Hey I know most here are composers rather than sound designers, but for those who do this side of audio, when recording sound effects or foley for games do you generally A) Record in mono or B) Record in stereo and convert to mono when needed Or do you know which method is more common. Reason being as obviously most games use mono samples & position in the stereo field within the games audio engine. I have been recording in mono, the advantage of that I guess is I don't run into problems converting to mono later on.I am looking at eventually upgrading recording equipment & I am wondering if there is much benefit in having a stereo setup..My microphone preamp only has a single microphone input, so if I was going to get 2 mics in a x/y stereo setup I would need a new preamp also. As a side note, which type of mic do you like to use for this purpose. A Cardiod mic yeah? Do you find a shotgun mic has any real benefit when recording indoors?

I always record in stereo.

When capturing foley or doing any field recording, you never want to limit the amount of source material you have at your disposal. Sometimes one channel will pick up a sound or have some special quality that is more usable than the other--in the MONO case you're just limiting yourself to capturing the sound once.

Think of it like multiple mic positions.

When possible, I try to deliver ambience in stereo as well, so when I go out into the wild to capture natural ambience, I definitely choose stereo.

Thanks, do you mostly use 2 mics or a single stereo mic?

I think I will aim to upgrade my preamp first and then mic next. I'm pretty happy with the mic I have now for dialogue recording, so I might hold onto that, upgrade to a better and at least dual channel preamp next, and aim to buy a stereo mic for foley & sound effects work later, for simplicity sake.

Ah it's so expensive to get started in this =p



[Edited by - Jay Taylor on May 5, 2009 10:09:20 PM]