what do you think of the zoom ambisonic 360 mic as a starter mic to get introduced to ambisonics in general? I want to record classical music: piano specifically along with voice, french horn, and guitar. but since you said ambisonic mics are sensitive to musicians live dynamics, would something louder like french horn + piano be difficult to record?
A friend of mine has one of the zooms. He uses it for capturing things like fireworks on the 4th of July and other cool ambiance things. It does a great job for that and is a cheap way to get into ambisonics. Neither of us liked it for musical things, most sources just sounded a bit thin and too bright. I think it's the best place to start if you're curious about ambisonics though! The next tier up for ambisonic mics is going to start around $1000, so the zoom is about the only affordable option. As for dynamics, you just have to be conscious about your gain staging. You can't approach this as setting levels for 4 different microphones, every mic has to have the exact same gain settings to decode correctly. You have to figure out which capsule is getting the loudest signal, and make sure you set the gain on that channel to leave you enough headroom. Then you have to set all the other preamp channel to the same gain setting that first channel is at. It's a bit odd sometimes, as you'll have one channel that's getting a lot of level and the other 3 channels seem way too quiet. That's just the nature of ambisonics, so make sure you're using the exact same gain settings for every channel and leaving yourself enough headroom.
Is just one preamp/p48 required or 4, one for each capsule? Ah, found it, 4 preamps are required: “Preamp Level Matching Use four identical preamps and ensure that all four channels are set to equal gain. This is crucial to capture an accurate sound field and prevents any discrepancies in your recording.”
You need 4 channels of the same preamps with phantom power (think of this as 4 microphones in one body). The better you’re able to match the gain in each preamp channel, the better (they all need to be set to the exact same gain setting). I use 4 channels on my Universal Audio Apollo interface so I could set the gain exactly the same.
Brilliant video. The first time I learned about ambisonics was when I went to an audio engineering school for 2 years in Oslo, Norway, back in 1987. My teacher had an original Calrec Soundfield microphone which he had used on many recordings. I have always wanted to do ambisonic recordings but I have done live sound most of my career so I never got around to it. But now I have my own recording studio and this video was a great inspiration to go get an ambisonic mic. Thank you for this most beautiful video.
