After getting a request to divulge my guitar recording secrets I thought this piece could be useful to other members.
First off, I use Reaper as my DAW. I usually record with a pair of Behringer XM1800S microphones through a Behringer Eurorack UB1002 mixer going straight into an Audiophile 2496 soundcard.
For electric guitars and basses I D/I through the same mixer.
My ‘studio’ is only a partitioned off section of an attic room which is slightly over 8ft by 6ft. It contains a large desk with PC, dual monitors and printer, scanner, etc. Across from that is a bench on which sits the Roland KR-650 and Behringer mixer, both desk and keyboard being accessible from a swivel chair.
Because of the lack of soundproofing and the cramped area my acoustic instrument recording method is very specific. I always use close proximity mic’ing with the mic positioned about 6 inches from the instrument and, with string instruments, pointing towards the end of the fretboard nearest the soundhole. Sometimes I utilise two mic’s with the second placed either at the lower body end of the instrument or over the right shoulder pointing down (this theory is that it picks up what your ear does), although since discovering certain plug-ins I tend to stick with the one mic more often.
After recording a track I always clean up the background noise, from computer hum and other outside sources, using ReaFir. This comes as part of the Reaper suite of included plug-ins but I believe a pack of these effects can be downloaded separately. Next in the chain I usually use “Kjaerhus Classic Compressor” set on the Acoustic Guitar preset. At this point I normally render the track to a new one to save on CPU usage (my machine is quite elderly so I don’t like to make it struggle too much) then disable the effects and mute the original.
My favourite recent discovery has been “Back Stage EQ One”. This, at face value, is an EQ unit but the developer says that he includes some compression values and some ‘spatial’ stuff to give stereo enhancements. The adjustment parameters go under obtuse headings instead if number values to make you feel as if it is not just another EQ machine.
I think it really does the business for most acoustic instruments.
I shall follow this article up later with some sound examples.
James
