I decided to wrap my head around this thoroughly and gathered my thoughts.

Might be interesting to some, annoying to others.

https://satoration.org/stereo-miking...oloists-spots/

IMO, the most convincing argument hasn't been presented:


Normally, you have the group of musicians panned in stereo, usually via the main pair or perhaps assembled via a bunch of spot-mics. The "initial image" construction doesn't matter.

What matters is this: all of the other musicians will be present in the channel you want to push up. Bleed is inevitable in live recordings.

If you push the fader for a solo and you have a mono spot, the stereo image of the rest of the musicians will collapse to mono, around that position in the auditory scene (to borrow a phrase from Linkwitz).

If you have a stereo spot, the stereo image of the rest of the musicians can be maintained.
You'll need to be careful to get it to work really nicely, but IMO this is by far the best argument for stereo spots.


Chris

A nice summary of your journey while producing these recordings. I agree with almost everything you say with the exception of the statement "Today’s listeners, especially those enjoying classical or acoustic music, are accustomed to high-quality stereo playback systems." I wish this were so. Perhaps it is in your country but, in North America, it has been my experience that more and more people are listening on phone, laptop. or tablet speakers, or via Bluetooth on a Sonnos or Google monaural speaker. The closest these people come to a stereo listening experience is in a car or when they put their earbuds in (and we have all seen a young couple share a set of earbuds, right?) So anything produced in stereo should always be checked for mono compatibility. I still think stereo spots are great, but sometimes one must consider using XY or MS rather than just AB.

It was meant for the specific target audience... Then, personally I also often listen on earbuds, a mono bluetooth speaker in the kitchen, in the car... and the recordings (also done with spaced AB and stereo miced soloists) sound decent everywhere... I often wonder about those "mono compatibility" issues of spaced pairs... sounds fine to me - for a lesser playback device, anyway...

One loses nothing by ignoring the lowest common denominator.

I did a recent recording of a chamber orchestra with a female vocalist, where I put the vocal off-stage with a close-A/B pair of km184s. The mixing engineer only used one of the vocal mics in the final mix. I think the decision was made regarding wanting tight central imaging, but I also kind of liked my own mix which used both vocal mics :-)
Also, I had a project mixed by Lynn Fuston at 3D Audio once where I sent him four tracks - stereo pair on a bosendorfer, and a stereo pair on a flute, and he only used one of the flute mics in the mix.

There are infinite stories of obsession with 'mono compatibility' compromising stereo mixes.

The underlying theme here is the old argument of AB versus coincident techniques. If you can make a good stereo recording using coincident microphones, and those who favour AB or stereo predominantly from phase difference will argue it can't be done, then mono compatibility is never an issue. Even near-coincident techniques such as ORTF, NOS, etc. collapse to mono pretty well. In my opinion, AB up to 60 cm can be OK in mono, depending on the source and the room. Things like Decca trees depend more on gain structure and placement than spacing to provide satisfactory results. Some prefer a wash of sound over a sharp lens - its like preferring impressionism over realism in painting. À chacun son gout.

To clarify my argument - an AB (not wide AB) pair of room mics in a good hall sounds mostly OK to me in mono. A Faulkner figure 8 pair can also sound OK in mono. When it comes to spot mics on a vocalist or a cello, AB is OK if they are blended at a low level with room mics, but weird stuff happens if they predominate and you switch to mono (level/tonality changes due comb filtering). As @ M50k says, mono is the lowest common denominator. Perhaps mono compatibility is more important in pop music than classical...when was the last time you saw Mick Jagger singing into spaced omnis?

no love for stereo spots here in general - i only use them on physically large instruments, not necessarily a spaced pair (but often schoeps cmxy4v) but certainly not omnis...