Recording mic'd guitar amp

S

Sammigz

New member
Im running the StudioOne Pro version and am looking for a way to record my mic'd guitar amp at a decent level.
Heres my dilemma...

I have a one room set-up for recording/mixing/mastering. I have an SM57 coming out of my Presonus FireStudio Project and mic'ing my Fender Frontman guitar amp. Its pretty loud (the amp) for the small room im playing in, but my recorded level is LOW, even with the SM57 mic input level all the way up. The recorded wave form is very small also. If i double the tracks and pan them hard left-right and jack the volume, I can get it to sound normal. But it seems like i have to turn the amp volume all the way up to get a good level, but then with my headphones on the amp is so loud I cant hear the backing track.
I have thought about setting up another mic as a room mic and record both mics at once and see what that does. But it seems like I should be able to get a decent volume with the SM57. Any ideas?
I was thinking of what plug-ins I could use on the input track? Or maybe something else Im doing wrong thats cutting my signal? Any help is appreciated. Thanks guys

-Xam
 
what's "LOW"?
what are the meters saying at peak and rms? -12? -24?

also, not familiar with that interface but are the pre's maybe the issue? Not hot enough?

I've used the 57 for lots of recordings and generally have to push the pre's a bit. You have another mic to try?
 
Sammigz said:
l room im playing in, but my recorded level is LOW
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Like the Dog said, what levels are you peaking at? LOW doesn't mean anything without numbers. The reason we ask is because 90% of the time when someone says "LOW", it's actually not too low. Hopefully you're not going for the dreaded "as loud as possible without clipping" because that's way too hot. If your levels are anywhere between -18 and -10 digital, that's not oo low, it's just right.

The recorded wave form is very small also.
Click to expand...
Define "small". It should be small. Actually, I wouldn't even pay attention to that. If you want a bigger wave form, change the view.

Recording and mixing aren't the stages you should be wprrying about volume. That comes way later in the process.In reality, unless you're recording at something like -75, there's really no such thing as too low.
 
First off. I needed to attach some files but the site has gone crook. All I get after clicking on the "Paperclip" is a BSOD.
I get this both on this P4 runing XP and Chrome and a W7/64 running IE.

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My thought was that this level problem comes up so frequently that I would do a bit of a "benchmark"? So, I taped an SM57 and an AKG P150 together and sat them 1cm away from the fret of a cab containing 1x12 Greenback . The speaker is driven by an HT-20 and the git' is a Mex Strat. Clanging an E major I set the amp for a peak of 90dBC at 1mtr, amp totally clean and reverb off.

Mics feed a zed10fx usb and that drives an M-A2496 in an HP desktop AMD 2X2.7G 8G ram running W7/64 Home P.
The cap mic (ch2) gain was set at min, 10dB and the Shure (ch1) advanced to get the same level. The mixer gain knobs indicate a difference of 30dB*. This is a bit pessimistic of the 57 methinks, the diff is more like 20dB (I can do pics of mixer if anyone wants!)

Then I adjusted the channel level pots to give a peak of -20dBFS in Samplitude Prox Silver. The resultant waveform is writ very wee!

Pictures and .wavs will be available when "they" fix the attachment thingy. Otherwise PM me and I can email them out.

I shall leave this rig setup ad. inf so if anyone wants other numbers I can do them.
Next I shall repeat the test using the usb recording system in the ZED10.

*Note, this still gives me bags of spare gain! The channel pots are backed off to "9,'o'clock" from the normal "0" at about 2. The main mix out pot was left at "0". So you see there is lots of gain in hand all thru the system and a peak level of 90dB is actually not that loud, well, ok at 3 in the afternoon, not be popular at 2am!
Dave.
 
snatchman said:
Did you try reversing the phase on your mic's pre amp..?
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How would changing the phase on a single mic do anything?



Other that the fact that the OP hasn't come back to his own thread. I guess he didn't like the answers. :D
 
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