Impact of Steered Height Microphones of Large Sources on One's Immersive Listening Experience

Luo JS, Geluso P. Impact of Steered Height Microphones of Large Sources on One's Immersive Listening Experience. In: Convention Paper. Audio Engineering Society; 2025. Paper 10254. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23098

@inproceedings{Luo2025_23098,
  author = {Luo, Jessica S and Geluso, Paul},
  title = {{Impact of Steered Height Microphones of Large Sources on One's Immersive Listening Experience}},
  note = {Paper 10254},
  year = {2025},
  month = oct,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23098}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Impact of Steered Height Microphones of Large Sources on One's Immersive Listening Experience
AU  - Luo, Jessica S
AU  - Geluso, Paul
M1  - Paper 10254
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/10/14
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23098
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - When recording immersive performances, height microphones are placed strategically to capture the image realistically. Of commercial immersive recording arrays capturing large ensembles, most arrays have height microphones placed non-coincident from the horizontal layer. For solo recordings of large sound sources like the piano or drumset, the spatial image may be treated similar to that of capturing a large ensemble -- as a wall of sound. To allow for more control in the post-processing stage, height microphones that can be steered during mixing are proposed and evaluated as a technique for immersive recordings of large sound sources. Through subjective listening tests, three differently-steered height microphone layers were compared to one another as well as a reference non-coincident height microphone layer on perceived realism, source width, source size, height, and tone color of a solo piano and solo drumset. The findings of this investigation conclude that differently-steered height microphones did not significantly impact the perceived realism of these two instruments. Additionally, different directions were preferred for each instrument.
ER  -