The C-trilogy (Part 2) - Center, where are you?

[Continued from Part 1]

Like I said before: "What you want to do is find a spot where you'd place the one microphone required for a monophonic recording."

There are collegues that insist that the center is reserved for instruments that can be heard from the middle of the ensemble, but this makes sense primarily with small groupings. As soon as the ensemble is wide and deep it becomes difficult to determine--without examining the music in depth.

One possible creative idea would be to enhance transparency by placing various spot-miked sources in the center, delayed to let the original impression (from the space between the two front speakers) come first and steer the perceived source in that direction utilizing the Haas effect.

The single microphone used to derive the center will most likely be placed not far off the central axis, and rather close to the ensemble. Since we are dealing with a discrete channel Lou Burroughs' "3:1-rule" must not be taken into account--except for the situation in which you might want to experiment with adding some of that signal to a stereo mix.