Guitar Room Mic Techniques Question

favance

favance

Power User
So, after experimenting for the last few years w/CAB IRs, I'm starting to believe that one of the last components of our quest is the Cabinet room/mic techniques.

Question: how come of all the IR's most lack the "in the room" IR that experiment with the mic placement in the room?

After reading this month's Guitar Player magazine review w/Joe Bonamassa, I am convinced that this is the missing/secret ingredient to our quest. Fractal has done a magnificent job at modelling all aspects of the guitar amp/effects. However, the guitar cabinet/mic modeling has yet to come close to the real-world combinations used by many great artists...

Why do most IR distributors lack the vision to use/include the "room" mic techniques used by most of the great recordings?
 
favance said:
Question: how come of all the IR's most lack the "in the room" IR that experiment with the mic placement in the room?
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Because if you've captured room reflections in the IR, and then play through that IR, you're playing an in-the-room tone on top of the actual sound of the room you're in. That's okay for the guitarist who's blasting his face in the near field of his monitor, but it doesn't help the audience.
 
Andy at TAF includes some room IR's in his Studio Delta IR pack.

I think some room reverb effects can be used live okay. In my experience you have to let the FOH and monitor mixer have control of the wet/dry mix to make it work in some venues.

In a recording studio, room mics can capture the quality of a good room and give some 3D and depth to the tone. It makes the tone more complicated but in a good way.

Algo reverbs are so good these days, not the same as a top shelf recording chain capturing a great room, but more than good enough for live work.
 
favance said:
However, the guitar cabinet/mic modeling has yet to come close to the real-world combinations used by many great artists...

Why do most IR distributors lack the vision to use/include the "room" mic techniques used by most of the great recordings?
Click to expand...

I disagree with the first statement (just my opinion). Things can always be better but to say that what we have now isn't even close is a stretch. I experimented with the Redwirez packs a while back.These IR's were shot many years ago and obviously non Ultra Rez. They have arguably the most complete collections of mic's and positions. I was impressed with how I could use real world knowledge to choose mic's and positions to get a desired result. Work some of the cab block room parameters to add some spice and it's impressive. YMMV

Most of the packs I've bought do include some room mic's. Some more than others. One thing to note though is that even Ultra Rez isn't long enough to properly capture "the room". I like using the room options in the cab block with close mic'd ir's and sometimes mix in some of the room ir's as well.
 
I just think it's funny that you took the same thing from that Joe Bonamassa article as I did.

After reading it, I immediately ran over to my Axe Fx and started experimenting with room mics. I was pleasantly surprised.
Some IR packs are including it. Not as much as I would like, but that's just because I want more options than I'll ever use.

Cab pack 5 had a lot of good room mic options. I can't speak for the others, though.
If you're looking for a good room mic sound to emulate, John Mayer's solo on "I Don't Trust Myself with Loving You" is insanely good, in my opinion.
 
the difference for me is, sure they use room miss, but who the hell knows how much they blend them? beyond that, there is a world class engineer/producer behind the console make sure that the guitar sounds and sits perfectly in that mix. they can tweak and blend to their hearts content for that mix. try to use that type of thing live, going through god knows what pa, with god knows who on the faders....and its easy for it go bad, in a hurry.

i'd much rather send a close mic'd tone that i know is going to cut and sit the way i like than to have too much room mic and have my band/mix tone suffer for it.
 
jlynnb1 said:
the difference for me is, sure they use room miss, but who the hell knows how much they blend them? beyond that, there is a world class engineer/producer behind the console make sure that the guitar sounds and sits perfectly in that mix. they can tweak and blend to their hearts content for that mix. try to use that type of thing live, going through god knows what pa, with god knows who on the faders....and its easy for it go bad, in a hurry.

i'd much rather send a close mic'd tone that i know is going to cut and sit the way i like than to have too much room mic and have my band/mix tone suffer for it.
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That's why I recommend having both wet / dry separate so the house has control over it. It's not going to work well in some venues to give the wet / dry mix combined.
 
barhrecords said:
That's why I recommend having both wet / dry separate so the house has control over it. It's not going to work well in some venues to give the wet / dry mix combined.
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understood, and i agree...i just can't imagine wanting a room mic sound in a live setting. different strokes and all.
 
I think it has its applications but like everything else, the context in which applied is the most relevant point.
 
I was not necessarily intending to use these for "live" patches. This was more aimed at using the Axe-Fx in my home studio and trying to capture a larger room mic effect in the IR.
 
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