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How Many Microphones? There have been many fine recordings made with only two microphones. You hear the concert with two ears (stereo). It would seem logical that you just need to find the "best seat in the house", put your microphones there and record! In practice the "best seat in the house" is well above the audience heads generally near the conductor. (More on this later). I refer to these microphones as my main stereo pair. Most of the time the sound on the recording is the sound from these microphones (even if I have 20 microphones on the stage, I would guess that 80% of the recording is mostly these two microphones). So why do you need more microphones? Soloists Sometimes you can tell a recording was made with two microphones when the soloists sound "distant". The same may be true of some acoustic instruments. To me, this is more noticeable in a recording than it is live. Putting a microphone closer to the soloists can solve this. If the choir has a habit of overpowering the soloists (or instruments) when they sing together, the use of additional microphones CLOSE to the soloists or instruments may help solve this problem. Quiet instrumental passages Why is it that the audience seems to wait for a quiet instrumental passage to cough? Putting microphones closer to the instruments means that the microphones hear more instrument and less audience. So during soft instrument passages we can "shift" to these local microphones and minimize audience noise. This will minimize the "ambience" of the room however. Sometimes we can put the ambience back into the recording in the studio. Close Choir microphones. The same closeness argument should work with the choir as well. However most choirs are on risers. During soft passages the close microphones will not only pick up the choir, but also all the riser noise! In some choirs this is a real problem. Actually the riser noise is always there, it's just usually overpowered by the choir. So this may or may not be useful. Putting microphones close to the choir can still be useful if one of the choral parts is weak. Let's assume that the altos are weak. Putting a microphone near the altos means that that microphone will have the altos relatively louder than the other parts (when compared with the main stereo pair). This may allow us to add in some "alto" in the recording. In practice these microphones have to be significantly closer to the weak part than the main stereo pair. The same problem with the "riser noise" exists here. Different moods of music. Moving the microphone towards and away from the choir changes the sound. The "best" position depends on the mood you are trying to achieve. If some pieces are BIG and some pieces are "intimate," you have problem. The BIG pieces may want a lot of "room" in them. This means we want a microphone back from the choir (so it picks up more room relative to the choir). The intimate piece wants to be close to the choir (less room). You have three options. First, pick a position and just deal with the fact that it will not be optimum for at least one piece. A second option is to put the microphone close to the choir. Then (back at the studio) add the "room" back into the sound for the BIG piece. This of course requires studio time (and cost). The third option is to use a second stereo pair placed farther back. Summary There is no ideal arrangement of microphones for a live concert. In a studio setting you can change the microphones for each song. In a live concert you set up a set of microphones that is a compromise. More microphones allows for less compromising. It also means increased cost and the possibility that to use the additional microphones you might have to pay for studio time.
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