PZM Experiments

[physics]

Hey Physics!

Having fun with the mic?
How do you record, with the mic pointing at the cone or with the mic alongside the speaker?


Strelok

Howdy!

Yes, lots of fun. Been meaning to post, but haven't got around to it. The short story is that if I use my ears to find where in a room things sound good and then stick the mic there, the recording sounds very close to what I heard with my ears. Here are a couple clips:

Yamaha CG172SF with bone nut and saddle, and La Bella 2001 Flamenco Light Tension strings. PZM-6R taped to sizable sliding glass door about two feet or so in front of and a bit above the sound hole.
https://soundcloud.com/grrrrr-662986275/...O6geIGeiie

'82 4104 JCM800 with stacked boosts/overdrives into a Yamaha 4x12 w/Celestion V30's. PZM-6R around 15ft or a bit more into the room off to the side on the wood floor. Master volume upwards of 2 I think.
https://soundcloud.com/grrrrr-662986275/...NiNUj8AjdI
 
Same JCM800, but through it's 2x12 cab loaded with EV Force 12 speakers. No stacked boosts this time, only 12dB of clean boost with just a bit of presence added via an EQ pedal. PZM-6R on the carpeted floor about a foot or less from the center of the cab. Special note for these recordings: it was past 12am when I recorded these, so the master volume on the amp was almost off. I could easily talk over it, and you can easily hear the acoustic sound of my strings.

Same riff as the room mic for comparison:
https://soundcloud.com/grrrrr-662986275/...Kg3qJHP1yD

And the two best sounding (aside from playing) tracks I've got of the amp so far.
https://soundcloud.com/grrrrr-662986275/...DRWqEmFjcd
https://soundcloud.com/grrrrr-662986275/...Z1jsgYROsP

As far as the how of recording, the mic has a hemispherical pickup pattern. The mic itself looks like this:

I just stick that plate on the floor, wall, or wherever I think it sounds good in the room. Ideally facing the nose towards the sound source when that makes sense geometrically (i.e., when it's on the floor or far up a wall). The clips I recorded at midnight volume levels though I got by just sliding the mic along the carpet until I found a spot where it sounded decent enough. Technically, it should be a hard flat surface that you place the mic on, so the carpet might have affected things but I'm not sure how at the moment as I didn't stick my head at that spot to check how it sounded to me. Some people also just get a sheet of plywood and stick the mic on that, then they place the plywood a few feet in front of the amp. Or, similarly, sticking the mic on the wall and the amp a few feet away pointed at the wall. When I get a chance I'll recorded some higher-volume clips of both a "room-ish" setup with the mic 8ft away or so in a place I think sounds good, and a "close" setup with the mic on a wall with the amp pointed at it. The thing with these mic's is that the low end response is affected by how big of surface you stick 'em on, so if I were to do a "traditional" close-mic technique the result would be a flat 6dB drop from around 1kHz to DC if I remember correctly. Though I suppose that's worth a shot too just to see what I get.