The Coincident Technique is a stereo microphone technique in which the capsules of two microphones are positioned as close as possible to each other.

The goal is for the sound, coming from any direction, to reach both capsules at exactly the same time.. With the diaphragms practically at the same point in space, the time and phase differences between the two channels are eliminated.

The stereo image is created solely by the differences in intensity (volume) captured by each microphone, due to their directional polar patterns.

For example, a sound coming from the left will be picked up louder by the microphone pointed to the left. Advantages The main advantage of the coincident technique is its excellent mono compatibility. Since there are no time differences between the channels, when adding the two to mono, there are no phase cancellation problems (comb filtering). The most common coincident techniques are the XY Pair, the Blumlein Pair, and the Mid-Side (MS).