Tears in the Rain

[pauli]

personally, i would agree. So much depends on the quality of the information yielded by the spot microphones. All one can do sometimes is create a believable illusion rather than necessarily recreating the actual listening environment. Its all subjective so one has to trust (and develop) ones own feelings and preferences.

Sometimes spacial realism is a must for me (subjectively) when the source material is conducive... especially when there are live, multi-miked ensembles with lots of leakage... Sometimes a believable illusion is best, too, when it suits your taste, and most often it does for me, especially if I can get something to sound more splendid than it would ever sound sitting right in front of me, be it through mixing illusions, modulation, et cetera.

For this one, the bass is software, the drums are software... so realism is already out the window to some extent, and the steel strings have some really odd-sounding tonal properties. I spent far too much time obsessing over my subjective preference on that score that it hurt the technical balance, so I'll try re-working this with a balance of realism and supernaturally vivid tone as a goal and see if perhaps that approach yields a better balance for me.

Thanks again for comments and astute observations