Quote:
Originally Posted by
StevenLMorgan
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As described to me, Chris and Landon meticulously position the mics by ear, will not record until they have the sound they want, without phase issues.
In the linked video, they discuss their recording process, patterns in great detail, however, this episode is focused on acoustic guitar:
https://youtu.be/gZOlB6Gyf60
So, these guys claim "ribbon mics should never be used on strings" eh ...lol !
I'll split hairs and take issue with their methodology: they're not so much meticulously positioning the mics by ear...as they're meticulously placing them by ear-
by headphones.
While I can appreciate their explanation that it hugely aids the iterative process (of moving the mic(s) near the guitar, while listening with cans in real time to the results of their incremental moves.)...I'm not sure that the ear isolation that each earcup gives is conducive to hearing those phase interactions between spaced mic pairs ?
This is mainly because each ear is hearing only the contribution of that (hard panned) mic...whereas if listening to the same mic pair feed via monitor speakers, you're going to get the crossfeed of left speaker sound into right and vice versa. You could call this 'air mixing' or 'room mixing'....and it's going to expose those phasing anomalies they discuss with much more clarity and immediacy.
There are some headphones (and headphone amps) which will feed a controlled amount of interchannel bleed from one earcup to another....such a method would help to expose the phasing issues which they claim to hear using headphones in the tracking studio...but which I'll contend are actually masked by conventional headphones (and exposed by monitor speakers)
In summary, while I applaud the drive to remove phase anomalies via critical listening to the mic feed (and adjusting mic angles/distances accordingly)....using closed-back headphones as they describe isn't the way to do it...
Speakers are...and thus the frequent walk-trips between control room and studio that they decry (as an unwelcome 'extra effort killer') are in fact necessary !