If you liked that, also read the next sticky down, "Some Thoughts about "Better", "Best", and Mic Recommendations". You might find it useful.
First and foremost, thank you (again) Harvey for sharing your professional
knowledge with most of the home-grown basement punks (like myself).
From the fifteen pages I've read thus far, a few things have popped out
which never occurred to me - mainly why we pan instruments/signals; it's not
all about sounding cool...
Before I get too involved in my response, is there a source which holds all of
the diagrams and PDF's used in your earlier examples? I'm no longer able to
see them.
I never really paid much attention to microphone design; most of my selection
preference comes from trial and error, and/or respsonse profiling of my limited
stash of mics. Your lesson about near and far field placement may indeed
solve some of my issues with dynamic range of specific drums and vocals.
I've noticed that my overhead microphone often sounds much better than
'near-field' snare/tom mics with respect to reproducing the natural sound
of the drum.
The obvious negative to overhead recording is isolation between drum channels/tracks.
Another bit of information you presented earlier will help during the mix down.
The idea of giving each instrument a place in the audio spectrum is very
intriguing.
I can't wait to try another session with better mic placement and eq. using
your suggestions. At the moment I'm having difficulty getting the vocal
"in your face" when listening out from a set of stereo speakers.
I'll have to pay close attention to my spectrum analyzer when mixing down
to see the difference between hard panning guitars vs. centered.
Awesome help. Keep on 'rawkin'
