Preventing phase cancellation

[jwleeman]

Any of you guys have some brief guidelines on how you normally prevent phase cancellation ? I know there's that rule of 3 or something, but is it really just trial and error?

Even better would be a little write-up in the Tips and Techniques section

thx!

[ghellquist]

Originally Posted by jwleeman

Any of you guys have some brief guidelines on how you normally prevent phase cancellation ? I know there's that rule of 3 or something, but is it really just trial and error?

Even better would be a little write-up in the Tips and Techniques section

thx!

Use the tried and tested microphone techniques, search for things like ORTF, AB, Blumlein, Jecklin disc. These all use phase differences as part of creating the stereo image.

Use fewer mics in recording rather than more. Learn to place a stereo pair just right and very often that is all that is needed.

The so-called 3-1 rule is taught in some of the recording schools but is not very relevant if you ask me. If you, for example, want to spot mic two singers and get each of them in isolation, you need to have each mic close to the singer and away from the other mic. This is where the distances supposedly should be at least 3 to 1 (the mics three times further away from each other than from the spot miced source). In the kind of classical recordings I do, I never spot mic that way. Most sound comes from my main stereo setup and a few spot mics are used to enhance only a few instruments or voices. This means that the instruments spot miced also sound in the main stereo pair.

// Gunnar