Stereo or not?

[Imagewerx]

How obviously audible is the stereo effect? I have always used a mono shotgun mic up until now,and have just bought my first stereo mic.
I was expecting a LOT more stereo separation than I get.The waveform below shows the sound that is recorded onto a digital camera that is set up in the middle of my back garden pointing across it.The garden is about 25 feet long and I walk along it speaking at one end of it,in the middle and then at the other end of it.I then do hand claps in the same places.
Under these conditions (no reflections etc),I'd have expected much more obvious left and right placement of where my voice was coming from,but even on headphones there seems to be almost no separation at all and the waveforms are almost identical mirror images.

Is this as good as it gets straight out of the mic without any processing,or are the exagerated stereo effects we hear in the cinema and elsewhere just the result of processing,i.e. do I have to to use the panner control if I want something to move realsitically across the sound stage?
It's main use will be for motorsports,so it would be nice to hear the car move across the soundstage as well as see it move across the screen.

[Averdahl]

Make sure that the settings in the camera is set correctly. You don´t mention what camera, brand/model, you have or how the mic is connected, iow 3.5 mm or XLR. Many cameras have the option to take let´s say the left channel and duplicate it to the right channel or vice versa and that will get what you hear/see. The camera itself won´t identify the microphone as a stereo mic, so it is easy to forget that one changed this for some years ago. This must always be done manually. Consult the camera manual.

Start there. 🙂

[Imagewerx]

Thank you and sorry,it's a Panasonic Lumix G9.Connected via a stereo jack plug and I can't find an option in the camera's settings that changes it from mono to stereo or dual mono.
I've not seen this before.Is this bit set correctly?

[Michael Grenadier]

you're not gonna get a lot of stereo separation on a single microphone.    There's no reason why you can't actually change the pan on an individual track in premiere to get the effect you're looking for.   Feature films often record with several mics and often dialog is dubbed in afterwards and stereo placement is adjusted in the audio mix.  

[Imagewerx]

Thank you.I get a VERY slight stereo effect on headphones-I think.So this is probably as good as I'll get with a £50 microphone in that case.

[salvo34]

MGR is correct. If you have one mic you will not get any separation and the fact it's called a stereo mic is simply because it's putting the same signal into left and right via the mini stereo plug. If you can hear a difference it's only because the source of sound moved and has ZERO to do with the word STEREO.

Stereo is 2 mics ( minimum ) plugged into left and right side separately via XLR or combi plug. Then you need two speakers ( left and right ). That is stereo.  Your camera can't record true stereo.

do the panning thing if you want to fake it.

[Imagewerx]

It's got two capsules in the same housing though with a jack plug with three contacts on it.

[Michael Grenadier]

try this.  put the camera on a tripod and have 2 people standing a few feet in front of the camera and microphone one about 3 feet to the left of the camera and the other about 3 feet to the right of the camera.  Record them having a conversation and then bring the material into premiere and see if you hear some stereo separation and see some difference between the waveforms.  

[Imagewerx]

That's exactly what I did,but with just me.It sounds the same with the raw file straight out of the camera played in Windows,or the same imported into Preemiere Pro and then exported again.

[salvo34]

https://www.mediacollege.com/audio/microphones/how-microphones-work.html

check out the weird little mics built into the zoom H4N. They actually DO record in stereo but not as good as you would want for, let's say, sound studio music recordings.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DPOXS8I?tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1

[Imagewerx]

I also have a Tascam DR05 and that's slightly better,but not a lot.

[salvo34]

I use a tascam too.. with a boom mic on pole... which is mono... but I did test it using a lav in one XLR port ( left ) and mic in the other ( right ) . My model only has two combi ports.

That was a bit weird of a test cause I had to test battery in line with lav OR phantom power, and I use phantom power for the boom mic... so it was kinda weird to see how long the batteries would last, and how it sounded once mixed using Audition....

I ended up getting some noise from the lav due to the high level it was at....

[Imagewerx]

So I either need two microphones at least 100 meters apart,or I learn how to use the panning feature with a mono mic.

Edit...Well that was easy enough.The only problem is that when you go far left or right,the background noise is gone from the other speaker,so it sounds a bit odd.It sort of works to copy and paste a short clip of background noise only over and over again,unless there's an easier way?

[Michael Grenadier]

you've opened a particularly complicated can of worms.  How you record the voice is important but how it's mixed and how it's monitored by the audience are equally important.  Your initial question was about the stereo effect recorded by your microphone and my answer was to help you evaluate the stereo effect that it would record.   So asking questions here and elsewhere and doing research will help you get a sense of what's involved.  

[salvo34]

very ingenious of you .. you discovered 'room tone' ( what you call noise )..and used it to make it sound better when panning ...

You might be able to get what you want with a subtle volume adjustment on the left and right tracks...as car moves left you increase the volume ( key frames ) slightly on the left but leave the right alone. It might be just enough to give the impression you want.

I don't know how you came up with 100 meters apart stuff.... the H4N has 2 mics inches apart from each other and it does record stereo. For about $ 250 or so that's what I would use if doing what you want a LOT.  Just to be faster getting it done. You can mount it on something and just aim it toward what you're shooting ... with a slate if you can handle that ( for sync ). Sometimes you need to run around a lot if by yourself to do all this stuff ( roll sound, roll camera, mark it ( slate ) run back to camera and focus, frame and shoot.

hehe, good luck

🙂

[Imagewerx]

Sorry I missed the replies and didn't answer sooner,I didn't get any notification emails.

The 100 meters apart comment was supposed to be a joke.I understand how modern music is multi mic'ed with studio recordings where the musicians are in separate booths in a lot of cases,so the recording engineer can place any instrument where ever they want on the sound stage.My expectations were based on a single stereo mic pair being used to record a whole orchestra that gave accurate stereo placement of both left and right and front and rear of every sound source in front of the microphones.
I've yet to use my new stereo mic at such an event.But from what use I have had from it so far,it's ability to pick up at the sides a lot more might be a hinderance rather than a help.The shotgun mic I used on the following clip would probably be better for this type of usage.
This was done simply enough with keyframes and a copy of the original audio track at 10db below the main one to fill in some background sound in the channel that's faded out so they're not too obviously silent.