First Experiments

Blumlein, M-S, ORTF, NOS, XY
not shown- Spaced Pair & Binaural

Spent 4 hours today in the university SSL studio beginning my initial experiments into the different stereo recording methods. I was met with a number of set backs including dilapidated stands which couldn't hold a microphone straight above the base, let alone at the extent of the boom making it very difficult to position the microphones close together without them drooping onto each other. Once they were finally cabled up we'd discover that half of the cables were faulty, the re-wiring requiring the mental agility usually associated with solving chinese puzzles to complete.

Finally signal was flowing all the way through to the AWS, but there it stopped, for some reason that neither I, nor Eddie could understand. Eventually we decided to bypass Pro-Tools and record in Logic instead.

By this point it was getting late in the day and patience was wearing thin, the realisation that these experiments would probably had to be repeated had sunk in however I was determined to get some useable results that at least proved the validity of the different methods. With the help of my friends Mike and Holly, I recorded samples of moving sound sources as well as simultaneous sources to demonstrate the improved intelligibility offered by stereo. 

Listening back to the results confirms a few of the basic assumptions made by the research however it also demonstrated how the originally designed experiments were flawed, with the microphones shadowing each other and interfering with the stereo image. The next set of experiments will be conducted using the acoustic testing device CLIO and only one of the techniques setup at once to control the variables although the recording environment will inevitably compromise the results somewhat.