I have at times "time aligned" spot mics, however in more recent years I have found little benefit in this. My justification is that spots are in 3D space and therefore it is practically impossible to get a time alignement that relates accurately to all the front mics (and potentially other spots) together with the added potential problem that time aligning mics can lead to comb filtering effects.
A few years ago some interesting listening tests were run (by studio sound I think) where several top classical engineers were bought together and blind comparisons were made between recordings with and without the spots being time aligned. Universally the non time aligned versions were prefered which surprised most of the participants.
Regards
Roland
