Mic placement?

J

Jackrip

New member
I am getting frustrated with my quality.. I mean it has gotten better with the new equipment I am buying, its still kinda a dissappointment. I tried everything, I tried out so many different set ups, and the one I got sounds the best, but its still kinda blahhhh if you know what I mean. I just wanted to know if mic placement will help me get crisper and cleaner vocals? Because right now they are kinda muffled
 
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Groove Tubes GT 55 Mic... VTB-1 Preamp... Dbx 166xl compressor.. Tascam US-122... Laptop

I record in my basement..
 
Try singing in a Closet Filled with Clothes...The Clothes should absorb the Reflected sounds and Give you a Truer representation of what your Voice sounds Like as Opposed to Singing in an Untreated Basement....

Just a Thought!!!


Cheers
 
while we're talking about mic placement, what are some of the good hot spots on guitar amps. I like an inch or to from the speaker pointing at about a 90 degree angle towards the cone. Anybody have any other recomendations, different approaches with distorion, clean?
 
Big Kenny said:
Try recording without that compressor once, could be muddying things up for ya.
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Well if thats the problem... can I fix it? Cause I am still messing with the settings... and I dont wanna NOT use the compressor, you know?
 
Put headphones on and check for the sweet spot on all yours mics. Use your voice for this. Not the instrument. Try all angles all around the mic. Only point this sweet spot directly at the point you wish to record. I do not recommend off angle mic placement until your comfortable recording the sweet spot dead on. Then you will easily hear the difference when doing off angle. Know your mic sweet spots!!!

Some guys flip out about putting the mic directly into the middle of the speaker cone. I find this works very well in most but not all cases. Listen to my demo:
http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?fid=3952
The sweet spot of the mic was pointed directly at the center of the cone for this. This is where your high freqs are.

Your preamp gain should be as high as possible without clipping or distortion.

Your cables should be excellant quality. Monster mid grade, I believe the Pro? series. Keep them as short as practicle. Cables do make a difference. I can hear the difference in my monitors. I made most of my own on the cheap.

Avoid compression until you're comfortable with the above. Then work in a touch of compression. I prefer limiting over compression.

You should get pretty good recordings with the above recommendations. Again avoid off angle recording until you are comfortable with dead on mic placement of the sweet spot.

Bob the Mod Guy.
 
and I dont wanna NOT use the compressor, you know?

Mission Control, I think we've found the problem.

The advice to learn how to mic with the minimum in your signal path is as good as it gets. Everything you put in the way is one more thing that can potentially screw up the sound, unless you are very experienced at using it. I am guessing that you are not up to that status yet, based on your question.

This is not a putdown, just practical: the compressor doesn't do anything you can't do through technique, either on the engineering side or the performance side. Compressors are the LAST thing you do your recording, not the first.

Mic placement is learned by taking the mic and moving it around while you listen to what it's hearing, just like Bob the Mod Guy said. So what's the secret? Moving the mic around and listening: every time, every recording. Eventually you'll find 5 or 6 places where you like it, but unless you record the same song over and over, I doubt you'll find "THE" magic spot. That's what makes it so difficult to advise people on it, because it's all about YOUR ears and YOUR gear and YOUR room and YOUR singer and YOUR microphone...I guess you get the idea. A couple of individuals on this board have advised me that I CAN'T be using a [name of mic I own] on vocals, because it sux! OK, for them, it sucks, but I get great results in my room with my gear and so on and so forth. And I don't use that mic on every recording, but when I do, I take the time to find out where it wants to be.
 
Additional point

Another point to make is mic distance. 6" to 8" to 10" is fine. Any closer you'll run into proximity build up which will make your tracks sound more bassy and dark. Also you don't need to crank, an easy relaxed volume is all thats needed unless your going for amp effects that only surface when maxed out but then your mic technique will change to accommodate that.

Bob the Mod Guy
 
That clip sounds pretty good Bob. I've never had much luck getting that kind of quality with the mic pointed dead center speaker cone. What distance is that mic from the speaker?

Compression tends to accent hi freq and sibilance when I over do it. I had a decent experiment this weekend splitting the mic signal and recording one completely dry and one compressed, then blend the compressed one in just enough to fill out the thinness in the dry one. But I had to tame the hi freq on the compressed one, since the dry one was already bright enough. Supposedly this is some kind of "Motown" trick, thought I'd experiment with it. I was 2 feet from the mic (RE20) since the character of the song blends better with a voc that isn't too thick and warm.

Mainly I noticed that compression was the component that tended most easily to ruin my voice.

For guitar cab, I've had good results using a front mic and a back mic (open back cab). But I'm using a tube amp which sounds a lot better cranked, which means I cant do the close up dead center position or the mic distorts. So I moved it about 12 inches away from the cone edge and turned it off axis not quite 90 degrees, this helped a lot. Used an ND468 for that, and a D770 for the back of cab (reverse phase on it).
 
I think your doing to much work and reading to much of what others have done. I have often found, that although these tricks may have worked in the high end studios of the past they never worked for me. Compression is a form of distortion of the audio signal and so it will almost never sound natural. That demo was done simply. The sweet spot of one mike pointed dead center about 10" back at low volume for both the left track and the right. I did employ one trick however, I used one mic for the left and a different one for the right. That technique of using different mics for different tracks works better than any other I have found. Plus I also do a high pass using a hardware eq. Everything below 50 Hz is dropped by -11 dB. That helps alot too. It chops out dead air and improves the definition of the in band range. Plug in eq do not seem to have the horsepower hardware ones do so I would suggest a hardware one. There is one free one that seems to have some balls to it and thats the slim slow slider which doesn't seem to be available anymore.
I have often found alot of that high end studio trickery just does work out well in my humble project studio in my spare bedroom. Keep it as simple as possible. If you read the Hardware vs Software thread you'll read about where I used limiting but no compression on that either. You may wish to read that thread.

Bob the Mod Guy
 
Bob's Mods said:
Your preamp gain should be as high as possible without clipping or distortion.
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Noo...noo..noo...

Leave some headroom...shoot for peaks from -.6 to -.12 db(24 bit)...I keep mine at around 10.

"as high as possible without clipping" is not very good advice. Dynamic range! Headroom! these are good things!
 
Big Ray,

Actually -6 DBFS is just fine! Yes, 24 bit recording does offer alot of head room. -.6 to -.12 is really on the edge. Too high in my book. Your golden in the -6 to -4 range. Thats where I operate.

Bob
 
woah, you guys ahd me comfused there for a second :D

BR if you didn't add the decimal point (e.g. -.6 to -.12) you woulda had it right. You mant to say -6 to -12 right?

I try to keep my peak into a Ad at -12 to -6 dbFS, and shoot for -9. I wish DAW meters were alittle more accurate though, especially on transients.

T
 
lpdeluxe said:
This is not a putdown, just practical: the compressor doesn't do anything you can't do through technique, either on the engineering side or the performance side. Compressors are the LAST thing you do your recording, not the first.
Click to expand...

Vocals and bass are often printed to tape/digital with compression. In fact almost every producer interviewed in "Behind the glass" say they record with compression on vocals, leaving room for more if desired/needed at mix down.
 
EDAN said:
Vocals and bass are often printed to tape/digital with compression. In fact almost every producer interviewed in "Behind the glass" say they record with compression on vocals, leaving room for more if desired/needed at mix down.
Click to expand...

Headroom can be achieved by compressing at any point in the process. The best engineers use compression when tracking mainly for three other reasons:

1) As a light limiter to control an unexpectedly loud transient
2) Because it adds a desireable color to the vocal or instrument
3) (And here's the one a lot of people forget): It helps the performer control their own dynamics in the cue mix, so they actually can give a better performance. They don't get lost on the softer sections, and don't feel they have to back way off when they get loud. It lets them sing (or play) less self-consciously, allowing them to concentrate on musicality.
 
yeah, -6, to -12.

In 24 bit recording, you can record at -47 and STILL have greater resolution than redbook....why use up all your headroom?? leave some space!!!! ..if you record every instrument in this manner every time... :eek: :(
I try to shoot for a mix where something REALLLLLLY has to be going on to get the peaks up near pegging.


Tonio said:
woah, you guys ahd me comfused there for a second :D

BR if you didn't add the decimal point (e.g. -.6 to -.12) you woulda had it right. You mant to say -6 to -12 right?

I try to keep my peak into a Ad at -12 to -6 dbFS, and shoot for -9. I wish DAW meters were alittle more accurate though, especially on transients.

T
Click to expand...
 
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