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Mark E
Lokahi
USA
186 Posts |
 Posted - 03/26/2008 : 6:33:31 PM
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I've read the discussions of the H-4 but I can't seem to get it to sound very good when recording a single acoustic guitar. Would someone condense their experience with it to give me a starting point of settings and placement for this purpose?
Thanks for any help.
Mark E
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Fran Guidry
Ha`aha`a
USA
1579 Posts |
Posted - 03/26/2008 : 9:02:08 PM
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I use an H2 rather than an H4, but some of the issues of recording an acoustic guitar aren't very device dependent.
Without hearing your recording, I can say a few general things.
Don't record too "hot." Back in the days of tape recording, tape noise was a problem, and a small amount of clipping was a good tradeoff to reduce noise. In digital recording, noise is much less of a problem but clipping is nasty, so leave a good safety margin in your recording levels.
Use 14.4/16 bit wave format. Don't use any built-in limiter or AGC.
It seems logical to record a guitar by putting the mic right in front of the soundhole and a couple of inches away. This doesn't usually work too well. Both the soundhole and the close placement will result in bassy, boomy recordings. The default position I usually see recommended, and use myself, is about 12 to 18" from the 12th fret, perhaps rotated slightly toward the body of the guitar.
The sound of the room is a big part of a recording, and rooms that sound "interesting" to our ears often sound obnoxious when recorded. So roam around the house (a great advantage of a portable recorder) and do brief recordings in as many rooms as you can.
Once you've found the room that sounds the best, try a series of recordings moving the recorder across the guitar, from the 12th fret to below the bridge. Describe each position when you record, load them all into your audio editor, and normalize them so you won't be affected by volume differences. Hopefully one or two positions will sound decent.
Test again by using the good sounding position(s) you just found, now varying the distance and rotation of the H4, until you find the optimum for your room, instrument, playing style, and taste.
There's another world of fiddling to do in your recording software after you record. A discussion for another day.
Fran |
E ho`okani pila kakou ma Kaleponi
Slack Key Guitar in California - www.kaleponi.com
Slack Key on YouTube
Homebrewed Music Blog |
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Mark E
Lokahi
USA
186 Posts |
Posted - 04/13/2008 : 6:07:02 PM
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Many thanks, Fran. I've been trying your suggestions with improved results!
Mark E |
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Leonard
Lokahi
USA
124 Posts |
Posted - 04/14/2008 : 04:26:59 AM
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| Fran: I noticed your comment about the trade-off between clipping and noise, and how the decision for tape recording equipment is not the same for the newer equipment. I just recently had this problem (from the clipping end). In a digital recording I was making, I boosted the input to reduce the noise (out of habit from my tape recording days). The resulting recording had some clipping, the effect of which seemed significantly worse than a little clipping in old tape recordings. Now I know that I shouldn't worry quite so much about noise, and keep the input levels down a little to be sure I don't get any clipping. Just shows you how one small, off-hand comment may be important. Thanks! LRR |
Be the change that you wish to see in the world. M. Gandhi |
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Fran Guidry
Ha`aha`a
USA
1579 Posts |
Posted - 04/14/2008 : 05:33:53 AM
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Leonard, I'm so glad my comment was helpful. This idea of "hot" recording is just one of the totally wrong ideas that is very common in Internet tutorials on recording. Due to the different metering technologies and other things, -8db on a digital device is about the same as 0db on an analog tape recorder, so before we get to clipping we're overdriving our recording chain in a way that usually sounds bad, not good.
The H2/H4 does not have a great signal path, especially in terms of noise, so a decent signal is a good idea, but pushing that $.27 preamp beyond its design limits by trying to hit 0db is not going to make for good recordings.
Fran |
E ho`okani pila kakou ma Kaleponi
Slack Key Guitar in California - www.kaleponi.com
Slack Key on YouTube
Homebrewed Music Blog |
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