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VonBonfire
Well-known member
Yet there is no way to 100% capture that, ever, so he's trying to reinvent the wheel.
Metal guitar recording methods used by majority are far from optimal?
TheGreatGreen
Well-known member
Yeah it seems he’s saying the best way to capture the true essence of a 4x12 cab in the room is to use a 4x10 cab mic’d with a “flat” mic from multiple feet away.
Oh and he also only listens to music that sounds “different from all the rest” so you know he’s better than everybody else and also totally right about everything.
However, I have yet to hear him put his money where his mouth is and actually record anything that way himself and then post a single clip though. I hope he does because I can’t wait to be impressed beyond words at the sheer genius of his ideas that have eluded everyone else for decades, which will surely give us this magical “true whole sound of the speaker” that he thinks is uniquely desirable for some reason.
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VonBonfire
Well-known member
You never hear the amp as it sounds in the room because your ears compress at volume, thereby naturally altering your perception of what it sounds like live. Then you have the room itself, and mic location, altering that sound also. If you want a room sound you're in the chase forever because there is no definitive "room" sound for a given amp i.e it's room dependent. Change rooms and you now have a different room sound. And if you are running volume then the room sound is going to reflect it's sonic biases even more. To top it all off everyone has different ears right down to the physical shape and angle they are set to the head so they will naturally hear everything a little differently. A dumbo ears guy isn't hearing the amp the same way a cub ears guy will.
I am working on finishing mixes for a 9 song CD. I tracked all the guitars with a 57 up close and a room mic about 5 feet off and 5 feet up from the floor. In zero cases do I have more room mic mixed in vs the 57. The room mic does add a good dose of depth and richness to the tone. I would not go back to solely using a 57 but neither would it be possible to go room mic only. I've found blending the two, with mostly the 57 as the dominant mic has given me about the best "room" sound I could put together with the gear I have available at my disposal.
TheGreatGreen
Well-known member
Totally agree. Amp in the room tone is inherently non-transferable because a necessary component of it is the listener's head position and their own perception of the room sound.
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VonBonfire
Well-known member
Yeah, and then add things post tracking to it to optimize the tone. Even if you had captured the perfect theoretical room tone all you'd get is a situation where less post processing is needed and tbh a 57 close mic'ed doesn't need much fooling with which is why it is a such a go-to. Affordable and effective.
7704A
Well-known member
I don't think the unattainability of an ideal means we can't get close(r) to the ideal.
I don't think the OP is aiming for a single well-defined sound, I think he just wants to be able to capture whatever the particular combination of room, amp, volume level, listener position, etc. is adding up to. E.g., show up to a club for a show, find the spot in the audience where it sounds best, plop a mic stand there, and when you listen back on studio monitors it's almost like standing in the club again.
Sure, and so the upper limit of realism would probably be set by this.
I think the OP's plan in that situation is to get "the perfect theoretical room tone" and then not post process it.
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VonBonfire
Well-known member
If you have time and money to burn, by all means. The law of diminishing returns applies to everything here in a big way.
Yet none of the parameters can be applied starting with it's not a live show and he's not in a club and even if he were the most "real" sound is gonna be on stage, not in the audience who are getting post processing through front of house which ties into this below:
Except post processing is inherently beneficial to the overall quality of your final mix, which is why everyone does it. He could close mic it with a couple different mics, then place ten high quality condensers out in the room. Now you're at the stage where "which mics and mic pres and compressors are most accurate at reproducing the sound I'm hearing in the room?"
Sounds like an argument for buying a ton of expensive outboard gear to go along with it. You could spend a half million bucks in such a venture and ultimately wind up with something that is marginally better than a 57 and one room mic, which is why industry standards are industry standards. It seems naive to think that a thousand other engineers with more and better gear than the OP didn't already explore these pathways and at the end of the day the close mic is still going to be at the core of the final product. I would encourage you to confirm this for yourself by tracking your PZM's in stereo alongside with stereo 57's simultaneously and then do a final mix of both of them and see which mics take primacy in your end product.
7704A
Well-known member
Sure. OP seems willing to at least try burning time.
Those specific parameters weren't meant to be taken as core to the example, they were meant to be taken as arbitrary and uncontrolled to illustrate just showing up to whatever situation you have and getting an accurate recording.
The exact details of how the sound is generated in the club example were not important. The idea was to illustrate what I think the OP wants. He stands somewhere in the room, and likes what he hears. The sound could be generated by a guitar amp a few feet away, a club PA, crickets, or a squeaky rubber chicken. OP then wants to be able to use some mic setup to record the sound he hears in that spot of the room so that when played back it sounds as close as possible to what he heard originally. @Kraku is that right?
I don't think OP is focused on getting a better tone, just a different tone. He wants to hear what he hears in person on a recording. He seems fixed on hearing exactly what he hears in person, so I doubt he'd apply post processing even if it made things subjectively better. @Kraku ?
Maybe @Kraku can shed light on his thought process.
This is in the works already. So far the PZMs are promising from a quick uneducated attempt at baffled pair recording, but the setup still needs tweaking. Which thing ends up in the final product would again kinda be a function of end goals. I've gotten some PZM recordings that I thought sounded as close as possible to what I was hearing in the room, but were subjectively inferior to what I heard through the 57. In that specific case, if I was trying to maintain accuracy to the room I'd use the PZM, if I was going for what sounded better I'd go with the 57. It seems like @Kraku is in the former camp, and wants to get everything sounding right before it hits the mic and then alter things as little as possible with the mic, pre's, compressors... etc.
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VonBonfire
Well-known member
That should be a goal of anyone recording but at some point aiming to hear the room sound is going to be limited by the room you have to work with. Even in a case where you have an amazing room to work with it wouldn't make sense not to also close mic. Speaking from experience here, room mic'ing adds to a close mic'ed sound but it will be more post processing than a 57 will be if you utilize the room mic as your core tone because now you are forced to counter the sonic bias of the room post production.
He's chasing something people have already chased. Between your PZM's and your 57's you'll wind up with a kickass final sound but I seriously doubt you will be able to replace the close mic'ing with PZM's room mic'ing your amp alone.
RaceU4her
Well-known member
im so glad i never really got too hung up on any rules as i see many doing when it comes to recording, maybe being into as many different styles of music as i am and learning different techniques to get all those different styles has kept me open to pretty much anything.
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Kraku
Member
The simplest way to explain what I'm after is that whatever sound comes out of the guitar cab, I want to reproduce it as faithfully as possible coming out of my studio monitors. A sonic Copy/Paste operation. So no room sound/ambience should be recorded at all. This I've tried to emphasise in my comments, but people have mostly ignored that important point in their answers.
So the effect you should experience in the room would be like you had moved the guitar cabinet to where your studio monitors are. So the recorded signal should be as dry as possible and any/all room sound would be coming from the real room around you while the studio monitors are playing back the recorded audio.
Smash
Hack
Speaker IRs are great. Especially if lazy. But micing your cab is fun also
311boogieman
Well-known member
Have you seen Ola's video where he compare/contrasts multiple mics at the same time on the same riff and you can forward or rewind?
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Kraku
Member
Don't know the video.
311boogieman
Well-known member
I can't find the one I was thinking of. It is fairly old. It shows the room he is in and all of these mics including some In Room ones.
But here are 2 others that I found that are also interesting. Just FYI, nothing else.
But here are 2 others that I found that are also interesting. Just FYI, nothing else.
BeZo
Well-known member
I'm getting ready to start my process. I hope it lives up to the standards.
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Kraku
Member
@skoora said in a different thread: "Don’t get ahead of yourself now. Still waiting for your speaker shoot out."
Let's move this to the right thread which is here, instead of you trolling around the forum.
Based on what you're suggesting, I can see you lack the capacity to understand the topic of this conversation. If you had understood it, you would not have made that comment. But since you did, I feel obligated to answer you so you might become a productive member for this discussion, instead of being arrogant because you have no comprehension of the concepts that are being discussed here.
First of all, the exact speaker types and the exact sounds coming out of the speakers are not the what is being discussed here. The speakers don't matter. The sound coming out of them doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that you can copy/paste that sound coming out of that speaker so that it then comes out the same out of your studio monitors. We are not comparing the sonic characteristics of some specific metal guitar tone. That's completely beside the point. We are talking about if some more generic process can faithfully capture the sound coming out of those speakers, so that there would be no need for such rotes people mostly use for capturing many of the guitar sounds today, such as the infamous metal guitar tone you hear in most of the metal songs.
The second things is, that there is no technical way to make anykind of speaker shootout regarding this topic. Not just because it's not about the speaker, as I explained above, but because the only way to know if the process does what I want it to do, is to actually be in that room for yourself, and compare what's coming out of your guitar cabinet and how closely it compares to what you hear from your studio monitors. That's the ONLY way to know what the results "sound like", i.e. how well the process works. If you listen to any of those recording in any other environment, or even in the same room but without first hearing yourself the sound coming out of the guitar cab, you have absolutely no idea at all how well the process works, or if it works at all.
I hope this clears some of your confusion.
Let's move this to the right thread which is here, instead of you trolling around the forum.
Based on what you're suggesting, I can see you lack the capacity to understand the topic of this conversation. If you had understood it, you would not have made that comment. But since you did, I feel obligated to answer you so you might become a productive member for this discussion, instead of being arrogant because you have no comprehension of the concepts that are being discussed here.
First of all, the exact speaker types and the exact sounds coming out of the speakers are not the what is being discussed here. The speakers don't matter. The sound coming out of them doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that you can copy/paste that sound coming out of that speaker so that it then comes out the same out of your studio monitors. We are not comparing the sonic characteristics of some specific metal guitar tone. That's completely beside the point. We are talking about if some more generic process can faithfully capture the sound coming out of those speakers, so that there would be no need for such rotes people mostly use for capturing many of the guitar sounds today, such as the infamous metal guitar tone you hear in most of the metal songs.
The second things is, that there is no technical way to make anykind of speaker shootout regarding this topic. Not just because it's not about the speaker, as I explained above, but because the only way to know if the process does what I want it to do, is to actually be in that room for yourself, and compare what's coming out of your guitar cabinet and how closely it compares to what you hear from your studio monitors. That's the ONLY way to know what the results "sound like", i.e. how well the process works. If you listen to any of those recording in any other environment, or even in the same room but without first hearing yourself the sound coming out of the guitar cab, you have absolutely no idea at all how well the process works, or if it works at all.
I hope this clears some of your confusion.
311boogieman
Well-known member
^ I think he was just kidding around a bit bro. We do that a lot around here, you'll be OK. And although I did not dive into that thread and it is none of my business you are still allowed to tell me to fuck off 
pipelineaudio
New member
Often the answer to this like so many other recording questions about gear choice and technique is because "that's how everyone else does it and I'm afraid to think for myself". Luckily with micing a cabinet, the results are immediately audible, unlike magical or false claims about mic preamps and other faith based gear claims, so it may just be that its because that's the sound they like, regardless of what they claim they are after
TheGreatGreen
Well-known member
@skoora said in a different thread: "Don’t get ahead of yourself now. Still waiting for your speaker shoot out."
Let's move this to the right thread which is here, instead of you trolling around the forum.
Based on what you're suggesting, I can see you lack the capacity to understand the topic of this conversation. If you had understood it, you would not have made that comment. But since you did, I feel obligated to answer you so you might become a productive member for this discussion, instead of being arrogant because you have no comprehension of the concepts that are being discussed here.
First of all, the exact speaker types and the exact sounds coming out of the speakers are not the what is being discussed here. The speakers don't matter. The sound coming out of them doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that you can copy/paste that sound coming out of that speaker so that it then comes out the same out of your studio monitors. We are not comparing the sonic characteristics of some specific metal guitar tone. That's completely beside the point. We are talking about if some more generic process can faithfully capture the sound coming out of those speakers, so that there would be no need for such rotes people mostly use for capturing many of the guitar sounds today, such as the infamous metal guitar tone you hear in most of the metal songs.
The second things is, that there is no technical way to make anykind of speaker shootout regarding this topic. Not just because it's not about the speaker, as I explained above, but because the only way to know if the process does what I want it to do, is to actually be in that room for yourself, and compare what's coming out of your guitar cabinet and how closely it compares to what you hear from your studio monitors. That's the ONLY way to know what the results "sound like", i.e. how well the process works. If you listen to any of those recording in any other environment, or even in the same room but without first hearing yourself the sound coming out of the guitar cab, you have absolutely no idea at all how well the process works, or if it works at all.
I hope this clears some of your confusion.
I wrote up a pretty big effort post in this thread the other day about this but decided not to post it because it seemed like the discussion had died down, but I can see it hasn't, so I'll try to rewrite some of it.
Look, it's great you're wondering about stuff. And you should always look for ways to improve things, whatever they are, guitar or otherwise. However, in this case, we've been trying to tell you something that you have been unwilling to hear, so I'll say it as clearly as I can...
In the digital modeling industry alone, the concept of developing some method for "making a monitor or PA speaker mimic the exact sound and behavior of X,Y, or Z guitar cab" is something that has been chased by everyone, including some of if not the smartest and most innovative people in the entire guitar gear industry for the better part of at least two decades at this point. Many of these people have vested financial interests in cracking that nut, lots of whom have effectively all the resources in the world to make it happen. And do you know what literally all of them have concluded?
What you are asking cannot be done. It is impossible.
Not "we don't know how to do it," not "we might be able to do it but it's too expensive and/or resource intensive," but "it is literally impossible to make a FRFR speaker enclosure sound like any specific guitar cab."
Why is it impossible? Well...
The answer is basically "physics." What do you actually hear when you hear a 4x12 cab in the room? Hearing "four speakers" is only part of it. Even if you eliminate room reflections, which are HUGELY influential to in-the-room-tone, in addition to the main four speakers, you are still also hearing the other 6 sides of the speaker cab all audibly vibrating and behaving as speakers themselves (and it's 7 total sides if you have an angled cab) in addition to the main 4 speaker surfaces. And make no mistake they absolutely vibrate loud enough to influence the sound in the room. That means for any given straight-baffle 4x12, all together there are a minimum of TEN (10) separate surfaces vibrating and emitting sound, each one with its own unique EQ signature, its own dynamics, its own phase relationship between itself, every other surface of the cab, and your ear.
There is quite literally no way to completely accurately capture and translate the full behavior of that kind of sound producing device to a given studio monitor or PA speaker, most of which have only one main driver plus a tweeter and are completely differently sized, differently built, differently internally dampened, and many of which are differently shaped as well. It's just physics. And EVEN IF you eliminate the sounds produced by the sides and backs of the cab and you're only dealing with four speakers floating in space, you still wouldn't be able to capture the identical experience of standing in front of those speakers and walking around them and translate that to another monitor, just due to the fact that the overall shape and configuration of those four cones are going to be entirely different from whatever monitors you'd use, which means the directionality and beaminess would be totally different because your exposure to a given amount of speaker surface area depending on where you stand would be different between a cab and a monitor.
We hear what you are asking. It’s not just a case of us idiots not being able to comprehend the unfathomable genius of your idea to “use a reference mic and put it a little farther away than normal and maybe use a 10 inch speaker.” It's physics, man. What you are asking simply cannot be done because of the fundamental differences between guitar cabs and FRFR cabs. The next best thing is then to capture a sound that will translate to FRFR speakers and make it as good as possible.
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