About recorded amp harshness and highs

[nightlight]

I’ve been wrestling with getting good tones for years, and only in recent times have felt that I’m getting somewhere.

Some points I’d like to add to the discussion.

1. Don’t try to dial in a guitar sound in isolation. At least have a few bars of bass and drums playing on repeat and go from there.

2. A great single tracked guitar sound does not equal a great double tracked sound. In particular, this holds true for gain, which stacks. So before committing to a sound, experiment with the settings on your amp to get a good guitar sound in the mix.

3. Always record a DI. This should be the basic step in recording guitar, always, and will save you a lot of grief in the long run.

4. I think someone mentioned above how important it is to listen to your tone through studio monitors. If you don’t have a control room, this makes things very hard. What I do is dial in my guitar step by step. Make a few tweaks, record and then listen back and then tweak again. If I start approaching a good tone, I follow steps 1-3 to refine further.

5. Have at least one stereo monitor pair and one mono monitor. The mono monitor is the best way to get levels right in your mix, and also helps you figure out how your mix will sound over something like a cellphone or a pair of bookshelf speakers. The stereo monitors are for everything else. Headphones are fatiguing and I don’t trust them for mixing decisions, though they are useful as an auditioning method.

6. Make notes of your recording settings. This is hard to practice, but just take photos of your settings and put them in a cloud folder that is labelled with the project name. If you have space, you should also keep a copy of project files you have done in the cloud. I have learnt this to my error through frequent crashes that led to valuable work being lost forever.

 

[skoora]

I’ve been wrestling with getting good tones for years, and only in recent times have felt that I’m getting somewhere.

Some points I’d like to add to the discussion.

1. Don’t try to dial in a guitar sound in isolation. At least have a few bars of bass and drums playing on repeat and go from there.

2. A great single tracked guitar sound does not equal a great double tracked sound. In particular, this holds true for gain, which stacks. So before committing to a sound, experiment with the settings on your amp to get a good guitar sound in the mix.

3. Always record a DI. This should be the basic step in recording guitar, always, and will save you a lot of grief in the long run.

4. I think someone mentioned above how important it is to listen to your tone through studio monitors. If you don’t have a control room, this makes things very hard. What I do is dial in my guitar step by step. Make a few tweaks, record and then listen back and then tweak again. If I start approaching a good tone, I follow steps 1-3 to refine further.

5. Have at least one stereo monitor pair and one mono monitor. The mono monitor is the best way to get levels right in your mix, and also helps you figure out how your mix will sound over something like a cellphone or a pair of bookshelf speakers. The stereo monitors are for everything else. Headphones are fatiguing and I don’t trust them for mixing decisions, though they are useful as an auditioning method.

6. Make notes of your recording settings. This is hard to practice, but just take photos of your settings and put them in a cloud folder that is labelled with the project name. If you have space, you should also keep a copy of project files you have done in the cloud. I have learnt this to my error through frequent crashes that led to valuable work being lost forever.

It’s probably because I developed my recording techniques long before re-amping for guitar and DAW’s were a thing, but part of the artistic side of the process for me, is to pick a sound and just go with it. I’m not worried about getting it perfect. Just that it feels right for the riff/song. One thing I hate about music is option paralysis with certain gear. I try and avoid it whenever I can. It gets in the way of creativity.

Headphones are OK for some mixing, if you know them well. Just use good reference recordings to judge what they are doing to the sound. Same with studio monitors really. I don’t care what their reputation is if I’m not familiar with them. I always have one or two albums to try and get my ears accustomed to what I’m listening through, but having a few different methods of hearing playback is always good for balance.

Agree about occasional notes…when you have enough crap like I do, you sometimes stumble upon an unusual combo of pedal/amp/speaker/mic and the settings you did to get something special.
More often than not though I’m not too worried about re-creating a certain thing because I’m interested more in what might happen next.
If I was doing it professionally, not just for my own kicks, I would care a lot more about having good notes and history of how I achieved certain things.

 

[BesaMoogie]

That was a huge part of the problem, since i recorded too bright, I thought i had to lowpass up to 3khz (!!!), then kill those 5-6 khz frequencies as those on youtube does.

So is there a certain consensus which frequencies YT usually kills?
Just asking because I build a tube audio amp for my parents home. It sounds good with DAB+ radio signal but with YT, I always think that some of the top-end air is missing

 

[frthib]

So is there a certain consensus which frequencies YT usually kills?
Just asking because I build a tube audio amp for my parents home. It sounds good with DAB+ radio signal but with YT, I always think that some of the top-end air is missing

ahah i meant a lot of the "youtuber experts" on mixing and producing tend to remove some 4-5-6 khz frequencies systematically by dipping 2-3db with a narrow Q...

but I know YT alter the tone somehow, compression is a fact, and i guess some automated mastering of some sort but I don't know

 

[ZEN Amps]

the artistic side of the process for me, is to pick a sound and just go with it. I’m not worried about getting it perfect. Just that it feels right for the riff/song. One thing I hate about music is option paralysis with certain gear.

This man speaks the truth.

So is there a certain consensus which frequencies YT usually kills?

but I know YT alter the tone somehow, compression is a fact, and i guess some automated mastering of some sort but I don't know

I've read many anecdotal accounts of YT messing with audio, but after some pretty thorough testing it's not something I've been able to reproduce in any meaningful way. Maybe others have, can't say I've really looked into it. It's discussed in this thread.

Since then I've tried it on full mixes, speech and mixed content, and the quality is consistently fine. The audio all but phase cancels with the original, meaning dynamic and frequency response are unaltered.

Yes the audio gets data compressed to a 128kbps AAC. This may sound low quality, but it's considerably better than an mp3 of the same bitrate, and sounds the same as the original HQ audio under normal, practical circumstances. This has nothing to do with audio compression, although it seems many people confuse the two distinct processes.

But make sure you disable the 'Stable Volume' option in the YT player settings menu, this new 'feature' can screw with audio dynamics depending on the content.

 

[Monkey Man]

This has nothing to do with audio compression, although it seems many people confuse the two distinct processes.

Whilst I agree 100% with your entire post, for the layman this is likely the most-critical observation you shared IMHO brother.

Good stuff.

 

[nightlight]

This man speaks the truth.




I've read many anecdotal accounts of YT messing with audio, but after some pretty thorough testing it's not something I've been able to reproduce in any meaningful way. Maybe others have, can't say I've really looked into it. It's discussed in this thread.

Since then I've tried it on full mixes, speech and mixed content, and the quality is consistently fine. The audio all but phase cancels with the original, meaning dynamic and frequency response are unaltered.

Yes the audio gets data compressed to a 128kbps AAC. This may sound low quality, but it's considerably better than an mp3 of the same bitrate, and sounds the same as the original HQ audio under normal, practical circumstances. This has nothing to do with audio compression, although it seems many people confuse the two distinct processes.

But make sure you disable the 'Stable Volume' option in the YT player settings menu, this new 'feature' can screw with audio dynamics depending on the content.

Audio compression is something that happens on YouTube when you upload a file that is deemed too loud to be suitable for streaming.

It definitely happens, here is a clip I put up on YouTube, which sounds pretty horrible.



And now listen to this original clip, which is also pretty horrible, but yet sounds better.

https://1drv.ms/v/c/26282cd173ef66d7/EUVQ6kymL9VPgeLB6A0yGOgBwtNdhpGm87zRQrPrUQgS9w?e=rrfpKF

It's a pretty long video, so I would invite anyone curious to just to the 11.30 mark in both videos, which was where something resembling good tone shone through. Just listen for about 30 seconds, that's all.

You would notice on the Youtube clip how the volume is drastically reduced from the original on Onedrive.

If you listen closer, you will also hear other tell-tale signs of compression, like a bloated and reverberating bottom end and a higher gain structure, which makes the texture of the tone grainy.

Now the thing that really blows my socks off when listening to my Youtube video versus other videos on YouTube is "Why the hell are they compressing the sound so much? The volume is easily 3-4 db lower than all the other YouTube videos out there. Shouldn't it at least compress to the same loudness as those videos?"

At any rate, just want to point out that compression does happen on Youtube and it's not some made up phenomenon.

Also, compression reduces sound to a predetermined level. End of story. It doesn't arbitrarily pick and decide winners and losers, except on Youtube and other social media sites.

Go figure.

 

[ZEN Amps]

Audio compression is something that happens on YouTube when you upload a file that is deemed too loud to be suitable for streaming.

It definitely happens, here is a clip I put up on YouTube, which sounds pretty horrible.



And now listen to this original clip, which is also pretty horrible, but yet sounds better.

https://1drv.ms/v/c/26282cd173ef66d7/EUVQ6kymL9VPgeLB6A0yGOgBwtNdhpGm87zRQrPrUQgS9w?e=rrfpKF

It's a pretty long video, so I would invite anyone curious to just to the 11.30 mark in both videos, which was where something resembling good tone shone through. Just listen for about 30 seconds, that's all.

You would notice on the Youtube clip how the volume is drastically reduced from the original on Onedrive.

If you listen closer, you will also hear other tell-tale signs of compression, like a bloated and reverberating bottom end and a higher gain structure, which makes the texture of the tone grainy.

Now the thing that really blows my socks off when listening to my Youtube video versus other videos on YouTube is "Why the hell are they compressing the sound so much? The volume is easily 3-4 db lower than all the other YouTube videos out there. Shouldn't it at least compress to the same loudness as those videos?"

At any rate, just want to point out that compression does happen on Youtube and it's not some made up phenomenon.

Also, compression reduces sound to a predetermined level. End of story. It doesn't arbitrarily pick and decide winners and losers, except on Youtube and other social media sites.

Go figure.

Look man I'm not out to prove people wrong for the fun of it, or have gotcha moments, but I am interested in this area so I ran some tests on your audio. More data is always a good thing, and frankly it's nice to get to the bottom of things.

Those two sets of audio are virtually the same my friend. I believe there's two things leading you to your conclusions:

1. The volume difference. I forgot to mention that Youtube may normalise the audio. That's not the same as compression - it's just a global reduction of volume, exactly like turning down the volume slider on YT. It's static, i.e. global and consistent.

In fact it doesn't even alter the audio in the uploaded video, it does it on playback based on some metadata when the video was uploaded. This is to stop very loud videos from blasting people. So louder is better seems to be the case here.

2. It's a roomy, compressed audio recording. Maybe when it's played back quieter you're hearing the compression, or room more.

I ripped the audio from both sources you posted - the level was not changed on either. They mostly phase cancel, the remaining artefact is the result of different data compression or codecs used in the different platforms but it's not really affecting the audio. Same as comparing a CD track to a m4a, to the ear they are all but identical.

And here's that little section you mentioned (blind test), no difference to speak of:

 

[VESmedic]

Or you could just get a ribbon mic.

And have absolutely the darkest most bland undefined tone in a dense mix, sure.

 

[skoora]

And have absolutely the darkest most bland undefined tone in a dense mix, sure.

Those work good for me on jangly, medium gain tones as a solo mic, especially on a blue or other alnico but for hard rock stuff, definitely just a blend mic.

 

[nightlight]

Look man I'm not out to prove people wrong for the fun of it, or have gotcha moments, but I am interested in this area so I ran some tests on your audio. More data is always a good thing, and frankly it's nice to get to the bottom of things.

Those two sets of audio are virtually the same my friend. I believe there's two things leading you to your conclusions:

1. The volume difference. I forgot to mention that Youtube may normalise the audio. That's not the same as compression - it's just a global reduction of volume, exactly like turning down the volume slider on YT. It's static, i.e. global and consistent.

In fact it doesn't even alter the audio in the uploaded video, it does it on playback based on some metadata when the video was uploaded. This is to stop very loud videos from blasting people. So louder is better seems to be the case here.

2. It's a roomy, compressed audio recording. Maybe when it's played back quieter you're hearing the compression, or room more.

I ripped the audio from both sources you posted - the level was not changed on either. They mostly phase cancel, the remaining artefact is the result of different data compression or codecs used in the different platforms but it's not really affecting the audio. Same as comparing a CD track to a m4a, to the ear they are all but identical.

View attachment 367940

And here's that little section you mentioned (blind test), no difference to speak of:

Thanks for looking into this so deeply. I am quite surprised a null test shows you that the audio is the same.

Here are some screenshots of the waveforms. I routed the audio to a Fireface 800 and then into my UAD Apollo and from there to my DAW.

First shot should confirm the waveforms were relatively in sync. But look at the difference in the close up of the waveform right at the start of the clip, where there was silence.

The above dual lines are the Youtube video, the below ones are from the video I uploaded on OneDrive.

I did a null test using just the Youtube audio and it cancelled itself out. The same, however, did not happen when I flipped the polarity on the OneDrive clip and played it back with the Youtube one.

The waveforms should be able to tell the story pretty clearly, I would think.

 

[Speeddemon]

@Monkey Man you ought to try a Beyer M201 if you haven't already?
I find it more pleasing on guitar cabs than an SM57, in a way that you get a better tone more easily. I also got a Beyer M88 which even sounds better for high gain thick tones.

Like @VESmedic my experience with a -granted, cheap MXL R144- ribbon mic hasn't been great for rock/metal tones. And at this point in time, with quite a decent mic locker in the sub $1000 per mic category, I have no inclination to get a Royer R121.

 

[VonBonfire]

I'm finding this thread somewhat amusing. There seems to be a lot of overthinking happening. If you are doing a lot of post EQ'ing maybe your amp just sounds like trash to begin with. If you think one pricey mic is gonna make it happen your rig probably sounds like trash.

I've yet to meet any classic Marshall or Fender circuit that, dialed in for a good stage sound and combined with decent cab/speakers, didn't also sound pretty killer with a 57 and a room mic in front of it without doing a whole lot. If the room is all metal or mirrors that might be a problem but short of just a horrid room this is rock n roll, not rocket science. I guess this is why most bands and players never get projects off the ground. I do think there is a whole lot of guys who can't dial in an amp. Join the club, I can't either so I just use stuff that is tried and true and eliminate the guesswork. *shrugs

 

[Kalluget]

And have absolutely the darkest most bland undefined tone in a dense mix, sure.

Each to their own, Michael Wagener used them since the late 80s and got better tones than you ever will in your lifetime.

 

[dave74]

Anyone here ever try a beta-57?
It's much crisper and more defined sounding in both the highs and lows than the basic 57, and a bit louder too.
Maybe it's too bright/harsh for center or near dust-cap placement but I found it actually very useful for placing near the outside edge to blend with other mics.

 

[frthib]

There seems to be a lot of overthinking happening. If you are doing a lot of post EQ'ing maybe your amp just sounds like trash to begin with. If you think one pricey mic is gonna make it happen your rig probably sounds like trash.

I made a lot of mistakes and overthinking.

I started from the end, matching a real amp tone to a recorded sound. Stupid mistake but I suspect lot of people are doing this. Once you record that tone, you quickly find out it's pure garbage.

It's not the amp or the price of the mic.

At least doing this taught me at lot about post processing, eq's, mics, mic placement and multiband compression; all is not lost.

 

[skoora]

Each to their own, Michael Wagener used them since the late 80s and got better tones than you ever will in your lifetime.

I’m sure he only used one ribbon and no other mics

 

[VESmedic]

Each to their own, Michael Wagener used them since the late 80s and got better tones than you ever will in your lifetime.

Oh really? Cool, not one modern metal record in the last 40 years has ever had a R121 or any ribbon even CLOSE to being the main microphone used on guitars, let alone ever being on a heavy record really at all ever…but please, go on about a washed up dude who hasn’t been relevant for 35 years….

Where are your tones? Could you share some examples? I’d love to hear them! ESPECIALLY with that Uber awesome perfect royer 121, really looking forward to that.

 

[VESmedic]

He used Fostex M11RP Ribbons to record guitar amps, no dynamics or condensers. Go be a nigger somewhere else.

Wow, and here we are, the newest biggest piece of shit on rig talk. Enjoy your last post here fuckhead, I give it 10 minutes before your permabanned

 

[skoora]

The Fostex is a unique mic in that it’s a Printed Ribbon diaphragm that isn’t a traditional ribbon design. It has strong Dynamic characteristics. It’s a one off. Everyone here is talking about a traditional Ribbon design.