Sound Designers

Over the recent years, several 3D main microphone array techniques for capturing surround
sound with height information have been proposed. Furthermore, with the burgeoning interest in
360° audio for virtual reality applications, Ambisonics microphones are more widely used than in
the past. Most of the main arrays augment existing 5-channel or 4-channel spaced microphone
arrays, which are designed based on psychoacoustic principles, with additional microphones to
feed height channels. On the other hand, the Ambisonics microphones have a coincident nature
and attempt to reconstruct the sound field of the recording space at the microphone position.
To formally evaluate the perceived qualities of 3D acoustic music recordings, it is first necessary
to understand what kind of differences can be perceived among different microphone techniques.
With this motivation, recordings of musical performance and impulse responses were made in a
concert hall using various 3D microphone arrays and additional microphones simultaneously.