Award Sounds

also known as "Is it wrong to apply effects to an accurate recording of a guitar amp?"

I was recently recording my new guitar amp, the Matamp 1224GT. While I was happy with the clean sounds I was able to record, I was not happy with the captured overdriven sounds. So I spent a lot longer with mic-placement and trying different mics. I also tried the amplifier at different volumes. Some of the captured sounds did sound close, but nothing sounded quite like what I was hearing in the room as I played.

How staged are demo recordings?

Now there are a few reasons why that's the case and I mentioned most of them in the second clips article. So there was me recording the guitar amp as raw as I could, with no added effects and no eq. What I wasn't really thinking about was how staged the usual amp demo recordings are. And I'm still not sure.

Audio and image equivalents

I often find it useful to compare the equivalents of audio and image domains. In this case, a demo image from a new camera would be staged to be taken under ideal conditions. I'd expect the photographer to make use of the camera's in-built features to the best of their abilities. What I don't expect is that the image would be photoshopped. If it were, then it would be an unrealistic demo image. Now that cameras can shoot in RAW and jpg/tiff, a photographer wouldn't just provide the RAW file as a demo (well, actually I've done that but only because OS X was not accepting Panasonic .rw2 RAW file format). Instead, either the in-camera jpg/tiff would be produced or the RAW file would be processed in specific software to produce a better jpg/tiff than possible in-camera.

Audio equivalent of raw image processing

So what's the audio equivalent of processing a RAW file? RAW processing allows the photographer to:

• adjust white-balance,
• adjust levels of luminance, saturation and hue,
• adjust exposure,
• adjust contrast,
• adjust chromatic aberration,
• adjust lens aberration, etc.

There's a confused line between where RAW processing stops and image manipulation starts. With audio, I'd say that the RAW files are the recordings from each of the microphones.

The obvious RAW processing equivalent for audio would be:

• aligning the signals (if that hadn't been done at recording)
• balancing the relative tracks from the microphones (again this could have been done at the recording stage). This could be counted as mixing, but it's just for one instrument so I'm allowing it as an equivalent of RAW image processing (akin to altering the levels.

The not-so obvious processing is where we may start to cross over into to the domain of mixing and mastering

• applying a high-pass filter - this could have been done at recording (either on microphone or pre-amp). It's good to avoid all the energy in lower frequencies and it's generally not useful or wanted signal either. I'd usually have a mild HPF on when recording guitars. For the recordings of the guitar amp mentioned above, I'd bypassed all the HPF options for a fuller recording.
• applying reverb - a mild amount of reverb could be applied to make the guitar sound more natural. We never actually hear a guitar without some of the sound bouncing off walls and floors, so why produce a recording without it, especially when the guitar amp is the sole focus of the recording?
• applying compression - I'm really not sure about this one. I like some compression. I don't always feel it's necessary, but it can make the sound stand out more, even against a blank background.
• applying eq - similar to compression, it can make an instrument stand out more. The filtering out of the lowest frequencies with a HPF mentioned earlier is a form of eq. With other instruments, I'd eq a guitar so that it fits in with the rest of the mix. On it's own, I'm not sure that there's much scope for applying eq and still retaining an accurate recording.

So what's the aim?

If the aim is to be an accurate recording of the guitar amp itself, then there's a limited amount we can do. I think the HPF and a small amount of reverb is acceptable to make it palatable. If the aim is to reproduce what I heard when recording (bearing in mind that I wasn't standing where the microphones were), then compression and eq would also be acceptable. However in that case, maybe putting the microphones where I was standing would be a better solution to start with.