Quote:
Originally Posted by
Earcatcher
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Thank you for the samples! I had a good hour of fun with them, although maybe not all fun. The Gerzon samples confused my head enormously, with instruments jumping around like fleas. On speakers the effect is less promiment, but on headphones I could not listen to them without feeling headsick. The small AB files were a lot more to my liking, with some wishes of further improvement here and there. Anyway, I took the original DRY files to my studio and ran them through the Phaedrus hardware Shuphler, to hear what would happen there. I post the AAC version below and will send you the FLAC version personally. What you hear are small AB with Blumlein delta shuffler setting on the Shupler box only and a version where I ran the decoded signal through a bit of a random chain of EQ, compression and reverb, just for fun and to see what would happen then. All files were treated with the exact same settings. Those files have "mix" in their names. Then there are also the Gerzon files, decoded with the Crossed-fours™ matrix of the Shupler box. I tried all the other settings as well, but none was really satisfactory to my ears, although at least three were better than the original signal. But the one I used seemed the most appropriate one. I did not attempt to do any mixing with these.
To those who will listen: remember that these decodings are meant to be listened to on speakers (as the matrixes intend to decode from binaural to speaker presentation), so do not judge on headphone listening alone!
Enjoy!
Thanks! I really would love to know exactly what settings Phaedrus uses in their circuit, but the folks at Phaedrus / PSP haven't responded to my questions about it.
Did you see M50k's point above about the 22 cm spacing? Do you recall where that comes from?
Yes, the Gerzon capture sounds really strange. I can't stand to listen to it more than a few minutes on either speakers or headphones. I've used this setup a few times before, actually once for this same festival and it never had such imaging confusion. Maybe it would be better if moved back out a bit, though it's supposed to be placed closer than an ORTF pair. Clearly I'm going to be using the omni track for my final mix to send out.
The biggest flaw I hear with the omni pair is the double-imaging, particularly noticeable with the violins. I realize having the mics lower would help this somewhat, but with the close distance I would have balance issues elsewhere. I think the imaging itself is overall fairly realistic otherwise, better than I would have expected with such a close AB pair without a baffle.