Thin sounding recordings

L

lavaxtris

New member
I always felt like my recordings have lacked that nice deep sound that you can find on most professional audio recordings, and I always have wondered why my tracks don't ever sound like that.
Here is an example of a song we had recorded at the Lava Room in Cleveland. It's just a demo so I think they just slapped on reverb and that's it:
....and here is a version I made at home using a Zoom L-12 and a AKG C214 mic. The guitars were the same:

Now, where did all that low end go? The guitars even seem lacking in the mids.
 
One thing I noticed is the difference in delays. Delayed guitars and/or wideners will cause slight comb filtering that reduces lower mids. Out of phase issues will also cause this.
 
Oddly, I thought the thinner sound actually suited it better. The differences for me were in the vocal - the studio version is warmer, and has more energy at the bottom. The guitars don't really have much going on at the bottom, so pushing what there is would sound a bit weird?
 
It's honestly hard for me to believe that the guitars were recorded with an LDC mic. I use LDC's and I generally need to remove low and low mid frequencies with EQ. I'm also not hearing the sparkly high end I'm used to hearing either. Without knowing the mic placement or how the gain staging was configured I really don't know what the issue could be.

I actually do like the guitar sound better in the studio recording but it might just be that I like the stereo spread better. In both I think there are some frequencies in the lower mids that are muddying up the sound but without an EQ or analyzer I couldn't tell you which exactly.
 
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