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To add to Fran's comments, doing really valid comparisons is really hard. Even when I think I'm doing a controlled comparison, I still have to think about whether the results are "real", and what might be responsible for the results - it may not be what I believe.
For one thing, we can get fooled easily - lots of sound engineers have experienced making EQ tweaks until a mix sounded better, only to discover the knob they were turning was de-activated! And there are always elements we can't control. I once got a sound I really loved with my ribbon mic. I know exactly where I was sitting, how the mic was setup, what guitar I was using, etc. I can't get that "magic" sound again, tho. Who knows why. Maybe the strings were a perfect age, maybe my nail length was different, or the humidity was different. Or maybe the mic was an inch closer or further away. When I first got my Brauners quite a few years ago now, I tried every possible mic setup I could think of, and one that really didn't work well was MS, so I concluded those mics just weren't a good match for MS. I could leap further and conclude that LD's don't work well for MS, and so on, but I just left it as "those mics and MS don't mix". But a few weeks ago, I gave them another shot (I posted an example here), and I really liked the sound. What changed? Who knows, maybe I set them up differently, maybe it was a different guitar, or a different spot in the room. Or maybe my taste has changed. So another self-generated myth bites the dust. There's also theory vs practice. Those DPA charts are very interesting, but we still have to figure out if and how measurements made in lab conditions relate to recording a guitar, if there's a difference there we can hear, and if so, if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
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Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar |
#32
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Doug and Fran,
Thank you. You guys are providing a real service. Jim McCarthy |
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I could tell little difference. Maybe the last one was not quite as sparkly but I don't know. They all sounded good Very nice playing!!
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Great comments Doug.
This is certainly true in my experience. With my ridiculously simple set-up, there are just not that many variables. Yet I can get very different results when I thought everything about the set-up was identical. Perhaps it's slight changes in mic angle, who knows. I get a wee bit suspicous when folks are too scientific about recording. Your mention of humidity is interesting. Anecdotaly, just based on what I have observed, I am convinced that humidity changes the transmission of sound waves and there is a noticable difference in clarity based on changes in humidity. Quote:
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Collings D2HG - German Spruce/rosewood Voyage Air VA-OM6 YouTube: http://www.YouTube.com/wfbrown1234 |
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Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar |
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Now of course, the quietness of any mic is useless if the recorded sound of the instrument is displeasing, in this case if the sound of the acoustic guitar is muffled or restricted. But I'm quite pleased with the acoustic tone. Again, not scientific and no claims of this being true for all folks, but in my old house, different mics seem to behave very differently.
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My YouTube Page: http://www.youtube.com/user/ukejon 2014 Pono N30 DC EIR/Spruce crossover 2009 Pono koa parlor (NAMM prototype) 2018 Maton EBG808TEC 2014 Hatcher Greta 13 fret cutaway in EIR/cedar 2017 Hatcher Josie fan fret mahogany 1973 Sigma GCR7 (OM model) rosewood and spruce 2014 Rainsong OM1000N2 ....and about 5 really nice tenor ukuleles at any given moment |
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How many times have we read the suggestion that dynamic mics "pick up less room" than condensers. Intuitively obvious and demonstrably false, but the demonstration takes some effort and very careful level matching. Fran
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E ho`okani pila kakou ma Kaleponi Slack Key in California - www.kaleponi.com My YouTube clips The Homebrewed Music Blog |
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Jon, did you use a test tone to at least make sure the mics were all at the same level?
I had a weird case when I first got my Brauners, where I had them side by side with my Schoeps, and level matched, so when I played guitar they had the same basic levels. Then I noticed that if I flipped a light switch across the room, the VU meters on the Brauners jumped dramatically more than the Schoeps. That had me puzzled for a while: how could the mics have the same levels when I played guitar, but pick up a quiet signal differently? Maybe the Brauner's responded "faster"? That didn't seem right, the Schoeps SDs should be faster to respond, if anything. Fran finally came up with a convincing answer - differences in polar patterns or off-axis response. That makes perfect sense. If you read that DPA link someone posted, they also compare how different mics have different patterns at different frequencies. We think of "cardiod" as being a set pattern, but it's not, it varies by mic and by frequency. I'd expect that would have some impact on how each mic picks up Lake Michigan, but might have less impact on how the mics pick up a guitar right in front of it.
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Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar Last edited by Doug Young; 01-07-2015 at 05:19 PM. |
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My YouTube Page: http://www.youtube.com/user/ukejon 2014 Pono N30 DC EIR/Spruce crossover 2009 Pono koa parlor (NAMM prototype) 2018 Maton EBG808TEC 2014 Hatcher Greta 13 fret cutaway in EIR/cedar 2017 Hatcher Josie fan fret mahogany 1973 Sigma GCR7 (OM model) rosewood and spruce 2014 Rainsong OM1000N2 ....and about 5 really nice tenor ukuleles at any given moment Last edited by ukejon; 01-07-2015 at 05:36 PM. |