[Shootout] Recording Guitars - Importance of Room Acoustics

[Soundlurker]

I think some of you may be interested in a little experiment I did using Jaymz' backing track and DIs. The whole idea is to demonstrate how much a typical guitar recording setup is influenced by a room's acoustics.

The guitar tracks, amp settings, cabinet and mic are identical in all clips. The mic position should also be virtually identical. No processing on any of the files except "mix c". The tone is intentionally bass-heavy to emphasize low frequency problems.

acoustics test - control.mp3 is recorded with a fairly typical setup and should serve as basis for comparison with the rest of clips. The cabinet is positioned in roughly the centre of the small control room, on wheels, directly on the ground. All doors and windows are closed.
acoustics test - open windows.mp3 is exactly like the control, only all windows and doors are open.
acoustics test - in corner.mp3 is same as the control but instead of being in the center of the room the cabinet is in one of the corners.
acoustics test - with fort.mp3 is like the control but in front of the cabinet are added two rockwool panels.
acoustics test - over rockwool.mp3
is different from the control in that the cabinet is not on its wheels - instead it is placed on a rockwool panel and the microphone stand is placed on a separate rockwool panel.
acoustics test - with fort and over rockwool.mp3 is the same as the above but with two rockwool panels in front of the cabinet.
acoustics test - backing.mp3
is the part of Jaymz' backing track that corresponds to the guitars.
acoustics test - mix a.mp3 is a mixdown of the control and the backing
acoustics test - mix b.mp3 is a mixdown of 'acoustics test - with fort and over rockwool' and the backing
acoustics test - mix c.mp3 is like the above but with some quick processing (mixed in the control room and with a cold but to give some idea)
acoustics test.rar contains all of the files above.

I definitely learned a few things from this and I hope some of you will find my shoot-out helpful as well. I'll share my thoughts on the results a bit later. Let me know what you think. Cheers!

 

[jangoux]

listened to it all on the studio and, honestly, I don't have an opinion. Every one of them is different (not bad, just different) and none of them made think 'ew! what a crap!'. The one with the windows open is a bit inferior, less 3d-ish, but even them it is still fine (maybe just less good).

 

[Soundlurker]

Thanks for listening

They certainly aren't miles apart but I'd say there are two quite noticeable differences. Putting the cab and mic stand on rockwool panels definitely tightened the low end and tamed the boominess and adding another panel in front of the cab removes some nasty 400hz-500hz mud and makes the tone slightly more defined.

The one with the open windows was indeed disappointing and the one in the corner wasn't quite as bad as I expected but still more "slow" and messy.

 

[Soundlurker]

Yeah, I guess this thread is irrelevant to impulse users but still ... no one else

 

[~BURNY~]

Interesting. Can't say I dig this tone in general (moar mids pl0x )but If you were able to keep the exact same mic position each time, I'd say it's a significant difference, more apparent than between two decent mic preamps.

 

[s34nsm411]

unless you mounted the mic to the cabinet, ensuring exact mic positioning each time, then it would be pretty hard to tell if the room is actually influencing as much as it seems

as we all know even the slightest of variance in mic positioning when close up to a cabinet yields very different results

 

[Soundlurker]

The cabinet has a metal grill and a piece of tape signifying the sweet spot. I'd go as far as saying all of the clips minus the corner one (I did this one a bit later) were with the mic placed within a milimeter of the previous positions.

Even if we are not convinced in the accuracy of my placement I can guarantee 100% that all mic-related factors were the same in the following
groups of clips:

1. acoustics test - control = acoustics test - open windows = acoustics test - with fort

and seperate from this:

2. acoustics test - over rockwool = acoustics test - with fort and over rockwool

 

[dcb]

thanks for doing the test! more of that ;-)

i must admit i dont like any of the tones, but if i had to pick one :
>> with two rockwool panels in front of the cabinet.

sounded the best to me.

room acoustics are still the most relevant point that 90% of people on this forum ignore.
so thanks for doing this test once again! i wished we had more people chime in, but you know how it is.
people post "djenty hardcore - my best mix to date!="!§=!"
and threads like this get ignored... its a shame.

i guess i will do a vocal test like this in the future.

 

[Soundlurker]

Yeah getting a perfect tone wasn't the goal here.

I'd say blended with the 2 other guitars, with more mids, it sounds better:
new mix


And BTW, here's another test that showed surprisingly audible differences

Here's the sm57 through the mic pre with all buttons out:
normal z
and here is the same thing with the low impedance button in:
low Z

It seems with the lower impedance it has a lot more bite and controlled lows! Am I imagining stuff?