Acoustic Guitar Test Recording

M

Mchu86

New member
Hello all,

I've been experimenting a lot with recording my acoustic guitars and would like some feedback on the quality of it. Nothing special to it, just a recording of simple chords.



Equipment is as follows (prepared to be appalled...):
MXL990/991 > M-Audio Buddy > BOSS BR-600 > Reaper

Mics were placed in X-Y configuration at approximately the 14th fret, 6cm away.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Michael

P.S. If others would post up their examples of acoustic recordings, I think it'd make a great resource for others (and myself :o) to have a listen through.
 
Sounds pretty good. If you can, I'd put some eq and compression on the track just to mellow it out a little. Does reaper have eq and comp plug-ins? I'd just cut a little of the low mids and then put on a compressor plug to shave off 3-4 dB of the peaks. Another way to get rid of some boominess is to mic a little further from the sound hole, like fret 12, and maybe a little further away, like 12 inches.

We're really starting to love mid-side recording for acoustic guitar. You need a figure of eight mic to do it, but it's worth it IMO. Just google mid-side recording and you'll find tons of articles on it. I just posted a sample here:
https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=290804

Good luck and keep at it.
 
Interesting comment by Zero. Without reading his reply, I listened. I agree that the sound is really nice. My nit is that there's too much compression. The hard strums on beats 2 and 4....I can hear the limiter kickin' in real hard...sounds un-natural. Either raise the threshold a tad, or reduce the ratio, to get those 2&4 strums a little louder, as intended when played!

Other than that, it's a righteous sound!
 
the kind of sound you want out of it, depends on the kind of song you'll use it for. if it's a mellow, soft song, then you'd want to take their advice. if you'll be putting drums into this and it'll be a more powerful kind of song, then it could stay like it is right now. i honestly love how it sounds, organic, strong yet mellow.
 
Thank you all for your critiques. I'll back off the compression a bit (still figuring things out obviously...).

For my purposes, I'm generally only going to be recording the acoustic track accompanied by a vocal. I believe if I upgrade the mics/pre, I should see an improvement. Agree? Or at least a noticeable difference. And guitar zero, I'll look into mid side recording, thanks.

Cheers,
Michael
 
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jeffmaher said:
Interesting comment by Zero. Without reading his reply, I listened. I agree that the sound is really nice. My nit is that there's too much compression. The hard strums on beats 2 and 4....I can hear the limiter kickin' in real hard...sounds un-natural. Either raise the threshold a tad, or reduce the ratio, to get those 2&4 strums a little louder, as intended when played!

Other than that, it's a righteous sound!
Click to expand...
Jeff, you are right, I hear it now that you pointed it out. I thought I was hearing uneven dynamics, but it seems that some of that was created by over compression. You have a good ear. I still think it would benefit from cutting some around 300Hz. At least I've noticed by doing so, it gets rid of some of the muddy sound, and brings out more of the rich woody sound of the guitar.
 
Yeah, it's pretty slammed, but I think the recording of the instrument was done pretty well. Just enough top end...easing up on the compressor will eliminate some of the lowmid humming going on, but in the right song, that sound can work very well. It's just that right now, it already sounds like it's coming out of my radio with a compression ratio of infinity above x and a threshold of "any noise at all will be compressed."

There were some audible clicks/pops that sound like an arm moving on the guitar, by the way...but I think that'll be virtually undetectable once you ease off of the compression.
 
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