SM57 & proximity effect

[Great Satan]

How far back do you like to have a SM57?

I just put mine about 4.5 inches away from the grill, on-axis directly infront of where the cone meets the dust cap as this seems to give the clearest/crispest signal to me with a V30.

It also had the side effect of making the top end sizzle a little as opposed to being cutting, which is a bit more pleasing to the ear than right up close and a bit more natural sounding.

 

[Drew]

That's WAY outside the range of proximity effect, and far enough back that it's barely close-micing any more - the near field area around a 12' speaker with a central coil I'd assume is about 6", and you've almost left that.

I generally place a SM57 on axis, towards the edge of the cone, and 1/2" to 1" off the grill.

 

[Great Satan]

That's WAY outside the range of proximity effect, and far enough back that it's barely close-micing any more - the near field area around a 12' speaker with a central coil I'd assume is about 6", and you've almost left that.

I generally place a SM57 on axis, towards the edge of the cone, and 1/2" to 1" off the grill.

Yup, i found the proximity effect overwhelmingly bassy (i was having to scoop out at 200hz post-mic with a para-eq on my mic pre when i was close micing at about an inch) this cleared it right up whilst making it more natural sounding, less post-processed.

 

[Drew]

This could get a little technical, but IMO you're conflating two concepts, proximity effect and near-field/far-field micing.

Proximity effect is the increase in bass frequencies you get as a dynamic mic comes quite close to the source - say, within 2" or less. It's purely a heightened bass effect, that - don't ask me to explain this - has a lot to do with the porting design of a mic.

What you're doing, though, is approaching the limits of the "near-field" range of your amp speaker. As a broad rule of thumb, the "near field" of a sound is closer to the sound source than the size of the vibrational source. So, if a 12" speaker is vibrating, as you start to move outside of a sphere of that diameter with the speaker as one plain, you're moving from the near field to the far field. Inside the near field, what you're hearing tends to be very position dependent and very "filtered" sounding, as you're too close to the vibrational source to clearly "hear" it all, so you're only picking up the point your mic is pointing at. As you move farther away, and enter the far field, you're now far enough away to capture the whole vibrational surface, and the resulting sound you're getting is less focused and filtered, and becomes more "natural" as in more like what you yourself hear in the room.

Whether or not that's a good thing depends largely on what you're trying to do, and if you have a good acoustic and a couple good mics it's worth spending time experimenting and getting a feel for how near and far field micing captures sound differently while working with a really transparent source.

However, I'll say this - while this is definitely within the range of production choice, the number of engineers who choose to capture a guitar cab with a far-field mic as their primary source, rather than utilize some form of close-micing approach, is very, very small. Moving back outside of proximity effect is one thing, but once you start to approach a far-field range, you're going to start losing a lot of the "punch" of the guitars. This might work well for clean tones and possibly lead sounds, but it's rarely desirable for rhythm guitar, especially in a metal context.

Rather, I'd experiment a lot more with mic positioning, inside the near field range and liekly inside the proximity effect range, and also with your amp settings. If you're not already starting like this, try evaluating your tone (at LOW volume!) pu putting your ear right up against the cab where the mic will be, and listening and dialing it in there. Getting a good close-mic'd sound takes a lot of work and is kind of an art form, but I'm guessing some fiddling with your amp settings to make it sound killer from right out front, and then experimenting with mic positioning until you're capturing it well, will make you a lot happier than placing a mic 4-5 inches away for heavy rhythm.

If you're playing jazz or something, of course, disregard all this.

 

[Great Satan]

In regards to proximity vs near field effect; i don't know the terminology all i know is further back = clearer (& less sharp with a sm57).

I think it just boils down to a preference thing;
I've been messing with mic placement for about 3 months now, twiddling knobs on amps+pedals and so forth, and this is just the best sound thus far to me.

I'm not recording at overly loud volumes here (the benefit of using pedals into a clean channel) much over tv volumes as my boss's bedroom is right next to where i record (& i like to play all at hours in the morn). He says he never hears it, or he's never actually complained about hearing it at 4 in the morning so there's that.

Previously the best sound i was getting was about a half inch infront of the grill (or where it would be as i have none on my 1x12) and that was a very modern, cutting kind of tone, but overly boomy if i didn't cut out a large part of the 200hz area.

Now, at the same place on the cab but a little further back around 4 or so inches, can bypass the eq completely (as it made it sound overly processed) and softened the cutting presence a little which i was neverly overly fond of.

See i'm not a huge fan of modern metal production, like at all. Which is primarily what informed my decision to move as far away from digital as possible (i.e. no vst amp sims, digital amp racks, pod hd with IR etc.) and my guitar tone has moved to a more 90's sound as my fav production has always been on pre-2000 albums (i don't know whether it's because bands had more money back then, had more analog ewuipment or the less availability of laptops with protools but it just sounds better to me).

Either way; that less-processed, softer highs, maybe less 'immediate' sound is probably the best tone i've ever gotten at home and that's been down to pedals > amp > 1x12 > old beat up SM57 > analog rack-mount mic preamp > monitors.

The less processing in the signal the better imo, and it just sounds.. better than any other modern digi-metal tones i hear (i hate that scrapy "djenty" metallic lowend, ugh). I play early-90's influenced death metal, not space-prog-metal or whatever (or bow-chicka-wow-wow music on 9-string guitars lol)

 

[Drew]

I hate djent tones too, don't worry.

Three months is NOT long in terms of the learning curve to really get good with an SM57. Are you pointing the mic straight at the center of the cab? I think the sweet spot varies a lot person by person, but I've gradually settled on a position 1/2" or so off the grill, way off towards the edge of the cone, as a position that gives me a full, balanced, and not overly harsh or edgy sound. That plus a MD421 positioned similarly (though on the other side of the cone for simplicity) has gotten me to a tone I'm really happy with, but in a pinch the SM57 alone is pretty awesome, too - I used one of those alone for probably a decade before starting to get into incorporating a second mic.

If I think of it, tonight I'll try to post a picture of my current mic positioning - for now, if you jump to the last 20 seconds of that Fender singlecoil shootout I posted recently, I ended it with a picture of my mic'd up cab for positioning info.

 

[Great Satan]

I've been pleasantly surprised how easy it has been to get a good sound with the 57,
Initially i was just plonking it down at the center of the cone because you've got to start somewhere. I was just testing to see if the mic was working, but i liked it so i left it cone center the first few days.

Then the following weeks the mic roamed around a bit, twiddled knobs and such, eventually i settled for right up against (where would be) the grill, on axis, directly in front of the cap edge.

It was fairly overwhelming in the lowend however so i scooped out a fair bit at the 200hz area with the parametric eq on my joe meek mic pre. It sounded really good so i left it there.

Then on a whim i decided to scoot the mic backwards to (what turned out to be after i measured it) 4.5 inches from the grill in the same spot directly on axis towards the cap edge. This position all of a sudden negated the need for any eq intervention, resulting in a less 'produced' more natural sound but with the same clarity as right up close.

I also tried putting it even further back after that just this morning, which further served to thin out the tone some, but actually resulted in a pretty spot on Demanufacture tone using a 7-string (i guess that album's sound owed a lot more to mic placement than you'd think) i wish i bothered to measure it but my guess was it was 7-8 inches back.

Both sounded great, but i like that thicker, warmer sound at 4.5 inches so i put it back. Sounds fabulous to me, best tone i ever got at home (low volume too).

 

[Drew]

Trust me, you're barely scratching the surface. From what you're describing it sounds to me like your amp is putting out far too much low end, but at the end of the day, all that really matters here is that YOU are happy with the sounds you're getting, and not if you're getting the theoretically most perfect recording you can. So, ignore all this, and go rock the .... out with a tone you're happy with. Just be aware that what you're doing is NOT the normal technique and will probably not be ideal for most other people, but if you're getting results you like, that's all that matters.

 

[Great Satan]

Oh i know that for a fact, usually i'd raise it up on a stand but i put it down on the floor by the bed specifically for sound dampening reasons. The amp itself has the bass rolled back but that doesn't negate the natural acoustics, plus because it isn't really that loud it doesn't carry much energy to overwhelm the bassiness.

However, like you say, sounds good; very clear, very thick, quite balanced and the mids are still prominent.

Now if i was in a more studio environ with treated room yadda yadda i'd raise the cabinet up off the ground and have it much louder, which would change the dynamics of the sound overall and i'd have to try more conventional methods. But just working with what i got (& very much limited space) this is both comparable to albums i like and much better than a lot of youtube demos i've heard (so thin, dry and scratchy, what's the deal! Where's the beef! and the juice!!)

 

[newamerikangospel]

Im usually right up to the grill cloth, no more than 1' away, and a little outside of the cone/cap sweet spot, slightly twisting the mic away from the cap. When micing as far out as you are, you are getting less "specific" of a tone, that sounds better by itself, but may be too dull in the mix. The closer to the sound source, the more clearer the transients will be. One thing I am learning is that the classic sm57/v30 tone that sounds great on record is a bright sound going through a preamp that will give it that push. The only time I have gotten a v30 tone I liked by myself in my bedroom studio was with a pr20

 

[Great Satan]

When micing as far out as you are, you are getting less "specific" of a tone, that sounds better by itself, but may be too dull in the mix.

That doesn't seem to be the case here, i've got it directly infront of the cap edge with the mids all the way up and a little presence.
It cuts through pretty well.

Maybe because it's at lower volumes (around medium tv vol) or because i'm running preamp-style pedals into a super clean channel (the eq being post distortion) but what you people are describing doesn't seem to be as prominent at low volumes.

You guys should try micing a 1x12 on the floor with a decent master volume amp (or super-clean amp with pedals/preamps) and see what i mean. Need to turn the mic preamp up obviously to compensate for the volume, but i've got a decent one and there's no noise except a slight hum from the (cheap chinese mesa copy) amp. I run the mic pre into a pod hd to both plug the monitors into and for post-distortion time fx, with a little gating on that it eliminates any noise.

Not for power-amp tones (obviously) but frankly, i don't go for that 'you need to get the power tubes cooking' thing. This ain't the 70's and this isn't a marshall stack with very little preamp gain lol

I need clean headroom and high-gain preamps. A fender tweed turned up ain't gonna cut it (but turned low or medium with a high gain pedal it might).

 

[tedtan]

usually i'd raise it up on a stand but i put it down on the floor by the bed specifically for sound dampening reasons.

I think this is why you're getting too much low end.

When you put the amp on the floor, it couples with the floor and creates more low end. You'd typically want to get the cab isolated from the floor for recording to reduce the low end. And recording in a bedroom, you may be getting some room modes, too, which will be low frequency resonances at specific frequencies which cause further low end build up.

I would suggest 1) getting the amp up off of the floor and, if possible, 2) building a "room" around the amp using either rigid fiberglass (like Owes Corning 703 or equivalent) or rockwool. When I say room, I mean enclosing the amp within the insulation on all sides. Doing these two things will result in less low end and much clearer recordings.

 

[tedtan]

Proximity effect is the increase in bass frequencies you get as a dynamic mic comes quite close to the source - say, within 2" or less. It's purely a heightened bass effect, that - don't ask me to explain this - has a lot to do with the porting design of a mic.

Just to clarify a couple of things here, proximity effect occurs will all types of mics (ribbon, moving coil dynamic, large diaphragm condensers, small diaphragm condensers, carbon mics) with a directional pickup pattern: figure 8, cardioid, super cardioid, hyper cardioid). It does not occur in mics with an omni pickup pattern (picking up sound equally from all directions).

Also, it can begin to occur from as far away as a couple of feet. This is more noticeable with certain mics (RCA 44, Coles 4038 ribbons) than others, but the point is that it can have an effect further out than we typically think it does, so we need to watch for it in certain situations.

 

[Great Satan]

Yes the cab on the floor was a conscious decision, i know about the nature of floor vibration and i had it raised up off the ground before.

Fact of the matter is i like how it sounds; its clear as-is but much thicker from being on the ground. I know people these days like to scoop the everliving .... out of their bass and low-mids these days but my fav tones have always been early 90's death metal bands like Bolt Thrower and Vader; very thick and fairly bassy, almost undefined in a wall-of-sound kind of way.

I don't go into that tech-djent-prog stuff so every pick-scrape & nuance on a string is entirely unnecessary for me, i'm looking for raw and brutal not sterile precision. I don't much like this trend of overproduced super-clear sound on every instrument these days anyway, far too digital, sounds sterile.

My fav recordings have always been those ....ty early 90's death and black metal demos, so as much rawness i can get into the tone before it inevitably has to hit a track on a DAW the better. I hate the sound of digital and resent that it ever crawled into mass consumption as the 'only' way to listen to and make music.
So much generic and pointless music in the golden age of pro-tools, blegh.

 

[Drew]

You guys should try micing a 1x12 on the floor with a decent master volume amp (or super-clean amp with pedals/preamps) and see what i mean. Need to turn the mic preamp up obviously to compensate for the volume, but i've got a decent one and there's no noise except a slight hum from the (cheap chinese mesa copy) amp. I run the mic pre into a pod hd to both plug the monitors into and for post-distortion time fx, with a little gating on that it eliminates any noise.

Trust me, man, I've been doing home recording in various forms since 1999, there are not many ways I HAVEN'T tried micing an amp over the years. I still think that if you're getting a better tone from 5" back than oyu are close-micing, there's a problem with your amp settings, close-mic technique, or both.

Just to clarify a couple of things here, proximity effect occurs will all types of mics (ribbon, moving coil dynamic, large diaphragm condensers, small diaphragm condensers, carbon mics) with a directional pickup pattern: figure 8, cardioid, super cardioid, hyper cardioid). It does not occur in mics with an omni pickup pattern (picking up sound equally from all directions).

Also, it can begin to occur from as far away as a couple of feet. This is more noticeable with certain mics (RCA 44, Coles 4038 ribbons) than others, but the point is that it can have an effect further out than we typically think it does, so we need to watch for it in certain situations.

Ahh, thanks - it was omni vs directional, I knew I was forgetting something. It's not something I really spend a ton of time thinking about these days, because for the most part I have a pretty good idea what works, and don't have a reason to deviate from that.

EDIT - although, could you point me to anything with a pretty good read on the actual physics behind proximity effect? If it's a physical property of how sound behaves when it hits a directional mic, then there must be something it relates to which should make it somewhat more predictable - say, the size of the mic diaphram, or something along those lines. It's probably worth knowing.

 

[Drew]

My fav recordings have always been those ....ty early 90's death and black metal demos, so as much rawness i can get into the tone before it inevitably has to hit a track on a DAW the better. I hate the sound of digital and resent that it ever crawled into mass consumption as the 'only' way to listen to and make music.
So much generic and pointless music in the golden age of pro-tools, blegh.

This may actually be a point worth holding onto, too - if you're chasing the sound of low-budget 90s death metal demos, then odds are the tone in your head is NOT a professionally recorded guitar amp, but probably someone just pointing a mic in the general direction of the amp, and hoping for the best.

Also, "90s death metal" and "djent" are not the only two points on a binary spectrum - there's a whole range of tones and production styles out there, and from a guitar standpoint I'm advocating a more "traditional" approach, but not a "djent" one (heck, if you wanted djent, you'd be asking which bulb patch to load in your AxeFX II).

Similarly, I don't think your hatred for "digital" vs "analog" is totally warrented, either - it CAN be a problem, especially in the djent world where you have guys step-editing guitar performances by chopping up, punching in, and quantizing DIs before reamping them, and writing music they can't actually play (HAARP Machine, Rings of Saturn, etc). However, I work in Reaper, a digital recording platform. For me, the main appeal isn't editiong a performance to death - I think that stuff is just as soulless as you do. Rather, I like it because it offers costless repeated use (rather than buying reel after reel of 2" take), exceptional audio fidelity and signal-to-noise, the ability to automate and save a mix and to save FX parameters with a project so I don't have to remix a song from scratch through rack gear every single time I pull a song I've been working on up, ease of collaboration with friends locally and all around the world, and gives me the ability to write and record music that I would never have had in the days before the home recording revolution where digital audio became cost effective and competitive in quality. And, in experienced hands, I doubt you'd be able to hear the difference between a 100% digital and 100% analog recording blindfolded.

Again, none of this matters if you're happy with the results you're getting, but if your question at the start of this thread was "is what I'm doing similar to what other people are doing," then I'd say the answer is no, it's not.

Still, I'd love to hear a clip or two of what you're working on.

 

[KailM]

Yes the cab on the floor was a conscious decision, i know about the nature of floor vibration and i had it raised up off the ground before.

Fact of the matter is i like how it sounds; its clear as-is but much thicker from being on the ground. I know people these days like to scoop the everliving .... out of their bass and low-mids these days but my fav tones have always been early 90's death metal bands like Bolt Thrower and Vader; very thick and fairly bassy, almost undefined in a wall-of-sound kind of way.

I don't go into that tech-djent-prog stuff so every pick-scrape & nuance on a string is entirely unnecessary for me, i'm looking for raw and brutal not sterile precision. I don't much like this trend of overproduced super-clear sound on every instrument these days anyway, far too digital, sounds sterile.

My fav recordings have always been those ....ty early 90's death and black metal demos, so as much rawness i can get into the tone before it inevitably has to hit a track on a DAW the better. I hate the sound of digital and resent that it ever crawled into mass consumption as the 'only' way to listen to and make music.
So much generic and pointless music in the golden age of pro-tools, blegh.

I really miss the "like" button.

I, too, can't stand "modern" metal production. It's getting harder and harder to find anyone who even understands the older sounds as well. I share your opinion that metal production hit a high-mark in the 90s. There are, of course, some bands that carried the torch in the 2000s and there are even some today that still shun the "modern" method in which every guitar track is high-passed at 300hz and downtuned to drop-E (one octave below standard E, that is).

I'm definitely going to play around with my mic placement because of your thread. I've been setting my mic on the edge of the dust cap and cone, about 1/2" away -- which sounds pretty good, but your thread has me wondering.

I've always said, if I could only get the actual sound I hear when I'm playing in the room, there would be no need to quad track, no need to double track -- hell no -- one track sent both right and left would sound killer. But to this day I can't even come close to achieving my live tone until I've at least double tracked it and messed around with EQ -- which makes production a real chore. Probably preaching to the choir here though...

 

[tedtan]

EDIT - although, could you point me to anything with a pretty good read on the actual physics behind proximity effect? If it's a physical property of how sound behaves when it hits a directional mic, then there must be something it relates to which should make it somewhat more predictable - say, the size of the mic diaphram, or something along those lines. It's probably worth knowing.

It has to do with the different types of capules and headbaskets (e.g., ports) used for omni vs. directional pickup patterns. I don't have a definitive textbook link, but these should give a good general overview:

http://www.neumann.com/homestudio/en/what-is-the-proximity-effect

http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/using-microphone-polar-patterns-effectively

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_effect_(audio)

 

[Great Satan]

Trust me, man, I've been doing home recording in various forms since 1999, there are not many ways I HAVEN'T tried micing an amp over the years. I still think that if you're getting a better tone from 5" back than oyu are close-micing, there's a problem with your amp settings, close-mic technique, or both.

Ain't nothing wrong with the technique it sounds fine. Turns out it was a monitoring issue, these cheap ass monitors i inherited from my boss have a hyped bass so once i adjusted that and some amp controls (turns out the mids all the way up was adding a lot of bass in that area aswell) cleared it right up.
So technically i could close mic is now if i wanted to but the current position is giving up the goods so that's where i'm keeping it.

Similarly, I don't think your hatred for "digital" vs "analog" is totally warrented, either - it CAN be a problem, especially in the djent world where you have guys step-editing guitar performances by chopping up, punching in, and quantizing DIs before reamping them, and writing music they can't actually play (HAARP Machine, Rings of Saturn, etc). However, I work in Reaper, a digital recording platform. For me, the main appeal isn't editiong a performance to death - I think that stuff is just as soulless as you do. Rather, I like it because it offers costless repeated use (rather than buying reel after reel of 2" take), exceptional audio fidelity and signal-to-noise, the ability to automate and save a mix and to save FX parameters with a project so I don't have to remix a song from scratch through rack gear every single time I pull a song I've been working on up, ease of collaboration with friends locally and all around the world, and gives me the ability to write and record music that I would never have had in the days before the home recording revolution where digital audio became cost effective and competitive in quality. And, in experienced hands, I doubt you'd be able to hear the difference between a 100% digital and 100% analog recording blindfolded.

My main issue with digital is people's over-reliance on it; the advent of digital is people have prioritized convenience over sound quality, the one 'good' thing i appreciate about your average DAW is the ease of use and clean/noise free sound. But the only piece of outboard gear i'm using is a joe meek mic-pre with onboard compressor and parametric eq, and no equalizer plugins have come close to that for sculpting sounds. It just has a musicality to it, possibly because of where it is in the chain right after the microphone, but i see it as just part of my rig now (i use it to shave off a little excess presence for a slightly warmer tone/smoother high-end, whatever you want to call it, basically using the higher band as a LPF. I also use the low band to shift the bass a little by scooping around 200hz and boosting at 90hz, just gets the sound closer to what i prefer).

I really miss the "like" button.

I, too, can't stand "modern" metal production. It's getting harder and harder to find anyone who even understands the older sounds as well. I share your opinion that metal production hit a high-mark in the 90s. There are, of course, some bands that carried the torch in the 2000s and there are even some today that still shun the "modern" method in which every guitar track is high-passed at 300hz and downtuned to drop-E (one octave below standard E, that is).

I'm definitely going to play around with my mic placement because of your thread. I've been setting my mic on the edge of the dust cap and cone, about 1/2" away -- which sounds pretty good, but your thread has me wondering.

I've always said, if I could only get the actual sound I hear when I'm playing in the room, there would be no need to quad track, no need to double track -- hell no -- one track sent both right and left would sound killer. But to this day I can't even come close to achieving my live tone until I've at least double tracked it and messed around with EQ -- which makes production a real chore. Probably preaching to the choir here though...

Cheers, nice to know i'm not the only curmudgeon lol
There's a certain musicality to the 90's production albums that you know they could only have got with big desks and outboard gear instead of laptops and plugins. You really have to make it a priority in your mind to try and replicate that kind of sound, then you have the uphill battle of learning how to recreate it (without the aide of studio rooms, live drums and big desks).

But as i mentioned before, i like to go out of my to make things s****y sounding, but not in a harsh digital way more in that warm distorting analog way. I think my hybrid approach is the right way to go about it, get your sound as close as possible as you can before it ever hits a digital converter input.

Even then the method i'm using isn't flawless & is always going to require mixing. But about the only plugin i ever use itb for eqing guitars (besides hp/lp filter) is multiband compression, specifically waves C4 plugin, as that's the one method i've found of altering a signal without utterly mangling or destroying the sound. It can be as subtle or severe as you need it do be, i find judicious scooping of the mids helps to bring out the highs and some of the lows without having to jack up the presence on the amp and without thinning out the sound.
Avoid those eq plugins!! Use a multiband comp (better yet with outboard gear) instead.

 

[Great Satan]

Again, none of this matters if you're happy with the results you're getting, but if your question at the start of this thread was "is what I'm doing similar to what other people are doing," then I'd say the answer is no, it's not.

Good, the further away i am from what everybody else is doing the happier i'll be. Use your ears not your peer-pressure.