Mic amp recording not sounding good

[teokouts]

Hello friends. My name is Teo. I'm a rookie home studio producer for metalcore and this is my first thread here. So please be gentle To begin with I have a Peavey Vypyr VIP 2 for amp and I like its sound very much. So I got myself a Shure SM57 in order to record the amp. The problem is that the sound I am getting is a bit muddy and not in your face sound I was hoping for. I read a lot of post and tutorials on how to mic an amp and placed the mic on axis just a bit out of the cone. But the results where not as I was hoping for. I mean I managed to get the sound I wanted with vst plugins but wanted to record my guitars with the amp and mic so I won't have the digitalness that vsts are giving. Any advice guys because I don't know if it is my mic placment or the amp that is just not good enough for this purpose. And thank you very much for reading my post.

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

sample or gtfo

 

[teokouts]

The first is 2 guitar tracks panned hard lerft and hard right and the second is the same guitars with drums.

https://soundcloud.com/teo-paranoid/amp-rec-test


https://soundcloud.com/teo-paranoid/amp-rec-test-with-drums

 

[Studdy]

Does it sound the way you want in the room? You cant take an amp that sounds like shit in the room and throw up a 57 and it be good. Source needs to be good first. In all fairness (some will disagree) modern in the box amp sims are pretty great nowadays, unless you have a pretty stellar setup it will be tough to beat what you will be able to accomplish in the box. That being said a good amp, good guitar, with a good player and signal chain can sound "better/realistic".

 

[evanwarren]

You can get great results with plugins, so don't think that using a real amp for the sake of using a real amp is going to solve any problems. If what you're getting with a plugin sounds better than your amp, then use the plugin. But all that being said, where is the mic positioned on the speaker?

 

[teokouts]

The mic is posinionted just a bit left of the cone. I know the room does matter a lot, but when I play with the same settings it sounds pretty good.

 

[scorpio01169]

Like Studdy said, first you must get the amp to sound good to your ear in the room. the second step is to start your mic in the center of the amp just off the grill/cloth. and with no eq set on your board/daw, move the mic from the center of the speaker outward trying to get the best sound to your liking. Once you've done that in that order....then eq and compress if needed.

 

[KHE]

...So please be gentle .

sample or gtfo

pan those gtrs hard l/r and bring them up. add bass-guitar. otherwise it's guesswork what needs to be done.

 

[Machinated]

keep practicing and adjusting the mic position. soon you'll learn how to adjust the position to achieve the sound you're after. a combination of mic position and settings on the amp should get you to the tone you hear in the room

 

[bryan_kilco]

Yep, it takes a bit of time and practice/patience to get a good mic'd tone. What I do is throw on some headphones and turn the amp volume down low enough so that it's not blasting over the signal I'm getting in the phones and adjust the mic from there, then once I've found a decent placement, crank the volume a bit. Of course this may not always work as your tone changes once you start cranking it. Also, your room plays more of a roll than you probably think. Try placing the cab in different locations and see if that yields any better results.

Good luck with the journey, it's a fun ride!

 

[teokouts]

I am wondering if I place the amp in my closet and put some sort of isolation on the walls would it be better than leaving it in the room?

 

[Studdy]

You are over thinking it. The room always plays a part but assuming the room is a decent size the room wont have a super drastic affect on the close mic. It of course plays a part but if you are not 90% of the way there the room isnt causing it.

Does the amp sound exactly the way you want before micing it up? This really is the question here. If the amp doesn't sound exactly the way you want it to sound, the recorded tone will be even worse.

 

[Trevoire520]

You're likely to make things worse shoving it in a closet.

Listening to that clip I think you need less bass and more mids. Your guitars sound like they're coming from the centre, so I'm guessing you've recorded one take and the copied it and panned them hard L/R. This is NOT the same as double tracking. You need to record 2 seperate performances and pan one left and one right.

Alot of the size of your guitar tone in the mix actually comes from the bass guitar, so once you add that you should be in better shape.

 

[teokouts]

You're likely to make things worse shoving it in a closet.

Listening to that clip I think you need less bass and more mids. Your guitars sound like they're coming from the centre, so I'm guessing you've recorded one take and the copied it and panned them hard L/R. This is NOT the same as double tracking. You need to record 2 seperate performances and pan one left and one right.

Alot of the size of your guitar tone in the mix actually comes from the bass guitar, so once you add that you should be in better shape.

I played two times the riff into two diferrent tracks.

 

[Trevoire520]

Maybe you've exported in mono then, because everything sounds like it's coming from the centre, there's no stereo seperaton.

 

[Sludgekicker]

Try to cut back the bass on the amp(maybe push more mids too) then if you can bring the mic closer to the membrane, so you get more bite but hopefully wont loose much oomph. You can also feed a bit less gain if you do this.

 

[Ericlingus]

seems like it needs some more mids and less gain.

 

[DullElysium]

You could try to record the fx-loop send and slap on a good IR-response (preferably same mic, cab and position) to see if it's to do with the mic placement you're using.

If it sounds better like that, just test different mic positions etc. If not, there might be a problem with your settings.

 

[teokouts]

You could try to record the fx-loop send and slap on a good IR-response (preferably same mic, cab and position) to see if it's to do with the mic placement you're using.

If it sounds better like that, just test different mic positions etc. If not, there might be a problem with your settings.

Could you be more specific cause I didn't get what you suggest.

 

[bryan_kilco]

He's talking about connecting the FX Send of the amp into your interface so you get the raw preamp signal and then using an IR loader such as NadIR, LeCab, etc, to simulate a speaker/mic/mic placement instead of actually micing the live cabinet.