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  #31  
Old 10-04-2020, 07:30 PM
lkingston lkingston is offline
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Originally Posted by RRuskin View Post
Different strokes and all that. I don't like the idea of panning a single voice & single guitar away from one another, especially when part of a video. The visual and audio just don't make sense to me that way.
I just do that to record. I pan both channels center for the finished product.
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  #32  
Old 10-04-2020, 07:35 PM
Chipotle Chipotle is offline
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Different strokes and all that. I don't like the idea of panning a single voice & single guitar away from one another, especially when part of a video. The visual and audio just don't make sense to me that way.
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Originally Posted by lkingston View Post
I just do that to record. I pan both channels center for the finished product.
You have to be careful with effects, especially panning and reverb, if you are doing video. If the audio and video don't seem to match, it can really throw off the viewer (e.g. panning out if you're looking at a person and guitar in one place, or a big hall reverb when they're obviously in a small room).
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  #33  
Old 10-04-2020, 07:43 PM
lkingston lkingston is offline
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Originally Posted by RRuskin View Post
The Cloudlifter will add a bit of color as well. Everything in the audio chain does. Everything's a tradeoff.
When I was a young audio engineer I could hear so much detail. I could hear a mix and tell what gear was being used and how everything was set. I could easily hear things like mp3 artifacts and types of dither.

At this point, my left ear is totally gone and I have a hearing aid on my right just to be able to keep up with conversation.

The FetHead bothered my son so much he was going to give up on using the SM7B, but he doesn't mind the Cloudlifter at all.

He normally uses an AKG 414 with his closet functioning as a sound booth, but he uses the SM7B for remote audio when he has no control over the acoustics.

At this point, for me this is mostly a hobby. I don't want to sing in a closet or drape blankets on the walls and set up bass traps. I just want to record myself and post some YouTube videos for a handful of friends. And I want it to sound as good as possible within those constraints.
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  #34  
Old 10-04-2020, 08:05 PM
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keith.rogers keith.rogers is offline
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Originally Posted by RRuskin View Post
Different strokes and all that. I don't like the idea of panning a single voice & single guitar away from one another, especially when part of a video. The visual and audio just don't make sense to me that way.
I'm talking about a mix that will have other tracks, in general.

If it's a solo performer, I might do a very slight pan, say enough to balance the bleed so the result sounds centered (something less than +/- 10), but when you bus the tracks to separate stereo reverbs, it spreads out to give a more natural feel. At least that's what I'm trying to do in that case. But, if it's a bigger mix, I might want the guitar panned further if there's something to balance. (Several videos I've done with a friend who only plays guitar have my vocal centered, but the guitars are panned. It's not super wide panning, but it doesn't feel unnatural to watch, even with headphones, at least nobody has ever said anything about it!)

P.S. This is a video of my friend & I recording in my/wife's untreated family room with the kind panning I'm talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtpt...TnHOFE&index=7
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Last edited by keith.rogers; 10-04-2020 at 08:11 PM.
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  #35  
Old 10-05-2020, 12:29 PM
rockabilly69 rockabilly69 is offline
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Originally Posted by lkingston View Post
When I was a young audio engineer I could hear so much detail. I could hear a mix and tell what gear was being used and how everything was set. I could easily hear things like mp3 artifacts and types of dither.

At this point, my left ear is totally gone and I have a hearing aid on my right just to be able to keep up with conversation.

The FetHead bothered my son so much he was going to give up on using the SM7B, but he doesn't mind the Cloudlifter at all.

He normally uses an AKG 414 with his closet functioning as a sound booth, but he uses the SM7B for remote audio when he has no control over the acoustics.

At this point, for me this is mostly a hobby. I don't want to sing in a closet or drape blankets on the walls and set up bass traps. I just want to record myself and post some YouTube videos for a handful of friends. And I want it to sound as good as possible within those constraints.
That's why I like the Cloudlifter Z it's very simple, but the variable impedance of the Z model really changes the tone of the mic in a variety of cool ways. And on the rack channel zx2 version you even get to add in (or not) a cinemag transformer to the tone! I bet that sounds great with SM57 and SM7s! I have two of the single channel Z models so no transformer option for me but I love what they do with my SM7 and ribbon mics!

Did you get this 2 channel model...
https://www.cloudmicrophones.com/cloudlifter-cl-2

Or this one...
https://www.cloudmicrophones.com/cloudlifter-zx2
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  #36  
Old 10-05-2020, 01:29 PM
RRuskin RRuskin is offline
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Originally Posted by keith.rogers View Post
I'm talking about a mix that will have other tracks, in general.

If it's a solo performer, I might do a very slight pan, say enough to balance the bleed so the result sounds centered (something less than +/- 10), but when you bus the tracks to separate stereo reverbs, it spreads out to give a more natural feel. At least that's what I'm trying to do in that case. But, if it's a bigger mix, I might want the guitar panned further if there's something to balance. (Several videos I've done with a friend who only plays guitar have my vocal centered, but the guitars are panned. It's not super wide panning, but it doesn't feel unnatural to watch, even with headphones, at least nobody has ever said anything about it!)

P.S. This is a video of my friend & I recording in my/wife's untreated family room with the kind panning I'm talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtpt...TnHOFE&index=7
The OP had asked specifically about single guitar/vocal performances. With denser production, the only "rule" I follow is putting bass, kick drum and lead vocal in the center, a leftover from the days of having everything go to vinyl.
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  #37  
Old 10-05-2020, 01:40 PM
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  #38  
Old 10-08-2020, 12:46 AM
rockabilly69 rockabilly69 is offline
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Can I get that in an XL please?
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  #39  
Old 10-08-2020, 01:36 AM
Brent Hahn Brent Hahn is offline
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When I was a young audio engineer I could hear so much detail. I could hear a mix and tell what gear was being used and how everything was set. I could easily hear things like mp3 artifacts and types of dither.
The people I know who claim to be able to hear like that can't hear music in a normal, useful way, or communicate productively with musicians. Be glad that you're in recovery.
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  #40  
Old 10-08-2020, 02:28 PM
lkingston lkingston is offline
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Originally Posted by Brent Hahn View Post
The people I know who claim to be able to hear like that can't hear music in a normal, useful way, or communicate productively with musicians. Be glad that you're in recovery.

Lol! I could definitely hear like that! I could turn it off and just enjoy music, but when I went into “audio engineer mode” I could pretty much tell you how many cents something was sharp or flat, or how many milliseconds the timing was off. I could also dial out problem frequencies on an EQ by just going to them.

By the time I quit doing sound, I remember people coming up to me and asking “what’s that buzzing?” “What buzz?”...I couldn’t hear it! That’s when I started concentrating on guitar. You can be half deaf and still be a really great musician: just ask Tommy Emmanuel, Doyle Dykes, or Ed Sheeran. You need your hearing to be a sound guy!
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  #41  
Old 10-14-2020, 02:54 PM
rockabilly69 rockabilly69 is offline
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Originally Posted by Brent Hahn View Post
The people I know who claim to be able to hear like that can't hear music in a normal, useful way, or communicate productively with musicians. Be glad that you're in recovery.
Once while visiting California, my brother was called out to do a sound job at the Warfield theater in San Francisco, so he asked me if I would help as he was slightly understaffed that weekend. I was more than qualified as I had been doing Pro Sound installations for awhile, and I was also running a project studio (which I still do). Well, when got there, I found out that the performer was touring with his own FOH guy. That's where the fun started. This character was shouting out specific frequencies to boost or cut, just to show off his hearing abilities. At first I thought I would go with the flow until I realized his hearing wasn't as good as he thought it was, so I would just push or cut another frequency than the one that he stated and he had no idea I was doing that to test him. FAIL!!! What a tool. This guy was the total package, he barked orders at everyone to the point where not a single person wanted to help him. Despite him being a jerk we got the mix sounding good and the show went great. My brother who had mixed at the Warfield more times than I can count had no problem dialing it in

I normally love sound jobs, but I couldn't wait to get out of there.
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  #42  
Old 10-14-2020, 10:01 PM
lkingston lkingston is offline
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Default Recording guitar and voice with separation

My experience (both with myself and other sound techs) is that we aren’t aware of how much our hearing is deteriorating. We remember abilities we had as young men and are convinced we still have them long after they are gone. I used to be able to EQ on the fly, but towards the end of my career, I had to ring mics out thoroughly at soundcheck because if there were issues during the shows, I could no longer tell what frequencies they were.

To make it worse, as your hearing deteriorates, you tend to turn things up to compensate, and that makes acoustic problems and client complaints even worse. It took me a while to realize I had a problem, but once I did I started using an SPL meter all the time to keep myself from turning things up. Between that and ringing out the mics with an RTA loaded on my smartphone, I stretched out my run a few years longer than I should have.

Many times, the audio guys that are the subjects of horror stories were actually decent at it in their prime.

No longer being able to hear well enough to mix properly is one of the main things that got me back into guitar. I can still tell when the sound is good, but I can’t hear well enough to set it up. I hear well enough to play guitar though!

Last edited by lkingston; 10-15-2020 at 07:20 AM.
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