Your biggest winner is how well you understand what you hear and how you work with that to get a good recording. People with a lot of critical listening experience will do better with gear that's not so good.
That normally starts with a good set of headphones that you can come to terms with. I like
Sony MDR 7506. Are they flat? No, but I understand them. They make sense in my head. I move mics and players accordingly. When I listen to playback, yes, that's what I wanted to hear!
Jazz recording engineers used to make great recordings with the group all playing together in a relatively small space. Yes, there was bleed, but it didn't matter. That's because they understood the sacred geometrical relationship of multiple mics (mostly figure of eight ribbons) placed properly among the players.
Rudy Van Gelder from Hackensack, NJ was one of these guys. He died last year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Van_Gelder
Reading about him taught me a lot. I had the opportunity to do some Blumlein recording with a pair of
AT4080 ribbon mics a few years back. In one session, to prove a point, I had a pedal steel speaker cabinet, two acoustic guitars and a vocalist all going at the same time to two tracks – a stereo master if you will.
I positioned the players, paying particular attention first to their guitars. The singer/player was a right hander, so the body of his guitar was a bit to the right. I put the other guitar player to the left to balance that – so they were physically "panned" as we recorded. I had some experimentation with the right height for the pair of mics to get the voice to guitar balance right. I also had to deal with relative loudness and had each player move in or out a half step till I got that balance right.
I put the Pedal Steel speaker at 180 degrees, so it was centered, but on the back side of the mics. I then moved it closer or farther until I got the right level. I recorded each mic to a separate track. Afterwards, I panned each track fully and added some 10k shelf and a little reverb.
You can hear the clacking of the pedal steel pedals in the first few moments of the recording.
Here.
Additional thoughts:
Square rooms are bad. I think there's data to prove that rooms with a 3:4:5 ratio also suck, but I can't find it right now.
Where you sit in any room makes a difference.
Windows normally are bad unless you are clever with mic placement. Even then, enough glass can make otherwise well thought out equipment and placement a futile effort.
Your space should have the right balance of absorptive and diffusive surfaces.
Regards,
Ty Ford