When recording in an unprepared room, I can close mic and get a decent
sound, but if I back out, I get a room sound that isn't necessarily good.

When recording in a properly constructed live room, if I need to back away
from the source, I can do so with confidence that the room will reinforce,
not hinder, my recording process.

Can it get any simpler than that?

"Carey Carlan" wrote in message
. 205...
When recording in an unprepared room, I can close mic and get a decent
sound, but if I back out, I get a room sound that isn't necessarily good.

When recording in a properly constructed live room, if I need to back away
from the source, I can do so with confidence that the room will reinforce,
not hinder, my recording process.

Can it get any simpler than that?

I actually believe room choice to be more important than mic choice.

Carey,

I agree with Ricky that the room is more important that the mike. I'll go
farther and say it's more important than pretty much anything else.

When recording in an unprepared room, I can close mic and get a decent
sound

Yes, but one thing that close-miking does not solve is a skewed low end
response. Being close helps the ratio of direct to ambient sound to avoid
sounding off-mike, but the peaks and dips at low frequencies caused by
acoustic interference are still present. Those are position dependant, and
the frequencies affected vary with the mike's distance from a room
boundary - the walls, floor, and ceiling. So you can still get poor results
with bass amps and the like, even with the mike very close.

--Ethan

"Ethan Winer" ethan at ethanwiner dot com wrote in
:

I agree with Ricky that the room is more important that the mike. I'll
go farther and say it's more important than pretty much anything else.

That goes along with the adage, "First, make the sound you want to record."

First comes the source. Must create a "recordable sound" whatever that is.

Second is the propagation of sound from that source to the mic. That
includes direct and reflected sound and the elimination of extraneous
sounds. The room controls this, therefore the room is important.

Then and only then does mic selection, preamp, ADC, processing, and all
that other stuff come into play.

I think ranking is useless. It ALL has to work for a good recording. The
most important part is whatever isn't good enough, yet.

that's true.
i remember booking time with a band at a guy's studio for a quick
demo. he had solid mics and excellent outboard. but his main
tracking room completely sucked (unbeknownst to me before we got
there). it "crappified" the whole project. the guy was also a fat
load and took forever to wobble around setting up his patches, and did
precious little to prepare for our session before we got there. what
a lost evening that was!

but i did get to spy on some gear so all was not lost :-)