Wow, thank you very much for that! I haven't considered that, but can actually imagine that you're very right about that. I will definitely explore it.
Rock guitar cabs with a C700 must be great!

I do find the C715 too soft for rock vocals, though.

That sounds very interesting. And expensive.

Out of interest, has anyone here tried the new Soundfield By Rode decoder plug-in with an existing Soundfield mic? I was surprised by how much better it sounds than the old Surroundzone plug-in.

Still at this point I've had only a few chances to work with my new C700s.

But I have to say...

This mic, few feet out in front of a acoustic guitar / vocalist, is an amazing capture.
The mic sounds wonderful. Thick, warm, and very, very detailed.
And that is with all three outputs recorded at the same level.

But the ability to control the patterns afterwards in the icing on the cake.

That being said,
THE ROOM better be good...
Already I have requested location changes due to the sonics of the room we were recording in.
I can"zoom" in with the C700s, but still a better room will make the recordings much better, and the mic made it so obvious the shortcomings of where we were at that time.

I also tried the mic about 3 - 4 feet above the floor, and 6 feet out in front of a drum kit, and got one of the most realistic recordings of that set with a near perfect balance of snare to kick, & cymbals with only the one mic.
Amazing~!

I just checked it out a bit, I can't say that I notice a big difference in SQ- but the interface is really cool. It's too bad it has almost 900 samples of latency though.

One thing I find with the C700S is I really like the sound of boosting the Z level going into either decoder. I'm not sure what this does exactly to the decoding, but it makes the result wider, and wider than I can seem to get by going to a wider spacing setting.

It's really jaw dropping on a drumset...it feels like cheating to be able to get that good of a sound that easily. Even just having it in the tracking room up on a stand placed randomly in the room and arming the tracks when someone is playing drums is eye-popping. I could see for more indy type rock just moving it away from the kit until it got the sound I wanted...then maybe a kick mic.

Also even with stereo decoding it's stunning for vocals.

I'd be interested to hear some guitar/vocal samples with the 700s, if you can share anything! Thx.

FWIW I own the ST450. It's an amazing tool and has saved my a$$ on many occasions.

Generally, when put head-to-head against a Schoeps main pair (of any pattern), it doesn't usually win. But its flexibility and speed of setup can save the day.

I have to say, the decoding in the plug-in tends to sound superior to the on-board M/S decoder.

I am not at all surprised that the plug-in wins. You might also want to do a trial with the Harpex. In its newest incarnation X it has reached unknown levels of sound quality...
Also, the generic format A to B conversion has become very good.

I own the SPS200 but I would like to upgrade to the 450 one day. I don't want the preamp however. There were rumours that some people succeeded in only buying the mic. Does anyone have knowledge of this and the discount that it would bring with it?

How much latency if any?

Good question, but I have never noticed any because I use it in post. I rarely use the Soundfield without an AB on its sides.

I may check it in the future. I would guess there's plenty of calculations going on...

Is Harpex better than the free Ambisonic Toolkit?
The Ambisonic Toolkit - Tools for soundfield-kernel composition
I like that a lot (using it in Reaper).

Harpex is incomparable with any other plugin that I have tried. It is expensive, so think twice before you order an evaluation period, because after hearing it, there's no way back...

Harpex B already was a revelation, but Harpex X sets the standard even higher. People that haven't heard it, have no clue what Ambisonic is capable of.

Interesting, thank you!
The price, though...

Have you tried the ATK?

No, the ATK not yet. I wasn't aware it exists. Does it do upsampling to higher order Ambisonics, because that is one of the reasons that Harpex sounds that good.

I will look into this plugin.

I tried about 6 others, and they were all really close, except for Harpex.

i didn't get to try the harpex x either as i wasn't aware of it, so thx for the recommendation (and pls stop complaining about the price; it's not free but it ain't that much either) - happy x-mas!

I was surprised to see someone that finds the price of Harpex reasonable...

Then I saw the location Basel...

Interesting, thank you! I will have a closer look at ATK to answer that question. Maybe you're quicker, I won't be in the studio for some days.

I am in Winterthur, Switzerland, and found the price high when I looked at it some years ago... But then again, Winterthur is not Basel.

very funny... - are you prepared to pay anything or do you think all gear/software should be for free? and how about your work? is it worth anything? do you charge anything or do you work for free?

Sorry, I was just joking, and I do like Basel a lot!

I think the price is high for just one plugin (it is not a large collection).

On the other hand, I am sure that the development and coding wasn’t easy and the market is not that large, so I guess that the high pricing will be necessary.

Frohe Weihnachten!

Yes, it's certainly a niche market, and I am very thankful that there are plugins at all. I am VERY thankful that the ATK collection is free. I actually feel gratitude when I'm working with it.

I'm told the new Rode by Soundfield plug-in also uses upsampling to HOA. I'd be interested to know if anyone has compared that with Harpex.

Good tip! I will try it out soon.

Yes, thanks for the tip!

BUMP for some singing songwriter samples...

I will post some sometime soon, (I hope)
Holidays have put a delay on sessions here.

New recordings to be commence in the next few weeks.

I have a c700s that I’ve been using for several years, mostly recording ambisonics for 360 videos. It sounds gorgeous on everything. If you want to squeeze even more quality out for some things, move into 3rd order with Harpex or the blue ripple harpex up-sampler, then use virtual mics, beam forming, or other spatial image processing on the third order signal, even if you decode back to mono or stereo. There are so many free ambisonic tools now; check out Blue Ripple Sound o3a Core, IEM plug ins, SPARTA plug in suite, Matthias Kronlachners ambiX suite, and the Facebook 360 spatial workstation for 360 video work.

Thank you for all these tips! I must admit that I don't feel warm&cosy about a facebook plugin, though...

ha, yeah, I hear you, but the software used to be called Two Big Ears, and it was $5k for a year-long unlimited license, so I didn't feel too bad getting to use it for free once Facebook bought TBE and released the whole suite for nothing you aren't tied to their platform or anything by using their suite, as it's fully 3rd order compatible with any other ambisonic plug-ins now.

Now THAT has made me curious. Thank you! Now off to find that plugin...