"soundhaspriority"
wrote in message
Technically, it's all wrong,
To coin a phrase, that's all wrong.
yet it has the imprimatur of a famous name.
http://www.neumann.com/?lang=en&id=c..._descript ion
Why does a Neumann coincident large diaphram mike exist?
It suits a need.
The prevailing opinion is that:
1. Large diaphrams have really lousy off axis response.
It's a physics "has to be."
It is true that a LD mic has poorer off-axis response at high frequencies,
but that can either be the good news or no news, or the bad news. You're
only mentioning the bad news.
Here is the good news part: What you want to record is usually on-axis. This
comes from the time-honored practice of *not* pointing mics away from the
sound source of interest. ;-)
Here is the no-news part: What you really want to record does not
necessarily have a lot of high frequency content. You may even not want to
record all of the high frequencies that are there. For example at 8 KHz, the
USM69 is less than 3 dB down at any angle, and is +/1 dB at 0, 90, 180, and
270 degrees.
2. The X-Y technique implemented by this mike has the
fewest virtues of any of the coincident techniques. It
conveys stereo strictly by intensity encoding.
There's nothing all that wrong with intensity stereo. From several important
practical standpoints its even ideal. For example, if mono compatibility is
important, intensity stereo rules because mono derived from intensity stereo
loses the least. Coherency is a desireable property for a recording to
have, and intensity stereo maximizes coherency.
What intensity stereo provides less of is phasiness. The degree of phasiness
in a recording is a somewhat matter of taste. No matter how you feel about
mono compatibility, there is definately such a thing as too much phasiness.
I personally like a little phasiness, but this does nothing to diminish my
enthusiasm for X-Y microphone techniques. I just pick up some phasiness with
a few spaced mics following the 3:1 rule, and mix the phasy and the coherent
mics together to suit. Most of my micing is done with one or more X-Y pairs,
some cardioid pairs and some hypercardioid pairs.
All of the closely spaced techniques are said to be
better: ORTF, NOS, Jecklin, Decca Tree, because they
convey phase and time differences as well.
Trouble is, it is arguable that the time and phase differences that these
methodologies "convey" is by some means of thinking, artificial and
manufactured.
One can understand why a neophyte might be attracted to a
single stereo mike.
Coincident pair mics in a fixed array are very convenient. I do a lot of
work with a Rode NT-4. It sounds a heck of a lot better than it looks. IME
it is almost hard to make a really bad recording with one. If I have to do a
setup equipment, no rehearsal, one-shot record type gig of anything but a
soloist, a coincident pair would probably centerpiece my micing setup. And
even then...