Hearing a similar sound to that a microphone or the audience will hear is one of the reasons I like using a taller cab with a driver at ear level.
Also, in my experience, itty bitty stage = no PA support for bass, whatsoever, so it's moot.
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Why have a nice rig just to be run direct?
- Thread starter mancefine
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Hearing a similar sound to that a microphone or the audience will hear is one of the reasons I like using a taller cab with a driver at ear level.
Also, in my experience, itty bitty stage = no PA support for bass, whatsoever, so it's moot.
I the problem with the term "accurate" here is that it has a specific meaning to audio engineers (an analog or digital signal is converted to exactly the sounds that the signal represents), whereas musicians tend to use it loosely to mean "FOH sounds like what I hear on stage" or even "FOH sounds good to me". Everyone here advocating for mic'ing cabinets *wants* their signal to be shaped by their amps/cabinets, and, from an audio engineering viewpoint, that is not accurate reproduction of the signal the amp is receiving.
Note that "inaccurate" doesn't mean "wrong".
"Wrong" sound only occurs when FOH isn't what the artist wants.
Note that "inaccurate" doesn't mean "wrong".
"Wrong" sound only occurs when FOH isn't what the artist wants.
Yep.
One of the guitarists in bands I play with also is one of the sound guys that a local venue uses. He does usually do four or five bands a night. He still usually asks the bassist about whether a mic or DI is preferred.
Maybe in your world. My experience says, that a sound guy likes to talk gear, as any bassman that I know does. And they are not "that" busy to have no 10 Minutes to have a beer. I recommend rookies to get in touch with the tech to give him an idea of the sound they want to have through FOH.
You don't want to call a bassman that celebrates his 36th anniversary on stage next year a rookie, do you?
I had more than 1.700 gigs during the years. And I know what is possible to get my sound.
It's not that hard to catch a sound guy when he has a few spare moments if a band arrives on time or even early for load-in. Lets the band have an opportunity for chatting with the people at the venue they'll be working with, and also gives a positive first impression that they know what they're doing.
I have absolutely no idea what this has to do with anything discussed in this thread.
sitting back reading this thread evolve. As a bassist and live sound mixer for many years on stages of all sizes, I have to say that I square with squeezer on just about all points he makes.
To tell it honestly as a sound guy, it does not make me wonder.
To answer as a musician, I understand your confusion.
BurningSkies
CRAZY BALDHEAD
- Feb 20, 2005
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There's a big difference between creating a rig that is 'accurate' in reproducing what your bass gives it, and having a live sound man that is providing 'accurate' tone in the room. You can count on a WHOLE pile of bass players who don't really give a rat's ass to hear their bass as a clean DI feed, whether it be recorded or live. They view their amp as part of their instrument, it generates tone, it doesn't just reproduce it. The MI industry fosters that, given the complete lack of truly accurate amplifiers or cabinets on the market. Even ones that people believe are 'accurate' are not. Cabs go the same way.
If we're having a discussion about your sound in a live setting and the transition from rig to FOH, you can pretty well understand that accurate means "MY SOUND OUT FRONT". It doesn't mean get the signal as close to my strings as possible. That's only accurate to in a scientific measured ideal that means nothing in the real world. Its accurate to nothing that the band or any person who's heard the band has ever heard...what's the point in that? There is none. I love my bass' tone, but I love it even more once it goes through some wires, hot glass and wire wrapped iron on the way out the other side.
BurningSkies
CRAZY BALDHEAD
- Feb 20, 2005
- 27,956
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- Endorsing artist: Dingwall Guitars
+1sitting back reading this thread evolve. As a bassist and live sound mixer for many years on stages of all sizes, I have to say that I square with squeezer on just about all points he makes.
IMO his points are very valid points.
edit:
sometimes I wish I could translate something better but, ****in English
I agree that hardly any bass player really wants accurate reproduction of the signal from the bass's output jack.I think what nearly every bass player wants is the sound they get on stage, colored by their effects/amp/cabinet.
If you give the sound guy a pre-amp DI, that's not what you're going to get.
If your stage sound depends on your effects/amp/cabinet, mic'ing is the only way you're going to get anything close to it to FOH.
If your stage sound comes from effects/amp sims/cab sims to a fairly accurate monitor, and FOH is getting the same signal, you stand a pretty good chance of getting something close to what you want.
Let's avoid highly technical terms like "accurate" unless we know what they really mean.
If you give the sound guy a pre-amp DI, that's not what you're going to get.
If your stage sound depends on your effects/amp/cabinet, mic'ing is the only way you're going to get anything close to it to FOH.
If your stage sound comes from effects/amp sims/cab sims to a fairly accurate monitor, and FOH is getting the same signal, you stand a pretty good chance of getting something close to what you want.
Let's avoid highly technical terms like "accurate" unless we know what they really mean.
BurningSkies
CRAZY BALDHEAD
- Feb 20, 2005
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- Endorsing artist: Dingwall Guitars
Myself, while playing I have my 2x10 tilted way back drilling the back of my head, through earplugs. I haven't gone to the trouble of recording the mic at various positions to see just how different the sound is from checking it 4ft out in my ears when I lean over it without earplugs.
End of day, I don't believe Jimmy and I are any more "special" than anyone else. We both point a flat mic straight at a 10" cone from 1 to 2" out. I got no reason to suspect a 15 won't work the same.
Itty bitty stages indeed are moot. I eq the rig for the room, not for me.
Here was my take 10+ years ago:
I need to get the most transparent amp/cab combination that I can, run everything flat except for maybe cut some nasty frequencies if required, but for the most part make all EQ adjustments at the bass. Get as clean of a tone as I possibly can and when they take my tone from the D.I. I have a pretty good idea what to expect from the FOH.
My take now is a bit different. Although the above may work for some, not for all. I have been recording various bass tracks from my Bassman 100T. It has a silent record mode that allows for pre and post tube soak on the DI output. Although it sounds pretty good and does a good job of coloring the sound with the tubes, it isn't even a close second to running through a cab. I just took a Fender neo 410 for a test drive tonight with the head and there is no comparison. If I were gigging with this setup, I would DEMAND, and I mean DEMAND that the cab be mic'ed in the nicest way possible. That is the only way to even get close to the tone that I am hearing out of my entire rig, period. I would of course offer the DI from the amp as a emergency backup, but would emphasize the importance of getting the tone from the mic'd cab as a primary.
I need to get the most transparent amp/cab combination that I can, run everything flat except for maybe cut some nasty frequencies if required, but for the most part make all EQ adjustments at the bass. Get as clean of a tone as I possibly can and when they take my tone from the D.I. I have a pretty good idea what to expect from the FOH.
My take now is a bit different. Although the above may work for some, not for all. I have been recording various bass tracks from my Bassman 100T. It has a silent record mode that allows for pre and post tube soak on the DI output. Although it sounds pretty good and does a good job of coloring the sound with the tubes, it isn't even a close second to running through a cab. I just took a Fender neo 410 for a test drive tonight with the head and there is no comparison. If I were gigging with this setup, I would DEMAND, and I mean DEMAND that the cab be mic'ed in the nicest way possible. That is the only way to even get close to the tone that I am hearing out of my entire rig, period. I would of course offer the DI from the amp as a emergency backup, but would emphasize the importance of getting the tone from the mic'd cab as a primary.
If that comes to pass do please unplug the DI after your soundcheck to see if you go mute like our pal ^^^.
With a full range mic there is no need for "blending", which is 10x more work to get right.
With a full range mic there is no need for "blending", which is 10x more work to get right.
I have enough friends that are sound guys that have a good ear that I can get a straight answer from them. One is a hell of a bass player to and he would be cool with letting me A/B the two channels so I can hear the FOH mix of the mic vs. DI while he fingers my bass. ♫♪♪♫♪
My "stage sound" fills more then the stage even with a great PA. It also is what all the people standing at the stage and on the dance floor hear. The PA gets the rest of the room where everyone is sitting at tables or playing pool.
OK, technical content follows -- don't read it if you're not interested...
If you point a mic at a speaker cone from a couple of inches away you don't get the sound heard by the player which is the sum of the sound from all the bits of the cone, you get mostly the sound from the bit of the cone near the mic. Particularly for mid and treble, the sound doesn't come evenly from all parts of the cone -- more treble tends to come from the dust cap and where it joins the cone, so if you point the mic at this it's usually too toppy, and midrange resonances which add tonal colour come from the cone so these are de-emphasized.
Move it a couple of inches to one side and the tone changes (even more so with guitar amps than bass). Neither is what you hear standing in front of the cab, though you might get something close with a lot of fiddling around so long as you're using full-range drivers (no separate mid or treble drivers) pointing at your ears (not your knees); bigger drivers have more tone variation with mic position than smaller ones, and the variation is bigger the closer the mic is to the cone.
It's the same reason that close-micing acoustic instruments like guitar and fiddle doesn't give the sound of the instrument you (or the audience) hear, there's usually much more string and finger noise and body boom which have to be corrected with EQ (relying on the soundman again) because different sounds come from different parts of the instrument. When trying to get the "true sound" of an instrument in a studio for recording the mics are nearly always placed at least couple of feet away for exactly this reason, but you can't do this on stage because of feedback and stage wash.
Anyone who doubts all this, here's an experiment for you to try.
Set your rig up and put your favourite cab mic in your favourite mic position. Also put a high-quality flat-response condenser mic on a stand where your head would be while playing. Do this in a dead room or preferably outdoors to remove any room effects.
Equalise the mic levels, and make a stereo recording (preferably onto a PC) of you playing -- or even record the bass through a clean DI and then play it back into the amp input so you can listen to exactly the same thing each time.
Add delay to the cab mic channel to compensate for the fact it's closer to the speaker (about 1ms per foot), otherwise your ears think the cab mic is louder because the signal arrives first.
Now listen to the result on wide-range monitor headphones, and see how different the tone in the two channels is (also use spectrum analysis to look at the difference). If they're similar you're very lucky, you can feel happy now
If they're not (much more likely) move the mic around to minimise the difference, and then see how much EQ you need to add to the cab mic signal to get it to sound like the stand mic one (what you hear when you're playing). You'll probably need at least a third-octave graphic or multiband parametric EQ to get anywhere near (just software on a PC). Don't be surprised if you need more than 10dB boost or cut to do this. Remember that the differences on a stage will be even bigger, we're only testing the cabinet and mic here.
Now look at the amount and complexity of the EQ you've used and work out what the chance of any soundman coming up with this is by listening (clue: roughly zero). That's exactly the chance of getting the same sound at FOH as the "perfect tone" you hear on stage.
If you do mic up a cabinet -- for which people have very good reasons if it delivers the sound you want -- and care about your sound, I'd really encourage you to try this. You might be horrified at the difference, but if you want to stick with using a cabinet it'll at least help you find the mic position with the closest agreement with what you hear (an inch either way can make a real difference), and maybe you can even provide the EQ settings to the soundman (if they have a digital desk with enough per-channel EQ).
I'm not saying you can't get a good sound out front with a mic, just that unless you're *very* lucky (lots of things all need to work) it won't be the same as you're hearing on stage -- which after all is what you're listening to, so it's the "gold standard". Good luck with the soundman, you'll need it ;-)
And yes I've done all this, and it's why I use a DI with any EQ and effects in front of it...
P.S. It's much easier to do the setup using pink noise into the amp input, then switch to playing bass afterwards -- all we're trying to do is get the mics to sound the same.
OK, well here's my technical content reply to all that:
Assuming all that is true, who cares? It still sounds better than the vast majority of DI's. And if I can get the mic'ed sound of my rig to sound so close that I can't tell where the amp ends and the PA begins, anyone can. I don't do anything special...I just did a little bit of homework on mic placement and I know where to put it to make it happen and I know what to say to the soundman to make it happen. And since I've made it happen in a number of different situations with completely different PA's of varying quality, then it ain't luck.
Assuming all that is true, who cares? It still sounds better than the vast majority of DI's. And if I can get the mic'ed sound of my rig to sound so close that I can't tell where the amp ends and the PA begins, anyone can. I don't do anything special...I just did a little bit of homework on mic placement and I know where to put it to make it happen and I know what to say to the soundman to make it happen. And since I've made it happen in a number of different situations with completely different PA's of varying quality, then it ain't luck.
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