using only 2 microphones rarely gives the result I am after. Remember that using two microphones in stereo and listening on 2 loudspeakers does not give you the same sound as where the microphones are. One factor is that the microphone 'mixes' the direct and the indirect sound making different discrimination afterwards very difficult. The microphone generally changes the perspective as to compared how the human ear hears and perceives at the same location. An example: if you use one microphone at a very busy party where many people speak and you try to follow a conversation, the microphone will already have superimposed all the noises on top of each other, making this almost impossible to understand if you listen on one speaker. Using a stereo pair in that situation will increase the resolution when listening on 2 loudspeakers, because some of the spatial acoustical characteristics are retained. But it may give a more true sound picture if you use a middle pair and two wider spaced mikes and mix them with time alignment together. You will certainly get a better and more convincing sound reproduction if you use five loudspeakers and 5 microphones, maybe also with some modest used close mikes, giving the same intelligibility as in the real situation where the ear can zoom in the conversation by using the acoustic features and can discriminate on sounds from different locations.

Combining the 5 channels in a consumer player to two channel will never give you anything predictable or better than the optimal stereo mix, and you really should stop expecting it to do so.

Multi channel recordings are for multi channel playback. And I hope that many people will be ‘infected’ with the wonderful results this can give, like I am and many of the musicians I have recorded are.


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  • Re: SA-CD SURROUND - Erdo 09:42:43 08/16/05 (0)


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