Contribution
Approaching an Unbiased Microphone Comparison in Tonmeister Training
* Presenting author
Abstract:
In Tonmeister training, considerable attention is paid to the individual sound transmission characteristics of different microphones. At Erich Thienhaus Institute, the 'Acoustics Laboratory Exercise' therefore aims to enable students to set up unbiased listening comparisons to challenge traditional paradigms. This paper describes the realisation of a listening test designed to discriminate between music excerpts recorded with different small-diaphragm condenser microphones (6 cardioid, 4 omnidirectional, 6 manufacturers). Each microphone model was set up as a stereo pair to record a reproduction grand piano playing back 1.5 minutes of Beethoven. A specifically modified ABX design was implemented to assess the distinguishability of microphones of the same type based on their individual 'timbre'. For mono playback, few of the 22 test subjects were able to distinguish the paired, loudness-normalized stimuli at 5% significance level. This result was unexpected, given that the differences in 'timbre' are typically regarded as being obviously apparent in recording practice. Comparing the results to those of a previous study, the distinguishability did not seem to scale with microphone distance from the piano. This experiment raised several interesting questions in the educational context regarding the piano's reproduction accuracy, the test design, comparative listening strategies and mundane realism.