bass mic gain

[Oreomeister365]

So what I've been doing as far as setting the gain for my mic (PR-40) is setting it basically as high as I can without clipping when playing the highest gain thing I can (generally I play a big 4 string chord...).

I'm curious if that's the normal thing to do, or perhaps it's affecting how accurately it's reproducing the tone or anything of the sort? Perhaps there are benefits to setting the mic gain as low as possible (while still getting the volume you need)?

Thanks

 

[lowfreq33]

You've kind of got the right idea, it depends on how you're determining what clipping is. If you know how to use the meters on the board then that's probably right. You want your peaks to be around zero on the meter. If it's an analog board you can be a few db over and it's not a problem. If it's a digital board you want to leave a little more headroom, clipping a digital system sounds horrible.