How Much Delay on Acoustic Guitar DI?

[PHILANDDON]

To match up with the mic'd signal. In general. I know it depends on the mic distance from the guitar.

 

[phaqu]

If its close mic'ed,probably not enought to worry about. And ambient mics in the room,whatever delay you get will just add more to the overall sound. But,if you have to,take the speed of sound,convert it to milliseconds per foot ,multiply that by how many feet your mic is away from the source. Set the delay that much. (I think its 1.129 milliseconds/ foot. I could be wrong).

 

[PHILANDDON]

Hmm. Interesting response. Does everyone agree that the sound from the pickup gets recorded first? Seems so to me.

 

[PHILANDDON]

Also, out of curiosity does anyone just add a little reverb to the DI'd signal to acheive the same effect?

 

[Big Kenny]

Leave 'em where they land, adds depth and fatness that cannot be achieved any other way ('cept an sdc at the twefth fret and a room condenser, which sound way better by the way)

 

[Treeline]

Leave 'em where they land, adds depth and fatness that cannot be achieved any other way ('cept an sdc at the twefth fret and a room condenser, which sound way better by the way)

Ditto.

See how it sounds first without any fooling around with delay. It's easy to overthink this stuff.

 

[Farview]

If you are recording to a computer, you can just slide the DI track over until you see it match up with the mic'd track. The only reason to do this is to get rid of phase problems, which could be fixed with better mic placement.

 

[SonicAlbert]

Hmm. Interesting response. Does everyone agree that the sound from the pickup gets recorded first? Seems so to me.

The pickup is fractions of an inch from the string and the mic is probably feet away, or inches at the very least. So the pickup would get recorded first because the sound has less far to travel.

But we are talking about very small differences here. I think the mics would have to be pretty far away for you to want to compensate with a delay.

And as has been mentioned, mic placement is all important.

 

[MOFO Pro]

I'm with Sonic on this one... delay would be negligible, and really wouldn't be the major factor in what you're asking here...

But whenever you record one source through two different signal paths, phase is an issue... There are rules of thumb for mic placement when stereo micing a single source, but even following those, fine tuning initilial placement is the best way to deal with phase issues... although once in the box you can bump one signal back or forth to aliagn after the fact... just move a track around until the phase corrilation isn't cancelling frequencies on you.

The same theories apply to micing with an acoustic pickup... grab some headphones (with good isolation) and move the mic around listening for the sweet spot. It's really how it sounds that's important.

 

[soundchaser59]

See how it sounds first without any fooling around with delay. It's easy to overthink this stuff.

These guys are right. I tried using my pickup track to replace the Mid mic, mixed with two tracks from a figure 8 mic. No matter how much delay I put on the pickup track, I coudl not tell any benefit at all.

I ended up concluding that the mic'd sound was far superior to the pickup sound. The difference was obvious and easy to hear.

If you try it, try it first without any delay.

 

[Dogbreath]

Another "me too" with the don't worry about it thing. Let em lay where they land.

Play with the placement with an sdc at the 12th fret and set up a room mic. (condenser)
I've had good results with this placement. And a set of good isolation cans, as stated already, helps you find the sweet spot.

Luck to you.