I’m really glad to hear my videos have helped you in any way. Hang in there!

Thank you Moonlapse!

Thank you!! And Happy New Year!

I did too! When I recorded The Name of Life way back, I thought I wouldn’t need to play this one - but someone requested it a while ago and I thought, why not :) Happy New Year!

I think I have them all now! Thank you, and Happy New Year!

Oh yeah, I would definitely struggle!

Finetuning of the mic placement continues - thank you very much for mentioning it! And Happy New Year!

​@@Caliko I just got a stereo mic setup (Worker Bee IIs and a cheap Pyle mixer with pan ability...haven't released any recordings with it yet) and happened to get into a discussion on the ToneBase forums with a German sound engineer who was super generous with his thoughts. I thought it was useful so I'm sharing in case there's something in there you want to consider/experiment with: ~~~~~~~~~~~ If you use two mics in a stereo setup (that's also true for field recorders) totally pan 100% left and right! [...] The 100% pan is for any spaced pair stereophony, panning inwards will yield comb filters and corrupt the stereo image. In a stereo setup each microphone to a considerable amount is already hearing what the other one does - but at a slightly different time. By the speed of sound, every sound originating anywhere but exactly at equal distance from the mics will arrive a little sooner at the closer mic and then a tad later at the other one. The temporal shift is bigger for greater angle of incidence and that information is exactly what our ears need to make our brain conceive the plasticity and depth. If you're blending the channels you're sending information "crosstalk" vice versa that already was in the other ones but at different points in time. Some earlier, some later - creating the acoustic equivalent to "double edges" in awobbled photograph. Then adding the same but opposite from the other direction (introducing sort of "triple edged silhouettes" of acoustic events). The only area unaffected by this crazy blur is a thin vertical slice in the middle of the acoustic picture, that's by far too little. Adding to the disaster, since frequencies have wave lengths, some of the time shifted crosstalk will lead certain frequencies (and their multiples) to overlap their peaks in the other channel, thereby exaggerating the volume of said frequencies - while frequencies in between (and their multiples) will overlap a peak and a valley/trough, thereby cancelling themselves out. So again that's the comb shaped frequency response called comb filter. As described in the previous post, you could also yield it in a single microphone through reflections of nearby boundaries [e.g. bare parallel walls], but - hopefully as clear now - also by panning the two channels of spaced pair stereo mic setup not 100% L and R. If you want your left microphone sound a little bit more like your right microphone and vice versa, just move your mics closer together or go for more distance so each mics "sees" more what the other one does but always keep them in 100% L/R. Stereo systems you can pan inwards without sonic damage are XY, MS and Blümlein setups. In these the capsules are as close as possible (theoretically they were in the same spot) so no runtime differences between the mics will occur. I.e. sounds of any origin hit the two capsules at exactly the same time. They do so, but with different volumes due to the directivity of the microphones listening into other directions. These setups are able to yield crisp clear mono-compatible recordings with good directivity and the potential for stereo width manipulation (panning inwards). Mostly that's desirable for post production, when mixing in context of larger ensembles, bands etc. The compromise to that advantage is these are totally lacking the depth and spaciousness of well executed spaced pair (AB) recording. So, if you're recording a solo instrument for an audience, most of whom do not listen on mono radios, you might lean towards a stereo system that integrates a runtime component and stay 100% L/R :) A second possibility of panning two microphones inwards without sonic damage and strange artefacts is when the mics hear so very different "angles" of the sonic events that they can't be considered a stereo pair anymore but rather form a double mono setup. If you want to do this the rule is to keep at least three times more distance between the mics than the distance between each mic and the instrument ("3:1 rule"). The undesirable artefacts remain inaudible from the 3:1 and beyond scenario. You can achieve good, "round" and "interesting" sounding recordings this way, as you capture two angles that nicely blend. Only they are not able to produce the three dimensional spaciousness of a true stereophonic perspective. [...] As you start to tilt the mics outwards, the volume component increases. Distance between mics should not be too big though as this stretches the middle of the recording angle again. [...] You can try any combination between say 17cm 0° [i.e. mics 17cm apart, parallel] and 25cm at 90°. You can also try listening at the sound holes. Best chance to find magic spots would be if you have one person play, one moving the stereo setup around and one listening to the result at a decent stereo in another room.

@@MarcPlaysPiano That was super helpful, thank you for sharing! I used to always pan 100% left to right, but then started playing with it since I had 4 mics thinking it sounded nicer when there was an overlap in the closer mics... maybe not! I'll go back to panning completely L/R

@@Caliko You're welcome! These technical aspects of sound engineering are a whole different world that I'm unfamiliar with, so I'm finding it fascinating. I'm asking him a follow-up about adding a third mic to capture more room sound, so we'll see what he says! If he still has patience enough to respond, haha. In the meantime, he added this info for consideration/experimentation (I don't quite understand all of it, but I think I get enough to know what to try out...especially after googling EBS recording and seeing what it looks like): ~~~~~~~~ For those of you who have two cardioid mics available i'd like to recommend that you try out the setup called "EBS". It was developed by Eberhard Sengpiel, it is 90° mic angle and 25cm / 9.84" distance between the middle of the capsules. You might check technical drawings of your mics to know exactly where the membrane sits. It is not about a mm but try to be exact. Like a photographer dialing in focal length and aperture. There are two special properties about this configuration: One is that, as a rare occasion, with these parameters mic angle and stereo recording area are identical. That means if you're using pencil style microphones then where the axes of the mics are pointing at will be the leftmost and rightmost position to appear in your recording at the speakers positions. And everything in between - i.e. inside the SRA [i.e. stereo recording angle]- will be distinctly displayed in the stereo panorama. The other one is that at these parameters the interchannel intensity (volume) differences and the runtime component really nicely complement each other for perceived soundstage direction and spacious depth. So with EBS by aligning with your eyes along the mics axes, it is easy to find the mic position that determines which portion of the sound source and/or room in the recording will be precisely presented fanned out across the full stereo spread between the speakers. In EBS runtime differences account for app. 53% of the perceived sound stage and intensity carries about 47%. In ORTF (17cm at 110° mic angle -SRA 96,3°) the share of the volume differences is stronger at 60% complemented by 40% runtime stereophony. So EBS has a stronger depth staging of the SRA while at the same time with ORTF at 110° room acoustics should appear stronger at same distance. It can be seen that one should not confuse spatial elements with the perception of spatiality. Hope it's all understandable :)