RecordingFreaks.com

RecordingFreaks.com's opinion on what's more important and what's less important in recording...

When it comes to recording, it's always important to keep track of what's most important.  I think I'd rather hear a recording of Led Zepplin made with six SM57 microphones into a cassette deck, instead of some poor musicians playing a boring song in the most expensive studio in the world.

So here is what's we think is more important when recording music:

1.  The song and the musicians.  Nothing beats a killer song with a good arrangement and the right talent playing and singing it.

2.  The sound at the source.  The sound coming out of your source (guitar, amp, drums, etc.) is more important than how you capture it.  It's hard to take a bad sound and make it good.  It's easy to work with a great sound and tone.

3.  The room and playback system.  Room sound and acoustics; speakers and monitoring system.  You can't tell what you have really recorded if you can't hear it properly.  A bad room hurts you when you record and then again when you listen!

4.  Effects and how you use them.  The proper use (or misuse) of compressors, reverbs, EQ, and other processors can really make or break your sound.

5.  Microphones- selection and placement.  The right mic in the right place can make a big difference.

6.  Everything else.

We're not saying numbers 4, 5, & 6 aren't important.  We're just saying numbers 1-3 are more important.  That being said, this site will spend a lot of time discussing 4, 5, & 6. 

So never forget that you can't fix a bad song with recording gear.  You can tune a singer or instrument.  But if they play the wrong parts, you will have trouble.  And the tone quality and sound quality from the source (acoustic guitar, sax, drums, amp, etc.) is critical.  It's really hard to fix a bad acoustic sound (usually impossible!)  It's really easy to use a great acoustic guitar sound in your mix.  So, always fix it at the source if you can, before you record. 

And while this site shows the more common ways to record instruments, there are a lot of people who use different ways to record.  And neither way is right or wrong.  Sometimes doing things different can produce great results.    

Where to spend your money

If you want great recordings, your number one priority should be the sound source.  That would be the instruments, like... good sounding guitars, drums, amps, etc.  You don't always have to spend big dollars.  I've seen musicians with a $500 drum kit that had new heads that were tuned properly and sounded great.  I've heard $400 guitars with new strings and $400 amps that have good tone.  If the instruments sound terrible at the start, no effect in the world can save them. 

If you won't be using your own instruments, spend your money getting the room to sound good and get decent speakers and headphones, so you can hear what is really being recorded, instead of hearing a bad room sound through bad speakers.  

If you have a bad sounding room, get some acoustical treatments and improve it.  Many rooms in homes are used to record in.  These rooms are often nearly square and have bad resonances caused by sound waves bouncing around the room.  Companies like Auralex, Real Traps, Ready Traps, and others, make treatments that can improve your room sound.  You can also make your own room treatments if you take the time to learn and have the skill to build them.  If your room sounds bad, it can hurt you twice: Once when it adds the bad room sound to your recording, and then again as you listen to that recording play back and the room imparts the same changes on what you are hearing.  This can cause your to make poor decisions about how you mic, EQ, and process effects.  

Your playback system is your studio monitors (speakers), amp (which is sometimes built into the speaker), and headphones.  If your playback system is poor and not reproducing the sound accurately, you won't be hearing what was really recorded and you will have difficulty in getting good mixes.       

After your room and speakers, the microphones are the next priority.  Your mics will shape your sound more than any other piece of gear you have, except effects like compression and reverb.  Spending your money of effects is not listed sooner because decent plugins can be had for $100 and up each.  And the secret to great sounding effects is more in how you use them than how much you spent on them.  With that said, many cheap stand alone effect boxes sound so bad, it would be tough for the best engineers to make them sound great.  But good results can be had with many of the free to inexpensive plugins out there.  For stand alone effect boxes, usually you have to get into the mid-level equipment to start to get decent sounds.  Not many $100 reverb boxes sound nice.  

SUMMARY:

1.  Use quality instruments

2.  Get your room sounding good with acoustical treatments

3.  Use decent studio monitors and headphones

4.  Microphones are important in shaping your sound

5.  Everything else (Recording interface, software, plugins, preamps, etc.)

Microphones

Microphones are the tools that transform the sound in the room into an electronic signal.  For the purposes of this webpage, we will focus on three common types of microphones: dynamic, condenser, and ribbon microphones.  If you want to read more about microphones, the Wikipedia page is a good place to start.

Dynamic mics don't need an external power source and are usually rugged and can withstand more physical abuse and higher volume levels than other types of mics.  They come with either small or large diaphragms.  They are commonly used for close micing instruments like drums (Shure SM57, Sennheiser MD421, AKG D112), guitar amps (SM57, MD421), and vocals (Shure SM58 or SM7b, Electro-Voice RE20).  They are not know for their high frequency response, and therefore are used less commonly on instruments with wide ranging frequency content like piano, acoustic guitar, drum kit overheads, or some female voices.  Although many have used dynamics on just about anything with good results.  The large diaphragm models are known for their extended bass frequency reproduction.  This makes the large diaphragm models more popular for bass drums, toms, bass guitars, guitar amps, and male voices.  Although small diaphragm models are also used on those sources with great results.  

Condenser microphones do need an external power source.  It is usually phantom power from the mixer or audio interface, but can also be from an external power supply or battery.  Condensers come in both the large and small diaphragm sizes.  Condensers usually have more high frequency response than dynamics, and therefore are popular recording instruments that require that, like piano, acoustic guitar, voice, strings, horns, and room mics for anything that requires recording the ambiance of the sound in the room.  Small diaphragm condensers (Neumann KM84 or KM184, Mojave Audio MA100, Rode NT5, Audio-Technica AT2021) are known for the accuracy of reproducing the true sound.  Large diaphragm models (Neumann U87 or TLM103, Shure KSM44, AKG C12 or C414, Rode NT-1, MXL 990) are know for their ability to enhance the bass and/or treble response of their subjects.  There are many other models than the examples listed here.  

Ribbon mics may or may not require external power.  Ribbon mics are known for their ability to have a smooth (and not harsh) treble response.  This makes them popular on instruments whose sound can be ruined by brittle high frequency reproduction, like electric guitar amps.  They can also be used on vocals, as room mics, or for just about anything.  The ribbons inside them are usually fragile and may not withstand high decibel levels or rough physical handling.  Use caution before putting them too close to extremely loud sound sources, like a bass drum or high power guitar amp speaker.  Most ribbon mics have a lower output than other mics and require more gain from the preamp they are connected to.  Some preamps may not have enough gain to bring certain ribbon mics up to an acceptable level.  Because they need more gain from the preamp, the mic and preamp's noise may be more evident on the final recording than that of other mics.  Popular models include the Royer R-121, AEA R84, and  the Beyerdynamic M160, although there are many other fine models to choose from.

There are also boundary mics that can be placed against a hard surface and used to pick up sounds from anything from a piano to drums to anything else.  

Microphones have polar patterns that are usually diagrammed to show the direction where they pick up more or less sound from.  The volume level may change from different directions as well as the volume of different frequencies may change from different directions.  The most common polar patterns are cardioid, omni, and figure 8.  

Cardiods pickup more sound from the front than from the back and sides, making them popular for rejecting the other nearby sounds in the room and controlling feedback in live performances.  Cardiods exhibit the proximity effect where more bass is reproduced when the mic is extremely close (within a few inches) to the sound source.  This effect is often used to add bass to guitar amps, snare drums, and vocals, among other things.  The proximity effect can also add bass where it is not wanted.  The solution is to move the mics further away from the source.  The cardioid pattern is the most commonly found pattern.  Many mics have only one pattern available and that pattern is often a cardioid.  The supercardiods and hypercardioids have better rejection from the sides, but have less rejection from behind.    

Omni patterns pick up sound (almost) equally from every direction.  They are good at picking up sounds from all around the room.  They don't exhibit a proximity bass boost, so they are used to get close to an instrument and still have an accurate sound.  

Figure 8 patterns pick up sound equally from the front and back, but have great rejection from the sides.  These mics excel whenever side rejection is needed or when you want to mike two instruments or singers on opposite sides of the mic.  Figure 8 patterns are usually seen on ribbon mics or mics with two diaphragms.          

Cables

Your microphone plugs into a cable with an XLR connector and carries the signal to the preamp.  Try to use decent quality cables that are not too long.  A cheap cable probably uses thin wire that breaks easily and may leave your recordings sounding poor.  I don't believe it helps to use ultra expensive cables.  Any blind listening test I have seen shows that no one could tell the difference.  I have a couple of these "designer" cables and they sound the same as my other cables to me.  I do believe that it is good practice to buy quality mid-priced cables.  They will sound fine and last longer than cheap ones.  Some microphones will have a 1/4" plug instead of an XLR connector.  These mics are high impedance and usually of poor quality.  

Don't buy mic cables any longer than necessary.  Your recorded signal slowly gets weaker as it travels through the cable.  The longer distance it travels, the weaker it gets.  If you are 20' away from the mic, a 50' cable will lose more signal than a 20' cable and your noise level will be higher in the mix.

Preamps

Your microphone cable plugs into the preamp (preamplifier).  Microphones send a low level signal that must be amplified before it is processed.  The preamp's job is to amplify without adding too much noise.  There are many different preamps available at different costs.  A major recording magazine recently did a blind test with it's experts and it's readers listening to several preamps.  They could not pick out the expensive preamps and often picked the less expensive preamps.  So there is no need to spend thousands.  If you have the money and can afford it, those high end preamps are nice.  Whether or not anyone can tell the difference in the final mix is another story.  You should avoid the cheapest preamps because some of them contain more noise that can build up on your tracks if you use it for everything.  Different preamps will create a slightly different character on the sound that you can hear sometimes.  So if you have many to choose from, picking one is part of the creative process.  But you can make very good recordings with middle of the road preamps that come stock on decent interfaces and mixers, or are stand alone units.      

EQ (Equalizers)

Equalizers are volume controls that work on specific frequencies, instead of all frequencies.  The human ear can hear roughly the 20 Hz to 20,000 (or 20k) Hz range of frequencies, so this is the range where most equalizers work.  The main types of equalizers are shelving, graphic, and parametric.  The ranges are usually broken up into the following approximate areas.  Bass or Low- 20 to 200Hz:  Mids- 200 to 5K Hz; Treble or High- 5k to 20k Hz.  

Shelving EQ cuts or boosts all frequencies past a certain point.  A shelving EQ for the treble range might cut or boost everything above 10k Hz (or whatever frequesncy you select).  A shelving EQ for bass might cut or boost everything under 100Hz.  A Low Pass Filter is EQ that allows the low frequencies to pass unaffected and cuts the higher frequencies.  A High Pass Filter is EQ that allows the high frequencies to pass and cuts the lower frequencies. 

Graphic EQ is divided up into bands.  Each band has a set frequency.  A 5 band graphic EQ might be divided in to set frequencies like 80Hz, 250Hz, 1000Hz, 3500Hz, and 10,000Hz.  Each frequency can be boosted or cut by a certain amount, maybe 10dB in this example.  The frequency selections are fixed and cannot be changed. 

Parametric EQ allows you to select the frequency you want to change, instead of the frequency being fixed.  Semi-parametic EQ allows only frequency selection, but you cannot adjust the width of the selection.  Full parametric EQ allows you to adjust the "Q" or width of the frequencies you want to change.  For example, a semi-parametric EQ would allow you to select your center frequency to adjust (say 300Hz in this example), but you might be stuck with a 200 Hz "Q", meaning you are adjusting the cut or boost of the frequencies between 100Hz-300Hz.  A full parametric EQ would allow you to adjust the width or "Q".  You could select a very narrow "Q" of 50Hz (275Hz-325Hz) or a wide "Q" of 400 Hz (100Hz-500Hz).