Close Micing - opinions - GuitarTalk Community

PeachyDragon · 2012-02-14T13:45:55+00:00

It's an interesting trends. Everything gets close-mic'd these days. I know the Beatles probably only used two condenser mics early on to give the sound of th...

Close Micing - opinions

majestikc

I think you'd be surprised at how much close miking and compression went on with guns-n-roses recordings, even more surprised to see how much compression abuse went on with beatles recordings.

PeachyDragon

majestikc wrote: I think you'd be surprised at how much close miking and compression went on with guns-n-roses recordings, even more surprised to see how much compression abuse went on with beatles recordings.

Compression during mastering? Basically my way of judging is by looking at the final wave form. ?

AlanRatcliffe

majestikc wrote: even more surprised to see how much compression abuse went on with beatles recordings.

The difference between compressing when tracking and mixing (especially when the compressor is a 670, 1176 or LA2A) and the brickwall limiting/ loudness maximisation techniques used in a lot of modern mastering are two completely different things though.

majestikc

Was going to say, the "mastering" thing is just slamming everything into a brickwall limiter, and these days running some internal clipping on most of the drums.

Don't be afraid of compression, it's your friend............be afraid of the "mastering" engineer with his L2 or whatnot though (his ultra-mega-raperizer 9000 vst/rtas)

PeachyDragon

Too late. I already applied the ultra-mega-raperizer 9000 vst to my tracks. ?

majestikc

You're now officially a "mastering engineer"

PeachyDragon

lol @ majestikc.
That's often true... but there are exceptions... I know some of them.
For interest sake, I dropped a version of my uncorrupted track in the demos section
of the forum if you want to have a before and after listen... listen to the EQ as well.

TomCat

Nitebob wrote: Where is Tomcat when you need him....?

I'm over here....... ? ?

TomCat

I'm not sure I can add much more to this thread.....You all are getting along just fine without me.... ?

When I'm looking are recording/mixing/mastering....whatever......My first thought is to serve the song....what does each individual piece require to make it the best piece it can be.....it involves both science/engineering and art....

greetings

I agree with TomCat. It depends on the sound that you want to achieve, and what is necessary to bring the message of the song across.

Bob-Dubery

I recently got a call from my bank to offer me a senior-citizen's package (they used a euphemistic marketing term, but it amounts to the same thing). So I'm an old timer. I still hear contemporary records that sound fine to me, but I do think there is an element of fashion in things. The era that I really did not like sonically was the early to mid 80s with that big drum sound and the rubber-band flanged fretless bass and, seemingly, every guitarist in the world on orders to play like Mark Knopfler. Awful sounding records - because of sounds that became fashionable.

Where I hear a big difference is acoustic guitars. I think a lot more people are plugging in acoustic guitars in the studio these days. For me the 70s was a great era for recorded acoustic guitars. A lot of records from back then have very good acoustic guitar sounds (though there were some, now I think about it, with pretty thin sounding acoustics). Though I think things evolve rather than change suddenly. Joan Armatrading (an Ovation endorsee) was already getting a different acoustic sound from a lot of players, and the sound she was getting in the 70s would probably be quite acceptable to contemporary ears. I think the sound of acoustic guitars on contemporary recordings is party a fashion thing. I think expectations of how an acoustic guitar should sound have changed - though I don't know if the recordings are the chicken or the egg.

But yes... you still get good sounding records now. I think you get some really bad sounding records as well - mostly because of excessive compression. Somewhere on GFSA you can find complaints from me about the sound on the Them Crooked Vultures album. That's a record I really wanted to enjoy and I sense there's something pretty interesting going on, but it was literally tiring to listen to because of the compression and the relentless loudness. I suspect this happens purely because it can. You couldn't make records that way in the vinyl era because the vinyl record, with the grooves which were cut using a lathe (for the master copy) placed limitations on the mastering engineers. With CDs you can make your recording uber loud and so, too often, you do.

The close micing issue is no issue at all to me. It always was an option that engineers could use once the days of everybody standing around one mic were over.

Mo-Facta

Close miking is just one technique among many to achieve a specific sound. That's really the gist of it.

I don't think it's necessarily or at all the cause of a typically "modern" sound, as was discussed prior, but rather the result of necessity and experimentation. Sound quality has evolved as technology has evolved and you will always have some arguments that claim it has deteriorated and some that claim it has not. It's a matter of personal taste at that point. Recording techniques have also had their fair share of evolution and this goes hand in hand with the technology used to capture the recording.

Granted, the loudness wars and heavy handed compression have been detrimental to music fidelity and have become a tool of the marketing department instead of the mastering engineer. At the end of the day he has to please his clients because he's got overhead to cover. Precious values surrounding the fidelity of the music mean very little when it comes to keeping clients around and happy.

There are so many reasons besides close miking that differentiate the eras of recording, imo.

Cheers ?