Schoeps OCT Set Surround Front System

Microphone Set for the Three Front Surround Channels OCT stands for "Optimized Cardioid Triangle."It is a method for picking up the three front chan-nels of a surround recording. It can be combined with any of several possible methods for obtaining the rear channels (and thus "OCT surround"), as will be shown on the following pages. The preferred setup for OCT uses a forward-facing cardioid for the center channel. For the front L and R channels, two supercardioid microphones are placed at opposite ends of an imaginary line running about 8 cm behind the center microphone. These two microphones should be 40 - 90 cm apart, depending on the required recording angle*, and must face squarely outward, away from center (see diagrams below and on the following pages). Good separation between the center-to-left sector and the center-to-right sector is obtained with this method. For example, sound originating from half right is picked up only very weakly by the left microphone. Sound from the ext