Why would you need a MONO button?
It might come handy if you were to record an Orchestra with 4 mics.
It is indeed very common to record an Orchestra with and OCCO array on some sort of and ORTF in the middle and two Omni mics on the side right? This technique may really deliver some nice results if the “BAND” is great, positioning was made carefully, and there is a nice interface to capture it with. Not many times you may see one of iD series Audient preamps performing in such a situation, but if so, you can be sure the result would fit any broadcasting requirements due to the quality of the iD preamps ,and flexibility of the iD routing app.
iD44MKII is the unit what Tomi Fröberg used recording Symphony No 5 by Beethoven played by Joensuu Orchestra in Finland, and not only because it features a nice MONO button, that may come really handy in multi mic setups like this. Mics were positioned in the grandstand about 5-6 metres behind the conductor. He hard-panned the ORTF mics and the AB (were positioned either side in a more AB-ish setup – were turned slightly toward the edges of the orchestra) were left in the between for better mono compatibility.
The MONO button of the iD44 was a massive help in stereo recording situations like this. It makes it faster to check phase when recording with multiple mics. For example, if sound becomes thinner when summed to mono, I know there might be some phase issues and I probably need to check the mic-ing. It saves time because I can just press the button and I don’t need to use any plugins for mono-listening.
As Tomi said:
“The recording process went smoothly and it was easy! I just kept recording. I can confirm that you can absolutely record an orchestra with an iD44 and just four mics!”
Another great example of using the AUDIENT iD44MKII!
Find out more here:
https://audient.com/products/audio-interfaces/id44/overview/
