It was very nice weather this evening. The downtown was almost overcrowded with people which was shopping or just walking around to feel and smell the atmosphere of Christmas.
It was calm so the town smelled strongly of cloves, toasted knead, spirit, red vine, beer, all kinds of perfume, tobacco and even weed…and what is never missing in Reykjavik, a smell of exhaust from traffic.This was perfect weather to catch the sound of the Christmas rush hour.
Just 30 second after I start the recording, I heard beautiful singing voices. There were six singers of female song group „Jólabjöllurnar“.
I placed my self around 4 meters from the singers. Behind me was the audience on their walk who stopped for a moment to listen. The heavy background noise is mostly from car traffic, as usual.
This recording is captured with DIY binaural microphone rig which I just finished to prepare several hours before the recording. It contains two matched pair of parallel Primo EM172 capsules, connected to LOM phantom power adapter (see pictures).
I spent two hours walking around recording this evening. I noticed some audible time error between left and right channel in 30-40° around the rig which means the rig needs some changes in the future. But the funny thing is this time error sounds like a perfect „sound effect“ in combination with this well trained singers.
This was recorded on Lækjatorg square in Reykjavik town center between 9 – 10 pm.
Quality open headphones are recommended while listening at mid level.
Lækjartorg á Þorláksmessu 2017
Það var ótrúlega gott veður þessa Þorláksmessu. Miðbærinn var líka troðfullur af fólki, sem liklega skiptist jafn milli Íslendinga og útlendinga sem voru að versla, sýna sig og sjá aðra.
Þar sem ég gekk austur Austurstræti og var var nýbúinn að ræsa upptökutækið þá mátti heyra fagran söng frá Lækjartorgi. Ég gekk á hljóðið og þar var þá sextett fagurra kvenna að syngja jölalög.
Ég mátti til með að ná þessum söng á upptökutækið og gerði það þar til yfir lauk.
(mp3 256kbps / 44Mb)
Recorder: Sound devices MixPre6
Mics: Primo EM172
Pix: Samsung Galaxy6
Location: 64.147388, -21.936692
Weather: Calm. Cloudy, 1°C
HLJÓÐMYND - SOUNDIMAGE 
You’ve managed to capture some lovely singing.
I am a bit confused by your comment about the time delay; surely time delay, along with volume difference are the main frequency dependant components of the stereo field.
When you do adjust the microphone array, I would suggest arranging the capsules to provide a greater overlap of left & right channels, to reduce the effect of listening to two separate channels. It may be my ears of course! But the left & right channel extremes appear louder than the combined central sounds, which could be due to too much isolation (shading?) between the left & right channel capsules. Had you noticed that, or was this what you meant when referring to the time delay? I wonder what the stereo field looks like on a goniometer & phase correlation display?
Season’s greetings to you!
Thanks for your input Lawrence and season´s greetings to you too.
You are right and I think that this recording sounds similar in our ears.
I am not happy with the sound in the center. It is not well focused. The problem could be the distance in combination with the isolation baffle between left and right capsules. The distance between capsules is now 24cm, I should probably move it to 17cm which is closer to be the size of humans head. I think two of the problems would be fixed with that. I would have better focus in the center and less audible „time error“ between L&R. Plus, the whole rig would be even lighter.
I have still not thought about to use „goniometer & phase display“. But because you mention it, it would be interesting to use such tools beside usual listening experience.
Update.
This „time error“ I mentioned before is NOT due to the design of the rig.
When I’m playing the recording, it turns out that there is a reflection between the walls and big shop windows in narrow streets, so it is not connected to the microphone design.
Great work, realy enjoyed listening to it!