Acoustic Guitar Micing, Pt. 5

In our final post of this series, we’re talking about the Mid/Side method of micing. This one’s a little bit more complicated to set up, but gives you maximum flexibility.

You need two different mics, one with a figure eight pattern and another with a cardioid pattern. Placed together like this:

The Mid/Side microphone setup

Cons of the Mid/Side microphone technique

1. can be more complex to set up.

2. can require more expensive mics, and specific pickup patterns in the mics you choose.

3. requires a “mid-side decoder” to be set up inside your DAW-there is also hardware that can do this automatically.

4. can require higher quality, more expensive, very stable mic stands to execute properly.

For a deeper dive, here’s an article that describes more details of this setup, and it’s application in different types of recording situations.

You can reference the full series on acoustic guitar micing, for additional techniques that are useful for capturing this instrument.