Stereo Recording Made Easy With A 3D-Printed Mount

When making a recording it can be surprisingly difficult to capture a good stereo image. A well-known technique is the ORTF microphone arrangement in which two cardoid microphones sit at 110 degrees to each other and 17cm apart, and thus pick up a readily reproducible stereo separation. It’s something that we’ve been known to do in our student days with a pair of Shure SM58s and a stack of Post Office elastic bands, but [marsairforce] has done a much nicer job with a very neat 3D-printed microphone clip.

Designed in OpenSCAD, the first iteration printed on a resin printer proved to be too brittle for the task, so a second version was printed on an FDM machine. This incorporated significant strengthening, as well as a screw mount for a microphone stand. The result is an extremely useful and cheap addition to any recording set-up, and anyone who has wrestled with achieving a good stereo image will appreciate it. You can see some of what went into it in the video below the break.

If this is your field of interest, you might also wish to look at a binaural microphone.