#1933751 - 04/28/08 02:45 PM
Mic to amp help.....
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Rampdog
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I am having trouble duplicating what I hear from my amp to what I hear coming from my DAW... PC / Windows XP Pro
Cakewalk Sonar HS-6 XL
CPU Pentium 4
200 Gig Hard drive
2 Gig RAM
Samson Resolv 50a Active Studio Monitors
Alesis IO/2 Audio Interface
Line6 TonePort Interface
Korg K61 P / Midi Keyboard/Controller
I've gotten lucky once or twice but I'll be dipped in shite if I remember my settings... I've heard some of you guys' recordings so what are your tricks? I'm not talking about using a modeler I'm talking about recording amp to mic to interface to Sonar...
Any tips?
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#1933754 - 04/28/08 02:50 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Rampdog]
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Dr. Ellwood
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I don't worry about what I hear from my amp, I only worry about what the amp sounds like on the track! That sounds wierd doesn't it! but really it's true. I try different mic locations, room placement, axis changes etc. until I get what I want on the track, I don't pay alot of attention to the actual sound of the amp in the room like I do in live playing. I can tell you one thing...I've come to realize that recording guitar too hot is a mistake! because of the sonic space it takes up when you are trying to make the other instruments fit into the mix correctly.
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#1933756 - 04/28/08 02:56 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Dr. Ellwood]
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Rampdog
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Doc Lee... when you say "too hot" do you mean too loud at the amp? too much gain to the interface? too much gain in the software? Spill it brotha'.........
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#1933757 - 04/28/08 03:00 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Dr. Ellwood]
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fantasticsound
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Absolutely. If you're looking for the experience of listening to your amp when you playback a recording you will forever be disappointed. Even the best recordings of electric guitars do not sound like the amp because part of the experience (just like playing a real piano vs. a high quality sample) is how it affects your body due to the sound pressure levels. You can never recreate that through a PA speaker in the context of a song without burying the rest of the mix, and even then it won't move you like an amp and guitar cabinet. They're not designed to work that way.
Take Lee's advice. Be careful how hot (and distorted) you record your guitar and blend it with the rest of the mix. You'll be happier with the final product that way.
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#1933758 - 04/28/08 03:04 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Rampdog]
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Dr. Ellwood
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Well I guess I mean to much gain at the amp. I would rather make the overall guitar signature be created by two or three separate or doubled guitar parts than try to make a powerful fullness with just on guitar track. Drums are where I want hot powerful sonic fullness and if it's on one track it's ok but mix the different drums together to build the whole kit to be huge. I like to build guitar parts with maybe a acoustic track at the same volume as the electric track for fullness. Don't forget that your bass part should be huge! like a giant sonic carpet that everything sits on, and that takes up sonic space, again don't try to do it with just electric guitar.
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#1933761 - 04/28/08 03:08 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: fantasticsound]
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Rampdog
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Thanks Neil... So how do live albums sound so good? I mean the amps and guitars are live and I know they're mic'd through the mixer correct? (geez I sound like such a rookie but I am as far as recording...)
Doc Lee... I thought about layering but that is alot of work... I was looking for the easy way... (as always)
Edited by Rampdog (04/28/08 03:10 PM)
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#1933769 - 04/28/08 03:24 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Rampdog]
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Dr. Ellwood
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Ramp.... there is just no easy way! Easy ways end up sounding easy and not dynamic and unprofessional! Live recordings by pros are because of experience, ultra expensive mics, recording techniques and most of all what goes on in the mixing room and mastering stages later in the process... the live recording engineers duty is to give the final mix and mastering engineers the best basic tracks to work with, because garbage in usually is garbage out. Do LOTS of layering in the home studio! and build the parts up slowly. Just because you get a well played track don't think you have to keep it!! shitcan it IF it does not fit the overall project well, in my case I'm very used to playing with accuracy every time BUT recording is quite another story!!!
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#1933770 - 04/28/08 03:25 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Dr. Ellwood]
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Dr. Ellwood
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Oh..note... on live recordings, there are the mikes used for the PA system but there are also recording mikes there too that have NOTHING to do with the PA.
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#1933782 - 04/28/08 03:44 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Dr. Ellwood]
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fantasticsound
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Ramp, it takes a lot of high quality gear to get live recordings to sound that good for one. Also, if the recording is done live some of the interplay between instruments that sounds and feels so good to you on stage does get recorded. But isolating each instrument as is commonly done when you record alone or in many modern recording studios makes it more difficult to blend everything right from the beginning. A great live album usually begins with a great live balance in the room, although not always.
Recording is at least as much art as science and both are difficult to pin down as specs or procedures because the room you record in and about a thousand other variables come into play. Recording is rarely about getting the sound in the room anymore. Usually it's getting the sound you wish the room sounded like if you were sitting as a bystander. That's an entirely different thing than your perspective as a player.
There are few Geddy Lees, etc., who are great players that know when to play a lot or a little, then can move behind the glass and objectively fit their piece of the picture into the bigger scene. Geddy is pretty darn good at it. There are others. But it's very difficult to produce your own recordings with and objective ear towards the end product and not your contribution first. 
I can almost guarantee you that were you to listen to the raw tracks for many of your favorite songs you would be sorely disappointed by how they sounded before the mixer sculpted them into a coherent mix. More so post Beatles than pre but almost always on any rock album since the 1970's. You might also be surprised to hear how little gain and distortion are present on some of the hardest rocking songs of all time from bands like AC/DC. Angus and his brother did not beat their inputs into saturated submission near as much as people think, in the studio. Take a long listen to those records and compare them to bands that (IMO) overdo distortion to noise. By comparison AC/DC is virtually a clean sound. 
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#1933784 - 04/28/08 03:46 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Rampdog]
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Dr. Ellwood
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Ramp, tons of guys here will give you the answers you need, I am just trying to build tracks the way I've seen recording engineers do it and remembering how producers work with the engineers in studios I've played in, I sure wish now that I would have paid MORE attention to what they where doing LOL!!!
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#1933818 - 04/28/08 05:07 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: fantasticsound]
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Bill@Welcome Home Studios
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You move around the room, the amp sounds different from place to place. Is the mic where your ears are? No.
You can't mic a guitar amp from where you stand, because your mind does a lot of filtering of what you hear. But you can adjust your mic and adjust your tone so that what you get in the recording is what you both want and expect.
Number one, with someone playing, put on headphones and move the mic around. I usually start off with a close mic about one inch from the grillecloth, at about the outer edge of the cone, angled in towards the center of the cone at about the same angle as the cone. It sometimes helps (depending upon the musical style) to have a room mic, and it also needs to be moved around, forward or back, up or down, to find the right combination of primary signal, room echo, floor bounce and other ambience.
It shouldn't take much moving to find what works with the close mic, because you won't have to move it much to make a big difference. (I shpuld note that most people seem to like to put the mic square on to the cabinet, almost touching the cloth, dead center to the cone. To me, this sound takes your head off and needs a lot of eq in post.) The room mic is a different story. To get a start, I close my eyes and walk around the room whole the player plays, looking for my starting point. Then I go back to the headphones.
Bill
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#1933840 - 04/28/08 06:02 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Bill@Welcome Home Studios]
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mdrs
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For what it's worth I'll say that buying as good a mic as you can afford makes a difference. I'm still a total nubie, but my Royer 122 reproduces a very near facsimile of what I hear out of my little Fender combos......
The Royer is pricey, but perhaps some of the recording experts here can suggest more cost effective comparables.
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#1933845 - 04/28/08 06:14 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Rampdog]
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miroslav
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I am having trouble duplicating what I hear from my amp to what I hear coming from my DAW...
OK...can you elaborate a bit more?
What is it about your amp sound that you are not hearing from the DAW?
Not enough bite...too dull...too bright...too small...too big...etc?
But yeah, room sound isn't always what you want for the final mix.
And that's the other thing...are you just listening to the guitar by itself...or are you consider how it's fitting within the mix?
Often....what sounds great by itself in the room isn't always what you want/need for the whole mix.
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#1933948 - 04/29/08 03:39 AM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Rampdog]
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Trucks
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Lot's of good suggestions. I would second the need for a better Mic.
I did a small comparison recently between a Shure SM58 and a Beyerdynamic M88. Now the Shure I guess is a <$100 Mic and the Beyer a <$400 roughly. So not a great deal of price difference.
In my comparison I strapped the two Mics together and recorded one mic to one track the other to another track and then Mixeddown afterwards with only one mic per recording.
I found the Beyer to have more character than the Shure, the Shure sounds a little bland and boxey.
As you are not going to get a mic to 100% reproduce the amp sound, it's worth getting a Mic which adds some character in a way that is pleasing to your ears.
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#1933982 - 04/29/08 05:03 AM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Trucks]
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Bill@Welcome Home Studios
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I'm not against a new mic per se (better gear is always good...), but when I did a test of guitar mics a couple of years ago, I found that the overwhelming number of listeners prefered the sound of the Shure 57.
We've had a lot of discussions about mics and mic placements, and they can all be searched and re-read, so I'll not try to go over all that tons of info again. But I do suggest that, if you are inexperienced at recording and cannot get the sound that you want from the mic used to record more rock guitars than any other mic in history, you are either a very, very talented and picky beginner who should rush out and buy a pair of Royer 121s TODAY, or maybe you have a few chops to learn before you throw money at the problem.
Bill
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#1934145 - 04/29/08 09:44 AM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Rampdog]
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MILLO
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Just learned about Oktava and Avant Electronics CHEAP ribbon mics--apparently they're fairly good. Maybe it'd be better to just pick up the Royers, but it would definitely be cheaper to keep experimenting w/ mic position & amp dialing w/ what you have--I have to do the SAME thing myself.
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#1934186 - 04/29/08 10:37 AM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Bill@Welcome Home Studios]
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Trucks
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I'm not against a new mic per se (better gear is always good...), but when I did a test of guitar mics a couple of years ago, I found that the overwhelming number of listeners prefered the sound of the Shure 57.
We've had a lot of discussions about mics and mic placements, and they can all be searched and re-read, so I'll not try to go over all that tons of info again. But I do suggest that, if you are inexperienced at recording and cannot get the sound that you want from the mic used to record more rock guitars than any other mic in history, you are either a very, very talented and picky beginner who should rush out and buy a pair of Royer 121s TODAY, or maybe you have a few chops to learn before you throw money at the problem.
Bill
I'm sure if I were recording rock guitar, the Shure would be fine and dandy 
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#1934235 - 04/29/08 11:52 AM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Trucks]
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Rhino Madness
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Another thing to keep in mind is that a good preamp will make whatever mic you plug into it come alive. The difference between my Great River pre and the preamps found in a good prosumer level interface was striking. For those considering upgrading their mics, don't forget to factor in the whole chain before allocating the whole budget to the mics.
The best thing is always to do the best you can with the gear currently available and many great tips have already been posted. Practice and experience will probably dictate where your next upgrade should be.
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#1934260 - 04/29/08 12:38 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: fantasticsound]
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Michael Patrick
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I can almost guarantee you that were you to listen to the raw tracks for many of your favorite songs you would be sorely disappointed by how they sounded before the mixer sculpted them into a coherent mix.
This is so true... When we were mixing our album, I was shocked at the difference in the way any given guitar track sounded when the engineer pushed the "solo" button versus how it sounded in the whole mix. It's how the finished product sounds that is important. Don't take your eye off of that ball...
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#1934274 - 04/29/08 01:00 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Michael Patrick]
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Bill@Welcome Home Studios
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... When we were mixing our album, I was shocked at the difference in the way any given guitar track sounded when the engineer pushed the "solo" button ...
Yes that is another consideration. New engineers try to record every track as hot as possible, and as 'phat' (God, I hate that word...) as possible, and then when everything is mixed together, it's all mud. Go figure.
Bill
Edited by Bill@Welcome Home Studios (04/29/08 01:01 PM)
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#1934287 - 04/29/08 01:35 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Bill@Welcome Home Studios]
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CMDN
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The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Think about what's already been tracked and what kind of sonic space is presently being filled. Try looking for a tone that fills the empty sonic space--maybe it'll be really midrangey and snotty sounding or maybe it'll be really trebly and peircing. Don't be afraid to experiment and try stuff that sounds kind of lousy on its own.
I have frequently found an awful-sounding guitar tone (when soloed) will sit in the mix much more nicely than a comparitively "nice" tone.
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#1934297 - 04/29/08 01:50 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: CMDN]
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Rampdog
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Eric... I've been finding my Strat to sound nice and chimy outa' the amp but playback has been sounding a bit muffy? lifeless...limp... So now I'm trying to lean on the treble a bit and then see what I can do but listening to it commin' outa' the amp is a chore... It's different with the LP... For some reason it sounds pretty close after recording to what it sounds like from the amp... why is that???
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#1934298 - 04/29/08 01:54 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: CMDN]
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fantasticsound
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The preceding comments are perfectly illustrated on the Toy Matinee album. Many of the guitar timbres are downright disgusting when considered on their own yet they fill in exactly the space that needs filling in the mix. I'm a huge fan of the production on that album but I would be hard pressed to use those timbres myself.
Context is all that matters on record. And it doesn't hurt on stage either, but so long as you don't over power the PA or the room you can get away with a lot more push on stage than you can on record. Like Bill said, record everything "phat" (Yeah.. I hate that word too. ) and all you get is mud.
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#1934303 - 04/29/08 02:01 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Rampdog]
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Trucks
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Eric... I've been finding my Strat to sound nice and chimy outa' the amp but playback has been sounding a bit muffy? lifeless...limp... So now I'm trying to lean on the treble a bit and then see what I can do but listening to it commin' outa' the amp is a chore... It's different with the LP... For some reason it sounds pretty close after recording to what it sounds like from the amp... why is that???
I read somewhere on here a while ago (maybe it was Bill that posted it?) that a nice spot for the mic is a few inches back at the edge of the cone pointing diagonally in parallel to the cone surface (I hope I explained that in a manner which makes sense). After experimenting with that a bit, I found that the recording came through much clearer than I had been doing it (normally on the centre of the cone right up close).
I have also read some place (maybe here) that you can crank the preamp way up with the headphones on so you can hear the amp hiss quite loudly, then move the mic around til "the hiss sounds good", then bring the preamp back down again and adjust your levels etc. "the hiss sounds good" didn't make much sense to me until until I spent quite a bit of time friggin around with different placements etc and it started making more sense.
I find practical experimentation with a little guidance from others much easier to deal with, than reading pages of articles on "How to mic a guitar amp".
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#1934308 - 04/29/08 02:05 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: fantasticsound]
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Trucks
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Like Bill said, record everything "phat" (Yeah.. I hate that word too. ) and all you get is mud.
I'm not really sure what recording "phat" is. But I have had most success with recording with the mic preamp down as much as possible, while still getting a usable sound. Then normalising and what have you afterwards.
Is recording "phat", cranking the preamp? Or the Amp? Or both? Or what? :-)
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#1934320 - 04/29/08 02:28 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Trucks]
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Rhino Madness
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Recording "phat" does not refer to having a hot recording level or not but refers to recording everything as rich and full-bodied as possible so it sounds good on its own (but when all those rich-sounding tracks are put together without EQ-carving, the mix sounds like mud).
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#1934338 - 04/29/08 03:01 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Rhino Madness]
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Trucks
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Okaaay, makes sense now. Thanks for the explanation Rhino.
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But I have to learn somehow... Tune in for updates... 
I know alot of what I'm looking for will have to come out in the mix as Bill and Doc Lee and Neil and Miro have stated... It's work guys and I have to do it... no short cuts... Thanks all...
But so true... 
