Mic close to floor, problem? or inside?

LazerBeakShiek

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How close can you place the microphone to the floor before it starts effecting the recording? 12" , perhaps 6" . I'm asking because, the cabinet if placed closer to the floor or wall becomes bass heavy/distort. Wouldn't the same thing happen with the microphone, as the cabinet of speakers?

search got false hits with..noise floor

example low stand.
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Also , is there any benefit to placing the microphone inside the speaker cabinet? I have seen people remove the backing and place the magnetic coil mic inches from the speaker magnet. From the rear. Through the speaker frame port. Yeah.

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You can put the microphone wherever it sound nicest - a boundary mic, for example, on the floor can work quite well. Sticking mics into guitar cabs is quite an established practice and can give the sound a certain feel that works for some music and sounds dreadful for others. Guitar open back speakers can be tonally quite odd sounding fed with music. Fed with 6 strings and effects, the weird tone can be an asset. A good microphone's job is capturing whatever is present at a certain location. Pushing a cab up to the wall can increase the bass and make the sound a bit fatter and louder, if that is what you want - experiment with the mic to capture it authentically. Dynamics rarely bottom out with excess level. Condensers in close might need a pad to prevent distortion. Hell, it's common to slap an SM57 almost touching the cone for some guitar tones - move it towards the centre it gets lighter and towards the edge more dense and LF heavy - adjust to taste.
 
I have my mic close to the floor sometimes no problem. I haven’t noticed a difference. Just make sure your mic is right side up or the sound will be upside down!



:D
 
The simple answer is to think of the floor as another "wall". Same with the ceiling. Ultimately, a room is a box. If you think of what the acoustic properties are, we have to consider a room as a container of sorts, and the materials in the container, including all it's surfaces will either reflect and/or absorb sound waves.

So if we start with that as a premise, it becomes just another case of deciding what sound we are trying to achieve and positioning the sound source and mic accordingly, taking into account the acoustic property of all these surfaces. So adding reflections with hard surfaces makes a sound more "live" and damping surfaces increase the "deadness" of the sound.

A mic in a speaker cab is in a box so it''s essentially the same kind of problem, what are the acoustics of the container and the sound source?
 
The difference between a "box" and an "iso box" is the addition of sound damping. So, yes.
 
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