Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz
Hi all,
it happens to me when I overdub that some sound played back gets into the track I'm laying over. I use a SDC array about 80 cm in front of me (2,6 feet) with apparently enough gain to pick louder parts here and there from MDR-7506 or ATH-M50. Tried different ear pads... to varying results I'm still not quite okay with.
What options am I left with - IEMs only?
What do you record, what for, etc. ?
It happened to me all the time i recorded vocals. Especially with a friend of mine who can't stand headphones, so i just put a speaker at the rejection point of the cardioid mic. But there is bleed anyway. So i just use a noise gate, or the "delete silence" function in Ardour. I'm far to be a pro that said.
@cupakm
it happens to me when I overdub that some sound played back gets into the track I'm laying over. I use a SDC array about 80 cm in front of me (2,6 feet) with apparently enough gain to pick louder parts here and there from MDR-7506 or ATH-M50
What are you recording with the SDC? Vocals, an acoustic guitar, something else? If it is a guitar, I'd try to mess with the mic position, pointing it downward toward the guitar: most SDCs are pretty strongly directional (cardiod). For instance, I've had surprisingly good results with an SDC pointed at the pick guard of my flattop acoustic, just where it joins the fingerboard, and angled downward. Or you could move the mic up the neck, say to the 9th or 10th fret, and point it along the neck back to where it joins the body.
If your SDC is one of those with swappable capsules, do check that you have the desired capsule mounted: I found once to my chagrin that I had left the "omni" capsule in by mistake!
Vocals are going to be trickier: I would again be trying to get the headphones away from the axis of the SDC, but that's tougher.
Can you lower or change the mix to your headphones? Maybe drop some of the more bleeding bits (snare, big electric guitars)? Again, it depends on what you are performing; for a vocal, I need to be able to hear myself (preferably direct monitoring with a little reverb mixed in), plus enough of the chordal element to say on pitch, but I don't really need to hear the drums in the cans as loudly as I would mix them for the "real" version of the song.
Thanks for the answers guys, I could have been more specific...
The mic array is XY cardios + AB omnis spaced around 60 cm apart, 30 and 30 from the XY center. I record classical guitar(s). Already lowered metronome gain to -15 dB, which helps but it gets less and less pronounced each overdub. Sadly, there is no visual metronome in Ardour, as far as I know. Could be helpful, but it won't prevent the bleed of the other tracks anyway.
I thought investing into an IEM could solve the issue, but I haven't used a pair yet, so I hesitate a bit.
How is the distribution of bleed in the recorded tracks. Is it (roughly) the same amount through every mic (resp. array) or are there differences?
Is a figure 8 pattern possible (an option) with your mics?