A small digression in to stereo recording more generally, and how it works

Whichever stereo set-up you choose, they all work to create a stereo image by ensuring sounds on the left are picked up either sooner and / or at a higher amplitude by the left-hand microphone, and sounds on the right are picked up either sooner and / or at higher amplitude by the right-hand microphone.  When you play this stereo recording back through left and right room speakers, or headphones, these slight differences in timing and / or volume between the left and the right channels lead to a sense of space - some things sound on the left, some on the right, and some in between - the different locations of the different sounds at the time of recording have been reproduced as a ‘phantom stereo image’. Things can go wrong with this image if your initial microphone placement is off, for example, if you have put your microphones too wide apart or too close together in relation to your subject. Depending on where you’ve gone wrong, on play back it can sound like there is a hole (no sound) in the middle and the sounds are all sitting on the far edges (very panned), or conversely it can sound like everything is bunched up in the centre and nothing is happening beyond a narrow central angle. However, if you do get your initial microphone angles and distances right (Neumann have a ‘Recording Tools’ app that I’ve found useful for this) and manage to make a nice stereo recording of the correct width, you will notice a satisfying sense of space, which is not possible to achieve with a mono recording. In a mono recording (i.e. a recording made with one microphone only) exactly the same information will be played back out of the left and right speakers – no time delays and no differences in volume, and therefore, no phantom stereo image.