12 saxes in a semicircle (see pic) makes it a.... dodecatet ?
You bought it...you name it !

Pair of 9" (22cm) spaced parallel (no angle) sE ribbon Voodoo VR2 mics, on a small bar, as per Tony Faulkner's original phased array (his 8" spacing shrinks the stereo width field a little too much...10" would be even better methinks !)

It's a good test-example of the utility of this array, simply due to the equi-spacing of the players in a full semicircle, so you can judge how accurately the array renders their relative positions ?

It's really not very high...maybe a foot or two (0.5m) above the conductor's head. Mic stand is located around 4-5 feet (1.5m) behind conductor...again, breaking with the tradition/spirit of the Faulkner array, which suggests "significantly further back" is the ideal placement for this rig ? These active ribbons seem to play very nicely with brass instruments too...!

You can judge its efficacy from the attached audio sample below the pic...only the pair used, no spots, no added reverb, no comp etc The suspended AB omni pair above the conductor are not used in this scenario either.

Beautiful !! What pre did you use with the ribbons?

The one time I tried the 'Faulkner 8s' (also with ribbons, on multi-percussion soloist) I also found the 8" spacing much too narrow - went with 10".

I always found TF's 8" spacing puzzling - plug it into any stereo calculator and a very narrow image results; especially at a greater-than-normal distance, as stated in the original article.

I would just call that a saxophone choir.

Frankly, anything larger than a octet gets labeled as a choir.

ETA: It's a very nice recording of a very nice sounding ensemble. They did a great job on that piece and I think their blend and dynamics were top notch. Do you happen to know what the piece was?

Very nice recording! It’s remarkable what the fig-8 phased array can do with regards to cutting out the fluff of a large room like that. And it’s nice to see someone else using the VR2s—those seem to have flown under the radar, and I’m hoping to add a pair to my collection in the near future.

Just gorgeous! The "Studer58" array!

I bet that pipe organ sounds pretty sweet when they crank it up...?

Another great recording by studer58---your tapes are always some of the best I hear on GS. Very cool demo of a 'weird' array. Great stereo image. Even the audience clapping at the end sounds 3d ('bonus' property of fig 8's?)

Very nice Ray!

Excellent!

Question: Looking at the picture and where the mics are, it looks like the players at the ends of the semi-circle (the gentleman on the soprano on the left and the lady with the tenor (?) on the right) are close to the nulls of both figure 8's? Or is there more depth there than the picture suggests?

Regards, Christine

imo this illustrates the fact that in a room with lots of reflections and instruments/ensemble with a fairly wide dispersion, the pattern choice and the main mic's position - other than for setting the direct/reflected/ambient sound ratio - don't matter as much as some folks want us to believe!

[what one can hear a bit better though is whether a (near) coincident or (widely) spaced pair got used but once you add ambis to a direction/coincident pair, all bets are off again... - i personally favour the latter approach in almost all situations as it lets me selected the direct/diffuse ratio independently from each other (plus it's way easier to blur the stereo image than trying to get it more tight).]

another (and rather extreme) example are mics inside a grand piano: even with the lid on the long stick, there's so much sound bouncing around that it becomes very hard to tell (if it's possible at all) to tell from listening alone which spacing and pattern got used!

Thanks for your kind words and appreciations…the pleasantness of the sound was a surprise to me too, esp given I was unable to place the stand any further back than that…without it clashing with human seat occupancy !

Its location that you see in the pic avoided a brashness and hyper-detail that 0.7 metre further forward (in usual ORTF location) gave in the sound check. I guess that small additional distance kept the ends-of-ensemble players from falling into the fig 8’s null zone?

Being active ribbons they have a quite conventional and generous output, similar to a typical condensor mic…these went into a Mackie 1402 VLZ Pro mixer, then line-level out from it (as an insert) into a Zoom R16 recorder/mixer, at 24 bit/44.1

The organ shown (Casavant Frere) indeed has some roar and fire….I’ll post a short sample here from the same concert featuring it.

The sax composition that's premiered here in concert is called ‘Yuluna Loop’, by David John Lang…the link below shows him talking about the inspirational landscape which gave rise to its’ creation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QvSjxLkJepA

Great recording! Thank you.

The piece reminds of early Weather Report sound, Wayne Shorter specifically.

The Voodoo VR2 seem rather good value at 500€!

Yes, it seems to bundle all the best factors of a modern ribbon....durability, high output, a non-typical healthy HF output (ie it's not noticeably dull in the highs, yet without condenser mic top end resonance either), has a sturdy shock mount, apparently good build and not visibly intrusive, weighty or bulky (unlike say a Coles 4038 or Rode NTR), reasonable price.

Thus far, the omens are good...I'll post more samples soon here: wind orchestra, classical guitar, small baroque ensemble, solo Steinway D9 (Decca tail). Some fare better than others...!

For my uses, I'm happy. Not yet tested enough to comment upon: RF or hum resistance, ribbon durability, interaction with various preamp ?

This link is a helpful compendium of various reviews plus product description: http://recordinghacks.com/microphone...lectronics/VR2

Also, if you're more likely to use a ribbon as a close mic and your mic preamp has sufficient output (or you can buy a Cloudlifter, Triton or similar booster).....don't neglect the lower cost and even smaller non-active VR1, which apparently has identical specs (apart from output level).... http://recordinghacks.com/microphone...lectronics/VR1

What an interesting piece and nicely recorded Studer.....the double 8 strikes again.!!

Ray

Great recording - surprisingly natural sound from the old Faulkner Fig-8 array and the sE ribbons. I do find it a little lacking in the 3D department, a little flat - I'm sure it's the array (tried it myself a few times). Still great and obviously very useful. Thanks for posting!
::
Mads

Please explain what you mean by this. It's only a stereo recording, not an immersive format, so how could it possibly have any sort of 3 dimensional aspect to the sound?

You have 2 eyes and yet you can accurately perceive depth with them, yeah?

We're talking about ears here, not eyes. All these players were ostensibly about the same distance from the mics. The mics were only a foot or so apart. I contend that you can't hear that little distance based on a millisecond of phase shift from one source to another.

At the minimum, you would need another microphone somewhere to provide a way to triangulate the sound sources from each other.

I guess I’ve just heard plenty of 2-mic recordings that exhibited a strong sense of depth and dimensionality, never considered it a phenomenon.

Um Binaural much?

Even aside from that; 2ch has enormous potential for illusion of depth. Does NOT require having speakers behind you.

Depth is not only created by sources at different distances from the mics, but by the different delays between direct sound and room reflections. This is why most recordings that use too many mics have little depth - the delays become a smeared jumble. I call it 'grey sound'.

On the contrary, perceiving interaural time delays of well under 1 millisecond is precisely one of the pillars upon which our ear/brain system is able to localize sound sources.

i wouldn't put it that way but yep...

njet! this doesn't need to be the case - on the contrary actually: multiple delays enable a sense of depth in the first place (and to a degree far beyond what' possible with just a pair or trio of spaced main mics)...

...but then one needs to use a different approach and technique from what you seem to prefer.

Indeed it doesn't 'need' to be the case, but it very often is. How high the levels of spots are makes all the difference.

Marc Aubort said it well:
"...because if you have the microphones in one plane, you get the depth and width of the stage. As soon as you start putting microphones all over the stage you flatten out the whole thing."

So….does time-aligning and delaying the spots to the main pair enhance or degrade the illusion of depth and 3 dimensionality in stereo recording and playback ?

Theoretically, no - but do many people really do that with great precision on multiple spots? Wouldn't it require getting out there with a tape measure and calculating the exact time difference between every spot and the mains?

depends on the spot mic's pattern and position...

...but for depth, i'm heavily relying on ambis.

[in addition, i'm using multiple efx devices, one of which adds early reflections to signals of (directional) close mics; then i'm using my beloved tc, lex, sony and quantec devices but maybe more inportantly, i have a unique virual surround panning algorithm running on my digital desks which is different from simple amplitude-based panning, as it also calculates appropriate frequency and time-related changes, leading to a much more realistic soundfield.

kinda ironic, innit? using artificial efx to create the illusion of realism...
anyway, works quite well imo...]

dunno about others - what i do is to engage a pad on the main mic system, then hit a pair of claves right by the mics and get the delays of all spots with one click!

that said, i hardly place 'random' spots on soft instruments (well, i do put a mic on the harp almost always) but use concentrical semi-circles of spots or section mics for which one gets away with identical delays...

...and whether i do really use the delays while mixing is another discussion!

no, doesn't enhance...or no, doesn't degrade ?

Thanks for posting Studer. Nice work.

Tom

Thanks for sharing this! Very interesting spotting philosophy, I’d like to give this a try sometime.