The Digital Doubt

[Sascha Franck]

But I was referring to automotive industry specifically,

Oh of course! Same here!

 

[EOengineer]

I re-read my OP last night and could see how it turned out that way as a result of how I ended the post. More my fault for not sticking straight to the lack of trusting one’s own ears as I brought up the option aspect myself. Just took me a while to figure out where to jump back in.

Isn’t there a relationship between not trusting one’s ears and having infinite options though?

Micing amps in the studio is largely a battle of attrition if we’re being honest. Rarely are we spending hours nudging the mic into the perfect position, rotating out amps and cabs until everything is perfect, etc.

For most of us who don’t typically have unlimited recording budgets, it’s usually more like “this is the point of diminishing returns and BTW we still need to mic up the drums”. It should be fine and if not we will EQ it.

Modeling changed the math because it allowed us to dramatically reduce the time and effort required to change a tone, which IMO lends itself to tonal FOMO because it’s SO MUCH easier to tinker.

If Jimmy Page had an Axe 3 in the 60s, who knows what those tones would have ended up sounding like. He’d probably still be turning knobs.

 

[Orvillain]

Micing amps in the studio is largely a battle of attrition if we’re being honest. Rarely are we spending hours nudging the mic into the perfect position, rotating out amps and cabs until everything is perfect, etc.

Honestly, I'm so used to it now that it takes me about 20-30minutes to position three mics and get the rough colours I want; I want a bright fizzy mic, a smoother but still bright mic, and occasionally I might want something darker, in order to mix all three together and get a full sound.

If it is taking me an hour to position a mic, then I'm using the wrong mic, the wrong speaker, or the wrong amp.

 

[EOengineer]

Honestly, I'm so used to it now that it takes me about 20-30minutes to position three mics and get the rough colours I want; I want a bright fizzy mic, a smoother but still bright mic, and occasionally I might want something darker, in order to mix all three together and get a full sound.

If it is taking me an hour to position a mic, then I'm using the wrong mic, the wrong speaker, or the wrong amp.

Fair, but your average guitarist isn’t usually that astute when it comes to mics, phase relationships, etc. many of us here wear dual guitarist/engineer hats.

I’ll add that I do think modern modelers have done A TON to help guitarists better understand the difference between their amp as they stand next to it vs how a mic translates that. I’ve noticed in sessions over the last decade or so way more guitarists express a preference for certain mics and positions when they come in to track. That’s really cool.

 

[Orvillain]

Fair, but your average guitarist isn’t usually that astute when it comes to mics, phase relationships, etc. many of us here wear dual guitarist/engineer hats.

Yep, absolutely agreed.

 

[EOengineer]

Honestly, I'm so used to it now that it takes me about 20-30minutes to position three mics and get the rough colours I want; I want a bright fizzy mic, a smoother but still bright mic, and occasionally I might want something darker, in order to mix all three together and get a full sound.

If it is taking me an hour to position a mic, then I'm using the wrong mic, the wrong speaker, or the wrong amp.

Going back to this - just curious if you find modeling influenced your preferences for micing strategy? Are you finding yourself trying to mimic that placement and arrangement when moving back and forth between the digital world and meatspace?

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Honestly, I'm so used to it now that it takes me about 20-30minutes to position three mics and get the rough colours I want; I want a bright fizzy mic, a smoother but still bright mic, and occasionally I might want something darker, in order to mix all three together and get a full sound.

If it is taking me an hour to position a mic, then I'm using the wrong mic, the wrong speaker, or the wrong amp.

When you have an idea of the sound you are looking for, all of this goes much faster. In that scenario "right" is not a singular sound but a general tonal target and there are lots of ways to land within that target zone and move on.

When it's just a matter of being in search of The Best Tone Possible...that's never ending, because there is always another possibility, especially when you haven't identified what is problematic about the present tone that you are hoping to fix. To get back to OP, when the mentality is "I want The Best" and they've tried to do it themselves and come up short...its an awful lot easier to APPEAL TO AUTHORITY (bringin' in some cross thread BS there cause that's what I do) and just rely on the fact that Wagner or whoever that is a known studio bad-ass captured this tone so it must be great, even though who knows if its actually great within the context that user plans to use it.

Unfortunately, we've ALL had that experience of plugging into an amp (be it tubed, digitally modeled, digitally captured, or solid---no, nobody has ever plugged into anything solid state and been anything more than modestly surprised that it doesn't sound like shit) we knew nothing about, or that we weren't expecting to like and been blown away by the hidden possibility or synergy that we didn't expect. And so that can feed in all of us on occasion, no matter how disciplined, that "But I wonder if maybe this other weird thing might...".

Sorry to keep rambling but...ADHD and in the middle of my morning coffee so I'm buzzin'...I find myself mostly in your camp of "I know what kind of things I like and I'm not gonna Pfaff (sp?) about with this other bullshit" at this point. But I also got here by recording lots of different little blips and blurbs that were quickly deleted from my hard drive in figuring out a lot of that stuff. And I've had enough tube amps through my. hands, and played them along side my modeling rig in shops, etc., to FINALLY be to the point that I'm totally confident that tube amps don't offer anything to me and what I'm looking for that my modeling rig doesn't deliver. You have landed exactly opposite of that. Which is totally cool - my bank account thanks me, but my "I really wanna be cool" side was twisted in knots about it for years and it took me a looooong time to come to the conclusion that "meh, as cool as amps are, they never sound better to me and often sound worse to me within the context that I use them." And that's another challenge of getting to a place where you have a "zone of right" for yourself...it also took me ages to finally throw in the towel on SM57s. IRL and in IR form, on guitar cabs -- they just don't work for me, what I like, and the music that I make. "But everyone uses SM57s. They are all over lots of recordings I love". So? Move on.

That all made sense and was coherent, right?

 

[DrewJD82]

Isn’t there a relationship between not trusting one’s ears and having infinite options though?

I couldn’t tell ya, I made the thread because I don’t understand the correlation myself!

As for Jimmy, he was a studio guy before Zep was a band and while he may have gone crazy with options, I’d imagine he’d be fairly adept at getting what he wanted out of it.

“Not going to the castle this time, Bonzo! I’m running your kit through my AxeFX, Cliff just updated the reverb algorithms!”

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Isn’t there a relationship between not trusting one’s ears and having infinite options though?

To a point -- but I don't think one needs to explore all of those options to figure out which ones do and don't work -- like, I've listened to enough modern country music to know that while I don't mind it, its not the source of that kind of spiritual uplift that music can give. Same with Tool .I have not listened to every modern country song, or every Tool song, but I've listened to enough of each to know that if I'm looking for a spiritual lift, listening to more of them is probably not a terribly efficient way to go about finding the spiritual lift I'm looking for.

So if you gave Jimmy Page an Axe Fx, he MIGHT sit there and scroll through presets and dick around with it for 45-60 minutes, but he's not going to spend days rethinking how he goes about getting the guitar tone he knows he likes. He's going to ask you to help him dial in a Jimmy Page tone.

 

[KingsXJJ]

Less is more.

Give me a York fender deluxe reverb IR and I just feel better dialing in the amp.

I know nothing about mics and cabs and I’m not interested in it.

I think I’ve heard you mention something along these lines before which makes me curious about the type of music you play. Given your *awesome* avatar, I would have guessed you to be a York GB guy. Perhaps I am biased as the 20w GB’s from Justin are probably my favorites. I wonder what led you to like the Fender Deluxe IR’s so much. I actually put an EVH20 in my Deluxe and Princeton and am super thrilled with the results.

 

[jay mitchell]

Honestly, I'm so used to it now that it takes me about 20-30minutes to position three mics and get the rough colours I want;

Honestly, if it took me more than five minutes to "get the rough colours I want" from one of my modelers, I'd consider that I was having a Very Bad Day.

 

[EOengineer]

I couldn’t tell ya, I made the thread because I don’t understand the correlation myself!

As for Jimmy, he was a studio guy before Zep was a band and while he may have gone crazy with options, I’d imagine he’d be fairly adept at getting what he wanted out of it.

“Not going to the castle this time, Bonzo! I’m running your kit through my AxeFX, Cliff just updated the reverb algorithms!”

To a point -- but I don't think one needs to explore all of those options to figure out which ones do and don't work -- like, I've listened to enough modern country music to know that while I don't mind it, its not the source of that kind of spiritual uplift that music can give. Same with Tool .I have not listened to every modern country song, or every Tool song, but I've listened to enough of each to know that if I'm looking for a spiritual lift, listening to more of them is probably not a terribly efficient way to go about finding the spiritual lift I'm looking for.

So if you gave Jimmy Page an Axe Fx, he MIGHT sit there and scroll through presets and dick around with it for 45-60 minutes, but he's not going to spend days rethinking how he goes about getting the guitar tone he knows he likes. He's going to ask you to help him dial in a Jimmy Page tone.

Page was a terrible example to illustrate the point I was trying to make. I should have known better, as he was a studio rat and session player for years.

When you ask guitarists about tones they like, the overwhelming majority of guitarists will point to albums or specific songs/recordings. Very few actually understand how to create those tones with a cab and mic. I’m just suggestions that the lowered effort to change the tone in a modeler naturally lends itself to promoting non stop tweakage, especially for some of us who are anal retentive about this stuff.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

When you ask guitarists about tones they like, the overwhelming majority of guitarists will point to albums or specific songs/recordings.

I think the trap with options is that people think the point is to be able to sound like all of those albums/songs/recordings that they might point to. If you ask me to point to tones I like, yes, you better have a few hours to deal with me rambling on and on and on while playing clips from Spotify.

If you ask me "what do you want to sound like when you play?" -- that's going to be a MUCH shorter conversation with a lot fewer clips played.

 

[jay mitchell]

When you ask guitarists about tones they like, the overwhelming majority of guitarists will point to albums or specific songs/recordings.

Furthermore, most of them will have listened to those tones on speakers and in rooms (or cars) that add their own colorations to the tones. Consequently, not only do they not know what the rigs sounded like to the guitarists who made the recordings - nobody who wasn't present can ever know that - they will have, at best, only a vague idea of what the engineer/producer heard during mixing and mastering.

Very few actually understand how to create those tones with a cab and mic.

If that is even possible. The postprocesses that were and are applied to raw guitar tracks generally make it impossible to match even the basic tonality with just a cab and a mic.

I’m just suggestions that the lowered effort to change the tone in a modeler naturally lends itself to promoting non stop tweakage, especially for some of us who are anal retentive about this stuff.

If you don't have a solid idea of your goal, having more options never helps. Blind trial and error most often yield unsatisfactory results.

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

I think I’ve heard you mention something along these lines before which makes me curious about the type of music you play. Given your *awesome* avatar, I would have guessed you to be a York GB guy. Perhaps I am biased as the 20w GB’s from Justin are probably my favorites. I wonder what led you to like the Fender Deluxe IR’s so much. I actually put an EVH20 in my Deluxe and Princeton and am super thrilled with the results.

Thank you for asking.

Jimi Hendrix was my door into guitar. And when I listened to him, I never really thought about the gear he was using. All I knew then was "Fender" and that was it.

The Deluxe was the first amp in Helix where I was happy with the sound I was getting. So I got the York IR.

I now use a Super Reverb with either a 4x12 Greenback or a 4x10 Tweed P10R

Do you mean this one, by the way?

MRSH 412 M25 | York Audio

www.yorkaudio.co

 

[EOengineer]

If that is even possible. The postprocesses that were and are applied to raw guitar tracks generally make it impossible to match even the basic tonality with just a cab and a mic.

Yeah agreed. Not to mention unintentional post processing. Did they track to tape and hit it too hard that day, or was that channel strip on the fritz and adding extra saturation to the signal? Was the engineer coked out of his mind and sucked all the top end off the track on the tracking path instead of the monitor path?

Granted we can reproduce some of that stuff, but yeah…chasing recorded tones is definitely not as simple as just plopping in the mic guitar world said they used on the recording.

 

[FuzzyAce]

That all made sense and was coherent, right?

I never really thought about the gear he was using.

Stop right there.
Your answer lies within.

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

Also, the internet is such a weird place.

Here we might meet a nurse who is just hooking up her guitar in her Helix and having a discussion with a sound enigeer, who is having a discussion with a studio session artist who is having a discussion with a touring musician.

So who is right, right.

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

Stop right there.
Your answer lies within.

You must know me a little bit and realized I was going to York right away

 

[Orvillain]

Going back to this - just curious if you find modeling influenced your preferences for micing strategy? Are you finding yourself trying to mimic that placement and arrangement when moving back and forth between the digital world and meatspace?

Not really no. I'm way more influenced by the other instruments going into the song. I usually start with drums, because those - to me - are the driving force of any song. Then I do the bass, and my goal there is to have a bass tone that compliments the kick drum. From there, I know what my bandwidth and workable range for the guitars is, and I position my mics for that space, but also with a notion towards the kind of overall aesthetic I want.

My Bloody Valentine would sound very different with different mic positions.

When you have an idea of the sound you are looking for, all of this goes much faster. In that scenario "right" is not a singular sound but a general tonal target and there are lots of ways to land within that target zone and move on.

Yes, agreed.

When it's just a matter of being in search of The Best Tone Possible...that's never ending, because there is always another possibility, especially when you haven't identified what is problematic about the present tone that you are hoping to fix. To get back to OP, when the mentality is "I want The Best" and they've tried to do it themselves and come up short...its an awful lot easier to APPEAL TO AUTHORITY (bringin' in some cross thread BS there cause that's what I do) and just rely on the fact that Wagner or whoever that is a known studio bad-ass captured this tone so it must be great, even though who knows if its actually great within the context that user plans to use it.

I do this a little bit in terms of researching how different engineers do things. My love of the 57+421 combination came from learning how Joe Barresi tends to work in the studio. I've stole a few drum kit things from Sylvia Massey and Steve Albini over the years too! I don't see this so much as appealing to authority, as more of a researching the restaurant before you book the table kind of thing.

Unfortunately, we've ALL had that experience of plugging into an amp (be it tubed, digitally modeled, digitally captured, or solid---no, nobody has ever plugged into anything solid state and been anything more than modestly surprised that it doesn't sound like shit) we knew nothing about, or that we weren't expecting to like and been blown away by the hidden possibility or synergy that we didn't expect. And so that can feed in all of us on occasion, no matter how disciplined, that "But I wonder if maybe this other weird thing might...".

I have this often with 1x12 and 2x12 cabs. I have a bit of a prejudice against them, coz I immediately think they're going to sound shit and boxy. But they can often surprise me.

Sorry to keep rambling but...ADHD and in the middle of my morning coffee so I'm buzzin'...I find myself mostly in your camp of "I know what kind of things I like and I'm not gonna Pfaff (sp?) about with this other bullshit" at this point. But I also got here by recording lots of different little blips and blurbs that were quickly deleted from my hard drive in figuring out a lot of that stuff.

Yeah definitely me too. I'm 40 now (ughhhhh) and I've been doing this stuff since I was 14. That's a lot of experiments and making crap sounds to find the sounds that I prefer!

That all made sense and was coherent, right?

Yeshk.

Honestly, if it took me more than five minutes to "get the rough colours I want" from one of my modelers, I'd consider that I was having a Very Bad Day.

Are you playing densely packed post-metal music with multiple guitarists and a need to balance the low end of the guitars, bass, and kick drum? Everyone has different requirements of course, but in general when I'm micing up a guitar cab, I am micing up for a specific context. I don't usually bother with a mic if it is just me by myself playing and writing ideas.