Originally Posted by studer58 ➡️

When you’re juggling/balancing so many multiple mics pairs, it can be much like cooking with many spices and ingredients….the balance becomes a subtle blend of many flavours, and it’s easy to go overboard in one direction !

Where several mic pairs (particularly on piano) are all contributing at significant %, it’s easier to get multiple signal arrivals smeared across the time domain…and the resultant mix can sound seductively lush and smooth…not to mention the phase interactions (partial reinforcements and cancellations at various frequencies) !

However as you progressively subtract and substitute different pairs in different mix proportions, you’ll likely find the immediacy and percussive attacks factor returns, as you remove this multiple-arrivals influence. Less can therefore be more…depending on your desire for realism, lushness, immediacy etc. Always make ‘stripping back to basics, then rebuild’ your comparison strategy.

Making multiple mixes with varying combinations of the mic pairs is a very valuable exercise…it’s a bit like 5 cooks all cooking to the same basic recipe, with each exercising their own taste-based variations. Your job is to be the tasting panel on behalf of the piano-restaurant listening audience !