[Tascam DR-40] Capturing from audience or loudspeaker?

[yetanotherlogin]

Hello

Besides the DR-40 offering two positions for the internal microphones (X/Y or A/B), it offers some other settings when recording. Until now, I never changed the default settings, and am not sure when to use X/Y or A/B.

I use X/Y when leaving the recorder in front of a loudspeaker when recording a conference, and switch to A/B when I'm in an audience: Is this right?

Also, although I'm very satisfied about the sound quality of the recordings so far, are there useful settings I should play with?

Thank you.

[Cornucopia]

A/B is widely spaced. This gives it greater stereo separation & phase difference. This is both a blessing and a curse. Good because the imaging will have noticeable depth, bad because you can get phase anomalies that strangely color your sound and confuse the inferred placement. Oh, and a mono mix will only accentuate the bad. This gets worse the closer the mikes are to the source.

X/Y is nearly coincident, thus it has much less phase depth (relying more on off axis volume change for depth) but also has less coloration and phase problems, including better mono compatibility.

For best sound, you should NOT be miking the speaker(s), but rather taking a mike level feed direct from the board. Speaker miking is only a last resort and has its own problems of built in distortion & coloration. Plus you have to deal with the much higher level.

In these live situations, until you know more about recording dynamics, it probably is a good idea for you to use the limiter function and possibly even (god help me i can't believe i'm even saying this) the auto level function.

Of course, if you are happy with the recording, why change, right?

Scott

[yetanotherlogin]

Thanks. I'll just leave the settings as-is then.

I know picking the sound from a speaker isn't ideal, but the soundboard is off-limit since I'm just a guest at a conference.

Should I use X/Y when leaving the recorder in front of the speaker and A/B when sitting in the audience?

[Cornucopia]

I'll give that a definite "PROBABLY". You could (should?) do tests and load the sound into an audio editor. Very likely, it would sound best in X/Y, but moreso if you take the X/Y dual-channel signal and mix it to mono. There will be minor phasing/combfilter effect, but shouldn't really affect the sound that much. Plus, it should be helpful as a distant sound/noise reducer. If the phasing/combfilter effect is too pronounced for your liking, you could always take just 1 channel of the 2 and duplicate it (to dual mono), for a fuller, original sound (but you will lose the distant/noise reduction option).

Scott

[yetanotherlogin]

Thanks. I'll try to record in mono next time and see how it goes.

[Cornucopia]

No, NO. Do NOT record in mono, as it might not be what you're wanting and then you'd be stuck. IMO, ALWAYS record in stereo, converting to mono (if necessary) from within your DAW/Editing app.

Scott

[yetanotherlogin]

Thanks for the tip. I'll do post-processing on my PC then.