TIME WAS WHEN RECORD COMPANIES established their corporate identities mainly through the artists they held under exclusive contract. Victor, in its heyday, traded on Toscanini; Columbia countered with Bruno Walter. And in pops it was star bands like Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey that defined a record label. The recording process itself, still rather crude at the time, was taken for granted and rarely discussed.

It is still true that record companies derive their profile largely from their artists and repertory; but lately, technical criteria have also come into prominence. A number of smaller companies, mainly in the area of classical music, have chosen a specific kind of sound - a distinctive recording style - as their hallmark. Among record companies noted for their highly personalized yet musically appropriate engineering, Telarc, Delos and Nimbus have gained a devoted following among audiophiles. Despite their emphasis on engineering, it is significant that each of these concerns is headed not by an engineer or by a businessman but by a musician. Somehow this seems to put authority and control in the right place.

What sets these companies apart is their disdain for the common practice of multimiking, which uses anywhere from 20 to 30 microphones spread all over the orchestra to pick up sound from the various orchestral sections at close range. All these diverse sound snippets are then electronically mixed in what is hoped will be a musically pleasing aggregate.

This method has several practical advantages. First, all those microphones scattered throughout the orchestra can pick up sonic details clearly enough to become audible over the surface noise of poorly pressed or badly worn LP records. Second, the orchestral balance can always be altered long after the recording sessions by making adjustments in the electronic mixing of the separately recorded input from the various microphones.

A flawed performance can sometimes be salvaged in this way, with the engineer second-guessing the conductor. Or, if a singer or instrumental soloist complains about not being sufficiently up front in the overall tonal picture - as sometimes happens with star personalities - the engineer can smooth the feathers of a prima donna and save a touchy political situation with the twist of a knob. No wonder the tape-it-now/fix-it-later approach is greatly valued by record companies having to cope with capricious artists and tight schedules.

Unfortunately, this convenient multimike technology also has serious drawbacks. The overall sound perspective - pieced together at the mixing console from those numerous microphones - does not sound natural to listeners whose perception is conditioned by the experience of live music. Moreover, the closeness of the microphones to the performers often creates a harshly strident sound. On the old LP records, this was masked by surface noise. On inherently noise-free CD's, this defect is often unpleasantly apparent.

This is not to say that all multimiked recordings are inferior. The best of them, done with care and musical sensitivity, can be very good. But in terms of instrumental timbres and spatial perspective, their tendency is to go subtly awry.

It was the smaller record companies that could most readily avail themselves of alternative recording methods to bypass these shortcomings of multimiking. Their advantage lies as much in their corporate structure as in their technical expertise. In those small companies, management, producers and engineers are a small, cooperative group.

Usually they all attend a recording session and can quickly agree when to ''wrap up a take.'' They don't have to anticipate later remixing of the sound to iron out differences of opinion or to flatter a performer's ego. The dubious practice of remixing the sound after the session is altogether skipped. Artists recording for such companies understand this and know that things must be done right the first time because there can be no subsequent adjustment of acoustical balance.

Under such favorable circumstances, these companies could develop recording methods involving only a few microphones, sometimes just one each for the left and right channels. Moreover, these microphones are not placed close to the musicians (as in the multimike method) but farther back in the hall. This pickup pattern - known as minimal miking - more closely resembles what a listener would experience at a concert at some distance from the stage. As one engineer puts it, ''It's the natural way we hear. I don't know of anybody with 30 ears spread out all over the orchestra.''

Paradoxically, it is far more difficult to record with few microphones than with many. With multimiking, the aura of the space surrounding the music is often supplied artificially by means of electronically generated reverberation. With minimal miking, the object is to capture as closely as possible the natural ambiance of the hall. This requires the microphones to be positioned in just the right place where sound reflections from various directions converge in an acoustical focal point. It takes perceptive ears to ''psych out'' a particular concert hall to find its acoustical ''sweet spots.'' With most engineers accustomed to the casual ease of the multimike routine, only a few have the skill and acoustical awareness necessary to use the technically simpler method.

At present, the chief practitioners of minimal miking are Jack Renner of Telarc, John Eargle of Delos and Adrian Farmer of Nimbus. Each of these technically adroit and musically devoted engineers has a distinctive style of recording, but jointly they have sparked a trend that is rapidly gaining enthusiastic approval among serious audiophiles. Their specific methods and results will be examined in detail in a later column.