One-Mic Recording: Rediscovering the Art of Natural Sound
By Frans de Rond, Engineer at Sound Liaison
At Sound Liaison, we have always been driven by curiosity, about music, about space, about the emotional truth hidden inside a performance. Over the years, I’ve worked with many recording techniques, from complex microphone arrays to minimalistic setups. But few approaches have fascinated me as deeply as the one-mic recording technique. Using a single stereo microphone, the Josephson C700S, and placing the musicians around it has opened a completely new world of sonic authenticity. It’s a world I feel compelled to explore further, and once you’ve truly heard it, turning back becomes difficult.
The Fundamental Difference: Natural Acoustic Mixing vs. Electronic Mixing
When most people think about recording music, they imagine the typical studio setup: every instrument close-miked, sometimes with multiple microphones each, and then balanced, processed, and panned inside the mixing console. This is the dominant approach in modern production, and for good reasons, it provides control, isolation and flexibility.
But a one-mic recording is something entirely different. With the Josephson C700S, all instruments blend physically in the air, not electronically in the desk. The sound waves interact, merging, reinforcing and sometimes gently masking one another, long before they reach the microphone diaphragm. What you capture is the actual acoustic event, the way it happens in real life. And that, to me, is incredibly powerful.
Eliminating Phase Issues: Why One Mic Makes Life Easier
One of the biggest technical challenges in multi-mic recording is phase interference. When multiple microphones pick up the same sound source at slightly different times, those signals can combine in unpredictable ways. Some frequencies cancel out, others are boosted, and the result can be a smearing or hollowing of the sound. Engineers spend countless hours adjusting placement, polarity, distance, and delay to minimize these effects.
With one microphone, none of that is an issue. There are no competing arrival times between microphones, only the natural timing and spacing of the instruments themselves. The phase coherence is simply built into the physical world. What you hear is stable, focused, and true.
No Unwanted Bleed - Because Everything Is Meant to Bleed
In multi-mic setups, engineers also fight bleed: the spill of one instrument into another’s microphone. While some bleed can add warmth or cohesion, excessive or uncontrolled bleed can make mixing sometimes very difficult. It reduces isolation, complicates EQ decisions and often forces compromises.
In a single-mic session, bleed isn’t a problem, it is the system. Every instrument interacts with every other instrument in the natural acoustic space, and the distance to the mic becomes the primary “fader.” Musicians adjust themselves, not the controls. This requires skill and awareness from the performers, but when it works, it is breathtaking.
Air Mixing vs. Electronic Mixing
When sound waves mix in the air, they combine according to the natural laws of acoustics, pressure variations merging into a single and complex waveform before reaching the microphone. This waveform already includes the spatial cues, tonal balances and dynamic relationships shaped by the environment and the musicians’ positions. Electronic mixing, by contrast, combines separately captured signals inside a console or DAW. While powerful, it is essentially reconstructing a sonic reality that did not physically exist. Air mixing captures the real acoustic event; electronic mixing creates an acoustic illusion.
Why This Feels More Like a Real Live Performance
What continually inspires me is how a one-mic recording resembles the experience of attending an unamplified live performance. When you sit in a hall listening to an orchestra or a chamber group, no sound engineer is balancing faders, you’re hearing instruments interacting in space. The blend is organic, dynamic and inherently musical.
Every time I visit the Metropole Orkest during rehearsals (they are located in the same building), I’m struck by how beautiful the ensemble sounds without amplification. In contrast, their live concerts in large venues must be amplified to reach the audience. While the result can be impressive, it is fundamentally different. The electronic system, no matter how advanced, creates a mediated version of the sound.
Compare that with listening to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the 'Main Hall'. There, you experience instruments merging acoustically, and the hall itself becomes part of the ensemble. That natural blend, the way sound waves fill the space and interact with your ears, is something technology still struggles to replicate.
A Jazz Band Around a Single Microphone
This is exactly what happens when we record a jazz ensemble around one microphone. The musicians adapt their dynamics and positions, moving slightly closer or farther to shape the balance. Instead of relying on faders and plugins, we rely on ears, intuition and the simple physics of sound.
It can be challenging, every mistake is exposed, and every detail matters. But it is also deeply rewarding. When the musicians lock in, when the room supports the performance and when the stereo image from the Josephson C700S opens up like a living tableau, it feels as if the music breathes.
A Path Worth Following
One-mic recording is not a shortcut. It’s not easier, faster or more flexible than multi-mic production. It demands careful placement, exceptional musicianship and a willingness to surrender control. But the payoff is authenticity, a sound that resonates emotionally because it reflects a real acoustic moment.
Having heard what is possible, I find myself drawn further down this path. It’s a journey of discovery, and I’m not sure where it will lead. But one thing is certain: once you’ve experienced the beauty of natural acoustic mixing, it’s hard to forget.
Special thanks to Harry van Dalen from Rhapsody and Bert van der Wolf from The Spirit of Turtle for their invaluable inspiration for this blog post.