Required Reading

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2005 9:48 am

Hey All -

Based on Kurt A's (Recordista) post:

recordista wrote:

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Theile & Wittek's Image Assistant which will tell you a lot about the "view" a particular mic arrangement will provide.

It will help if you have at least a passing familiarity with the work of Theile and/or Williams. Start with The Stereophonic Zoom and Multichannel Natural Music Recording Based on Psychoacoustic Principles.

I have decided to post this as a sticky and re-provide the links to what Kurt reference. These 2 documents are excellent documents and if you haven't already read them, they're worth the read. If you have read them, they're worth printing and keeping around for the occassional glance.

Here's the links:

Image Assistant -
http://www.hauptmikrofon.de/ima2-folder/ImageAssistant2.html

Stereophonic Zoom -
http://www.rycote.com/products/pdf/The%20Stereophonic%20Zoom.pdf

Multichannel Natural Music Recording Based on Psychoacoustic Principles -
http://www.irt.de/IRT/FuE/as/multi-mr-ext.pdf

Feel free to add other links to "Must Reads."

Thanks Kurt!

J. Thumbs Up

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 12:19 am

Hey Cucco -

Good reading. Thanks and "Hello" from a fellow Fredericksburgian currently residing in the UK!

Cheers,
Matt

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 7:52 pm

I must have 20 papers here that I think are applicable, but perhaps a solid backgrounder on microphone basics is a good candidate:

Boré & Peus' Microphones - Methods of Operation and Type Examples

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 7:53 am

Mannakin wrote:

Hey Cucco -

Good reading. Thanks and "Hello" from a fellow Fredericksburgian currently residing in the UK!

Cheers,
Matt

Hey Matt! Welcome to RO!

What part of Fredericksburg are you from? Coming back any time soon, or are you a UK-er for ever now?

J.

Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2005 3:20 am

Hello everyone,

I was agreably surprised to find here a reference to the great work of Michael Williams.
I've "grown" with his unabridged "Stereophonic Zoom", he being one of my teatchers. His work is one of the best I know about a theorical thinking of stereo.

I met him a short time ago, and he is currently working on a new publication that will include multichannel arrays...
So far the volume 1 is out: "microphone arrays for Stereo and Multichannel sound recording" (editrice Il Rostro). Volume 2 will be the one covering Multichannel stuff, and is due in one year or something...

Nevertheless, I have a few objections, or corrections, about his work, that you may find of interrest (I did'nt invent them, there was a lot of interrest in my school for thoses matters, on teatcher or student side...).

First Mike Williams SRA diagrams are all based on a single work by G Simonsen from the acoustical laboratory of the technical university of Lyngby, Denmark, which track the sound localisation in a standart 60° stereo loudspeaker in function of both level differences and time differences.
Thoses figures are actually the bases for all his calculations of SRA.

One might wonder how relative thoses figures are depending on the room, loudspeakers, sweet spot placed or not, etc.. etc...
It would be interresting of course to deepen G Simonsen study, but that's no easy work, and I don't know of anybody doing it.

So if thoses figures are unprecise in any way, they will change the SRA diagrams.

While it doesn't lessen Mike Williams work at all, it's still a good thing to have in mind, and will help to relativise the need for a real accurate positionning of the stereo couple...

Second, for the multichannel work, it seems that it could be worst, because Simonsen Figures are not from a multichannel setup, so any SRA used might be all wrong...
But I did not read yet the multichannel part of his book (it's not out). So will not conclude on this.

Just hope it will interrest someone,

best regards,

Laurent.

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 2:20 pm

Laurent,

I think Michael Williams takes a very practical approach to things in his book (available in the US from Jerry at Posthorn Recording for $30 for those interested). Since Mr. Williams emphasizes doing your own testing with your own mics and monitoring setup, the concerns you raise regarding the base work for the SRA development should be less of an issue for the user.

I think the most important thing his work points out is the sensitivity of the image to the microphone setup. There is no room to be casual in the positioning of the microphones in a stereo pair, or the results will be very unpredictable. I have seen this fact disregarded too many times.

Michael

Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 3:54 pm

recordista wrote:

I must have 20 papers here that I think are applicable, but perhaps a solid backgrounder on microphone basics is a good candidate:

Boré & Peus' Microphones - Methods of Operation and Type Examples

that link doesnt work.

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 12:19 am

Neumann recently reorganized their site again. I updated the original link.

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 11:20 am

Thanks, Kurt! This is a great reference to have handy. I find that there's always something worth revisting or relearning with a book like this. I've downloaded it for reference and a little refresher reading.

Thumbs Up

Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 4:11 pm

thanks

a good starter for newbies on mic placement
http://www.shure.com/pdf/booklets/mics_for_music_studio.pdf

cheers

Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 8:17 am

i see references to michael williams, but no pointer to the particular site, so here goes:

http://www.soundsscot.com/MMAD_04/SOS_MMAD.htm

respect,

Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 1:33 pm

A bit off the path but of interest to me as a new area to be explored, double M/S: http://schoeps.de/E-2004/PDFs/Schoeps_DoubleMS_Paper.pdf.

I think this could be an interesting avenue. I have tried Williams arrays and he has helped me improve my batting average in on-site recordings. I am not a pro, but I am serious and learning avid amateur.

Cheers

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