Paul's Posts — 06 July 2012
By Paul McGowan
Yesterday’s post got quite a few of you riled up when I suggested a guitar pickup is just as sensitive to transients and subtle details and produces the same “simple” electrical signals we need to record as even a “complex” microphone and exonerated the recording chain from blame in our loss of live sound.
I was going to jump into a few posts about the outer edge input/output devices but perhaps let’s throw a little more gasoline on the fire first. I think this is an important thought puzzle.
Our first thought puzzle involved an electric guitar fed into a digital recording device and a bypass switch – setup so we could feed the guitar amp/speaker with either the output of the recorder or the live feed from the guitar. None of us blinked an eye when I suggested the sound we would hear through the speaker would be identical with either choice – thus exonerating the recording process as the culprit in the loss of live sound from our systems.
Why not then replace the guitar in our experiment with a microphone? Let’s now imagine two rooms: one a listening room the other a performing room.
In our performing room we have a stereo microphone setup placed in front of a small musical group playing live in the room. The feed of the microphones go both to our simple digital recorder and the bypass switch. You are sitting in the listening room with the high-end system of your choice and the switch that allows you to select either the output of our digital recorder or the live feed from our microphone. It’s the same experiment we made with the guitar only this time we are using microphones and high-end loudspeakers. Think you’d hear a difference between the two? I’ll bet you would and I would still hold to the notion that you wouldn’t in the guitar example.
If the recording chain is modifying both feeds the same and if both feeds are equal in their signal complexity then why would we hear the differences in one example and not the other? Is it as many of you suspect that microphones pickup so much more than the guitar pickup?
The answer is no – in fact, the guitar pickup probably has a better chance of reproducing subtleties than does the microphone.
Have a ponder and we’ll discuss tomorrow.
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alan
Paul, I am surprised to not yet see any posts challenging you on that one; perhaps you are right, but I seriously doubt it. Based on logic I agreed with you about the guitar pickup, but certainly not the mike. Both devices pick up a signal and direct it either to an amp/speaker or first to a recorder then to the amp/speaker. The recorder can’t perfectly record then playback the signal in either case, but both in both cases it performs far better than the speaker/room combo. I agree with you that the pickup is probably capable of picking up a very complex signal from the guitar, but in this case it doesn’t have to deal with a lot of spatial cues that probably give but the microphone and the speakers fits. But unless the slight imperfections of the recording process are exaggerated by the speakers it does not seem logical that any differences should be heard at all. Of course now we must UN-exonerate the recorder (-ing chain). [By the way, this is a forum, isn't it?]
Soundminded
I’m glad I didn’t get riled up. I don’t think I have it in me to get riled up about audio equipment. But then I’m not an audiophile
So let me see if I understand the three mental challenges so far. In all three challenges we are comparing listening to the input to a tape recording/playback system versus listening to the output to see if there is an audible difference.
Challenge 1, the inupt is derived from the electrical signal from an electric guitar. Result; no audible difference
Challenge 2, the input is derived from a microphone placed near the guitar. Result; no audible difference
Challenge 3, the input is derived from a microphone placed near a group of performing musicians, Result; audible difference.
One can only infer that the recording/playback system is adequate for the guitar, not adequate for the other musicians. It’s the only thing that changed. If I misunderstood the challenges I hope someone explains it better. If I came to the wrong conclusion I hope someone can give me the right one. I’m sure by the end of the day Paul will do just that. Either that or he doesn’t get to find out how to make it appear he’s sawed a woman in half without being arrested for murder!
BTW, what if the musicians were playing electric guitars through their own speakers? Would it still be different? Does it matter that more than one guitar is playing? Why?
Paul McGowan
Excellent questions Mark. Pondering now.
Soundminded
Paul, you just want me to tell you how to saw a woman in half and get away with it. Where I come from that’s called “aiding and abetting.”
Paul McGowan
Bassman23
I’d like to recoommend the new book, “The Wrecking Crew; The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Best-Kept Secret” by Kent Hartman for some interesting stories on the recording process itself – especially the final chapter, where Phil Spector walks away from producing becauses of the changes in the recording industry. He knew that the “Wall of Sound” technique required the live interaction of instruments playing together, and rock music studios had abandoned the concept. Every instrument became a separate channel on the board. I know it is only tangential to the discussion at hand, but it does inform the subject.
oliver T. Finch
The guitar pickup is very close to the guitar and picks up very little reflected sound from the surroundings. The microphone is placed at a greater distance and therefore picks up more of the reflected sound. This would make the sound different. Also is the frequency response of the the pickup and the microphone the same? Is the sensitivity the same? Is the pickup pattern the same?.They better be to draw any meaningful conclusions.It seems that the intention of this example is to prove that digital recording is so faithful to the original that no difference exists.Well experience in real life is different. Regards.