Comparison of sound field microphone techniques for classical music recordings in virtual reality

Abstract: Virtual reality (VR) as a field is currently seeing big technological advancement and an increase in both interest and content. At the same time, the production workflows for creating content for VR are still in their infancy and there are few commonly accepted conventions within the field. This study aims to compare different sound field microphone techniques for classical music recording in virtual reality. A Sennheiser AMBEO microphone, a double MSZ array and an INA-5 array as well as a 360° camera were used to record a rehearsal of The Royal Swedish Orchestra. These recordings were then used to conduct a listening test in VR where subjects scored the different microphones techniques on “localisation” and “naturalness”. A t-test between the results of the different techniques showed that the AMBEO microphone was significantly better than the INA-5 array for localisation and that the double MSZ array was significantly better in terms of naturalness compared to the INA-5 array. However, these results should be interpreted with caution as many variables during the process might be unique to this particular study.