Balancing out guitars

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ericlingus

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Hi i'm new to recording and even newer to mixing. When I record two guitar parts separately. One miked, one direct with vamp2. I can't seem to balance them out even when recording at the same db. The vamp2(right side) just sticks out more. No matter what I do it just is more noticeable. Is it just too different? Should I make the tone more similar to the miked one? Here is a sound clip. One is panned hard left(miked) and the other hard right(vamp2). My amp is a behringer vtone 210 amp. I miked it with a sm57 on the left speaker a little to the left of the cone. The vamp2 was recorded direct with a dualfex pro. Both guitars went into my firebox and were recorded in cubase LE.


http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?fid=3062
 
Play the part twice..record it twice.....Err.....make that play it FOUR times....and record it FOUR times.....but instead of having Vamp in one speaker and mic'd amp in the other speaker, have Vamp take 1 and mic'd amp take 1 panned left and Vamp take 2 and mic'd amp take 2 panned right.
 
ericlingus said:
... sm57 on the left speaker a little to the left of the cone. The vamp2 was recorded direct with a dualfex pro. Both guitars went into my firebox and were recorded in cubase LE.
Click to expand...
Here's a possibility -but only if it's not the same part played twice- if it's the same performance through those two paths, the more direct route (first arrival) will always pull forward.
Or said in reverse, delay one of two identical, panned signals about one ms, image shifts from center to the early one.
See 'precedence effect'.
If that's the case, time align them.

Wayne
 
my ears must be knackered then cos this sounds OK to me. The left and right guitars are not playing within the same range... probably an octave apart... difficult for me to say... would this not affect the way the mix "sounds"?
 
THanks for the replies. I played the exact same riff with each performance. I did it separate not just one performance. One performance with it DI'd and one performance miked. I really don't want to make 4 performances. I tried that but it kinda just smooths the part out. With other guitar part I probably would but I don't like doing it with tremolo picked parts Maybe I could use two mics on the amp instead of one. Two different ones. Then the left would seem more full like the right.
 
hmm after listening to it again with fresh ears I think i'll go with more tracks. Two performances on each side. One DI and one miked on each. I'll have to practice to get it tight enough. I have trouble with that. I find if I do more than two performances, it starts getting alittle muddy.
 
This is a very interesting example of how things aren't always as they seem.

Everybody will agree that the right channel sounds "louder" or "more present" than the left channel. Yet look at the numbers (as measured in Sound Forge):

PEAK LEVEL (dBFS)
L: -9.0
R: -12.8

RMS LEVEL (dBFS)
L: -21.0
R: -22.5

If you went by the numbers, the left channel would definitely be the louder of the two as it rules in both peak and RMS values. But yet clearly this isn't the case.

What's happening here is that the signal coming through the vamp on the right is much denser than the miked signal on the left. See the attached blow up of a section of the waveforms (L on top, R on bottom) to see the difference visually; the right channel just looks denser. And it sounds that way too, because there is actually more sonic information, even if it isn't "louder".

Why is this happening? It sounds (and looks) to me as though the vamp is compressing the signal, and in doing so is also giving a bit of a high-end boost to it. This boost is what synkotron erroneously heard as an octave modulation. They are playing the same thing, but the right channel is brighter and more present.

How do you fix this? The simplest way is to just increase the gain on the left channel. So what if they don't look or read out at the same level, nobody cares how the song looks or reads. If both sides sound the same volume, that's all that matters. As is always said here, mix with your ears ;).

Or you can try some compression of the left side to try and bring the densities in line, and then EQ a little to taste to go with the right side how you wish.

Try and remember this the next time the discussion of RMS and volume comes up and remember that they don't necessarily mean the same thing.

G.
 

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You could also put one of the parts in the center and the other panned hard to the side with a slightly delayed version (less then 40ms) on the other side.
 
3-9

Instead of hard l-r panning, maybe a 3 o'clock 9 o'clock pan( or 7:30-4:30...whatever).You still have a stereo sound spread, but the difference is spread out between the l-r channels.ie; some of the left is in the right and vise versa. Can even things out a bit.
 
I found nothing wrong with this sample. It actually sounds good to me.
It is a MUST that you have two different guitar tones panned hard-left and hard-right for rock and metal. The difference in playing, tone, density and EQ gives the SPACE and AIR needed to bring your mix to life.

What you DON'T want is two guitars that sound the same, since they create a space effect, but no DEPTH. Look, the right channel sounds more "in yer face" than the right one. So you have like your mix depth panned this way. It is a very good practice often done my metal gurus.

To sum it up, track two guitars with different tones and EQ's and pan them hard left and right and adjust the level of highs on the guitar you want to bring forward. Increase the level of the other side to create a slightly out of balance effect. Just like you did, it's very good to my ears. Just be careful to balance things out by putting the hi-hats to the left of the mix.
 
thank you very much guys. And Glen. I knew that the left had more volume. I guess I used the wrong word when saying balancing. I just wanted both guitairs to be equally as noticable. But maybe this works the way it is. I'll change it a little bit. So what do you think of the tone?
 
oh and looks like the dualfex does what it's supposed to do then. That's why I bought it, to make the vamp2 tracks sit better in a mix. Worked too well I guess lol
 
ericlingus said:
So what do you think of the tone?
Click to expand...
Without knowing what the rest of the song is like or what you have in mind for the sound of the other instruments, it's hard to talk about "tone".

But based upon what I hear so far and on what I imagine you might want from the song based upon the genre, I can say the following...

First, as it is now, one can only consciously hear a disparity in the left gituar in that the top two or three strings stand out; the lower three or four strings just do not have the same energy. I'd follow my second recommendation of adding some light-to-moderate compression to the left side so that it can hold it's own against the right channel across the spectrum, and not just on the top strings. That's not to say that they should sound the same, just so that they are equals in impression on the stage.

Then I'd salt and pepper the two guitars with some slight shaping EQ just to help lift and seperate their sounds a little (if needed and as needed.)

From there I'd try adding some analog dirt to the sound of both of them via a little hard driven tubes. If you don't have the outboard gear for that, then I'd try using the Blowfish compressor plugin and tuning in the "saturation" just a bit (to ear.)

G.
 
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