Through a practice-oriented study, various coincident, near-coincident, and non-coincident immersive microphone arrays were compared during drum recordings for different contemporary popular music genres. In a preliminary study, the OCT-3D, PCMA-3D, 2L-Cube, Hamasaki Square, IRT Cross, Ambisonics A-Format, and native B-Format were informally compared. This revealed that the differences among the non-coincident systems were much smaller than the differences between coincident and non-coincident systems. This led to a reduction in the number of microphone systems used for the final drum recordings.

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Four microphone techniques were selected: OCT-3D, native B-Format, Ambisonics A-Format, and IRT Cross. These were compared within the context of two different songs—a soft pop song and an energetic rock song—where the drums were recorded in a dry drum booth and a large studio hall, respectively.

A listening test with a small sample group was conducted to determine which microphone technique best suited each song. Participants were also asked to identify their overall favorite without musical context, as well as to evaluate spatiality, timbre, and height perception. It was concluded that the choice of immersive microphone technique depends on the musical context.

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Conclusions from more objective studies primarily focus on accurate localization, in which non-coincident systems consistently perform best. However, these studies often fail to adequately consider the musical context, where accurate localization is not always the primary concern. Additionally, it was observed that height perception in music is not solely created by speakers in the height layer.

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CONCLUSION // similar to practices in stereo recording, the choice of using either a non-coincident or coincident microphone array can depend on the musical context and room acoustics