Larry Murphy, staff engineer at Tierra Studios, begins his Mic’s With Murphy series with an overview of microphones.  Watch the video and read more about mics below.

(This image is from the Wikipedia Blumlein entry)

The Blumlein pair recording technique is a type of stereo recording technique invented by Alan Blumlein designed to create recordings that replicate the spatial characteristics of the recorded signal.

A Blumlein pair consists of two matched microphones set to the bi-directional, or figure 8, pickup pattern and positioned 90° from each other.  This configuration should allow the transducers of the microphones to occupy the same physical space, or at least as close to the same space as possible. The mics are then positioned so that the audio signal is in a line bisecting the angle between the two microphones.  The pickup patterns of the pair, combined with their positioning, delivers a high degree of stereo separation in the source signal as well as the room ambiance.

Properly used, the Blumlein pair can produce a “true” stereo image.

The traditional microphone for Blumlein Pair recording is the ribbon microphone, although some microphones are purpose-built for the type of coincident arrangements that are required for the Blumlein pair.