stereo miking

[daveblue222]

need help on the correct way to do this.

within cubase do i create a stereo track from inputs 1 and 2 from my firestudio? or, do i create 2 seperate mono tracks and pan accordingly?

if i have to pan how do i know what sound source goes left and which goes right.

im going to be recording a bunch of classical guitar pieces, x-y? or near coincident?

all help greatly appreciated

 

[WhiteStrat]

You'll have more control over your mix if you record each mic onto it's own mono track. You can pan those hard left & right, or somewhere closer to the middle depending on how wide you want it to sound.

And which mic goes on the left vs. the right? Whichever one you want. While there may be a debate about "players perspective vs. audience perspective" there are no rules.

I've done acoustic guitar recordings with 2 parts--each recorded in stereo. I'll often reverse the L/R orientation of one of the parts relative to the other.

One guitar part has the warm boominess of the bout on the left, with the brighter articulation of the neck mic on right, while the other part is reversed. Makes for a real sweet balanced sound without a bunch of EQ or volume adjustments.

 

[Bristol Posse]

You'll have more control over your mix if you record each mic onto it's own mono track. You can pan those hard left & right, or somewhere closer to the middle depending on how wide you want it to sound.

And which mic goes on the left vs. the right? Whichever one you want. While there may be a debate about "players perspective vs. audience perspective" there are no rules.

I've done acoustic guitar recordings with 2 parts--each recorded in stereo. I'll often reverse the L/R orientation of one of the parts relative to the other.

One guitar part has the warm boominess of the bout on the left, with the brighter articulation of the neck mic on right, while the part is reversed. Makes for a real sweet balanced sounds without a bunch of EQ or volume adjustments.

Yeah I like that too
1 mic, closeat the 12th fret slightly off axis toward the sound hole and 1 mic above the bottom curve of the guitar body pointing straight down parallel with the sound board.
get two good takes and pan the first pair of mono tracks to taste and then reverse the panning on the second pair

 

[daveblue222]

ok, thanks for clearing that up

do you think i would need to e.q and compress the tracks any?

cheers

 

[RAMI]

do you think i would need to e.q and compress the tracks any?

Nobody can seriously answer that for you. Only you know what your track NEEDS.

 

[daveblue222]

ok cool, errm silly question but should i pan tracks before recording or after? does it matter?

thanks again

 

[Dogbreath]

ok cool, errm silly question but should i pan tracks before recording or after? does it matter?

thanks again

are you talking about panning as you track it?
If so, I track all my stuff straight up the middle and save the panning for mixing. Never tried panning while tracking so I don't know if there'd be a difference or not. I'd imagine you'd have more control over the full stereo image by tracking dead center but I dunno. Like I said , never tried it.

my 2c etc...

 

[RAMI]

It makes no difference.

 

[suprstar]

A track is a track. A track is only panned in a mix. Without the context of a mix, a track by itself has no positional properties.

Yeah to WhiteStrat, you can do more with 2 mono tracks. But if you're going to apply the same eq/compression/fx to both tracks, you might as well keep it a stereo track and apply the plugin once. For 2 mono tracks you'd have to add the plugins and set the eq / fx settings to each track separately. For that reason I usually just record 1 stereo track. I used to separate them, and found myself doing the same adjustments twice all the time.

 

[WhiteStrat]

A track is a track. A track is only panned in a mix. Without the context of a mix, a track by itself has no positional properties.

Yeah to WhiteStrat, you can do more with 2 mono tracks. But if you're going to apply the same eq/compression/fx to both tracks, you might as well keep it a stereo track and apply the plugin once. For 2 mono tracks you'd have to add the plugins and set the eq / fx settings to each track separately. For that reason I usually just record 1 stereo track. I used to separate them, and found myself doing the same adjustments twice all the time.

That's true, but you can also make a group and send the two out through that group. Now you can adjust the volume of both, or ddd any FX or plugs to the group--so you've "one-time" control over 'em in that regard, but you can still tweak the pan, or change the volume independently. (I do that more often than you might think--often I want the richness of a stereo spread, but I want it "tilted" to one side, so I have room on the other side. I do that by tracking in stereo to 2 mono track and bringing one side down.)

 

[daveblue222]

whitestrat thanks. i have tried creating a group track and then routing that to an fx channel but i cant get it to work. what is the process? i have dragged bothe mono tracks into the group channel, then i click on the group channels sends. is this the way???

i also tried just putting in an insert but again no effect being processed

 

[noisewreck]

Make sure the individual track's outputs are set to your group track rather than the main output. Now in the group track, use the sends to "send" the group mix to your FX.