I want to start profiling amps. Would it be better to have the amp in an iso booth so when mic'd and doing A/B comparisons you would have no bleed into your ears from the actual speaker? I have a large walk-in closet that I can set up for amp/vocals iso booth. Or is this overdoing it?
Profiling Amps in isolation?
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Far from overdoing it - this is the recommended setup.
Compare the sound of the amp over the mic'ed signal only to the Profile.
A closet may however color the sound quite a bit. -
I use a bunch of moving blankets. They work well.
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I use a bunch of moving blankets. They work well.
hmm...
blankets, carpets and the infamous egg carton will only give you dull sounding reflections and or absorb only a narrow band of frequencies.
the issue with small untreated spaces like a closet are standing waves and low/low-mids frequency buildup.
Close mic'ing will of course be less problematic than a mic a meter or so away. -
I was thinking of the egg crate foam to attach to the back of the doors. I don't want to weigh them down too much.
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Just talking aloud here: Would it be better to lay less dense blankets over the amp and cover the mic. As opposed to covering the walls with stuff.
My thought is if you cover the walls you will still have a fixed hollow volume/space. So you will still get reflections, etc.
Where using a semi-dense type "blanket" the sound would get diffused right at the source. And then the wall reflections would get diffused again before returning to the mic.
If the blankets are too dense you will be creating another hollow room that is very small.
I have a 12" ISO-cab and filled it with cheap Walmart blankets and it works pretty well. But the cab is so small you still get a huge bass boost and it sounds a little weird. So I made an adapter and put in a 6" full range speaker which works better in the small volume but cant handle the volume and low bass of palm mutes etc and gets flubby real fast. So I rarely use the cab anymore.
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Just talking aloud here: Would it be better to lay less dense blankets over the amp and cover the mic. As opposed to covering the walls with stuff.
I don't want to hide under a blanket for vocals or a podcast.
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I don't want to hide under a blanket for vocals or a podcast.
You dont?
The Ghost™ podcast now available!!!I am too short sighted sometimes. But I am very curious if any acoustics pros have thoughts on it. When I was young and very poor I stuck a 6x9 car speaker in a plastic garbage can and filled it with towels. No cabinet. Just a speaker laying in a can. And it sounded pretty good
All of the Kemper profiles I have made so far were open in a room. But my next step was going to be using blankets around the amp/mic. Once I bought the Helix I stopped profiling for a bit. Will be getting back into it soon though.
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You could put yourself in the closet and use some good headphones instead - maybe 🤔 . Haven't thought this through
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I don't want to hide under a blanket for vocals or a podcast.
It's how Les Paul recorded Mary Ford on 'How High the Moon' 😎
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It's how Les Paul recorded Mary Ford on 'How High the Moon' 😎
And if my mix today sounded like 'How High the Moon' then people would throw grapefruit at me.
""How High the Moon", "Bye Bye Blues", "Song in Blue", "Don'cha Hear Them Bells", "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise", and "Vaya con Dios". The songs were recorded with multiple tracks where Ford harmonized with herself and Paul played multiple layers of guitars.""
LP used multiple track layers to keep the sound from being too thin. I guess that throws out the under-blanket technique.
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In-ears can be useful for isolation if you don't have a great room to profile.
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In-ears can be useful for isolation if you don't have a great room to profile.
I use in ears with a set of worksite ear defenders over the top which works well for isolation.