Recording things

[sproul07]

What is the best way to mic up an amp live and in the studio? I have heard people put the mic behind the cab in the back of the speakers if it is an open back.

[GuitarPix]

The "best" way is for you to get a few different mics and try different positions with different mics, then try combos. It'll take a few hours but you'll eventually find a sound that works for you. Before you begin, you should have an idea of what sound you want - whether its a tight driving sound, loose blues sound, old school "torn speak" sound, massive stacks metal sound. Something else? Try for something a little different from the norm.

For what its worth, I've dropped a single SM57 to side of the speaker of a small fender amp and run that through a tube preamp and got a pretty good sound for me. I've heard of running two different mics (an sm57 and a tough large diaphragm mic in front of the speaker and a PZM mic in the back of an open cabinet.

In the end, there's as many ways to mic a speaker as there are sound engineers.

Start with these positions, in front - close up center on speaker, to side of speaker (pointing at speaker), a foot in front the speaker, two feet in front, then in back, right inside the cabinet and then a foot back.

Another thing you can do, which works for any instrument, is cover one ear and move around till you "hear" a tone you like, then put a mic there.

Hope that helps.

[Hamm Guitars]

Just a side note:

If you mic both the front and back side of an open back cabinet, one of the mics will need to be phase inverted if both mics will be on at the same time, otherwise there will be some cancellation of the signal.

Some might say that micing the back side of the cabinet may get you out of phase with your 'off the stage' sound, but in reality every piece of gear in the PA or recording gear's signal path can alter the phasing by some degree.

[violation]

I remember reading a pretty good post about recording basics / mic placement and what not... 1 second... gotta' find it... http://jsguitarforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60843

There we go. Helped me out when I started messing with recording.

[Milkman]

In the studio I like one mic up close and personal (just off axis and against the grill) and one back a few feet to capture the sound of the room.

Live, it's one mic and depending on the amp I sometimes point it directly at the dust cap and sometimes off axis, but always almost touching the grill.

[Hamm Guitars]

In the studio I like one mic up close and personal (just off axis and against the grill) and one back a few feet to capture the sound of the room.



Me too...

http://www.hammguitars.com/guitarscanada/mics.JPG

[Milkman]

Me too...

http://www.hammguitars.com/guitarscanada/mics.JPG

Looks like a 57 and an Apex.

And, yup, the combination of those two channels will likely give you what you need.

[Hamm Guitars]

Looks like a 57 and an Apex.

And, yup, the combination of those two channels will likely give you what you need.


You got it. I had a guy that was going to record clips for my website, but he fell off the face of the earth...

I'm now running this through a Yamaha Pro Mix 01 (01v died on me) into an Echo24.

[Hamm Guitars]

Just eyeballing those relative distances, I would think you'd have bad phasing problems. But maybe not.

If I match the levels that cancells at around 160Hz. I set up the parametric EQ to pull out 160 on one track when I mix the two together so they don't cancel.

The room is pretty live as well, there are lots of hard surfaces, but this setup is just to get basic guitar sounds into the computer.

[Hamm Guitars]

The 57 up close is where the bottom end is and the apex is just catching air, so I dont mind having to cut a few dB off the low end of it.

The main signal is actually direct out of the tubeworks preamp, the mics are added to taste when I mix things down. Both mics have phase issues with the direct signal, but it's not actually too bad.

[Paul]

Just eyeballing those relative distances, I would think you'd have bad phasing problems. But maybe not.

I think that comb filtering and flutter echo are the likely problems. (both are phase type issues) The biggest reason for this that I can see is the complete lack of acoustic treatment for the room. EVERY room on the planet needs bass trapping. All of them. Get some 2" or 4" Owens Corning 703 FRK rigid fiberglass insulation and stradle every corner you can. Everything you listen to or record in the room will tighten up.

Once the bass trapping is taken care of, you can start to deal with reflection points.

I find it odd that we'll spend thousands on guitars, amps, mics, cables, PA's, computers and recording set ups, but won't put $200.00 into acoustic treatments.

FWIW, I've got my OC 703, I just haven't framed it up to make it pretty enough for my wife to let it into the house.

[Milkman]

Looking at a picture and judging the sound is a bit difficult IMO.

I would start with something pretty close to what the OP's picture illustrates, but with the close mic closer and the far mic a bit farther. If a phasing or cancellation problem occurs it's generally pretty obvious and easy to correct.

But, all rooms having their own sonic characteristics and the same being true for amps and guitars, one does have to use one's ears to judge how a particular mic'ing arrangement works.

[Paul]

I'm a fan of Ethan Winer, and his acoustics forum:

http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/postlist/Board/24/page/1

I've been in rooms with bass trapping per his ideas, and the improvement is dramatic. Ethan also has his own site: www.ethanwiner.com. It was this site were I found my sig line, so he can't be all bad.:smile:

Hamm talked about the pictured room being "live", and from the one corner we can see, the floor is hard surface, and there is no treatment on the two walls we can see. The vertical corner we can see would be one of the first places that should be treated.

Here is a room mode calculator that will tell you where your problems begin:

http://www.realtraps.com/modecalc.zip

which is part of this article:

http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

Start with broadband bass trapping, and then treat the remaining problems as best you can. Then again, using the spare 10'x11'x8' bedroom is working against you to start with. But for most of us, that's all we have.:smile:

[Hamm Guitars]

Hey Guys,

The set up pictured is just a quick and dirty set up to grab guitar samples for a web site. The room is very hard and very live and it has lots of natural reverb which actually sounds nice, not harsh. The mics are used to add some openness and get this natural rev onto the tracks to make things sound less focused than the direct line out. With that said, the two mics on their own in this configuration sound fine and the whole thing is workable.

The entire situation is not 'ideal' for recording, but I do live sound and I am used to working in less than ideal conditions. Combing filters are easy to hear and easy to treat with a single source and multiple lines using the EQ on the individual tracks. Also the end result is more than satisfactory for its intended purpose.

The mics have been sitting there unused for over a month so, they have moved and the cabinet that they are micing likely has as well. The grill is normally off the cabinet when recording as it rattles a bit every now and then.

If I ever get my player back, these clips will be on my website, so you will be able to hear what this setup sounds like.

I would record the tracks myself, but I am not that versatile of a player and more than a little on the unbridled side.

[Paul]

If your mics aren't placed properly, no amount of bass trapping in the world is going to fix that.

Mic placement is determined by personal choice. The acoustics of the room are determined by the laws of physics.

Just about every room will improve with broadband bass trapping. You'll reduce the peaks and nulls in the muddy part of the spectrum, and you will not affect the liveliness of the room to any great extent. If the room is too live you can always bring in a carpet, or put up some diffusers.

The smaller the room you are working in, the more likely you will benefit by making the room "dead", and adding ambience effects artificially in the mix.

I don't believe that the "perfect" room exists, for tracking, mixing or mastering, on either the hobbyist or "pro" levels, but there are rooms that are better. For those of us who dabble in home recording, we are stuck with the decisions the home builder made. In my room I am above the furnace, and the main water line. I cannot have heat, A/C, or lawn watering going on when I record because there is too much ambient noise. I've got a hardwood floor, drywall and popcorn ceiling in a 10'x11'x8' room for all tracking and mixing, (I have a Boss BR1180-CD). I can't have the mic live and have the monitors on at the same time, (feedback) so all of my tracking is done dry and flat. I honestly don't know what things will sound like until I listen back. Just about everything is done with headphones until I decide to try and mix things.

I've developed habits that help me predict what I might get on tape, (mic placement), but I know I've got issues in the room that broadband bass trapping will improve.

Let me be clear, acoustic treatment is not a cure all or a fix, it is something that makes an improvement. How much of an improvement is based on the original qualities of the room, and your budget. I'm in for about $200.00 for my broadband bass trapping, (I will treat all vertical and wall/ceiling corners, as well as some wall panels, (about 75' of 2 foot wide x 4" thick OC703FRK)), and I expect a noticable improvement in the tightness of the bass frequencies. I've been in rooms before/after with similar treatment, and the differences are frequently dramatic.

YMMV

[Paul]

1. Ensure that the source sounds good. Suprisingly, not enough people pay attention to this. Garbage in = garbage out.

EXACTLY!!!! And acoustic treatment of the room will make this task more predictable and repeatable. Where the sound source is physically located in the room can make as much difference in the sound you will be able to record as how close the mic is to the sound source.

All of the wonderful things that give sound "life" "brilliance" "clarity" "air" "presence", and all of the other great producer words are in frequency ranges well above the zone that broadband bass trapping will improve.

Again, let me be clear, I am in no way suggesting that broadband bass trapping is the cure to all ills. But for less than the cost of 2 SM57 mics, I can make measurable and audible improvements to the acoustic qualities of my room. I'm not fooling myself, in my case I'm polishing a turd. My room is less than a 1/3 the volume of a minimum sized decent room, and the room ratios are all wrong. But I have heard for myself, in rooms that have been treated with simple OC703 FRK corner bass traps, the improvements that can be made. The bass frequencies are tighter, the imaging is improved, and the mixes translate better to other systems in other rooms.

(and to make this thread even more contentious...this is where Milkman's use of the Tonelab shines. He has 100% control of the sound he creates. The soundsource is always the same, the PA is always the same. The difference in sound quality from gig to gig is the ROOM. You can't use EQ to fix a room. Acoustic treatments do that. Just don't go all Great White in your attempts at a cheap but deadly fix!:smile:)

YMMV

[Paul]

And again, let me be clear, acoustic treatment will do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to cure the phase issues caused by poor mic placement. We're talking about two different things here. If your comment was directed at the original poster, you are absolutely correct. Perhaps I misunderstood, but I thought you were referring to that picture of the two mics on the cab that Hamm Guitars posted and suggesting that room treatment would solve the phase issues, which clearly isn't the case.


I did refer to that photo, but more in reference to general phase type issues irrellevant of mic placement. (I'm sorry, I should have been more clear in my original post. I understand clearly what I meant to type, shouldn't everybody???:smile:)

Indeed you don't even need mics to suffer from comb filtering issues, all you need is two loudspeakers. How those two react and interact with each other may cause interesting sound qualities, depending where you are sitting.

Any space with walls is going to have some problem room modes. These are frequently most annoying in the bass frequencies. You can have peaks and nulls swing as much a +/- 15 dB at various bass frequencies only a few Hz apart. These peaks and nulls may be only a few inches apart in the room. Put the mic wherea couple of good nulls intersect, and all of a sudden the sound source is a bit thin and lifeless. That can sound to the ear like a phase cancellation issue, but the room is part of the blame. Move the mic and sound source 2 feet in any direction, and things can and will change dramatically, regardless of how tight your mic is stuck in the grill cloth. A single O/H mic too close to a reflective ceiling give you some neat phase problems, due to the early reflections.

Most of us are recording digitally these days, so multi mic phase issues are much easier to correct or at least compensate for. A little bit of time aligning by inserting or deleting a few ms of silence into one of the tracks, (assuming each mic is recorded to a separate track), and you are golden.

[Paul]

Not entirely. Phase issues are both time and frequency dependent. The results from shifting tracks around in a DAW after the fact will never be as good as just getting the relationships correct in the first place.

OK, I'll go back and edit "golden" to "silver".:smile:

I've never had much success multi micing guitar rigs, at least in one pass. If I'm going for "big", I prefer to tight mic on the first pass, and then open up the distance to get more of the room for a second pass. It usually takes me 187 takes to get two good passes, but I've got time. Talent......well I'm working on that.:smile:

[Hamm Guitars]

Guys,

I didn't mean to open up a can of worms here...

The two mics are about 40 inches apart, they will comb primarily at the frequency with twice that in wavelength (~160Hz). The distant mic does not benift from the proximity effect, so the lower end range isn't all that important, and it can be EQ'ed out to nullify its effect on the close mic. Any phasing as higher wave lengths is hardly noticable, if at all.

The room is live, and is kicking back lots of relections which is where I am getting my rev from. The direct sound of the pre amp is bone dry, and very focused.

All the technical aspects aside, this is quick and dirty. Two mics on one stand and a direct line out. I bring them up on seperate tracks, each one individually gives me what I'm after, there is a slight combing problem with the distant mic which is easily rectified. In the end, I get the result I'm after so I don't see any problem with it. With that being said, there is no need to move the mics or treat the room in any way.

I've heard lots of stuff that comes out of perfectly engineered studios, with ideal environments that sound like total crap. I've also heard bands play in hockey arenas and the sound was fantastic.

EQs are not evil, I've made a living by knowing how to use one. Look at relative mic placements in live situations, no where near ideal and the loudest ones move around. The main front of house graphs are for EQing the room and the environment in relation to the mics. Other than a few basic guide-lines, the whole technical aspect doesn't really matter if what you are hearing sounds good. Mixing audio is not a technical skill and it does not require any at all. If something sounds wishy-washy it doesn't really matter why, it only matters that you recognize it as a problem and can deal with it. Mix with your ears, not with your eyes or by some rulebook.

I'm not knocking the importance of proper mic placement, accostically nuetral rooms, or anyone else's opinion for that matter. I'm just pointing out that they are not the be all end all when it comes to shoving a couple of mics in front of a guitar cabinet and getting a sound that works for me.

I think GuitarPix said it best way back in the second post of this thread:

"In the end, there's as many ways to mic a speaker as there are sound engineers."

[washburned]

http://www.stephensonamps.com/gallery/pages/212muttmics.htm

[Hamm Guitars]

Here is what that quick & dirty set up sounds like without the direct signal.

The left side is the 57 and the right side is the room with a both mics totally flat.

After it is converted to a 128K mp3, the bottom end has lost all of its punch and there is some top end digital trash in it. The over all dynamics are also pretty much gone to hell and it sounds pathetically life-less, but as I said this is just quick and dirty to get a few sound clips on a web site, and I'll spend some time polishing up the end product.

Adding in the focused direct signal in the center gives me what I am after, considering that most people will be listening to these tracks through plastic computer speakers, this is by no means a professional production.

This is just me messing around setting levels with an FGS, I am going to get a guy that can actually play record the tracks for the web site for me. So, the end product will have the center channel and a guy that can play, which will make a big difference. I'll also put some time into getting it to sound right when it is converted to MP3 and the actual mixing of the tracks - this is just two raw tracks panned left and right.

So with total disregard for mic placement, room treatment and musical talent, this is what you end up with:

http://www.hammguitars.com/guitarscanada/mp3/FGS1.mp3