Mic placement experiment

[JasonBird]

don't know if anyone will find this interesting or useful in any way, but i thought that i would throw it out here anyway....read somewhere in another thread about phase issues with mic placement. I recorded my homemade guitar with a sm 57 placed in the back of the amp cab, at an angle pointed right at the speaker. another mic, oktava mc012 about 4feet directly in front of the amp . each mic going to a seperate track in Sonar . both trimmed to the same input level ~-12db . no other effects...It sounds pretty good to me. i hear no phase problems, but my hearing is questionable... One thing that i did notice is on the higher frequencies, the signal of the sm57 went down substantialy...anyway here's a link to listen for yourself.

track 7 ....
http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=2169&alid=-1


JasonBird

 

[virtualvisions]

I'm pretty sure you'll only hear phase problems if you pan the 2 mics rather than making a mono track out of em (if they truly were out of phase). Otherwise the sound being subtracted from the phase cancellation just wouldn't be there. Sounds good!

 

[AGCurry]

I'm pretty sure you'll only hear phase problems if you pan the 2 mics rather than making a mono track out of em (if they truly were out of phase). Otherwise the sound being subtracted from the phase cancellation just wouldn't be there. Sounds good!

Other way around. Monaural summing will reveal phase problems more than panned tracks.

 

[Big Kenny]

Yup and you won't get phase issues at that distance and placement. The oktava sounds good at that ditance cuz that's where you usually stand when you hear it. I use that placement technique a lot with loud guitar players cuz it always emilates what they hear.

 

[JasonBird]

thanks for the responses guys...in case i didn't mention it, both tracks were recorded in mono, and both are centered. tried panning them each seperate ways, but sounded worse....i thought they sounded best centered.


JasonBird

 

[jho1986]

Having the mics out of phase can sometimes be a good thing... It all just depends on how it sounds after being recorded. Sometimes with the mics being out of phase, certain frequencies get cut out and the end result is good...

One way to find out if they are out of phase is to just zoom in on the waveforms close enough to where you can tell if they are lining up. Guitar is probably the hardest one to do this with though, so good luck.

Also, if you mic'd the cab from behind and in front, then one of the mics would need to be phase reversed... keep in mind that if you like how it sounds now, maybe you shouldn't change anything.