Monitoring / overdubbing with speakers

[cjacek]

Hi,

I've noticed that overdubbing, while monitoring via speaker(s), is much easier for me, vocally, than it is using headphones. I'm just curious, for those of you who prefer this type of tracking, what you have found that works best as far as this setup is concerned. I'm particularly interested in speaker / mic placement, volume and anything else that you may wish to add... I'm always looking to improve my monitoring and it'd be cool if you could share your experience & wisdom.

Thanks.

 

[gecko zzed]

Hi,

I've noticed that overdubbing, while monitoring via speaker(s), is much easier for me, vocally, than it is using headphones. I'm just curious, for those of you who prefer this type of tracking, what you have found that works best as far as this setup is concerned. I'm particularly interested in speaker / mic placement, volume and anything else that you may wish to add... I'm always looking to improve my monitoring and it'd be cool if you could share your experience & wisdom.

Thanks.

It is true that many people would find it easier to perform while listening through monitors rather than headphones.

However, it is rarely done. You've obvioulsy discovered the problems yourself: bleeding of the existing tracks onto the track you are recording and the potential for feedback.

If you are happy to accept the consequences of this technique, then there is nothing to stop you. Keep your monitors as low in volume as possible and not pointing into the mike.

I expect, though, you would eventually be far more satisfied with results by learning to perform using headphones.

 

[jedblue]

Gee Daniel, when recording Lonely Few sessions there are no headphones in use by anyone. There's a splitter on the EV RE11 dynamic vocal mike where one feed goes to the in room pa mixer and the other into the recording desk so the only thing in the monitor speakers is the vocals. We have 3 x of those little 10" Yamaha pa speakers in play in the room, one sitting in the vocal mike's dead zone and the other two giving a bit of a vocal feed to the other guys (with the drum one quite close to the drummer's right ear but angled down at him away from the high mike) and we don't give a rats bum if they bleed into the vocal mike or the drum condensers (C414 & RE200).

Then again at 120 decibels full throttle everything bleeds into the vocal and drum condenser mikes. Let's just call that character?

However, I do recall seeing a doco somwhere where Bono prefers to record using an SM58, no cans and a monitor and I may recall seeing him doing that when they did that piece with the horn section at the Sun Studio in Rattle and Hum?

And did I remember seeing James Hetfield doing the same thing in one of the clips in Some Kind of Monster when they were in that studio doing vocal takes? Can't quite remember?

Maybe it is not all that uncommon and as long as you are careful setting up the monitors so that they are in the mike's maximum rejection cone and you are happy with the result then why not?

If I'm just noodling about on my own with the BR1600 then I prefer the cans on with a bit of reverb and delay on the vocal return coming back. I think it makes me sound better .

Geoff

 

[legionserial]

That's how I record guitars. My amp is way across the other side of the room (it's a fairly big room), with the mic facing directly away from the monitors, which I'm sitting next to. When I've recorded vocals I did the same thing I rarely get any significant bleed. Although in the case of the vocals I probably wasn't looking to hard for blled because I couldn't get past the fact that my vocals suck.

 

[cjacek]

I truly appreciate the input guys. Thanks and.... I too don't really mind the bleed, if it means a better performance. Just wanted to know what the different setups are like for this sort of tracking. Anyway, thanks again!

....and, Geoff, I too saw that Some Kind of Monster documentary. Pretty fascinating.

 

[witzendoz]

I seem to remember a technique where you put the control room monitors out of phase so that the mic picks up a phase cancelled mono reducing the spill volume. The monitors still sound loud to your ears as you have 2 of them (I hope).

I always use headphones, I also like in ears when performing live. So it's just a case of getting used to the phones and getting the phone mix right for you.

Cheers

Alan.

 

[jedblue]

I seem to remember a technique where you put the control room monitors out of phase so that the mic picks up a phase cancelled mono reducing the spill volume. The monitors still sound loud to your ears as you have 2 of them (I hope).

Cheers

Alan.

Aha, now that makes sense , I've got a Lonely Few recording session coming up in the next few weeks so I'll give that a go Alan. I've got a couple of phase reversing cables somewhere. I'll let you all know how it goes.

G

 

[cjacek]

The out of phase thing... yeah... I was just reading up on that. Attached is a graphic and here's the concept in a nutshell:

There are some performers who just can't get on with headphones, in which case there is a dodge using loudspeakers that can be made to work adequately. The basic principle is that the singer's mic is set up exactly midway between two loudspeakers, each of which carries a mono mix of the monitoring signal, but with one of the speakers deliberately wired out of phase — you can do this by simply swapping over the two wires connecting one of the amplifier's outputs to one of the speakers, as illustrated in Figure 2.

If you monitor the output from the mic with the backing track playing, you should be able to further fine-tune its position so as to get a reasonable amount of cancellation, but, because of room reflections and the fact that no room is absolutely symmetrical in acoustic terms, the degree of cancellation will never be perfect. Nevertheless, this technique has been used many times and generally keeps the level of spill down to manageable proportions. Small passive hi-fi speakers or monitors are best for this application.

original article: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Jan03/articles/cuemonitoring.asp

Does this mean that placing the speakers in the above fashion, out of phase, will have an even greater reduction in spill than putting the speakers directly behind the mic? If so, why is that?

 

[jedblue]

Hmm, that's interesting Daniel, thanks for that. I've been running some experiments recording a vocal track on a thing I'm working on at home just using the monitors and no cans and I quite like the result. It's bled alright but somehow it sounds smoother and more, ah, "expressive" for want of a work when it's mixed back in, bleed and all, than the cans versions I've done.

I've not reverse phased one of the speakers yet and it was stereo monitoring not mono. I can mono the monitoring chain and reverse phase one speaker so I'll do that tonight see if that does a better job than what I've already got down.

 

[Todzilla]

Has the OP tried pulling the headphone off one ear?

 

[jedblue]

Well I've been experimenting with a track I'm noodling about with (relatively low volume ballad) and this is what I've found so far (with the apparent monitoring volume feeling about the same in all three cases);

1). Closed Ear Cans - only very light high frequency spill on the track and no personal problem using them.

2). Stereo in phased monitors pointing at the back of the LD condenser (cardioid) with an Auralex square between the mike and the monitors and no cans - noticible full frequency spill on the track and no personal problem using monitors.

3). Mono out of phase monitors pointing at the back of the LD condenser (cardioid) with an Auralex square between the mike and the monitors and no cans - cancelled bass frequencies but still noticible high frequency spill on the track and no personal problem using monitors. Less spill than option 2.

4). Mixed track result; - no noticable spill in the mixed down stereo track from any of the 3 takes. Either of them sat in there just fine. I chose the one that was the best vocal performance which just happened to be number 2.

So, no reason not to use 'no can' tracking as a viable method and the mono out of phase thing defintely reduces spill and, if Daniel's document is followed vis a vis placement, it would probably cancel out the high frequency spill as well.

I've not bothered to set up the monitors mono / out of phase / left and right placement of the mike like Daniel's picture and I don't think I'll bother. I was happy with all three methods tried.

 

[cjacek]

Thanks for the update Geoff.

Mighty interesting about the out of phase speakers result and indeed the placement could reduce spill even more but then again I've never found it a problem. If I'm overdubbing (lately I've been just playing live), I use shitty little computer speakers in the back of my dynamic and spill is minimal (but there's really no low or high freq on those speakers so .... ).

BTW, to answer a previous poster.. Yes, I've used every method for tracking with headphones, including one ear off (L & R) and it's better, definitely but there's really nothing like monitoring off of a speaker, at least for me.

 

[lumbago]

Audio technology magazine describes a technique recording for choir where the mic pattern is directional and the monitors are set at 90 degrees, effectively excluded by the mic pattern


................voice...............
speaker-----mic-----speaker