Immersive Handpan Recording: 8-Point Inward-Facing Cubic Array

We just wrapped up recording one of the most inspiring instruments I’ve ever worked with: the handpan (also known as the hung drum). It’s a 360-degree sound source, a sculpted piece of metal that somehow manages to be rhythmic, melodic, and deeply atmospheric all at once.

For this session, we invited Sina, a wildly talented multi-instrumentalist with an uncanny ability to move between tight grooves, abstract textures, and lyrical, melodic phrases on the handpan. Unlike most of the other sessions in this series—where we had every detail locked in the night before—this one started from a place of openness. Musically and technically, we weren’t entirely sure what the “right” approach would be. We just knew we had to be ready to react.

The moment Sina started playing, the room lit up. Very quickly, it became obvious what this instrument was asking for: a fully immersive, audience-perspective experience. Together with the team—Ryan and Alex—we built an 8-point inward-facing cubic array around the instrument:

• A lower quad of Schoeps mics placed equidistant around the handpan
• An upper quad of DPA 4006 mics mirroring that geometry above
• A single M149 focused on the center tone, capturing that fundamental pitch that anchors the instrument

In playback, the array places you inside the sound field. The rear mics become the rear surrounds, the others define left and right, and the center mic becomes… well, center. It’s set up so that, from the listener’s perspective, the artist lives across the front wall of the speakers while the rest of the instrument’s halo wraps around you. There’s no “front” to this instrument—the front is wherever you decide to face—so the array behaves less like a flat square and more like a sonic dome around the handpan.

I’ve recorded this instrument in stereo many times, and it’s always been special. But hearing it in this fully immersive format was something else: the way it came to life in the control room felt both true to the experience in the room and somehow hyper-real, as if we were stepping inside the instrument itself.

That energy pushed us further than we’d planned. Sina’s improvisations were so inspiring that we ended up featuring the handpan on more pieces than originally intended. Our musical relationship has always been grounded in improvisation—listening, reacting, leaving space—and that spirit carried straight into this session. We came in with sketches, not strict plans, and focused on being present enough to capture what actually happened.

What emerged is a recording that’s as much about space and perspective as it is about notes and rhythm: a 360-degree handpan performance, suspended inside an immersive cube of microphones, inviting the listener to step into the center of the sound.