For on-site immersive recordings, height microphones are often placed carefully to avoid a distorted or unrealistic image, with many established immersive microphone arrays placing the height microphones 1.5 m or less above the horizontal layer. However, with an instrument so acoustically symbiotic with its space as the pipe organ, the impact of non-coincident height microphone placement has not previously been explored in-depth. Despite this, the pipe organ's radiation characteristics may benefit from non-coincident height microphone placement, providing subjectively improved tone color without sacrificing perceived realism. Subjective listening tests were conducted comparing a pipe organ recording with coincident and non-coincident height microphone positions. The findings of this case study conclude that non-coincident height microphone placement does not significantly impact perceived realism of the immersive organ recording.
