How good are today's microphones at capturing air pushed by the music?

[JackD201]

Okay, we're just talking about amplitude losses then, with straighforward linear distortion via FR variation. Something that the ear/brain has to handle all the time in real life, therefore there is no problem with the mics capturing the sound sufficiently for the mind to perfectly recreate the musical event, if the playback system is working correctly.


Jack, what comes out a Marshall amp's speakers is sound, vibrations of the air, just like the human voice or a piano initiates, produced in fact by fairly crappy speaker drivers, by the standards of high end speaker systems. There is nothing magic about that sound (unless you're a Marshall freak, perhaps), it can be broken down by frequency analysis into its component parts and looked at like any other "noise". It has distinctive tonal qualities, and tends to be subjectively loud and intense, but that's all there is to it. If a high quality playback system can go loud cleanly it should have no trouble reproducing that sound completely accurately. Or do you believe in magic, perhaps?

Frank

Sure, I never said mics couldn't just that no one mic can do it all. Take bleeding as an example. That mike you've got on the snare will pick up that guitar amp 4 meters away and it will find it's way into the mix if you choose the wrong mic. We have to understand that a playback system working correctly just can not make up for a mic poorly selected, poorly placed and poorly leveled.

It seems you are over simplifying that wiggle again Frank. I'm with you 100% on the voltage swing side what I'm asking you to do is imagine what makes up those voltage swings in the acoustical energy and not electrical realm. I mean what's captured by the microphone, which is never all of it. Let's compare the two scenarios live vs. recorded. Let's make it a small honky tonk and you are in the front table. The singer is so near he could spit on you but this is a guitar solo so think of him as some big acoustic panel or something . The guitarist is a couple of paces to his right (your left) and his guitar amp is a pace behind him. What are you hearing from that guitar amp? Direct sound from the drivers, resonances from it's cabinet, diffractions from the edges, reflections from the floor, resonances of the floor and maybe the wall behind it all from not one but maybe three meters. You're also listening to it with two ears and your head is getting in the way between the amp and your right ear. Now compare that with how it would be recorded. The mic would likely be two feet away at most for a four driver amp, too near to get the floor reflections and too near to get a whole of the other things happening later in the time domain. That's the raw microphone signal. Is it close to reality? It's got a lot of info in there for sure but does it capture what you would have in your chair? No. There are a lot of things to be done with the signal later that could make it get a lot closer. It's not an indictment of microphones. It's just the way work flows go in the here and now. I'm just waiting for Tom to jump in any minute now on the wonders of binaural recording. Hahahaha.

I'm not trying to burst any bubbles here. In fact, if anything, I'd like us all to appreciate the PEOPLE that gave us good recordings instead of worshipping blindly at the feet of the technology they had on hand.

 

[JackD201]

Ahhh... I'm only 60. Those days are way before my time.



Tim

If you count your "time" beginning in your teens. Yeah it would!

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

If you count your "time" beginning in your teens. Yeah it would!

I first started using microphones at about 16, so yes, that's how I count it. These days, I can point a couple of condensers at an acoustic guitar from a couple of feet away, and capture on my Mac a very high-fidelity recording of said guitar. I don't think I'm losing 25% of anything. It is a recording, and all that implies, but I'd still like to know 25% of what is supposed to be lost, even from a few meters away. Many of the great jazz recordings of the late 50s/early 60s were captured without close-micing.

Tim

 

[JackD201]

Mostly amplitude and the resulting masking of small transient edges really. I don't think it's even an issue really. My genre of choice is classical music and I personally think spaced arrays from a distance, done properly, makes for a more convincing presentation than a performance assembled like legos done properly. My whole point is that like I said in post #2 is that mics ARE good enough, 20%, 30%,50% be damned, if they are in the right hands.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I can see how you'd get there listening mostly to classical. Having been weened on mutli-tracked popular recordings that got better and better throughout the last few decades, I am, at this point, pretty addicted to the intimacy of close miking. I understand that I'm often hearing a resolution of transient attack that might not even be audible in the same room with the intrument, but I'm hooked nonetheless.

Tim

 

[JackD201]

And I can see why you are hooked. You aren't alone. My thinking is that these are all just tools used to fulfill artistic visions. This makes me technologically agnostic. Sometimes I realize it can come off as wishy washy. What can I do? The results always mean more to me than how the results were achieved. That's just how I am.

 

[fas42]

We have to understand that a playback system working correctly just can not make up for a mic poorly selected, poorly placed and poorly leveled.

That, I will severely disagree with. And the reason, as I've stated, I reckon off the top of my head, probably a million times already, is that the ear/brain can do a fantastic job of sorting out what's going on, if you don't overload it with too much distortion. A messy mix, correctly reproduced, everything's fine: a distorted messy mix, help, get me out of this room and fast!!

I mean what's captured by the microphone, which is never all of it. Let's compare the two scenarios live vs. recorded. Let's make it a small honky tonk and you are in the front table. The singer is so near he could spit on you but this is a guitar solo so think of him as some big acoustic panel or something . The guitarist is a couple of paces to his right (your left) and his guitar amp is a pace behind him. What are you hearing from that guitar amp? Direct sound from the drivers, resonances from it's cabinet, diffractions from the edges, reflections from the floor, resonances of the floor and maybe the wall behind it all from not one but maybe three meters. You're also listening to it with two ears and your head is getting in the way between the amp and your right ear. Now compare that with how it would be recorded. The mic would likely be two feet away at most for a four driver amp, too near to get the floor reflections and too near to get a whole of the other things happening later in the time domain. That's the raw microphone signal. Is it close to reality?

Jack, you're not giving your brain enough credit: you listen to the guitar solo from the chair, and then you go over to where the mic is while he's still playing, your brain doesn't say, gee whiz, this sounds now like something completely different, it bears little relationship with what I heard just a moment before. No, you think, this sounds more intense, you appreciate a few more subtleties in what he's doing, a few more extraneous noises like the fingers moving on the neck become clearer. But it still sounds very real, and it still sounds like just a louder version of what you heard from the chair.

So I'm still totally on the side of the mics: the rest of the conversation since your post here reflects that, that that piece of gear is doing a damn fine job! Which brings me full circle to one of my broken record pronouncements: there is no such thing as a bad recording. The mics did their job, the recording chappie did somewhere between a pretty rough to a superb job of getting the mic feed on some media, and that's been copied to a format at some level of quality. It's then up to the playback system to extract everything those mics picked up as cleanly as possible, and all the evidence I've experienced says that if you get the latter right, then it sounds real ...

Frank

 

[microstrip]

(...) What can I do? The results always mean more to me than how the results were achieved. That's just how I am.

Jack,
How can you enjoy fully if you do not have the expectation bias created by knowing how the results were achieved?

 

[JackD201]

Jack,
How can you enjoy fully if you do not have the expectation bias created by knowing how the results were achieved?

LMFAO! Nice one!

 

[fas42]

This makes me technologically agnostic. Sometimes I realize it can come off as wishy washy. What can I do? The results always mean more to me than how the results were achieved. That's just how I am.

Actually, I'm in the same boat: the interesting thing is that when I state that one can achieve really good results that there is such opposition ...

Frank

 

[JackD201]

That, I will severely disagree with. And the reason, as I've stated, I reckon off the top of my head, probably a million times already, is that the ear/brain can do a fantastic job of sorting out what's going on, if you don't overload it with too much distortion. A messy mix, correctly reproduced, everything's fine: a distorted messy mix, help, get me out of this room and fast!!


Jack, you're not giving your brain enough credit: you listen to the guitar solo from the chair, and then you go over to where the mic is while he's still playing, your brain doesn't say, gee whiz, this sounds now like something completely different, it bears little relationship with what I heard just a moment before. No, you think, this sounds more intense, you appreciate a few more subtleties in what he's doing, a few more extraneous noises like the fingers moving on the neck become clearer. But it still sounds very real, and it still sounds like just a louder version of what you heard from the chair.

So I'm still totally on the side of the mics: the rest of the conversation since your post here reflects that, that that piece of gear is doing a damn fine job! Which brings me full circle to one of my broken record pronouncements: there is no such thing as a bad recording. The mics did their job, the recording chappie did somewhere between a pretty rough to a superb job of getting the mic feed on some media, and that's been copied to a format at some level of quality. It's then up to the playback system to extract everything those mics picked up as cleanly as possible, and all the evidence I've experienced says that if you get the latter right, then it sounds real ...

Frank

Frank if what you are saying were true, every stereo recording would be made with a haphazardly placed stereo mic in any room a band could fit in. Why don't you download the audio from any concert on youtube taken with a cellphone camera and tell me again that you can turn that into something worth listening to for any reason more than for posterity.

 

[fas42]

Frank if what you are saying were true, every stereo recording would be made with a haphazardly placed stereo mic in any room a band could fit in. Why don't you download the audio from any concert on youtube taken with a cellphone camera and tell me again that you can turn that into something worth listening to for any reason more than for posterity.

Now don't go silly on me, Jack!

Obviously, if you can do something well then that's the path you'll take, for personal pride if for no other reason. In one sense you're right, IF playback had been very good way back when, then everyone would have been very sloppy in how they recorded and gotten away with it. The great thing is that the engineers were forced to try really, really hard over the decades to make up for the deficiencies of consumer's systems and we can reap the benefit of that! As a perfect example, recordings of the glory years in the late 50's and on were never heard to sound as good as the recordings were done, until decades later.

I'm gonna get Tim all upset again, but I have a perfect example of what you're talking about! A CD of local, young rock bands competing in a national competition, back in the 70's, many of the tracks were taken from people's battery cassette recorders they happened to have on them in the audience. And, yes, as the system gets better the "appalling" sound starts to come together, tape wow and all, you tune in more and more to the band, your head can bypass the recording's muck.

So, again, the trick is to get both the best recordings right, and have the bottom of the barrel stuff make musical sense, not be a torture session ...

Frank

 

[JackD201]

Not exactly half way Frank but I'll take it! Hahahahaha!

Geez I never realized just how much I miss the studios.