PUHLEASEEE!! Stop using camera-microphones!!

Drew_TNBD

I really wish companies would stop using camera-microphones in their gear demos. IT SOUNDS FUCKING SHIT!!!

/rant

ddlooping

Agreed.

Maybe Santa will grant your wish.

guitarfishbay

This is precisely why people like Ola have been able to make money from youtube - they actually bothered to properly mic up expensive amps.

The one that annoys me most is Mesa's own Roadster demo, probably because I own one and think it sounds great.  This demo sounds terrible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7j5INzX1yE

Drew_TNBD

Probably not!

digitalscream

The worst for me is when the person demoing the gear actually doesn't have the first clue what to do with it. A case in point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlzXrK3334k

So...he's got a brilliant dual delay pedal, capable of all sorts of cracking Gilmour-esque and Edge-like sounds, and what does he do? Play fast, loud licks over the top of it with the mix set low so that you can only hear the delay effect when he (finally) stops.

Great work there, son.

benmurray85

Great thread! I hate it when you can hear the pick attack/acoustic string over the actual amp.

randomhandclaps

Or when it start with the ominous "SSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" of noise constantly through the video.

samzadgan

hmmm...i've been guilty of doing those kinds of reviews...i look back at them and thing why did i do this!

the worse thing about demos is that the big guys, like Ola, Tone King, Chapman, Phil X, Gearmandude...etc...they always sound the same, so no matter what gear they are demoing, its almost irrelevant. Makes decision making on gear very difficult.

guitarfishbay

PGS Andy is the devil. I don't watch PGS demos because he makes pretty much everything sound like something I want to buy.

ToneControl

samzadgan said:

hmmm...i've been guilty of doing those kinds of reviews...i look back at them and thing why did i do this!

the worse thing about demos is that the big guys, like Ola, Tone King, Chapman, Phil X, Gearmandude...etc...they always sound the same, so no matter what gear they are demoing, its almost irrelevant. Makes decision making on gear very difficult.

Pete Thorn is the worst for this

Drew_TNBD

samzadgan said:

hmmm...i've been guilty of doing those kinds of reviews...i look back at them and thing why did i do this!

the worse thing about demos is that the big guys, like Ola, Tone King, Chapman, Phil X, Gearmandude...etc...they always sound the same, so no matter what gear they are demoing, its almost irrelevant. Makes decision making on gear very difficult.

Actually that is a pretty good point. But once you find someone whose tones you like, it's kinda good to be able to go "okay... if XXX makes it sound shit, then it must be shit.." kinda.

Drew_TNBD

Oh, and the main one who inspired this thread was Stormshadow Guitarworks. I mean... their new amps look nice, and I'm glad they're getting away from the Fryette stuff. But c'mon... you're asking for £2000 odd for an amp, and can't even be fucked to mic up the cabinet!! Really sloppy guys.

ICBM

I have to disagree, at least a bit.

The useful thing about camera mic recordings is that you know you're getting a less "polished" or "tweaked" impression of what the sound is like, you tend to be able to hear the room sound as well so it's more obvious if the result has been tampered with (EQ etc), and camera mics are all much of a muchness so it's a fairly level playing field. You also don't have the problem of mic placement drastically affecting the tone like you do with close mic'ing.

I often find I can get a better impression of what something is *really* going to sound like from a low-quality camera recording - even though the paradox is that you can't hear it as "well" as you can with a properly-mic'ed recording.

I think ideally you need both though.

randomhandclaps

Someone once leaked Tone King's prep list for demos on to the internet.  I can't remember all of it but I know it started like this -

1.) Take one rather large man and squeeze him into a tight, almost unmanageably small space.

2.) Clutter any spare inch of said space with other distracting and completely unrelated gear.

3.) Regardless of what you are reviewing ensure you play some power metal.

stickyfiddle

I generally agree with @ICBM, but it does depend on why you're watching the demo. If you want to know how the recorded sound of an amp comes across, then properly micced is obviously better. But if you're looking for the in-room sound of a pedal or whatever, then the camera mic can be fine (with the usual caveats about not wanting to hear the unamplified guitar string sound because the amp is so quiet, etc)

Drew_TNBD

ICBM said:

I have to disagree, at least a bit.

The useful thing about camera mic recordings is that you know you're getting a less "polished" or "tweaked" impression of what the sound is like, you tend to be able to hear the room sound as well so it's more obvious if the result has been tampered with (EQ etc), and camera mics are all much of a muchness so it's a fairly level playing field. You also don't have the problem of mic placement drastically affecting the tone like you do with close mic'ing.

I often find I can get a better impression of what something is *really* going to sound like from a low-quality camera recording - even though the paradox is that you can't hear it as "well" as you can with a properly-mic'ed recording.

I think ideally you need both though.

I disagree entirely. Camera microphones offer very poor low frequency response, as such you will never hear a proper representation of the amp. They are often followed with soft-clipping circuits, hard-kee compression, and brickwall limiting which results in one of the MOST hyped sounds you're ever going to hear. For this reason I find it incredibly useless to make it the basis of your demo video.

A camera microphone is several more degrees unrealistic sounding than close micing a speaker.

A proper room microphone is a different thing altogether.

ICBM

I still don't agree. I've heard many camera-mic demos of gear which I have personally tried either before or afterwards which give a fairer representation of what the gear really sounds like, even given all the things you say about camera mics (which are true), than many properly-mic'ed recordings of the same gear. Somehow the actual tone seems to come through all of it at least roughly right.

In fact, the makers of camera mics aren't fools, and the whole point of them is to get a fairly natural ambient sound - they'd be a bit useless for their intended purpose if they weren't capable of doing that at least roughly decently.

Being able to hear some ambient sound - eg a voice-over - really helps as well because it "calibrates" your ears to what you then hear from the guitar sound. I'd trust it less if none of that is audible. I also agree with stickyfiddle that it needs to be at enough volume that you can't hear the guitar strings though!

I would never take a camera mic recording as an accurate representation, but neither is a proper mic, necessarily - and depending on the type of mic and the placement (eg an SM57 close up) it can be much less so. A decent condenser mic halfway across the room is a different thing entirely, but how often do you get gear demos done like that either?

Drew_TNBD

Not that often, which is the whole beef of this thread!

I just don't like camera mics. Listen to this...



This is just terrible. Absolutely worthless. I could post more, but generally speaking, this thin and weedy sound is what I hear from camera microphones nearly every single time.

Drew_TNBD

And a voice is a very different thing to a guitar amp and cab setup. Camera mics are generally aimed at voices and low level ambience, even on the DSLR type cameras. They're really meant to augment proper recording setups so that you can sync audio to video easily later on. Plenty of beef flying in the camera work about built in microphones being shit too.

I just don't think they offer anything useful - ever.

guitarfishbay

As a gross generalisation, camera mics are usually off axis with the speakers, at least in the demos I see.  They're usually focused on you seeing the person playing the guitar, and are aimed with the visual aspect being more important than the audio.

Almost everyone practices off axis to a guitar amp.  If you've got a horizontal 2x12 or a 1x12 on the floor it is basically firing at your knees even if you sit down on a chair, even more so if it is a closed back cab.  If you go and sit with your ears right infront of an amp you'll hear something closer to what you get from a close mic - but basically nobody does this.

I think as well that Drew probably has a similar thought process to myself.  I mostly like the sound of and personally record close mic'd guitar cabs over any other option.  If an amp/cab doesn't sound good close mic'd with a 57 I'm probably not interested in buying it.  Those are my preferences and priorities, hence why I prefer to hear a close mic'd demo.

If you're mostly interested in playing for personal pleasure, or just playing with other people rather than recording, I can see that a room mic is probably most representative of what you want to hear.

I've not really got much experience with camera mics if I'm honest, beyond a couple of compacts and one HD Camcorder.  I do think my Zoom H1 sounds better than all of those, and more realistic to what I heard in the room, and I know Zoom do some HD video recorders with mics on them (not tried them) so maybe something like that is a better solution than just a generic camcorder.

Drew_TNBD

The Zoom recorders are pretty decent actually. We use a H1 for band practices, and the amps come across very well - when it's not clipping the shit out of the DAC!! I think the newer models have better control over the input gain.