09 January 2026
Discussions on the merit of time-aligning spot mics can fill page after page on professional audio forums. In researching the issue, you'll often find that knowledgeable and experienced engineers have very different opinions on the subject.
But I've seen very few examples of how to go about time-aligning. In this video, I demonstrate one method to time-align your spot mics to your main stereo pair when recording an orchestra.
Time-alignment is a pretty straightforward process once you treat it like a story problem and include all the actors (and your desired results) in your description.
I also show an example of my own recording, and I A/B between time-aligned and the original stereo spot mics.