I think it was a 30cm AB. it should not be more because of the width of the organ.and the proximity of the mics

When recording organ, so much of it is about recording the instrument in the space. I recorded a Cassevant organ that was a bit unusual in layout - the pipes were situated hard right and left of the nave, with none in the middle! As a result, I put omnis on tall stands in each of the aisles and then added a tall ORFT in the nave to kind of blend the stereo image. Worked OK I guess.

I hope to soon record an excellent newly-redone organ. Question for those who use DPA/B&K 4006:

Do you tend to use the default free-field grids, or the diffuse grids? My inclination would be to start with free-field grids because organs are voiced to sound correct out in the congregation, and the distance HF loss you'd get when recording an ensemble that far away would apply less in this situation. Am I thinking about this correctly?

In most cases I use the free field grid and when more articulation is needed I use the 5cm APE's. Even the free field grid sometimes can be too sharp, esp. with baroque organs. So in a few cases I actually used the trapezium 14K roll-off grid with baroque organ. I never use the diffuse field grids, in my opinion the peak starts too late and is too steep. The 5cm APE's do a better job in case you need more clarity, I think. My 2 cents.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Someday I may get a set of APEs, but I'm on the fence between 40 and 50 mm.

Very interesting that you used the roll-off grids. I guess the Baroque organs you are speaking of may have some sharp-sounding stops.

For the most part the choice between 40 or 50 boils down to the inherent response of the mic you're putting it on. The 40 will sound very upper-midrange-y on a mic with flat response; it requires a mic with a tip-up at the top for a balanced sound. The capsule in the M50 had more top boost than many engineers in the digital era would want, and so the milder top boost of the silver grid 4006 produces a well balanced sound with the 40.

Since the 50 boosts almost the entire top end (rather than just the upper mid-range like the 40), it works best with a very flat-response mic, with little top rise.

The original M50 capsule was up 5dB at 9kHz; the later Mylar capsule was up 6dB. The 4006 with free field grid is up about 3 dB at 12kHz; a good combo for the 40 which is up about the same below that and back down flat by 12kHz - for a nice flat boost in the entire upper-midrange, to the top. The 50 boost begins significantly lower, and extends well into the boost range of the free field grid, for a considerable brighter sound, that's also a bit 'pushy' sounding on many sources.

Thanks for the thorough explanation. It sounds like the 40 is the one I want. I was already leaning that way after hearing the comparison I posted earlier with wind symphony.

Organist Paul Jacobs at Christ Cathedral, Garden Grove, CA. The organ there is the fifth largest in the world. Mix for video is Sennheiser MKH800 Twins to DAD AX32. ATMOS release (later) will have more mics.

Cool! Enjoyed it.

Great recording, and great performance! I also found Jacobs' registration choices very refreshing.

May I ask how wide the 800s were spaced?

Thank you so much! I've attached a picture of the mics. They are about 2'2" (71cm) on a 3' bar.

Mics on the outside are Mesanovic SC1s. Not used in this mix, but they are very nice mics. The overall array is OVVO: omni, variable, variable, omni. Which I use frequently.

There is a small manufacturer of excellent microphones in Germany, the MBHO Haun brand. There is the MBC 410 in the range which seems suitable for the organ. Has any member here used it?

I have not because MBHO has very poor distribution outside of Europe. But I will say that every MBHO microphone I have ever used was very good and I wish I could use more of them.
--scott

Yes I used the MBHOs, but the modular system. They were great but not more than Neumann 18x. I had some problems with the capsules so I got Beyer's and Line Audio's witch are more reliable.
Everything I listened with the MBHO fixed capsules was too edgy. I didn't like them.

I've had a pair of Microtech Gefell M296 as my primary "organ" omni pair for over three decades. You might want to audition a pair, if you can. Mine are definitely of the "you can have them when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers" variety.

Asking this here since there was already a lot of discussion about the center line here in churches...

I recently tried out the Faulker fig 8 pair in a rather high vaulted ceiling church. In the end my DIN pair sounded better, and I'm wondering if maybe I had my 8's in the wrong spot because I was on or very close to the center line, and the result was overall thinner and more phasey sounding. The bass response was certainly better, and there was actually some nice clarity in the upper mids, but on the whole it was missing a lot compared to my cardioid pair.

I had two Samar AL95s spaced 18cm at standing head height. The DIN mics were in basically the same position, so seems unlikely to me that this was the result of one pair being in a null spot and the other not. However the organ and other amplified sources are at the back of the church on the second floor and the audience in the nave, so my mics were actually quite close to the front of the church. When I re-read Faulkner's paper there doesn't seem to be much or any specific mention of the positioning of the array off-center, so as centered as possible made the most default sense. But I am wondering if being too much on the dead center could have caused the issue. Or if maybe because I had the apse very close behind the array with the source on the other side of the hall if I could have been getting some unpleasant reflections that the cardioid mics were not so sensitive too, and I need to move my mics a bit closer to the source if possible.

For those with more experience with these kind of spaces or the Faulker 88 configuration, have you found center line positioning or that the apse of the building causes issues? I'm hoping to try this again, but I am often in a situation where I didn't have much time for trying different spots and isolation for listening is difficult. I'll probably put up a safety pair of cardioids in the same spot as previously, but try moving the 88 pair a bit further to one side and hope it still comes out reasonable stereo balanced. I have been mostly recording this organ most succesfully with a very tall stand and extension, but I am hoping I can get the Faulkner array to work as well in the space to make for a lighter/easier set up in there. Also very possible the Samars could also just have not been the right mics for the job, and I hope to audition some other ribbons and/or schoeps/MKH fig 8s at some point too.

Walk around with a finger in one ear and get a sense of what changes on the center line and I bet you'll hear exactly what your recording was picking up.

Note that the flutter echoes are usually worse as you get up higher, because there is a focal area (not exactly a point but a sort of ellipse) where the arched ceiling focusses into, and the closer you get to that the worse the flutter becomes.
--scott

Hi Scott,
I remember reading exactly this from you... 40 years ago in rec.audio.pro

...which illustrates that scott's word is almost like the laws of nature! ;-)

I have been saying it for a long time but _I_ first got that advice from Gabe Wiener.... probably more than 40 years ago in rec.audio.pro. And I've been taking it myself ever since as well as passing it on!
--scott