Do you think cab sounds better not in front of you?

[amarshism]

Reason number one a majority of guitarists have terrible live tone. That coupled with so many live engineers adopting a 'put the mic where ever' attitude. Once I've micd my Backline up after soundcheck I tell the engineer to piss off and not touch my mic placement. I pull my sound with my ear level and close to my preferred speaker, in this case top left. People pulling tones and walking 6 ft away from the cab and off to the side etc always put way to much god awful presence in their tone.

 

[Lasse Lammert]

It has everything to do with the way the direction of the soundwaves are coming from. When you hear an ambulance approaching you, it sounds different when its face to face in front of you, it will sound sharper, piercing. While its moving away from you it becomes lower. If your face to face with the cab and if you tilt the cab, you'll notice it will sound much different as well.

yes, that's if you run past the cab reallly fast

OP: get some of these:

http://www.webervst.com/blocker.html

 

[bassguy]

It's mostly just proximity effect, low frequencies aren't very directional and bend around objects (i.e. the cabinet itself will have low frequencies coming through the back and sides of it), whereas high frequencies are very directional and will just play out the front. Also remember that low frequencies have to travel further to be fully realised. So if you stand right in front of the cab it'll sound really harsh and trebley, but (assuming you're in a big enough room) walk to the other side of the room and you'll hear a shit ton more bass.

So sounds like you should just be winding the treble down somewhat if you're liking the sound better when you're off to the side of the cabinet. As everyone has said, the sound may be more pleasing from the sides, but the reality is that everyone else hears what comes from the front. Getting the tone sounding right from the front rather than just setting it like you normally would and going off to the side is always going to be better from everyone elses perspective.

 

[Lasse Lammert]

It's mostly just proximity effect, low frequencies aren't very directional and bend around objects (i.e. the cabinet itself will have low frequencies coming through the back and sides of it), whereas high frequencies are very directional and will just play out the front.

why are people on this forum using audio related terms so incorrectly?
of course it's neither doppler, nor proximity effect, both mean something entirely different.

and to take this away from the next posters: no, it's also not the precedence/Haas-Effekt, nor is it the butterfly effect.
stop throwing around words you don't understand, that isn't really helping anyone

 

[KHE]

sorry for ot

 

[bassguy]

Haha woops, just looked up proximity effect, getting things confused over here :Spin:

Anyway all I was trying to say was I remember learning somewhere that low frequencies will bend around objects and tend to be more omnidirectional, while highs just go more in the one direction and figured that probably played a part here in both it sounding harsher from right in front of the amp, and the people saying there was more bass when they weren't right in front of it too.

Now I'm just trying to remember what this is actually called, seeing as I confused it with proximity effect

 

[Trevoire520]

Now I'm just trying to remember what this is actually called, seeing as I confused it with proximity effect

You're thinking on low frequency diffraction.

 

[aviel]

well about the bass things, i think its also a matter of distance. the lower frequencies are from longer wavlength and need bigger distance to build up, thats why when we are far micing we can get more bass, and less treble (assuming we dont have that bass boost in close micing from proximity effect of course). you can hear it in a bass amp quite good, take a few feets back and you will have a much fatter bass.

what annoying in a cab is that it just feel phasy and strange. but do you agree that when throwing a 57 infront of the amp it doesnt capure what you ear hear ded on speaker, since our ear will just hear ugly fizzy sound. (might also be a distortion effect in the ear.. high levels are quite buzzing).

btw, many people try to capture the cab like it sounds in the room, and not dead on.

 

[MatrixClaw]

sorry for ot

LOL

That's the first thing I thought of when I saw Doppler Effect too