Richard & Karl,

That's what I do. I have a Behringer DEQ 2496 that I use strictly for the metering. Crane made a lot of stereo recordings from the 60s through the mid-70s with two spaced microphones. I most cases, I can adjust the azimuth for maximum high-frequency level on the Behringer's RTA. I've had a few tapes where there's very little difference, but most of the time it works. The Behringer's peak-reading level meters are also great for machine alignment. The bar-graph display gives both peak and RMS indications, along with a digital readout for both with 0.1dB resolution. When I got it years ago I checked it on the bench to make sure that it was accurate up to 20k and found it to be spot on with my test equipment. Whatever anyone may think of the EQ functions on this device (I've never used them) or any of their other products, the DEQ 2496 is worth the $350 US just for the metering and RTA.

Best,
Gary

____________________________

Gary Galo
Audio Engineer Emeritus
The Crane School of Music
SUNY at Potsdam, NY 13676

"Great art presupposes the alert mind of the educated listener."
Arnold Schoenberg

"A true artist doesn't want to be admired, he wants to be believed."
Igor Markevitch

-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Karl E. Fitzke
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2016 5:31 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Setting azimuth from program - a caution

Richard,


Great point to bring up! You are talking about being mislead by a lissajous pattern (phase scope) or phase torch under these circumstances, right?


Instead the best we can do is to fall back solely on our ears and live spectrogram, trying to establish maximum high frequency response, yes?


-Karl



Karl Fitzke
Audio/Visual Specialist
214 Olin Library
Ithaca, NY 14853

607-255-5521
[log in to unmask]
________________________________
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Richard L. Hess <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 3, 2016 2:44:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Setting azimuth from program - a caution

I have been digitizing a batch of tapes for a university music program's archives. Most were made in a the several campus performance spaces, and from the sound of it and experience, the preponderance of these recordings were made with spaced hanging cardioid microphones. While stereo mics were also widely used, these sound like spaced mics.

Anyway...none of the tapes had tones and from time to time there is a tape with an offset solo instrument. Remembering that we're looking for fractions of a degree accuracy in adjusting azimuth playback, when we see two separated mics, all bets are off.

With the speed of sound being about 1100 feet per second, we can see how moving a mic less than a foot is the length of a complete cycle at 1 kHz.

So, this type of recording is almost impossible to accurately adjust.
While full ensembles work well with the stripchart in StereoTool, a solo instrument or voice can show a huge azimuth error which is really an artifact of microphone placement relative to the source.

Cheers,

Richard


--
Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
Aurora, Ontario, Canada 647 479 2800
http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.