bluesfordan
Member
which I'm assuming means in a well-treated, good sounding room and also assuming good sound isolation from outside.
but what about when recording in less than optimal conditions? Or going direct?
Let's go with the latter first, going direct. I don't always get the same sound on playback as I do while I'm recording and playing. It usually sounds livelier during the performance. Part of that may be the acoustic sound of the strings gets in the headphones and augment the monitored sound. Then upon playback, it is usually duller, woofier.
so far, I haven't had much luck with preamp channel plugins, they often seem to introduce more noise than they are worth. You only get gain on the interface, no EQ going in. Listening to the playback I usually give a steep cut to around 235-250 Hz and boost some brightness into the rest if it's sounding dark. Then sometimes I lower the overall level if it is barking too hard on the main level meter. From there I go to compression, another round of EQ and sometimes more compression. I start getting it to sound more like what I was hearing when I was playing.
I did some recording last night with sdc mics, positioning them x-y where my head was in front of my amp (up on a bookcase). approximately 44" vertical and 20" from center of speaker. Very dark and woofy upon playback. The EQ analysis showed way more information in the sub-250 Hz than the direct input. Got the mud EQ'd out, couldn't really find a center for the nasally honk. That may have been a node caused by the room.
Long post short. Not EQing on the way in, but massively sculpting after the fact. I'm pretty sure GIGO (garbage in garbage out) applies but sometime that forces one hand to use a lot of Fabreeze in the form of EQ.
but what about when recording in less than optimal conditions? Or going direct?
Let's go with the latter first, going direct. I don't always get the same sound on playback as I do while I'm recording and playing. It usually sounds livelier during the performance. Part of that may be the acoustic sound of the strings gets in the headphones and augment the monitored sound. Then upon playback, it is usually duller, woofier.
so far, I haven't had much luck with preamp channel plugins, they often seem to introduce more noise than they are worth. You only get gain on the interface, no EQ going in. Listening to the playback I usually give a steep cut to around 235-250 Hz and boost some brightness into the rest if it's sounding dark. Then sometimes I lower the overall level if it is barking too hard on the main level meter. From there I go to compression, another round of EQ and sometimes more compression. I start getting it to sound more like what I was hearing when I was playing.
I did some recording last night with sdc mics, positioning them x-y where my head was in front of my amp (up on a bookcase). approximately 44" vertical and 20" from center of speaker. Very dark and woofy upon playback. The EQ analysis showed way more information in the sub-250 Hz than the direct input. Got the mud EQ'd out, couldn't really find a center for the nasally honk. That may have been a node caused by the room.
Long post short. Not EQing on the way in, but massively sculpting after the fact. I'm pretty sure GIGO (garbage in garbage out) applies but sometime that forces one hand to use a lot of Fabreeze in the form of EQ.