I've never worked in surround, only stereo. A chamber music recital
recording I made is good except for 1 factor: the musicians paid little
attention to sitting in a symmetrical semicircle around my Royer SF-1 XY
pair. (OK, it's a REALLY important factor!)

The wind quintet pieces are balanced OK, but misc. trios & quartets are
heavy to one side. Worse, the bidirectional XY setup confuses the stereo
field further. (Flute radiates everywhere even when everyone else can
be easily pinpointed.)

My question isn't about mic proximity, placement, or choice of pattern.
I'll chalk this one up to experience. I'd just like to salvage what
I've got. For the rough mixes I narrowed the stereo spread of the
unbalanced tracks.

I read on Digidesign's website that the perceived center can be adjusted
if you mix in 5.1 surround. Am I SOL?


Any help is appreciated!
~Christopher Barry
Syzygy Music, Sound & Vision

Christopher Barry wrote:
The wind quintet pieces are balanced OK, but misc. trios & quartets are
heavy to one side. Worse, the bidirectional XY setup confuses the stereo
field further. (Flute radiates everywhere even when everyone else can
be easily pinpointed.)

My question isn't about mic proximity, placement, or choice of pattern.
I'll chalk this one up to experience. I'd just like to salvage what
I've got. For the rough mixes I narrowed the stereo spread of the
unbalanced tracks.

That's probably the best thing to do overall. How does it sound if you
collapse it completely to mono?

I read on Digidesign's website that the perceived center can be adjusted
if you mix in 5.1 surround. Am I SOL?

Sure, if you use panpotted stereo with discrete tracks that have no leakage,
you can adjust the perceived center very effectively with either 5.1 or
stereo.

But you aren't starting out with that. I don't think you are SOL, because
I think collapsing the image is just fine. Good mono beats out bad stereo
hands down, and some of my favorite recordings are mono. Clean and accurate
imaging is a nice thing to have, but it's not half as important as good
tonality and a good performance.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."