51m0n

Beginning of Bachs Cello Suite No 1 usually does the trick.... Or something Clutterbuck-esque, because I'm worth it....

Oh mate, congratulations!

You're pretty stuffed. Its almost certainly a room node at about 47Hz as everyone said. Getting your rig off the floor wont do much, possibly moving it left to right or further or nearer the rear wall may be a good plan. If the front of your rig is about 65" off the back wall the reflection off it it will null with your rig at about 47Hz. That could help to tame the issue... Other than that you need a notch filter (there is one built in to the Digitech BP8 which was about the coolest thing I've seen ion a bass multifx ever).

I'd expect them to have several DIs, something very very clean, something with some colour (a REDDI for instance), most of which should be so far outside of your average decent pro bassists viable price range as to seem a little gratuitous Calling Rimskidog for his professional opinion of a serious studio having no DIs whatsoever....

True, beyond set and forget mode you are out for the count. Not that that isnt possible, its just really not using the system to its fullest potential (or even close). Thats why engineers do 'fiddle' all the way through the set. Good ones are helping all the time by tweaking levels slightly to help the mix for each differnet track. With modern systems it goes way beyond a little tweak here and there in some cases too. Not to mention the monitor sound and the effort that goes into keeping that optimal for the musicians. Whether a set and forget mentality is better than the offerings of the venue's own engineers (assuming they have any) I couldnt possibly say

[quote name='Monckyman' timestamp='1320664160' post='1429484'] The use of inexperienced (clueless) sound engineers can be blamed squarely on the venue manager/owner. .....//.... The only way around this is to pay your own engineer to do what you tell them to do. MM [/quote] Couldn't agree more with all of that! The only other option is learn how it all works, get a decent PA and do your own sound - seriously not trivial though....

My personal favourite in a little venue when you can get to do it is cab on a heavy duty stand up at table height about 6 inches off the back wall. You get lots of lovely acoustic coupling with the backwall, and the sound of your cab is straight into your lug holes. You can get the cab just behind the drummer (not directly behind but behind where he is sat) he gets to hear you more directly (albeit at an angle) off your cab and that can make a real difference. Of course if you have um-big stage and um-big monitors (another techincal term) its all irrelevant. Decoupling with a boomy floor is always "a good thing" though IME.

Pantherairsoft's Roscoe fretless 6 string. He kindly let me have a long play on it at the SE Bass Bash, best fretless bass I've ever played (possibly just teh best bass I've ever played). Absolutely gorgeous tone, unbelievably easy to play, just a shame I didnt have one of those Men In Black flasher things to erase all memory of it from his mind (just look into the light a minute Shep.......FSCSHHHHHZZZZ.... "Hey thats a nice bass you've got there Si", "Why yes it is Shep, thank you very much ")...

Oh no, get well Chuck!

[quote name='BigAlonBass' timestamp='1320620111' post='1429169'] Buy earplugs, NOW! and stop worrying. [/quote] +1,000,000

[quote name='ironside1966' timestamp='1320599567' post='1428813'] I am not having a go mate; any one who makes a living from sound must be doing something right. My remark was more a reaction to 51m0n “ This is virtually sound engineering key stage 1 stuff, get this wrong and you are struggling from then on in. If you have had reasonable results with those mics in front of your cab then I'm pleased for you, if you see lots of people do it its because they don’t spend the time thinking about it hard enough (seriously). I guarantee you its easier to mix my way (ha, its not mine personally, I make no claim to it at all, I've merely listened to some great engineers imparting what they have learnt, and tried a lot of different scenarios and used my ears), I know I've been down every possible path for getting bass and kick (and tuba and db) to sit together in a mix that I can think of.” Working live and studio is two different beasts, so when people make comments like this I have to ask what live actual expreance is this based on. Working live is often making the best of the equipment available at the time. Tthere are a thousand ways to do something and a good sound live sound is more down to the skill of the engineer, venues acoustics, good performance and quality of sound source quality of PA then microphone choice. 51m0n, I am not having a pop at you ether, it is just in a few post you have came across sounding like you know best and your method is the only way or the best way. the People who I have met and respect who engineer for a living tend to be more laid back and accept and use different methods depending on the circumstances. [/quote] I've done a fair amount of live, and more in the studio. Its not my dayjob, although I would have loved it to have been at one time in my life, but I have been shown some really informative stuff by some guys who know their beans as well as anyone in the business, and whose experience goes right back, to when it really was a case of get the mic position wrong and you've blown the recording or the transmission (due to massive lack of outboard for one thing). I consider myself very lucky to have even met a couple of them, and have the utmost respect for their experience and knowledge. You're absolutely right live is more often than not a case of there's the kit there's the deadline, get in, get it done, get out alive. I've experienced that end of it. It is possible to get perfectly good results with almost any mic, if you have the time, the outboard (esp eq) and so on. These days its probably easier than ever. Anyone making a living out of live sound has my complete respect (no honestly its a hellish job at times) and I totally understand the reasoning behind choices like this. I'm sorry I've put my point across too strongly in this thread. The reaction to that will be that no one will even try it. There are no rules, do what you can do to get the job done, I'm only trying to share what I've been shown, experimented with and come to trust as not bs. Take it or leave it.

[quote name='Monckyman' timestamp='1320578021' post='1428421'] Simon, why are you being so arrogant and condescending? I haven`t attacked you,merely said I and many other professional engineers don`t find any problem using certain mics in live situations. This isn`t opinion, this is fact. Why then would you even suggest that anyone who mics a bass cab with one of those mics didn`t know what they were doing? Why would you say this is "[i]virtually sound engineering key stage 1 stuff, get this wrong and you are struggling from then on in. If you have had reasonable results with those mics in front of your cab then I'm pleased for you, if you see lots of people do it its because they dont spend the time thinking about it hard enough[/i]" when you are talking about engineers at the top of their game, and working in front of tens of thousands of people daily? How astoundingly arrogant of you to insist that EVERYBODY else is wrong, and only you are right. Consider yourself off my xmas list. [/quote] Sorry mate, bit strong, fair point well made. Happy Christmas! Put it another way, I have lost count of the number of large PAs that sounded like rank plop - best sound I heard in the last ten years was Travis at the Brighton Center, that was unreal, Zappa plays Zappa was ok there, others have been awful as a rule. Now I am trying to compare PA's with major bands in the same venue since that is what counts if you like, as a reasonable comparison. Not trying to be arrogant or condescending, I'm trying to explain my reasoning. I know loads and loads of engineers use kick drum mics live for bass and kick. I happen to think it doesnt help a mix to be using mics that closely follows the same frequency response on the kick and the bass, live or in the studio. I can say why that is. I understand a lot of people do it, I'll just reiterate, I have heard a lot of big time PAs and there is no definition on the bass, and no seperation between bass and kick. It is a real grouch of mine I admit! It is nevertheless pretty much the first rule (if there are any) of mixing to give yourself the best chance from the source onwards to get that seperation right. I completely agree it can work, if the music calls for it, but a huge amount of music doesnt and the thing is how often do you guys on a festival actually spend an hour or two going through bass amp mic options? Not so much I'm sure. There are a bundle of other factors weighing in against that kind of experimentation, far easier to take the easy option of slapping one of the same old mics on there and go with that. I completely understand why its done, I am saying it is still not necessarily the best solution. In a situation where there is the time to do that experimentation (which I have done several times) the fact is it is often surprising to find that a different approach to the bass and kick can work better in the overall mix. Its all I'm trying to say. If you have tried what I'm saying and found that I am wrong in the circumstances you have tried it in thats cool, and I would honestly love to know where and when, genres of music and so on. I really would.But if you are saying everyone does that so its fine then all I'm asking is when did they last try something else? I apologise again, sincerely, if I over egged the pudding, I wasnt trying to, and I think the tone of my response didnt come over as I intended it. My fault.

Cool, maybe we'll all be able to pick out more than a rumble from the bass in the FOH in future then If everyone out there is asking for it on the festival scene it must be right, obviously, no need to question that at all. Funny though a lot of major engineers would use an RE20 in the studio, any number would reach for a Neumann (47, 67 whatever) a little way off the cab, I've seen plenty of use for Senn MD421s in this application, any number of mics fit the bill where you have the time to audition mics to get the best sound for the rig/song/mix. Its a kick drum mic a lot less often in that application than on a festival, nothing to do with the ubiquitous nature of kick drum mics, their well deserved rep for indestructibility, and all about the sonic perfection they guarantee.... ...oh hold on let me think about that again. They will perform the function of picking up the cab, they will do a load of eqing to the signal that may or may not be right for it. Whether you and everyone you work with have only used them for the last 20 years or not, that doesnt change the fact that they are not really the best tool for picking up the actual sound of the bass from that cab. You may or may not like what they do and find it can be made to work in the mix, personally I prefer to eq at the desk, not in the mic, live, just because you dont have time to swap the mics out when the bassist surprises you with a change of instrument for whatever reason and his signal turns to mud.. I confess, I havent done a huge live outdoor gig for years, I got really bored of being passed the DAT tapes (like a said years) by the management and being told to drop the mics and turn up the tape during the songs. I really lost interest in live all day events when that started happening....

Band/bass - not so good - although got a recording out. Recording - pretty busy, few projects done or doing. Mixing - pretty epic, taken up a huge amount of 'spare' time. Loving it! Oh and I got married - which was awesome

[quote name='Monckyman' timestamp='1320485486' post='1427368'] I personally don`t agree with Simons view on bass mics, having used D112 or beta52 or RE20s for the past 20 years at all levels of gigs,but he has a point that if you are after valve or FX only, an SM57 will do the job well, and you can buy your own for £50 along with a clamp to fix it in the right place on your rig. You must instruct the engineer and then follow it up with very strong objections if he/she ignores you. MM [/quote] Well the ElectroVoice RE20 is a mic designed for broadcast voice applications, its certainly not first and foremost a bass mic. Although it is superb in that application. I prefer the PR40 even to an RE20 though. Its virtually flat from 50Hz to 2Khz (above which its a tad wobblier, but nothing like a D112) D112s and beta52 have heavily eq'ed (basically mid scooped with a peak around 4KHz) frequency plots. They are that way because modern kick drum sounds require exactly that kind of eq, not because bass does (in some cases it can work, mix dependant though). The other point is have a look at the kick drum, if it has the same kind of mic (generically a designed for that purpose mic rather than the same specific brand) the sound guy doesnt understand frequency mixing and is going to struggle to get good seperation between kick and bass compared to a sound guy who makes sure he uses different mics on the two instruments competing for the same sonic territory. This is virtually sound engineering key stage 1 stuff, get this wrong and you are struggling from then on in. If you have had reasonable results with those mics in front of your cab then I'm pleased for you, if you see lots of people do it its because they dont spend the time thinking about it hard enough (seriously). I guarantee you its easier to mix my way (ha ha, its not mine personally, I make no claim to it at all, I've merely listened to some great engineers imparting what they have learnt, and tried a lot of different scenarios and used my ears), I know I've been down every possible path for getting bass and kick (and tuba and db) to sit together in a mix that I can think of. This particular one doesnt work so well in the context of the mix, there is one caveat to that of course, and that is the case where the mix choice is to use the 57 (or similar) on the kick (going for an old school little punchy funk kick drum sound this can work very well indeed) where the bass is very dubby and you low pass it below the presence peak in the mic....

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1320435446' post='1426958'] It's actually easy if you have the right gear, and an open space to do the job. You measure ground plane, the mic literally an inch off the ground, for a half-space result below the baffle step frequency. Then you put the cab on its back and suspend the mic above it to get a half-space result above the baffle step. Splice the two together and you're done. If you want to do off-axis you do that with the cab on its back only, as below the baffle step axial and off-axis are the same. The gear used to be silly expensive, but today the software is free, and the hardware is less than a hundred dollars here. You can do the entire job, including off-axis plots, in about fifteen minutes. [/quote] You havent seen how small his back yard was

Yeah, you hear all these modern 'vintage funk' bands banging on about loose tight feel and all that, nothing, nothing beats uber tight for me, this is absolutely groovey as hell, and they are all on the one so hard its like a pile driver of funk. Love it to death!

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1320423304' post='1426758'] Anything's possible, as every scenario is different. That's why definitive cab measurements are made outdoors (assuming you don't have an anechoic chamber handy) with the mic at least two meters, preferably more, from the cab. [/quote] Yeah true, I've had long chats with Alex about the lengths he has to go to when measuring his cabs to get some idea of their frequency response - not a trivial undertaking at all!

[quote name='Pete Academy' timestamp='1320418452' post='1426672'] I see this quite a lot. When someone starts to learn an instrument, they develop an early boost of confidence that compels them to play crude riffs loud and proud in music shops. Coupled with teenage hormones and angst, this results in an inability to accept criticism. The problem here is that Youtube is the world's biggest music shop. [/quote] So what's my excuse Pete???

[quote name='bassman7755' timestamp='1320417195' post='1426639'] For guitarists (I happen to be one of those as well ...) the power amp/speaker are generally much more a key part of the final sound. As you say, IF those things are key to your bass sound then you can be better off micing up but it seems to me that the majority of bass players, especially many on here who use solid state power amp and "boutique" speakers generally want those latter stages of the signal chain to add as little colour as possible. Also I think generally is much more difficult to get good reproduction of the extended lows from bass by micing up than it is when dealing with a more middly guitar sound. [/quote] Agreed, except for anyone out there running a big Ampeg svt into a fridge. Or some clone of that tone. As for the low end, thats where the DI comes in.

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1320417621' post='1426650'] At a couple of inches off the driver the difference would be minimal; remember that port output is omni-directional. And there's also baffle proximity effect, which enhances the low end. True close micing to separate the driver and port outputs is done from more like a half-inch away. [/quote] Strange, thats not been my experience. Is the port the true origin of the extended octave or so of bass? Certainly seems like it to me. If so is it not possible that a combination of phase and off axis rejection from the mic would cause the mic to be significantly less bassy when micing from a couple of inches off the cone? Especially a cone a long way from the port? Just IME getting that lower octave from a mic close to a speaker cone just doesnt happen.

[quote name='bassman7755' timestamp='1320410802' post='1426475'] The thing about miking a bass cab is that by the time your audience hears it they are getting the sound processed by two sets of speakers (the actual cab and the PA) and a microphone. Generally your better off DI-ing with appropriate EQ (say to remove the highs is you dont use a full range bass cab). [/quote] Depends entirely on the sound of your cab and the amount of your sound that is derivived from your amp after the DI (can anyone say Power amp tube overdrive?). WHat you say suggests that guitarists ought to DI too, and we know that isnt right...

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1320409709' post='1426444'] The two are inseparable. The point of close micing is to take the room out of the equation. [/quote] I'd beg to differ here Bill. If you close mic a couple of inches off the speaker you get none of the benfit of the cab port producing the low end. So by close micing you tend to take at least some aspect of the cab out of the equation as well as the room.

Well I can understand that, after all his rendition of suck my kiss is pretty much the best I've ever heard ......

A mic will output what it does based upon where it is placed (including the angle of placement), its ability to cope with the SPL and its own frequency response. The PA/recording device will get a sum of this and the characteristics of the mic pre being used. The biggest factors here are the polacement of the mic and its frequency response (on and off axis depending on what angle the mic is at to the source). Lets not worry about mic pres at this point! SPL drops at a rate based upon the root mean square of the distance from the source. So, if you put the mic very close to a speaker a couple of things happen, you get almost no meaningful spill from other sources (ie the drum kit and guitarist) and you get pretty much nothing but the speaker's output, so nothing that comes from the port or the tweeter of the cab (or any of the other drivers). In order to get the sound of the cabinet as a whole you need to move the mic back several feet off the speaker grill. The trouble is that you are then fighting for your life against the spill from any other instruments and the potential horrors of the room acoustic. The result will sound further back in the mix, and much more in a space - because you have picked up a lot of information relating to the space in the way of reflections of the boundaries of the room. As with all things in recording its a compromise. One of the reasons I hate and strongly advise against the use of kick mics on bass cabs is they are massively eq'ed, they will cut up to 20dB of mids out of your sound (AKGD112 for example) which is hopeless if what you are trying to do is capture the sound of your bass. These mics are used in the belief that only they can handle the SPL up close - which is a nonsense, lots of dynamic mics can cope up close to a bass cab, and SM57 is happy as can be right in there. They give the initial sense of deeper bass, which is a lie, its not deeper there is just more of it at about 100Hz compared to what is available at 350Hz ([url="http://www.akg.com/mediendatenbank2/psfile/datei/38/D1124055c25c068d6.pdf"]pdf datasheet[/url]). Bass is all the way down to 40Hz though. So, what to do? Well if you dont use loads of effects or rely on the sound of your amp overdriving to get your tone use a DI and you're golden, the simple fact is that in most cases live its the most complete signal you can give to the engineer and he is best placed to tailor that output to the PA, which will have a completely different frequency response to your cab and so should be pre-eq if at all possible (otherwise he will be fighting your amp eq set up for your cab which wont suit his PA speakers as well). If you really need that mic'ed cab your best possible outcome live IME is something like a Heil PR40 and a DI, failing that a Heil PR20, Sure SM58 or 57, Audix D4, Sennheiser E835 or E845 are all fine. That mic is compromised due to close micing, its there to get all the interesting mid range information from the speaker, its not there to get the bass end of the spectrum or the absolute top end, thats where the DI comes in. The two signals are filtered and or eq'ed and mixed together to create a single glorious entirety. Point to note, you absolutely must get the two signals in phase from the mic and DI, in practicale terms that means moving the mic until the output form it is in phase with the DI, which is no where near as hard as it sounds. They are in phase wheh the output is hottest. Using multiple mics on a cab is perfectly possible (and I've done it often) when recording to get more of the room/cab, but you have to be very very confident of your ability to get everything phase aligned. It is not really suitable for live IMO.