Sm57+MD421 Mic combo for Amp

[snow lizard]

Direct sound from a close mic is going to give you a detailed and articulate capture of the guitar, but it's dry and a bit unnatural. Not necessarily "big". Getting the core sound you want (the source) and the mic placement correct so that your monitors are making the sound you want is critical, but the sense of size usually comes from having some space. A mic placed farther away from the amp can help as it starts to pick up room reflections, but that might start to take away from the better qualities of having a close mic.

One idea is to use a nice room mic like an SM57 or something, and have it a few feet away from the amp aiming the null of the microphone at the speaker. You want the business end of the mic pointed the other way from wherever the amp is, so you're capturing the reflections off the walls, not the amp. I probably wouldn't try to time align something like this. The distance from the amp will create phase issues and comb filtering, but also a delay. Severe phase cancellation from near coincident mics wouldn't be the issue. It can work as a very natural ambience generator and a size control of sorts. Even small amounts of this kind of signal blended with the close mics should have a fairly obvious effect. There are fun things you can try on this type of signal like smashing the living daylights out of it with a compressor, and using high and low pass filters to control the frequencies of the room reflections.

 

[JamEZmusic]

snow lizard - I honestly think this is the missing key for me though, room mics in general. I only really started moving in a better direction on my lead tones once I started placing an LDC some distance back from the amp. I'll say that I really don't like room sound on my heavy rhythm guitars though, not for metal. I did leave a room mic up recording I believe and chose not to use any of the signal in the blend. Some great tips snow lizard. I'm enjoying checkin in on this thread for more ideas and hearing others experiences. Is not recording a room mic but instead using an impulse response real room verb a legit way forward do you think? Something to play with on my next tracking session perhaps?

GoodTimesRec - I have some basic treatment to the left and right of me but I don't really think it's doing much, just some acoustic tiles. I want to get some proper broadband absorbers with air gap. I was toying with the idea of building my own, I can't really get OC703 over here but there is an equivellent RockWool RW3 which is cheap enough. I am unsure of the black fabric material also, you are supposed to be able to breath through it. I am not sure if to DIY, or buy ready made panels yet. As soon as I put those bass traps in though, I need to juggle the whole room around. My guitar amps are in 1 corner and my rack in the other. Maybe time for a new desk with build in rack, and moving amps into a different room. I dunno. . . Can't afford traps etc yet anyway.

The apollo interface was what I wanted ideally. I am using a focusrite 18i20 which is like a third of the cost. I used the apollo once, nice UAD plugins, and no latency. I think I remember the pre-amps were really nice. Long time ago but I remembered it enough to want one myself.

I route my project down into a lot of busses, once I group my main instruments together I then just create another buss of all Drums/Bass/guitars/acoustics/vocals/synths/All Effects>PreMaster>Stereo outs. as typical example. I can treat the Pre-Master as my stereo out for the song, but keep the stereo out for reference tracks only, plus an instance of my sonarworks and analyzer/metering plugins.

I had to re-work my whole mix, was a pain. Abundance of mud in the bass which I heard clearly today. Once I cut that, then the kick needed juggling to suit and the hats, and then the rhythms were too harsh, etc.etc. went full circle, mix ended up about 5db's lower where I kept reducing faders. I am still getting the -10lufs with limiter tickling the peaks just with a much more balanced low end. Made me realise I am really lacking in skill. When I thought I got close balance wise then i did a quick bounce and put it on my ipad and walked around the house listening on tv/echo dots and other crappy speakers making notes just slowly walking back and forth fixing anything that seems to annoy me. It's tricky because I am making the mix sound worse on my main monitors to suit the other crappy speakers. But I suppose that is the art of mixing. Would be nice if I had great judgement from the get go instead of playing back on various other speakers. and making notes. I'm done again for today, struggled to much this morning and kind of ran out of energy.

Problem with compression for me, and maybe I am just using them wrong but no matter how fast you set the attack, you will get an incredibly spiky transient, dependent on threshold. meaning you have no choice but to limit anyway, or saturate to round it off. So I find myself using compression less and less now because of that fact. I will use compression more to fix dynamic issues, I put the logics DBX160 style compressor on the drums though (Classic VCA I think - the black face one with no attack/release knobs) After a long time I never realised I could have been using the compressor wrong though, there is a distortion setting and I have no idea wether you would set it to soft or hard, or clip to emulate a real dbx160, and I also foolishly neglected to think about increasing the distortion by using the make-up gain to drive it hotter and then using the ouput again to level match when the compressor is bypassed. Maybe this will round the transient! Something I need to experiment with a bit. If this does the job then I can see me using fast attack compression again to control peaks while benefitting from the compressors own built in saturation/distortion. I hear that Logics compressors are pretty kickass though so should play some more I think.

My monitors are just cheap budget speakers, M-Audio BX5's. my spectral reading shows I am lacking a ton of bass, but using the correction software it does a pretty good job of giving me that flat line because all of a sudden when activating the software the bottom end just pops to life all of a sudden. I had a real big issue of mixing my kick like 10dbs too loud before the room correction software haha. Then I have a second set of monitors, just a cheap set of speakers with sub that I can flick back and forth between. I do a little mixing on both but mainly my monitors are they are so much more revealing in the mids/highs.

One of the best tricks i've learned is to walk out of the room though, as you said. it's amazing that you can boost or cut what is necessary by sometimes a larger amount than you would have thought and you still have a real solid balanced mix even while listening in between the speakers.

I have no idea if I overcame my mono compatibility issue in a legit manner. but my lead guitar would juust become too quiet when summed to mono, so i inserted the MSED voxengo plugin on the guitars bus and just raised the mid up, traded off so I still have my stereo information but when collapses to mono, my lead guitars remain up front still. I am not sure if I am going to get any side effects doing this, and if this is a legit workaround. why not do this on every stereo signal that you want ultra wide and scrap using those phase shifting stereo mono incompatible plugins alltogether for complete mono compatibility? Will look into it I think.

Won't babble on, don't want to bore you!

Cheers for comment, I'm enjoying conversation. Haven't spoke to anyone about my craft for a while. not with the topics discussed anyway.

 

[GoodTimesRec]

I too like to talk shop so it's all good.

Are you using the limiter on your mix bus? I would take it off and see about making the track without any limiting, then try limiting that mixdown. You might be trying to do too much in one fell swoop with conflicting goals. Work on the mix having good dynamics but with parallel compression doing the work to keep instruments prominent after their transients. Just make sure that sounds good and if it isn't loud enough, turn up the monitors instead of trying to limit it just then. Once that mix is good, that's when you use additional compression/limiting/flavoring at the 'mastering' level. You can work a limiter on a dynamic mix just as well as you can on a squashed mix, and I'd wager the dynamic mix will come through it sounding better.

I think just having non-consumer stereo speakers themselves, even if they're lower priced monitors, is fine. They're still monitors and are at least geared toward showing you the ugly truth of your mix. You clean it up so it sounds good in those monitors and it'll translate. I have HS-8s that I mix on and they're midrange I guess? But they blew away my yamaha bookshelf speakers through a 1973 pioneer stereo I was mixing on before that!

Logic's compressor does indeed rule and all of its flavors work very well. I use the soft distortion often if just compression alone doesn't do the trick in the mix. I'll use hard or clip settings on drum buses sometimes too. Transients are fine and you don't want them to be gone, you just want to manage how crazy they are, and a lot of that can also be done at the microphone, like blend in a room mic on an acoustic, or don't have the close mic(s) at the soundhole.

For drums, it's tough because the transient is all the impact and you have to somehow balance that w/the ring you need through compression. But, using sends for parallel compression is the way because the track itself can be all transient, and the parallel send can be all compression. You need more snare attack in the mix? turn up the snare top mic track. Can't hear it ring? turn up the parallel comp track. Can't hear either? Take every other track except for the snare and turn them all down until the snare shows up again the way you want it to sit---that to me is also a huge thing to do instead of turning stuff up. Turn the rest down! Another thing is that good drummers/guitarists are even in volume so also try to keep everything strummed and the drums hit with the same force as much as possible so you're not having to spend time clip gaining hits, or overworking a compressor to do that job for you. If the transient is big, so what as long as it's always big every time. It's when there's a giant transient in a sea of medium sized transients when stuff gets hairy

I only upgraded to the Apollo because I got sick of the very muddy converters in my old MOTU 828mk3 hybrid. It was...fine but I just never got a great sound out of it. Plus when I went to upgrade the driver for it, there was 'pro audio drivers' and 'audio drivers' and my unit was not in the 'pro audio' category. And I mean I have to brag a little: my actual band's tracks get licensing/publishing deals with a local label (Pravda Records) and I kind of want them to sound better than 'regular audio drivers' haha. So I decided to go a tier up and was looking at RME and I forget the other brands too, there is a new MOTU that even met my better-quality and I/O needs. The UA was damn expensive but I justified it by saying I'll use it a lot and its own CPU (which does power some damn fine plugins) would take the heat off my 2012 mac mini I am going to use until it dies. And so far it's actually going that way. But I think any modern set of converters will do the trick, and the tools in Logic are great with my only gripe being it doesn't have a great saturation plugin, or a tape/vinyl machine if that's a flavor you're into.

In regard to stereo/mono issues on guitar, in a prior post it seems like you're tracking an amp with more than one mic, and you pan those mics from that one amp/take in your mix? I think if you left all the mics for one amp/take at the same panning amount, and then used an echo effect, or a reverb or what have you and let that do the panning/spreading you might get better mono compatibility. Or double track and use two guitars to fill L/R instead of one. I always look at that correlation meter in the Multimeter and so long as it doesn't go red, it doesn't have to be all the way to the right. Put a gain plug on the mix bus and set that to mono and turn it on/off randomly as you mix. I think that's helpful for me making sure the L/R guitars are even, and that hard-panned things are as loud as center-panned things if I ever second guess my mix.

 

[snow lizard]

Is not recording a room mic but instead using an impulse response real room verb a legit way forward do you think? Something to play with on my next tracking session perhaps?

Anything is legit if it gets results that work. There are a lot of rules to recording. Once you learn all of them and research what others have done you start to realize that just about every "rule" has been broken at some point. Sometimes there's merit to keeping things simple. Using multiple mics on a source can be great if it serves the track. Using only one mic will pretty much eliminate phase issues where every additional mic starts to chew away at the bandwidth of the others. It's worth experimenting with, but it's worth letting go of if it doesn't serve the track. It has to bring something of value. There's nothing wrong with printing extra mics, but sometimes the best processing option is the mute button. Overprocessing is another way to kill your tracks. Compression is something I rarely reach for on distorted guitar. If you get the distortion right at the source, you already have a heavily compressed signal.

Using impulse responses and artificial verbs and delays can help if there's something about your rig or your room that keeps you from being able to capture that sound. IR's and tools for amp, cab and room simulation have gotten a lot better in recent years. I'd set up a bus for the ambiance processing and send the dry guitar signal to that bus. It gives you full control over wet/dry balance and makes it easy to throw an EQ before and or after the verb or whatever. Too much low end on your verb will get muddy. Too much high end can be distracting. Using a short predelay, or just using a delay instead of a verb can help. Sometimes it's just not the same as capturing real ambiance. It's easy to set up either way. Double tracking your rhythm parts as someone else suggested can also be very effective. Dialing up a different sound, be it from a different amp, guitar, pickup, gain structure or what have you can help when doing a double. There's lots of options but beware of doing too much. Sometimes the best processing option is to stay out of the way. You need to allow the track to tell you what it needs.

My guitar amps are in 1 corner and my rack in the other.

Getting your amp off the floor or away from walls and corners helps to get rid of early reflections that lead to low end mud. Moving the amp around in the room can have a similar effect as moving the mic around on the speaker cone. There's a sweet spot somewhere.

 

[JamEZmusic]

I’m unable to reply because I have my children today. Will edit this tomorrow.

 

[CSP]

Haven't read the entire thread so the following might have been discussed.

1. Why use two mics unless you are after different sounds and/or you are panning the mics left and right in the mix ?

2. You are using two different mics from different manufacturers, so there is a very high probability that they will have different gains, different frequency responses, different gains at different frequencies, slightly different polar patterns and at different frequencies and different sound and so it goes on. Although it is most unlikely, it could also be that they are, for some reason, actually out of phase with each other

These are the type of reasons some manufacturers sell matched pairs of mics, but even here they are not necessarily 100% identical..

Just some thoughts and why I VERY seldom use two mics on any instrument.

That is not to suggest that I might not use a mic and a DI, but in this case I am definitely after that difference in sound.

David

 

[JamEZmusic]

GoodTimeRec -

I am really very sorry it took me a while to respond, the children stayed with me for a few days in the end and also I actually burnt myself out a bit with too much music production and found it very difficult to get back into. I have been wanting to respond and it was definitely on top of my mind the whole time.

I only put the limiter on before a quick bounce to get the levels up so it was nearer to how it would sound on the final mix. It makes it a lot easier for me to listen on various playback systems as well. I just barely got it compressing only a few times throughout the song to make it as transparant as possible.

Transients are fine and you don't want them to be gone, you just want to manage how crazy they are, and a lot of that can also be done at the microphone, like blend in a room mic on an acoustic, or don't have the close mic(s) at the soundhole.
I have got to try this!!! What is the logic behind it? Fattening up spiky transients so they are more bearable and more reactive to compression? Spiky transients are the bane of my existende for acoustic guitar, i normally have to play for quite some time with the enveloper plugin to dull the attacks.

I get what you say about needing some transients there, but with compression I have no luck controlling them even with the fastest attack, if you bounce down the wafeform you will see a nice thick body but with a needle like transient which is harmful for having the potential for a louder mix and often requires me to catch the rest with a limiter. But I don't always use compression this way, I mainly use it for thickening up the overall sound by having the threshold quite low so it is always compressing but with a very low ratio. The attack/release settings are not quite so damaging to the waveform when I use it like this. Or I will put 2 compressors in series to do 2 jobs, one thickening, other transient control.

I'll tell you what I've been having trouble with though, and that is simple balancing..... I don't even know why I feel like im getting worse at mixing. So I am going through the process of writing up a quick cheat sheet for typical mixes I do. When I nail the balance of this track i am going to jot down in notepad where all the tracks are peaking hopefully when it comes around to my next mix I may be able to use the notes to get me close enough to feel a groove in the low end especially. Those efforts may prove fruitless but will find out.

I am doubting my monitors slightly recently. It's only when I listen to my mix on vastly different speakers that i notice a ton of problems each time, I carried on today for an hour or so doing this and I feel like it's getting there. I will upgrade at some point, I am not even convinced I didn't damage my speakers in the past slightly when I accidently created feedback loops by wrongly routing to the wrong busses and occasionaly i made the mistake of unplugging things with the speakers on quite loud POP!

Definitely upgrading to an apollo one day. I am fine with the scarlett 18i20 for now, I only have access to 8ins because I think i need to buy another 8in preamp that I need to connect with an adat cable or whatever, not recording any full bands so not important at the moment, I think at most I will only use 5inputs at any one given time for now. 2 close mics in X-Y but kept mono just so I can blend a good balance between neck and body, stereo room mics + DI, but I think that may be overkill anyway. or maybe not. It's awesome your band is signed by a local label, congrats man!

This mono issue I had I don't quite understand because when summed to mono it is actually a guitar part that I did 2 entirely different takes on, instead of using 2 mics on the same source and panning. The M/S trick seemed to do the trick, but it is the only time I have ever came up across this issue. I am trying to critique my own mixes as much as i possibly can while getting the mix to sound good on all speakers I have in the house. So maybe it may have slipped me by in the past therefore I didn't notice the issue if I ever did run up against it in the past. This is something I have never experimented with either using an echo or reverb to create the other hard panned image. I don't think I have ever had the opportunity to try it before because everything I do is just hard left/right, or center. Not intentionally but I do guitar instrumental music mostly and I don't have any extra ear candy to play around with extra fancy panning.

I'm learning a lot from you actually. I really appreciate your in-depth posts.

 

[JamEZmusic]

Snow Lizard -

I did mute a mic on my acoustic strumming guitar, big improvement. Not sure if the mix just called for it or I had sub optimal mic placements but it's much more focused now and was just what it needed.

I didn't actually use much compression at all on the track apart from the drums. My distorted guitars were pretty much maxed on the drive. Which just sounded right to me in this instance.

I read an article on SoundonSound about using reverb and am adopting the same approach with using 2 reverb sends, one with less than 5ms predelay and short verb (ambience) this controls the depth, and the other a much longer sweeter washier reverb to get the instruments sounding like they are playing in a nice room. I always highpass reverbs at 200hz though. I send a little of every track to the ambience and longverb sends. It's a nice simple way of working and think I am getting better results. I went ahead and set up a short delay and longer delay for my projects aswel but didn't really use them much.

I'll probably shove the amps in a different room at some point, I think they are probably going to get in the way once I start putting bass traps everywhere.

https:// soundcloud.com/jamezmusic-1/ccore-unmastered - mixed a bit more today, still not finished though. solo guitar sucks and accoustic lead may be a touch too loud, apart from that it's done I think. Although my opinion may change when i listen again with fresh ears. i dunno how to improve on it anymore because Im n00b still

 

[JamEZmusic]

CSP -
I'm going to mess around re-doing an older acoustic track I did a long time ago but instead of any fancy mic combinations I will attempt to just use 1 mic and double track everything to see how it goes. It's difficult to judge what will work in the mix, sometimes I have really really get in there and butcher with EQ to make tracks fit. I just wish I had the ear to record the sound I want from mic placement. Not sure if I'll ever get to that point though.

I see what you are saying about the mics not being matched, but I think the sm57/md421 combo is an industry standard when it comes to recording electric guitar as they somehow both compliment each other so perfectly. I am no expert at micin up guitar cabs but on my first try, I really liked the results.

 

[GoodTimesRec]

I have got to try this!!! What is the logic behind it? Fattening up spiky transients so they are more bearable and more reactive to compression? Spiky transients are the bane of my existende for acoustic guitar, i normally have to play for quite some time with the enveloper plugin to dull the attacks.

I get what you say about needing some transients there, but with compression I have no luck controlling them even with the fastest attack, if you bounce down the wafeform you will see a nice thick body but with a needle like transient which is harmful for having the potential for a louder mix and often requires me to catch the rest with a limiter. But I don't always use compression this way, I mainly use it for thickening up the overall sound by having the threshold quite low so it is always compressing but with a very low ratio. The attack/release settings are not quite so damaging to the waveform when I use it like this. Or I will put 2 compressors in series to do 2 jobs, one thickening, other transient control.

I would just accept transients, they're the oomph of whatever your'e recording anyway so you need them to be there. Transients can literally push the speaker like drums, and you need that. I think the trick is to try and make the rest of it, or at least as much of the tail of whatever it is that needs to be there, present enough to not be lost after the transients. I maintain that using sends in logic for parallel compression is a key way to do this. You mix the transient/punchy track with its compressed send until you get the magic combo of punch and sustain. I do this for drums primarily but I have also parallel comp'ed bass guitar too. For acoustics/vocals/guitars I usually just compress the tracks and/or the bus for that instrument.

For vocals, or anything really, 2 compressors is fine. I use the UAD 1176 into the LA-2A on vocals, each doing a little bit and it sounds great! I would say Logic's compressor on FET mode at 4:1 or 8:1 would get you in the ballpark for an 1176 and the opto mode on 3:1 would get you close to a LA-2A. There's a lot online on how to dial those in, you just have to see what the original unit does and set it near those settings. Thing with Logic's compressors is there are many more tweakable settings than there are on the original compressors they sound like, which is good for tweaking but bad if you get lost in the tweak rabbit hole.

I get into the acoustic mic setup below

I'll tell you what I've been having trouble with though, and that is simple balancing..... I don't even know why I feel like im getting worse at mixing. So I am going through the process of writing up a quick cheat sheet for typical mixes I do. When I nail the balance of this track i am going to jot down in notepad where all the tracks are peaking hopefully when it comes around to my next mix I may be able to use the notes to get me close enough to feel a groove in the low end especially. Those efforts may prove fruitless but will find out.

I am doubting my monitors slightly recently. It's only when I listen to my mix on vastly different speakers that i notice a ton of problems each time, I carried on today for an hour or so doing this and I feel like it's getting there. I will upgrade at some point, I am not even convinced I didn't damage my speakers in the past slightly when I accidently created feedback loops by wrongly routing to the wrong busses and occasionaly i made the mistake of unplugging things with the speakers on quite loud POP!

I wouldn't try and apply the exact same formula to every mix, maybe more of a starting point/template...like for your idea for getting good balance: I wouldn't look at the peaks since they're momentary. Look at where the rest of it sits after the peak. For acoustics it's in the part after the strum transient. Get the post-transient sustain parts of your L/R channels to be even in volume and you won't notice the difference in transient parts of the strums/hits/whatever unless they're completely unbalanced. Especially if your strumming/drum hits/whatever are even when played (SO KEY)! Not even the whole time, but make sure the loud parts are evenly loud and quiet parts evenly quiet. It goes a long way.

And for mic positioning to help with that, on an acoustic point a LDC at the area just past and below where the body and neck meet (around where the cutaway would be on a les paul) pointed right at the body, and you should mitigate some of the direct strumming transients that would be near the soundhole (as well as a lot of low end rumble). It might sound perhaps a little muddy unless/until you find a sweet spot (moving a mic just a small distance makes a big difference). You can also put an overhead mic (I use a SDC) as high above you as the stand/ceiling will let you, pointing straight down at the neck where you're fingering frets. The combo of the two works really well! I learned the technique on the Creative Sound Lab youtube channel and it did work for me, and it's my go-to method right now. Or use a 2-SDC setup with one by the neck, one by the body and balance those tones. Don't worry as much about the individual tracks' effects or settings as much as how they work together when you tweak them. One will have a lot of low end, one will have a lot of high end, but you mix them together and there WILL be a point where they sound great together if you make sure to check the phase alignment with sample delay or tweaking mic placement.

For the monitors, definitely measure your walls and ceiling and put that into a room acoustics calculation tool! I used the Carl Tatz Design one which is an excel file but it shows you graphically the sound nodes and where you should put your speakers and your ears in your room to avoid them. Honestly proper monitor placement then room treatment (with rockwool!) go a LONG way. I spent a whole day measuring and moving my setup honestly maybe just 4-5 inches sideways and maybe 7-8 inches farther from the wall (edit: now that I remember, it was actually more like 2-3 inches CLOSER to the wall, ha). Before I fired up the system I wondered if I'd wasted time for such a small set of adjustments. But all of a sudden I heard all the frequencies! I previously had massively bass-heavy mixes because I wan't hearing any of the bass from the speakers. But I'd walk out of the room and toward the door in the corner all of a sudden there was my kick drum and bass guitar low end. But now everything is going to my ears so I can hear what I'm supposed to hear to make the right tweak the first time and holy crap it feels good to get to that point. Adding panels at reflection points has helped even more in that I tweak less for sound and now mainly for production/composition edits...the good stuff! My recordings are still a little bass-y but I like it as it helps compensate for the seriously pristine digital recording fidelity, or I tell myself that anyway. My goal was 70's sounding stuff and I think I'm getting there.

For the audio interface, if I had been smarter when upgrading to the MOTU I just had from the Echo Audiofire that had broken before it (or if that unit never broke in the first place!) I would have stuck with whatever interface I got at the time. The UAD thing was only because I was able to splurge a little and the idea of the interface-run plugs was interesting to me. You don't need a certain interface unless the one you have is super crappy or very, very old. Good mics (spend $ here) and not-shit preamps and interfaces will do well if you're recording a good performance on a good sounding instrument in as treated of a room with as good of mic placement as you can. Nice things sound nice and unfortunately they do cost money. But again, not everything has to be expensive, it just has to be good quality.

This mono issue I had I don't quite understand because when summed to mono it is actually a guitar part that I did 2 entirely different takes on, instead of using 2 mics on the same source and panning. The M/S trick seemed to do the trick, but it is the only time I have ever came up across this issue. I am trying to critique my own mixes as much as i possibly can while getting the mix to sound good on all speakers I have in the house. So maybe it may have slipped me by in the past therefore I didn't notice the issue if I ever did run up against it in the past. This is something I have never experimented with either using an echo or reverb to create the other hard panned image. I don't think I have ever had the opportunity to try it before because everything I do is just hard left/right, or center. Not intentionally but I do guitar instrumental music mostly and I don't have any extra ear candy to play around with extra fancy panning.

I'm learning a lot from you actually. I really appreciate your in-depth posts.

I only ever did the Van Halen room on one side/close mics on the other thing way back in the day and I too had issues. I am almost certain if you used sample delay to make sure that before you pan the mics, the waveforms are going up and down together, you would have fewer phase cancellation issues when summing to mono. For two different takes doing it, if it's the same guitar playing the exact same thing in the exact same spot, there will be similarities in them to the point where I could see them messing with each other in mono. maybe move the mic and where you sit just a foot or two in any direction in your room to get a different sonic footprint, or move closer/farther from the mic on the other take so they're not as similar? I will say this too-- when mixing and listening in stereo I think the far-left and far-right panned guitars are so loud, then I put it in mono and they're so quiet! I find I have to have stuff on the sides turned up a fairer amount than I think to make it all sit right after all. I'm sure that is something to do with the different kinds of pan laws Logic uses (I think mine's on the -3dB compensated) or maybe a symptom of how I'm used to listening on headphones vs. center of speakers.

And thanks!

 

[JamEZmusic]

I need to start writing down notes haha

I will look into what settings would closely mimic the real hardware compressors for sure! Thanks for the tips on setting up for an 1176, and the opto - la2a styled compressor ratio settings. I would assume the dbx160 styled compressor in logic (classic vca) would change the attack settings the further into gain reduction you go like the real compressor. I keep my compression between 4 to 8dbs for drums for the dbx160. Would love a real compressor, I hear the real hardware compressors are much more responsive in a sense that if you compressed a snare drum heavily you would literally get a splat!, which doesn't seem to be the case when using software emulation plugins.

I have space in my rack that I will be saving for a compressor one day. But as you say. Mics first, a new and nice sounding acoustic guitar is important to buy before more studio equipment. I kind of feel like I have enough to do a great mix if only I knew how to properly use what I have. I think if I'm clever enough I can get by with what I have. I used to use the apogee duet II interface but it was only a 2input, thing is though the pre-amps knock the shit out of the focusrite scarlett 18i20. It's most noticable when using a hungry mic to record a quieter source, so an upgrade to an Apollo would be desirable but not important for the time being. I can probably get over the issue by just avoiding using those hungry mics, or buying a dedicated pre-amp like the FocusRite ISAone thing which has like 80db's of preamp gain, unlike my scarlett which is like 60. The duet sounded better I think, but in the end I just ended up outgrowing it and needed to upgrade to the 18i20, but i made a mistake, I was supposed to purchase the clarrett range which has much nicer preamps and a digital preamp section so I can actually change the pre-amp gain while I am sat down away from the PC using the ipad remote, or even just mouse using the mixer software it comes with. Will surely teach me a good lesson for not doing my homework. although the interface is a few hundred £'s more expensive I think I would have splashed out knowing it's something so important for workflow.

You mentioned pointing the mic at where the cutaway section of the guitar would be on a les paul, you know this is warren huarts fullproof guitar mikin method, I didn't try this out on a delicate solo guitar piece yet because I just assumed this mikin technique was more for the percussive strumming on a typical pop song where the mix is dense, but the way you explained it makes me think this could really work so well for almost anything. What I do like though is where you say to put a mic up top near the ceiling. The most successful recordings I've ever had was with the over the shoulder method, I favour the over the ear mic in volume during mixdown but I suffer greatly with harsh recordings, and this is the only mic method that seems to actually work well enough that I get a nice full tone and do not have to cut away the high mids or low highs to take the harsh tones away. So First thing I'm going to do after this mix is finished is try your combo out because I have a gut feeling I am going to switch over to this. How far away do you place the mic that would be looking at the cutaway on the les paul? I think Warren places it much closer than you'd expect (4-8inches) I feel like I would place further away still if it were me. . . I'm not sure if phase is going to be an issue as I can get the over the head mic way over 3x the distance from the other mic. I'm intrigued how this will sound. Do you favour the overhead mic in volume?
I do similar with the X-Y, balance the neck and body tones until I find the sweet spot. I "kind of" was happy with some tones a little while back, but I definitely had a lot of room for improvement. Will try some acoustic recordings out very soon.

I am not sure if my speakers are already in the optimal position. I like to think they are, I ran some sinesweeping tests and no bass notes seem to jump or poke out at me. Damn.... I remember in my old room though, I couldn't hear the kick drum when i was sat in between the speakers and when I would listen to my mix downstairs on hifi system with sub, the kick would be cringeworthy high.... i mean, it was all kick! It always put a real downer on my motivation, I was convinced i sucked. I spent aages measureing out my speakers in this room. to the 1mm I got them, spirit level on the heights, measured equally off the walls, made sure they are not center of the height of the room, i've got the 18inces away from all boundaries etc.... On top of that I am using sonarworks to pull the speakers flat. without that software active the speakers reall do lack quite a lot of bass. (m-audio bx5's) the soundonsound reviews confirm this. But with sonarworks I am actually hitting the ballpark on my low end most times. when I am really off it's down to my own ear fatigue lust for more low end when in reality I am just destroying the track but I have not enough experience to recognize this yet. I am going to try out what you said, will measure my room properly and see what it says. if I don't have to completely change my whole room setup and it's not too much of an issue, i will definitely re-measure out speakers to see if I can get better.

I am also checking my mix in mono, and ..... to be honest, I prefer the sound of it in mono now.... It's strange, the guitars just seem a tad too loud with the 100% hard L R, The mix seems much more balanced in mono to me and it's not even a slight difference it's quite drastic. I am also wondering if it's Logics pan law. Another issue i seem to be having, listening in stereo (because as long as I don't A/B straight away to my mono version, it does sound alright) is when I turn up the mix considerably louder, the mix just sounds .... fatiguing. maybe harsh. but quieter volume it's smooth, and pleasing to listen to in my opinion. . .

Thanks so much for helpin me out, I have a few things I'd like to try out now you have given me a couple of ideas. Nice one!

EDIT: I just brought this ribbon mic, verry cheap but I know a guy who I respect very highly who swears by it. This will be my first ribbon mic to play with and learn before I decide to buy the more expensive royers.
the t.bone RB 500 – Thomann UK
Should have it within couple of days. Might help me with that overbright acoustic guitar of mine.

 

[GoodTimesRec]

Ah nice, I use a Fat Head ribbon mic if I want 'vintage-style' vocal, or if the acoustic is very bright or want an old school-ish sound/vibe to it. The ribbon also does a great and longstanding/current job as my front-of-kit room mic as it doesn't take in a ton of cymbal harshness that I always can't stand. And it takes EQ really, really well.

I put the non-overhead acoustic mic maybe a foot away? It honestly changes because sometimes I want it to be fatter and I'll use more proximity effect and be closer, but honestly lately I like being a little bit farther away, maybe around 2 feet, so I get a fuller picture of the guitar. But never too close that I'd run the risk of hitting it with my hand when strumming, usually around at least a foot away, I can't think of when I've moved in closer than that. I use more of the close mic and not as much of the overhead, because with the overhead there's a lot more high end information, maybe because I use a small diaphragm condenser but I modded it with a new capsule and it's pretty beefy now! A blend of the two with the overhead about half as much as the near mic gives you the high string info and the fullness and of the guitar too. I have to reiterate they're never at the same levels and half as much in the fader is a rough estimate, but the overhead is almost always less than the closer mic.

Where I/you set the settings depends on how it sounds--it's never the same levels twice and I just eyeball and fly by the seat of my pants with most of it to be honest. I will put the mics visually where I think they should be, and imagine a laser beam pointing out the diaphragm of the mic toward where I think it should be pointing. If I am recording someone else I'll have them sit how they will when playing and move the mics around that, but most of the time I have to pretend I'm where I would be and guesstimate. Or sit with the guitar and look at how the mics are, then put it down and get up and adjust the mics...repeat until satisfied. I never use a tape measure or any of that, who has time for that! Plus anyone you record WILL move from where the ideal place is anyway no matter how much you stress consistent placement. I spend more time eyeballing the above/below snare mics to make them roughly the same angle to the drum heads if that's how I'm aiming them, overheads if I'm doing X/Y because the long mic cable runs with fully extended stands WILL make the mics shift in tiny and annoying ways, and the 57/421 close on an amp cabinet. But I still eyeball/imagine the laser beam even when spending more time doing it. I'll just basically look at more angles, ha

 

[JamEZmusic]

Looking forward to trying out this combo, and perhaps with the new ribbon mic. I am hoping the mic is the answer to my overly bright acoustic and that from now on I should be able to get nice recordings at least. Thanks for going in depth on your technique, it's the first thing i'm going to try when the mic arrives, hopefully today? With the over the shoulder technique I used It was probably a 60/40 ratio I reckon, in favour of the shoulder mic. this got me the best results but mainly because my close mic always seemed too bright/harsh no matter where I placed it. Not sure what the results would be like if I actually used a high end condenser mic, it would be interesting to hear the differences. If only I had more money.

Is there merit in just EQing an acoustic guitar like how a ribbon sounds though? would I ultimately end up with the same result anyway... hmm, fearing I may need a new guitar, really hope not. . .

I used a tape measure the last time on my configuration, still struggled with phase to be honest, it's easier and faster for me to just see what mic needs to be pulled back a bit at a time by just eyeballing the waveform in logic. Also I moved around somewhat after a good amount of time recording so it was all a waste of time anyway. I have a good enough mic locker now to try plenty of options. If I have no luck again after trying everything out, recording inside duvets etc then I am buying a new guitar....... Is it the case do you think that some guitars are just unrecordable? Or is there always a way? It plays nice. just the high end tone is far too prominent. . .

I was curious, I'm finding in my mixes I could do with some sort of midi controller so I can automate far easier, I have always used a mouse but wondering if I could save a "lot" of time by using a fader, do you work with a mouse or a midi controller? Interested. . . I want to start getting into composing strings on a lot of my tracks and I don't think using a mouse is the best tool for this job. . .

Will probably drop by this thread occasionally and post, not a problem if you don't reply straight away or even at all. But sometimes want to ramble about my shortcomings/struggles/successes etc.

Been a Produce Like a Pro member for like 3 years (been inactive for 90% of the time), never mixed a multitrack :-( I am making it a priority to try and mix 1 or 2 a week from now on. Hopefully in a few months I will really get somewhere with all of this.

Cheers man

 

[GoodTimesRec]

You'll like having a ribbon mic in your collection! I think it's worth having because you might be able to EQ a mic to change the sonics from the mic to make it resemble the style of another but the diaphragm, how it's made (condenser vs dynamic), the wiring inside...the mics will take in sound differently so they'll always sound different. I have read that yeah, the low/mid/consumer grade mics aren't the same as high end pro stuff but A) it's better than it ever has been and B) it's not so far off that it's a night and day difference. I think we just have to work harder to sort of polish a bit (or many bits) of things that less-flat microphones do to the sounds they take in

Don't stress that much on the mic placement! Definitely try for the best/most precise setup you can but you know where they should go and have confidence you're putting them where they're supposed to be. Yes the sound changes when you move but once there's other stuff in the mix, unless you sort of get up and start walking across the room it's unlikely even you will notice the difference in the end.

A different guitar will DEFINITELY sound different! In the last few months I've tracked these guitars. I turned off the EQ and normalized the tracks. They all fit in the songs they're in just fine I will add! I actually wanted the thin strumm-y sound of that Hohner in the song I used it on:

-My $40 Hohner that I bought off some girl in a guitar store. They offered her $20 and I should have just offered $25 but at the time I figured I could only take $20's out of the nearby ATM: View attachment forty dollar Hohner.mp3

-My thousand dollar Larrivee D03 that I think is basically an electric guitar in an acoustic body it plays so nice (edit whoops I left one of the bass mic tracks in there too but you get the picture): View attachment thousand dollar Larrivee.mp3

-And I tracked a project where the guy brought in a 1960's Gibson parlor acoustic guitar: View attachment vintage Gibson parlor.mp3

The Larrivee was tracked with just one microphone (in the same way I would for the two-mic setup) but it's just so good of a guitar that it sounds great!

I have thought about a mixer/controller, as my good friend/recording peer has one and swears by it, but I bit the bullet a number of years ago on a Magic Trackpad and it's so great. I have it set so I don't actually push down on it, and three fingers is a click and hold/drag. I've heard some folks swear by a trackball but I'm set in my ways now

I also do not do all that much automation, it's mainly for artistic/compositional purposes or to get someone's talking before a take out of the song. If I have to even out a vocal phrase I'll split it from the rest of the take, then use clip gain and physically increase the waveform. It's more steps than it needs to be in Logic but it works really well as I can see the waveforms grow and shrink as I change the gain. I just eyeball vocal phrases so they look about the same volume

Love Warren Huart's videos! I learned a lot of stuff from him for sure. Also check out Why Logic Pro Rules as they will a lot of the time use techniques that I never knew were possible or had never thought of before.

Cool I will turn on notifications for this thread then!

 

[JamEZmusic]

Those guitar recordings are just 1 mic? I am listening on the laptop at the moment so not able to listen properly for stereo information but such a lovely balanced sound you have there. I do prefer the 1000 dollar guitar but wondering if the cheaper guitar would come very close in tonality if playing the same part. I notice when I record I "always" have too much low end, even if taking the time to position the mics. Of course I can easily get less low end with further mic positioning it's just that my ear likes the low end and only when it comes to mix down do I realise it's a problem. Again, just inexperience on my part. My ear is attracted to warmth, it's probably because of my overly harsh bright guitars why I seem to record this way, if I had nice guitars that were properly balanced I would probably naturally get a better position with the mics because I wouldn't be overcompensating.

Apologies for not listening on my monitors, I grabbed my laptop because I wanted to reply to you today, it's getting a little late here and I doubt I will set up in the studio tonight but tomorrow it looks like the mic is going to turn up so will like to spend a day. I will listen again to your acoustic guitars. I want to mention that I started mixing some multitracks a couple of days ago, and after about 20minutes of carefully balancing every track I checked it out to a reference and to my surprise I was bang on the mark. which is great for ego. I then took a minute to figure out why I was able to do it this time and examined all the tracks and noticed that all of the waveforms look lovely and thick, but with healthy transients/dynamics, I can kind of set the fader and just leave it and it sounds good all the way through, so I think I am going to change my approach to mixing my own material and carefully compress all of my own material so the waveforms look similar and I reckon I will be able to balance muuuuch easier. I would actually go as far to say that my own tracks are impossible to balance where there is too much variations in the waveform. It just amazed me that I found is so easy to balance the pro recorded tracks, but can't do that to my own recordings... Lesson Learned!!! (I think)

I also did some diggin on that mic question I had, on if I could get a condenser microphone to sound a bit like a ribbon with just EQ, and seems that some people claim to be able to do it with blind tests and a lot of work but ribbon mics react to dynamics, or condensers differently which you can not compensate for with EQ or transient designers etc so turns out the ribbon mic purchase I think is actually a really good move anyway. Looking forward to trying it out. Only think worried about is with it being a figure8, but seems like most ribbons have this polar pattern. I am thinking of having the rear side of the mic pointing into some thick duvets if it's a problem but I may not need to go to these lengths, I don't really know if I have a good sounding room or bad.... Hard to tell with the fact my guitar is not doing the sound any justice anyways. Before I even think about buying any more studio equipment, I am going to invest in a decent guitar. I definitely want to get the most out of what I already have though but if the ribbon doesn't solve the issue I seriously may just get rid of the cheap-o guitars because I can not see them being any use to me anymore and see if I can upgrade. It's never ending!

AH! I just noticed you said you recorded with 1 mic, I am reading through your post as I type up a response. Sounds like the mic is nearer 2ft away am I correct?

I feel like I need some automation in my tracks just to duck a little bit some parts that stick out a tad too much and distract my ear from listening to more important parts. I noticed that most use the trackpad, and I would have gone that route by now if not for the price but for now the magic mouse does the job. As said earlier, if I'm going to buy anything it will be a guitar first. Actually... Probably Acoustic Guitar>Mid tier mic>Treatment>Nice Pre-Amp>Midi controller in that order... The treatment perhaps should be higher in priority but I feel like my speakers actually do sound pretty neutral and judging from my spectral analysis of my room with no treatment (Or very little) to another guy who spent over 5k in treatment. My Spectral analysis actually looks pretty DAMN close to his! Now I'll bet his room is way more controlled with regards to reverb and he will probably have very little issue with bad room frequencies while tracking but I feel confident enough to say I want to hold out just a little while before I start spending more bloody money. I have been looking into making my own panels and the OC703 equivellent over here seems to be RockWool RW3 but I am struggling for time at the moment and may just purchase some ready made broadband absorbers at like twice the price, but just because i lack time.

Please do turn on notifications. It's great to talk, as I said in last post I have been a PLAP member for years now but never get to talk to any of those guys like I am here. I don't use the forums over there but live chat, and time differences mean I miss out when it gets busy over there. I kind of love the fact that I am always the least experienced in the group, pushes me harder to improve and keeps motivation high. There are lots of great production techniques that I would never have thought of in a million years by myself, but it's still hard for me to know when to use them. A classic example is when Warren chooses to put some saturation on a hi-hat, he seems to be able to know when to apply it, but I can never tell.... Still.... I won't beat myself up about it too much just yet, I am trying to match mixes from guys that have been working hard at their craft for 40+ years.

Thanks for sharing those recordings! They sound just like the pro-recordings I get from my plap multitracks, the kind that get played to the masses.

EDIT: I definitely don't struggle recording my guitar if I am strumming it, but if I want to record single notes for a main melody line then it's just a ballache. Can I ask, what reverbs do you like to use in logic? I'm presuming Space Designer?

EDIT2: I subbed to "Why LogicX Rules", I will watch some now. I really love Logic, some things it doesn't do quite as well as my former DAW FLstudio, but overall Logic X is much better for songwriting/arranging. and you have score editor!!!! which is invaluable to me when composing for strings, I can visually see if I have any parallel fifths, or awkward intervals. In FLstudio I would be screwed.

EDIT3: Just tried out ribbon mic quickly... HOLY S%£@ Warm, smooth, no harshness, I think I can now finally make some songs instead of stressing over tone. What a huuuge sigh of relief! The mic definitely does a lot more than a high shelf cut. Unbelieveable for it's price. I will not get too carried away, I have yet to record but it's looking really great so far. Had to update you

 

[GoodTimesRec]

Heh I probably should have turned on the email portion of the notifications

On those acoustic samples, I did the Huart/Creative Sound Lab 'close' and overhead-above-guitar two mic setup for all but the $1k Larrivee, which I single mic-ed it to see if the new rockwool panels my dad and I built made any difference when recording in the same bedroom as my computer and pres/interface. It made a big difference! I had that single mic definitely about 2' away because that was actually what I measured out when you asked before. I would say I have the close mic closer than 2' when I use the 2-mic setup, just about a foot away, or just within a foot away I'd say because I don't want to hit a mic in the off chance I get too exuberant with the strumming. I am so wishy washy on quoting a distance because I really just eyeball/earball it, ha

But the $40 Hohner and the 60's Gibson were double mic-ed in the other bedroom that in addition to panels has a couple 4' bass traps I built. I had to listen to the Hohner tracks individually because I couldn't believe there was so little low end compared to the other two guitars! I know it is capable of more low end because I've played it on my band's prior albums so many times and never thought that about it. I guess it goes to show that placement does make a pretty big difference. I would much rather have more low end and take it out than have to somehow come up with more on a source that doesn't have enough.

For reverbs, I honestly don't use them unless a singer asks! I will put the reverb on the guitar amps from the amp's reverb itself, and I have a pedal for when I use my Pro Jr that doesn't have verb built in. When I do use verb as a plug-in I used to really like I think platinum or was it silver verb? But it went into a deep plugin menu and I never got around to moving it back with the other verbs in the verb folder. So now I'll go to Chromaverb, but in one of the tabs I turn the setting down from ultra mainly because it uses so much CPU (also turn off the visualization, it's neat but also eats CPU). I also started using a 'basic' UAD reverb plugin that seems to have a lot of options and uses the interface's CPU to take the heat off my 2012 mini.

Instead of verb, for pretty much everything I'll use whatever room the mic is in instead. If I want more of the room I move the source farther from the mic. Which I guess is why treatment is so key for me lately. I am lucky because I had a concrete basement in the coach house I rented prior to moving that while it had only one kind of sound, it made drum kits sound rather huge! Those drums sounded rather bad ass to me and nobody I recorded ever said otherwise, but that's the only sound you'd get out of that room. I'd track acoustics and vocals upstairs but I had no doors in the place except for bathrooms so every spot in the place was pretty open and you couldn't get that out of the recording. So I went with it. I learned later early Albini loved this too (he still probably does) so that justifies it retrospectively And where I'm at now I have a sweet long hallway coming out from the rooms my music stuff is in. I can put a mic down the hall, open the door to the bedroom and get more distance sound. But the farther I go from the room the more chance I'll pick up something going on outside.

I do use Space Designer but I like, in the warped sounds presets, the transistor radio and other small speaker sounds! Those are outstanding and really not highlighted as something that plugin can do. Can use those on the whole mix as an effect, or like I have, on vocals or solos or other weird uses.

I'm glad you like that ribbon mic! They're great! Own the figure 8 pattern by either like you said pointing the back at something muted, or you can also use that to the mic's advantage in a multi-mic or multi-instrument setup as it will reject really well to its sides. Plus honestly it's not like there's going to be another instrument or someone talking on the back side of the mic to spoil what you're tracking. Just try it like you would a normal mic, but with mindfulness it's listening behind it too, and if it sounds too room-y either move the mic and source toward a wall or a gobo panel, or point the back to a closet filled with clothes. Or if you're feeling nuts tip your mattress up and use that as a big panel/bass trap. But I can't honestly think about a time the figure 8 pattern has burned me. Ribbon mics just rule so hard they make up for picking up front and back

For one note parts not sticking out well: When I'm tracking single note acoustic lines, it's for solos and other random fill/addition parts so they're separate takes and I just turn up the preamp so the hottest thing is peaking in the yellow of my interface meter. But for single note-only takes you shouldn't have an issue not hearing them in a mix unless you're really getting dynamic with those notes..just turn up the pre before you track. If it's a really dynamic piece either multi take it or get your compression/automation game going! Speaking of automation...

I use automation but never nearly as often as I should. I love putting a gain plug on and automating that so I can still use the fader. I am sure there's a way to automate while still being able to move the faders but that's how I do it, dangnabit. I love that you can automate pretty much any plugin parameter too. I more often use automation to turn off/on plugins if I'm, say, using a distortion effect on a lead vocal in the chorus but not on the verses. Or to swell in a reverb or something like that.

I would strongly recommend checking out using the inspector clip gain function instead of automating though, in certain cases. That's what I use so much more. It's a bit of a pain, as it's not streamlined in Logic like it is in other DAWs (my Win 98 era of Nuendo was SO GOOD with this!) but it's so worth it. You split a vocal into phrases and just clip gain them and you see the waveforms rise/shrink. I literally just eyeball them and 9 out of 10 times when I listen it's fine! I'll only say: Just make sure that if you're doing this with comp takes, you click the little three dots symbol:

and change it to the scissors symbol:
,
otherwise the gain parameter won't work!

So this isn't how I'd use it but I don't have my mac mini/production computer on. Normally I'd be lowering the loud piece to meet the rest, or if the 'odd man out' is the other way around raising a low part to meet the louder rest of a take. But in this hasty example, if I wanted a certain piece of this vocal to be REALLY loud and didn't want to automate it, I'd chop the piece out from the rest:


And raise the gain in the inspector clip gain on the left side. You can physically see the waveform go up in volume too!

 

[GoodTimesRec]

Oh you are definitely right about mixing pro-recorded tracks. It's what I was talking about earlier where you want to bring up the rest of the sound to compete with/meet/be pleasantly loud along with the transient! That's what my tracks sort of look like now that I use the UAD plugins ahead of tracking to disk. I will compress everything with a Distressor, or 1176, or dbx 160, or LA-2A, and sometimes a 1073 ahead of those. I'm not going to lie the UAD plugins are very darn sweet but I'd never be able to afford, nor want to deal with the hassle of hand labelling and setting/re-setting per session the real hardware units.

Anyway, I learned just a year ago that in the absence of tracking with these compressors/source sweetening effects ahead of the signal, using parallel compression and grouping mics into buses works! You just have to make your very disparate waveforms to sound as even as the ones the pros are tracking to tape with their compressors/what have you first. Sure your tracks won't look like that but you mix it to sound that way. And yeah, it's so much easier to not have to do that but again nice stuff is nice but costs a lot of money we don't tend to have. So we gotta spend some time doing it more hands-on

Edit: a thought is you could also bounce your track(s) in place with the effects you have on them and it'll print those effects to the waveform. You can 'check your homework' in a way and physically see what you're doing to a waveform. But I wouldn't get too bogged down in those minutiae, if it sounds good who cares how you did it (I mean you do obviously so you can recreate it but I mean rhetorically) or what it looks like in the DAW! Also I'm firing up my mini to see if I can find an old and new acoustic guitar I've recorded to see if they look any different

 

[GoodTimesRec]

I guess there is some difference, I went to find the oldest acoustic track on my hard drive and it's my 2007 recording of Tyla from Dogs D'Amour who for some reason lived in Chicago, came to my apartment, and I tracked this demo (among other songs of his) that I'm pretty sure the dude is still selling on his web site and of course not at all attributing to me, but he did buy some beer and pizza that day I guess

He did acoustic and vocals together so I pointed one mic at his mouth and the other pointed at the guitar. The top, vocal, track has a lot of guit bleed but they're both rather transient-y. I guess I screwed up and his vocal clips a few times!:


And this is the acoustic (and drum room mic--my ribbon mic!--and bass guitar mics) track from the "Associated Memories of the 1970's" song on my Levi Hustle bandcamp/site. The bass and guitars are definitely more even with the transients as I was using the Distressor on the bass at like 6:1 at the time (I've since toned it down to 3:1) and the 1176 on the acoustic guitar mic. I must have been in a hurry and not had time to two-mic that acoustic, ha:


I'm noticing that on the newer project, I hit the track zoom button so the waveforms look a lot bigger than they actually are! But on the old one, I really did track that hot. I'm much more sensible these days about how much I turn up my preamps, ha

 

[JamEZmusic]

No sweat about the notification thing, I will always reply but sometimes it can take me a day or 2 anyway. Luckily I managed to finish this construction job today so I am able to talk tonight but almost thought for a second that I would be leaving another one of my (Will reply tomorrow) posts. Probably will stay up late tonight anyways and I'm not doing much. Can't really start wailing out on the guitar because that will annoy my neighbour haha. (although she reckons she's never heard me......)

Clip Gain in Logic is amazing, I believe that wasn't always a feature in Logic and old fasioned way was to use a gain plugin, I can see that being a major pain in the ass though. No visual feedback or anything. First thing I do when I download some multitracks is to highlight all clips and turn clip gain down -12db's. They are all really hot for some reason (Probably normalised upon bounce or something). This gives me usually around -6dbs peak on master buss after initial balance, it comes down again slightly again normally once I start compressing individual tracks. But this is not always the case, sometimes I clip on very dense tracks, but quite rare that happens. I'd normally always use clip gain to manually raise loudness on certain phrases in my guitar parts as well if I am that far out, but rarely use clip gain to gain DOWN a sudden peak, for some reason I normally set up a high ratio compressor, or limiter to catch it. I honestly don't know why I never thought of addressing that issue with Clip gain.... During editing phase, the marquee tool and clip gain is my best friend. I do this on tom tracks also, just snip tom drum hits with marquee tool and turn the bleed down like 20db's, not to kill it but reduce severely. I only started doing this after watching a Mark Needham tutorial and he doesnt like to cut all bleed out using a gate, so I adopted this approach, but see plenty other pro mixers using gates, so at the end of the day. does it really matter?

So with my unexpected day off tomorrow, it's time to play with my new Ribbon. I noticed though unfortunately my audio interface is not quite gutsy enough to give me decent levels on the mic (another thing to irritate me with buying the wrong interface) Think I am hitting peaks of around -25dbfs, and this is where I am at a nice distance from the mic, 1ft+ away, maybe closer to 2ft/. I can get my preferred -10 -12dbfs peaks when playing closer to the mic but proximity effect is just a little out of control. So I have to overcome this somehow. It's going to come down to 3 options

1:sell apogee duetII and 18i20 interface and upgrade
2:buy mic pre-amp or cloudlifter or something (I don't know nothing about these)
3:Hope my art tube MP can supply me with clean useable gain (will experiment)
4ossibly levels of -25, or -20peaks (I will split the difference and go for more proximity but just cut in mixing) is hopefully enough that by the time I clip gain up (hehe) I do not bring up too much hiss/noise. Again, need to play.

Definitely looking forward to double mikin especially with the SDC condensor up real high to the ceiling above me. I may be surprised. I kind of wished I had 2 of those ribbons though. I may just go ahead and order another one soon. Heard they excel at room mics for drums aswel so I think it will be a worthwhile investment.
I am worried about handling the mic, I heard never to record closer than 6inches on a louder source, or to tap the mic, or even put it down without some sort of cover as the magnet inside could attrack metal particles and stuff it up? Are they really that delicate? if that's the case I am definitely keeping my daughter away from ANY ribbon mic....

Honestly though, the issue I had before was that the high end of my guitar (especially high e string) was so piercingly painful and I actually started playing bass strings much louder and high e very softly and it really affected my performance. Now I can really dig into that high E string and the tone actually sounds pleasing with lots of character. I knew if wasn't my playing because I can clearly hear on pro recordings where people do the same, twang the high e, or dig in and really pick it HARD, yet the recording sounds amazing for it. If only I knew that the ribbon mic would have been the answer. Was so close to just getting rid of all my acoustics and just saving up for a much more expensive acoustic, and then there is the hassle of choosing one, testing it out etc. Was getting really fed up with it actually. My acoustic guitar is honestly a cheap piece of crap £30 new, at least one of them is. but the ribbon makes it sound REALLY good/expensive/lush. It's amazing, and mindblowing all at the same time. Tomorrow I really want to find out for myself if I can make my condenser sound very close to the ribbon with some careful processing for peace of mind that it was truly impossible for me to match that quality by mixing alone during the past couple of years. I'm not one for experimenting like this but I've had a rough time battling with harsh acoustic for a long time and need to understand more about it.

I am definitely of same opinion about cutting low end out of guitars as opposed to trying to add it all back in. Have a feeling I am going to get used to playing the mic waay further back on ribbon, or cutting a fair amount during mixing because proximity effect on that thing is insane. Figure 8's have worst proximity effect I think, but will probably be really great for me to close mic guitar and use proximity effect to further enhance a high melody line to really warm it up. Will see how that works out when I try within a few days.

I don't think I'm brave enough to track my guitars with reverb on the amp, I will give it a try and see how it goes but normally I record dry. I've tried out lots of whacky things recently with my amp (none successful mind you) Using Logic Pedalboard plugin to re-amp my di signal back through my amp with lots of different pedals combinations in desperate search of that nice lead guitar tone. Have NO idea why I never found anything workable, but I thought it would work the same way as if I was using a real hardware pedal to shape my tone... If I had more money I would just buy real pedals and compare but instead it will be one of those things I have to figure out 1 day when I have time. I was really hoping it would have opened up a whole new world of tones for me to try out but nop.

I glossed straight over the warped presets in space designer.. I must try these out now you mentioned them. This is first thing I'm going to try out in the morning in-fact. I'm glad I asked you.

Honestly I can't hear the figure 8 effect of my ribbon, I didn't need to point the mic into a thick duvet or anything like that. I will still try it out to see if I can hear the difference. I have a thick duvet white blanket permanently hung up (and it actually improves the look of studio funny enough with my purple hue light) Feels cosier, and actually does its job of reflecting high freq's. But anyway, it's not there for that, I pull one across and hang it on a hook if I ever want to record guitar, Lately I have not been using it but it's in a V shape once I pull 1 duvet across and I can sit in there and pretty much record by rejecting all room sound. Difference is not impactful enough for me to use that method all the time though because it becomes a pain to sit so far away from the computer and struggling along with the wireless keyboard/mouse while trying to record takes etc. But it's there anyway just incase. and definitely worth experimenting with more now that I am becoming much more happy with overall of my recordings.

When I say I struggle recording single notes on acoustic guitar, or melody lines it was mainly due to the harshness, When strumming I have the low bass notes disguising the harsh high end and it is not nearly as noticable but when high melody lines are exposed by themselves the sound I was getting was rather disgusting. Just with quick test I did yesterday I was getting useable recordings right away, I used to record as best I could and then have to spend a couple of hours in mixing trying to tame with multiband compressor/saturation/EQ or dynamic eq's and still get results that are not comparable to even just the quick test recordings I did yesterday with the ribbon dry. It's funny you say you use an 1176 style compressor on your acoustics because just very recently I have started doing this and it seems to be the best sounding compressor by far in logic for acoustic guitar, the opto sounds horrible to me on acoustic but amazing on vocals. I noticed that you have to be much more careful on the attack time but go too fast and you get distortion, but on the clean platinum logics compressor you are find to pull the attack straight down to 0ms with no artifacts, or at least I have never heard any distortion....... Actually I use 0ms a lot for that compressor because it makes the attack of acoustic guitar sound much smoother and easier to listen to, but it's only my taste, I'll guarantee if I set a slower attack to let pick attack come through I would end up dulling it back down again with a transient designer. I'm drawn to smooth/warm/lush probably because I have really become over sensitive to the opposite after battling with it all for so long.

Yeah when you automate you lose control of the fader unfortunately. But my workflow kind of allows for that anyway because I will bus down numerous times. so in a quick crude way.

Multiple Kicks/Snares to Kick Bus/snare bus/tom Bus etc. > Drums > ALL DRUMS > PreMaster > Stereo Out
Bass DI/BassAmp/BassDist > Bass > ALL BASS > PreMaster > Stereo Out
Guitar L/R > Guitar > All Guitar > Premaster > Stereo Out
etc.etc.

I do all my automations on individual tracks before they go to any bussing, so I don't care if I lose control of fader because I just use volume control after, this seems like a long way around but you would bus anyway at least so you can compress all your drums as a whole, or EQ all your guitars out of the way of the vocal. And then if I want to bring all guitars up a bit i just nudge up ALL GUITARS, the Premaster bus is so I do not have to enable and disable all my plugins every time I want to check a reference mix. also I make sure this track is in the main track window so i can automate a chorus up a half db, or verse down or whatever. This is the Dave Pensado routing, It works really well for me, and probably only takes me an extra 2minutes per mix. It really narrows down the amount of faders I use, I'll get all the blends right at the start and then never really touch the faders again. I mean some multitracks I get there is almost 10 snare tracks... Current mark needham mix I have yet to finish has 5 drum room mics, 2stereos and a mono (he uses them all so I know to use them with the best blend possible) I would be screwed without the kind of bussing I listed above!

Note: I used to use a 2in2out audio interface and when I re-amped I needed to pull the left studio monitor out and use this to re-amp, to be able to listen to reference, and mics together while routing out into guitar amp and back in while maintaining ability to move mics and hear in real time through my headphones using the 3-4 channel instead of 1-2. this kind of routing is the only way I was able to do this. real funky but.... it got me over the hump, of course I have new interface now I just route straight out of mono output5, and ..... it's done. lol So that routing listed above was sooooo helpful for me to do that much quicker because I could obviously route the mix out of -premaster set to 3-4, but my re-amping signal out (stereo out), without this kind of bussing I would have to select multiple channels of busses and set them all to 3-4... fuck that

Ctrl + Z is a lifesaver in logic, it magnifies whatever track you have selected so you can adjust the trim volume in your track window without having to keep opening up your mixer view... (this is a better way to increase/decrease volume once your fader becomes occupied with automations, I prefer to change volume here than on a plugin because I try to keep everything perfect all the way through so I can bypass/enable plugins to A/B compare with no volume changes that may trick my ear, obviously if you use a gain plugin as you say that's fine, but I would never change volume up or down using like... the output of a compressor plugin because I lose that ability to A/B with plugin bypassed accurately) Note: I don't use a dual monitoring system so I have to keep hitting X to bring up my faders.

I used a lot of UAD plugins in studio, they were great! If only I had a chance to use them all again with a little extra knowledge I have, I would have made much more use of them and probably realised their potential. They made a lasting impression on me though, and one day... one day... I may just be able to afford.

So watching that mark needham mix walkthrough the other night. I watched him write a TON of automation in 10 minutes at the end of mixdown without using any kind of midi controller. It is much more simple than I thought, he was just switching between Read/Latch/Write mode and playing the track making simple movements on the fader, That guy mixes 3 songs in a day quite regularly, nuts... but I think he's found the fastest way of doing things now and after watching him work I am convinced a midi controller may actually be a waste of money for now. At least until I get into composing strings. Had a little test run on it the other day and it's a nice way of writing quite complex automations. I can't really do those kinds of automations using clip gain because that's more of a broader thing for me and believe you can not slope the automations, I'm thinking swells or using those ear catching techniques where you let someone hear a part briefly and duck it out of the way and subconsciously you still hear the part (or think you can) I love that kind of stuff.

I really like that part of the mix process now where I can fix all the tracks using compression and the rest of it. making the track sound like you wished it sounded when you recorded. I would much rather get multitracks where I had to compress and thicken/fix everything first before I started mixing than to get a bunch of great recorded tracks that I could start balancing right away, in my opinion it takes away half the fun. Plus I learn nothing then and would ultimately be screwed when it comes to trying to mix my own tracks... as I've just found out. If I had the money I don't think i would bother with a ton of outboard gear either. I have only just recently started up my own rack, lots of empty slots as I only have patchbay and audio interface/power strip. Compressor will go in there someday but I am in no rush. Would probably get something that looks pretty with a lot of lights that has like no practical use..... like a tuner. Just because .... pretty lights

Did you know about that fairly new feature in logic where you can process your tracks on the fly and it will give you your visual representation on the waveform as you go?
Apply plug-in effects to audio regions in Logic Pro X - Apple Support
Extremely nice new feature! I use it more for a learning tool than anything else, it definitely helped me understand compression a little better. And this is where I found out that my waveform had one hell of a spiky ass needle transient even on 0ms by applying processing during the tracks, you don't even have to bounce down you can just look at the preview, or undo if you want. I think this is a great tool if you want to eyeball a waveform so it looks similar to pro recorded track for instance, or to learn what a compressor is doing and if it's messing your waveform up etc. It's something I don't use much anymore but if I do decide to track to a reference and not sure if I got the track thickness, or crest, or transient spike right I would definitely apply processing as best I thought, visualise waveform a bit and tweak, I mean.... how can you possibly go wrong if you do that?

You know what.... There is more I want to say but I'm not really adding anything useful to conversation, instead I am just rambling a bit now. Tired.

Cheers mate,

James

 

[GoodTimesRec]

Heh I totally use clip gain on toms too! Although once I started using sample delay to keep phase coherence (? I'm not sure what the right term is) with all the drum mics, I haven't had too much issue with them working against each other. So I leave the rack tom on all the time and only noise gate the floor tom because MD421's apparently are both too big to angle right and don't do a good job rejecting a loud ride cymbal hitter. But I have started practicing being light on cymbals and heavy on drums and that goes a long way! Also setting up the kit to have the cymbals better spaced, it's not that hard to move an extra couple inches especially if it's for the tone! haha

Enjoy that ribbon! It does need more gain than other mics but before getting a preamp with more gain, the noise floor on our interfaces these days is so low-- just clip gain it to be where you want it after you record. 10, even 30 dB of gain won't do anything to a 127 dB-ish noise floor. Playing the shit out of my drums only brought my SPL meter to 95 dB. Also I too have never had the back end of the figure 8 be an issue to ever need a baffle. I keep in mind it picks up stuff behind it but 99% of the time I place it like I would any other mic. The other time is using it tracking a whole live band which is weirdly once in a blue moon for me these days. But man I wish I had two ribbons to use as dual overheads! I love the one as a drum room mic now. For a long time (and for all the stuff on my Levi page) I just used that ribbon in front of the drum kit, at the same height off the floor as the kick beater and sub kick microphones, instead of also using overheads. It sounds like the Beatles or older records' drums that I love. You could not go wrong with two ribbons I am most sure. I have heard, and I guess it depends on how many dB's the mic can handle in its spec sheet, that ribbons are fine on louder sources but I also keep it away from loud sources. I don't recall ever using it on a guitar amp! I'm a SM57 and now 57/421 guy I guess. I think more modern ribbon mics are more robust than their older brethren

But also unless you absolutely hate your interface and none of your pres get the ribbon to an acceptable (to you) input level AND bringing it up later somehow introduces too much noise, if your interface accepts line level inputs get a discrete preamp instead. I started with a Bluetube to augment my Echo Audiofire 8's dual pres way back in the day and the tube on it has since broke, but it's two competent and working solid state preamps that have phase/phantom/pad/high pass. Heck I still won't get rid of my Presonus Firestudio Project because its preamps are just fine and it's 8 pres plus firewire that I can use in a pinch! Also I only really go as fancy as a preamp with pad/phase/phantom/hi-pass. I am fine with solid state pre's for sure. They're fine! I don't think (non-crap) preamps make as much of a difference as other parts of a signal chain other than needing to provide the gain you need as well as being clean when turned up reasonably high, personally

Hm I will bus stuff but I never mixdown anything except the whole project. I like being able to (quickly) undo stuff and using the bus faders is fine since each one becomes its own instrument. Need more bass, turn up the bass sub fader. Lately I will not even group guitars but command click them to raise/lower them together because I am either too lazy or still want the fine tuning easily if need be. Even with parallel comps, it's easy and quick to use two faders because the drumkit bus tends to be transients/punch and the parallel comp drumkit track is the sheen, for lack of a better word. I am getting better at hearing which I need to raise up, or if I need both. But before that my go-to is just turning down everything else if I can't hear enough of a certain thing. It's not a race to the top, it's more that everything is just too forward and needs to step back. I can make it louder later in the master if I have to. To me the loudness isn't the dB's in the faders, it's the total coherence and punch of everything together. A quietly played guitar turned up loud still feels softly played and a loud amp turned down still sounds like a loud amp being played. When everything is even and the chords hit together that sounds and feels great.

Logic's compressors are so great, and I still use them even though I have the UAD emulations of the real-deal stuff! They just can do so much. Before I went to the UAD's on my drums I loved taking the drum kit bus and going into the sidechain and turning the high pass on and turning the threshold to maybe 150-180 Hz so that the compressor only touches stuff above the kick and maybe low tom parts, which at the time was my way to keep the low end in. Now it's all parallel compression, as that's just so good. (edit to add: the wet/dry knob is key on Logic's compressors and I guess in a way is parallel comp)

I also am on one display so I am used to hitting X (and I, and command+shift+I, control+H...oh so many keyboard shortcuts), but my favorite is to turn on autopunch you punch that control+option+command+P. To make things a little less cluttered in my newest template I went into the settings and turned off the track icons, made the fader titles two lines tall so they fit more description in them, and did some other tweaks to add stuff I use and take out stuff I never use.


I did not know about that Logic effects preview/application feature but it seems pretty cool, a more robust version of freezing tracks! As long as you can undo it, it's fine with me And I also agree, I would rather make the tracks from scratch than work on something pre-tracked. That's the whole fun of it for sure, creating something. I guess if I ever worked in a studio or took on mixing projects I'd be mixing other people's stuff but I can see myself being annoyed at how they did things unlike how I'd do them, ha

Cheers!!