DI 'ing bass guitar

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musicdavid

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The last time I did some recordings the bass was recorded live, in the same room as the drummer, with the amp miked up.

In the new studio I am planning to use, the engineer is talking about DI 'ing the bass straight into the desk in the control booth (while playing in sync with the drummer who will be miked up in the main room).

I feel this will result in a loss of feel and volume/power from the bass.

Does anybody have any opinions on this. Can you make me feel better about DI 'ing or should I stand firm on recording them in the same room with the bass going through an amp?
 
I'd say it's equally common to DI vs. miking an amp for bass. Doing both is also common (an amp track and a di track), so you can pick the best sound for the song and/or blend the signals together. As long as the studio has a decent DI for bass, I wouldn't worry about it. You could always re-amp it at mixdown if you really need that 'amp' sound.
 
I almost always record bands with the bass DI. It's fast. It's accurate. It keeps things clean - drums outta the bass and bass outta the drums. If every one is in the same room, they gotta wear cans. If they are in separate rooms, I sometimes set up a monitor for the bass player.
But........
There is no substitute for actually micing a cabinet, though.
That said, here are some other ideas:
You can always "re-amp" the recorded bass later.
You can put the bass amp (mic'd) in another room, and everyone wears cans.
Use an active DI or Modeler.
good luck!
 
musicdavid said:
Does anybody have any opinions on this. Can you make me feel better about DI 'ing or should I stand firm on recording them in the same room with the bass going through an amp?
Click to expand...

How can you "stand firm" about doing something if you have never tried it?
 
Di'ing mostly works ok, but micing allways adds "something extra" (the sound of the amp through the speakers in a room offcourse) that you can't get with a DI

If the bass has a dominant place in the mix I tend to mic it.
If it's merely low freq's without hi-mids I'd go with a DI


Why don't you try to reamp ?
Record bass DI, then send it to the bass amp and re-record it with a mic.
 
I usually mic a bass cab, AND DI the bass. It's good to get a good clean signal from the bass (DI). But, 9 times out of 10, I will use the mic'd cabinet as my final bass sound. There's no substitute for the sound of a mic'd bass rig. To me, the DI bass sound never comes across as very convincing. Even a condenser on a cab at relatively low volume, to me, still sounds more "LIVE" than any DI.
 
i run my bass through a Johnson J station, which is a Guitar/Bass amp modeler. i just use the amp model of that unit, and then i add a lil compressor n eq (if needed). thats works pretty good for me me, though im not a serious bassist, inmost of my songs i use synth bass.
 
it'll probably be fine. espically if he's useing a sans-amp or something like that.

and he may re-amp it later anyway.
 
For the most recent band I recorded, I had the bass going direct through a Bass SansAmp. The rest of the band said his bass had never sounded better.
 
For me the ideal way to record bass is a great DI (not just any DI will work) and a miced bass cab, but the SansAmp driver is a pretty substitute sometimes. But the result are not consistant. Some times the DI is the winner sometimes the miced amp, its usually some blend of the two.

Depending on the live room at the studio you are talking about, if its a situation where there would be tons of bass in the drum mics, I would rather have the DI sound than tons of bass in my overheads. There is no reason you can not be in the same room as the bass player though if you want.
 
get that lazy son of a jackal to DI it and mic the amp. Use one or the other or a blend of both.
 
DI-ing a bass will give you more of the lower frequencies (20-50hz). It's all preference, but I don't like DIing a bass with active electronics. It usually ends up sounding rather mechanical. A passive bass seems to respond better.

Like others have said, it's a good idea to mic and DI the bass and mix the two together. If I had to do one or the other, I'd mic the amp but millions of good bass recording have been done using a DI.
 
do both. just because you record both a DI and an amp track doesn't mean you need to use both of them in any of the songs. but it's good to have the flexibility.


cheers,
wade
 
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