These microphones are not truly omnidirectional at the higher frequencies, but exhibit some high frequency lift and directionality which is likely to positively affect stereo imaging of the Decca Tree arrangement. The technique traditionally uses three omnidirectional microphones, traditionally of the Neumann M 50 small-diaphragm pressure transducer tube condenser type, to record in stereo. The Decca Tree was originally used in orchestral situations, fitted on a tall boom and suspended in the air, roughly above the conductor. It was comparatively easy to auto-balance it and you didn't have to fiddle with it much, generally speaking in order to make it reliable. The reason that the Decca system survived as long as it did was that it was comparatively adaptable to different acoustic spaces. ![]() The reason we did this and consistently did it and got away with it and got wonderful reviews and many many awards was simply that the localisation cues were missing, but the sound was fantastic. It was a very controversial method of recording, because when you have that many spaced omnidirectional microphones you lose a lot of the directional cues, which is absolutely right, the way that we would deal with that was we would pan the left and right tree half left and half right, and the outrigger mics we would pan hard left and right and we would paint an artificial stereo image. Then we would have the two, the left and right tree, which would again be looking right into the first violins and the celli, if that was the way the orchestra was set out, and then we would have a couple of outriggers which were maybe twenty feet apart 3.2 metres high again, 10 foot 6, and they again would be omnidirectional 5 feet away from the edge of the orchestra 10'6" high looking down into the strings. You would have the conductor out front, then there would be a couple of desks of strings before you get to the woodwinds, and we would be looking right into the centre of those strings with that microphone. The centre microphone would be looking right into the centre of the strings in front of the conductor. Well, we used to have a thing called a Decca Tree which was an arrangement where the front edge of an orchestra about 3.2 metres up in the sky you would have a centre microphone roughly in line with the edge of the orchestra, and then maybe 2.5 feet back and 5 feet apart you would have 2 more forming a triangle, omnidirectional microphones. Microphone manufacturer Schoeps advises to put the three microphones at least 1.5 m apart to reduce crosstalk and excessive correlation at low frequencies (for example, setting the microphone width to 2 m and the depth to 1.5 m).įormer Decca engineer John Pellowe describes the specifics of the setup as follows: The recording engineer arbitrarily adjusts these dimensions accordingly to the size of the ensemble, the dimensions of the room and the type of music. In contrast to the ORTF stereo technique, the Decca Tree size is not fixed and may vary considerably distances between the two back microphones are seen between 0.6 and 1.2 m the front microphone is set proportionally and can be mounted slightly lower than the outside pair. The placement can be done with three separate microphone stands or using one or more bars. Two more microphones can be added and placed on the sides (called "outrigger microphones"), approximately at about 2/3 of the stage width, between the conductor and the outer orchestra boundary.Įxample of microphone positioning in a Decca Tree setupĪ Decca Tree setup uses three omnidirectional microphones arranged in a "T" pattern outlining a triangle, often equilateral the center microphone is mixed with the two spaced microphones to fill the "hole in the middle" in their imaging it points the sound source. The microphone system is not properly in front of the orchestra, but more "into" the orchestra. The microphone triangle was placed about 3 to 3.6 m high above the stage level, near the conductor. The first system was developed by Roy Wallace. The Decca Tree setup evolved from the idea of a minimal recording technique using a pair of microphones. ![]() The technique was developed in the early 1950s and first commercially used in 1954 by Arthur Haddy, Roy Wallace, and later refined by engineer Kenneth Ernest Wilkinson and his team at Decca Records and its recording studios, to provide a strong stereo image. It was originally developed as a sort of stereo A–B recording method adding a center fill. The Decca Tree is a spaced microphone array most commonly used for orchestral recording. Microphone stand for Decca Tree configuration
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