Tutorial - ORTF 3D
Tutorial - ORTF 3D
It all started with stereo ...
Almost everyone in the sound industry has heard of the "ORTF" setup for stereo recordings. It is not a special technique or trademark in the strict sense of the word.
The abbreviation stands for "Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française," which translates to "French Radio and Television Broadcasting Office" or "French Broadcasting and Television Office."
Sound engineers from the ORTF have manually evaluated the parameters of the "ORTF stereo setup."
They discovered that the distance between the two capsules should be 17 cm, not 17.5 cm, and that there is no intended correlation to the distance between the ears of the average human head. Its just by accident, that these numbers are quite the same.
So the ORTF (stereo) parameters are exactly:
110° Mic spacing 17 cm Equivalence stereo
If you're looking for a great visualization of the ORTF stereo setup, along with other stereo setups, check out the "source of wisdom": Prof. Eberhardt Sengpiel's website, in general, and particularly https://sengpielaudio.com/Visualization-ORTF-E.htm.
... and now into an additional dimension
Before we go into the technical details, let's have a listen.
There is a GREAT video from Schoeps on YouTube. But ... hear yourself. Make sure you wear headphones for the full immersive impression.
How it works!
You could consider the people at Schoeps to be the inventors of ORTF-3D. And yes, the ORTF-3D system from Schoeps is the gold standard. Period.
There is a GREAT article about this system on this website:
https://www.hauptmikrofon.de/3d/ortf-3d
And if you take a closer look: This article has be published "20 September 2015 17:30". So quite a while ago.
But then there's that price tag, which you might quickly mistake for the order number. It costs around €20,000 (excluding taxes and shipping!). (This is about 22.000 USD)
There's no question that this system sounds like ... you're right there on location.
But our goal is to enable good results without having to break the bank.
Here are the links to the shopping list and the tutorial on how to set it up.
Again! This will never sound like a setup with Schoeps microphones. NEVER EVER!
It will also not be that compact and handy. However, we can build a fairly good one ourselves for about €850. That's a different story, as you may agree.
The great thing about this system is, that you could convert it into ambisonic, Dolby Atmos and Auro3D.
There are compromises
First, we assume that you have eight SDC cardioids on hand or can borrow them from friends. If that's not challenging enough, try getting eight supercardioid microphones.
The tutorial we provide assumes you have eight SDC caridioids at hand. This will be good enough and also difficult enough to be setup correctly.
As "caridoids" and "supercardioids" record sound in a different way, the results will be not as great as with "supercardioids", but .... well, you will find out yourself. But thee have to compromises, otherwise the setup will not be easy and/or way to expansive.