Two AT2035 spaced pair demo - improvement?
 

** EDIT - SEE POST #13 **

I went back to using my two large condensers. I spaced them at 15" apart which is much closer than I used to space them, up at shoulder level, but pointed downward towards the guitar which was about 10-12" away. Watch your volume.

Hi Barry, very nice playing! I'd love to hear a nice recording of that. Not sure the recording is an improvement. The trebles especially seem harsh and a bit thin. Could be the mics, or the guitar, or strings, or... but most likely it's just your room acoustics. Given that you have challenges with that, I'd suggest micing in a way that maximizes the guitar and minimizes the room - close micing, right in front of the guitar (bridge and neck/body join). In difficult acoustic spaces, alternative mic placements are not usually your friend.

Not sure what you mean by watching the volume. You appear to be at about -18LUFS (of course, I'm seeing the SC stream, so who knows what your original file is). CD level would be -14 or -15, or 3-4db louder overall. So you're not extremely quiet, but it's certainly not loud.

Thanks Doug. The trebles are a little harsh, maybe its the strings. I've used the same mics and placement with my Avalon with better trebles to my ears. I'll play around with different strings for the Furch. Overall though I thought I was getting a much better result. Oh well.

Here's the Avalon with the same mics/placement/room:

Really nice Barry. To my ears, the trebles sounded much better with the Avalon.

That's better Barry. Trebles are much better. Something else going on, tho. A bit indistinct, somehow (also probably room acoustics), and almost sounds like some audible compression?

Phasey mono sound (or very nearly so). Either you used some setting that made it mono or you panned R and L channels inward.

The original (Furch, I guess?) does seem to be narrower than the Avalon recording. But something else occurred to me, Barry, did you do some noise reduction on either of these? That may be what we're hearing. The original track, especially, seems "damaged". Is this a raw, fully panned (hard left and right) track, or is there some processing on it?

That was my first thought. Sounds like heavy compression

Barry, I really enjoy your playing. I feel like I sense the emotion of the composers intent when you play. Maybe you should make an album? It'd be on Sunday morning rotation at my house if you did.

To my ears, I prefer the Avalon for recordings.

Thank you, I really appreciate that.

To Doug and Eric, yes I think I have Ozone 8 sitting in my basic reaper proforma project. I'll make sure I take it out. Thanks for your help.

I also used level A spectral noise reduction on the clips (With Rx 7 Standard)

I'd skip the noise reduction. I'd much rather hear a nice recording with a little noise (You can hide it substantially just by trimming beginning and ending) than hear the artifacts it produces. I'm suspecting that you're hitting Ozone way too hard. It's really easy to hear compression on solo guitar. If used at all, it needs a really light touch.

R and L waveforms almost identical. That plus sound makes me think some panning rather than hard R and L.

Ok, do over, :D

I almost always save a version of a sound file prior to noise reduction and in these two cases I did. Here are both string demo clips with just reverb.

Derek was right, I double checked and there was some unintended panning going on. I fixed the Reaper projects so that all the balances are fixed and the only eq is the reverb. I disabled the two low and high passes I had set up, one on the guitar and one on the reverb, and removed all Ozone FX from the files.

The Furch demo still has that edgy treble to it. Might be the strings. I could probably tune it down a half step and then capo on 1 to fix that, otherwise as the strings age that might settle down.

GHS Demo (Furch):



D'Addario XS Demo (Avalon):


Re GHS Demo:
Again, thanks Doug. I'll have to see if I can expand this into a full tune.

Hi Barry,

Just caught up with this thread. I really like the Avalon (XS) demo, and can't say the same about the Furch (GHS) one.

It sounds more than an issue of new strings. If I hadn't heard the Avalon example I would have thought it was related to your style of picking, but the Avalon sounds so much better.

Just some general thoughts of methods and diagnostics

When you are wanting to compare anything or hear anything like the mic's,,, the guitar's,,, etc. procedurally reducing all possible variables, is the key to increasing the accuracy of the reference .

So I would suggest loose all processing except for maybe a high pass filter.

Understand that every FX you add in, is increasing the variables needlessly and for example even with the exact same settings on an effect.,,, but two different files (say two different guitars ) there may be a difference in the way the FX reacts to the specific file (particularly EQ - Reverb and possibly even noise reduction ) loose all of it, if you want an accurate representation.....

I don't know what you mean by " the only eq is the reverb" but I would definitely loose any reverb FX ...

Remember if the goal is to compare things, (especially physical things) like mic's,,, or mic position's ,, guitars etc... (unless you are comparing what an effect does ) You are NOT after what sounds "good",,,, You are after what sounds accurate ,,, AND want RAW files ,,, again with the possible exception of the same high pass filter to get rid of excess boom