Mics versus ears

[lebouche]

So with my new mics I been trying to make things sound like my ears hear them. Its a big revelation for me...things aren't actually that loud if you take the headphones off and listen.
In reality we don't deal with proximity effects and cardoid patterns...I mean what is the cardoid pattern of the human ear?
What is the engineer trying to achieve..I always thougt it was true rep but now I'm thinking its just an impression.:Confused:

[burnsy]

Thats a good strong solid point there. Though the only trouble is that when we see bands live we hear them through mics so why change the style in which we hear them from live to the cd ? Ok if they just played without mics etc then the performance and sound would be incredible different. Music is an art and I suppose mics are an instrument of this art so its at the produce of whoevers creation it is to make it the way they like.

Im not sure if that makes any sense but It did in my head when I read your post.

Good topic though.

[Tim Halligan]

Boy, this is an interesting topic.

So, on one hand you've got a microphone which you feed into a recorder, and on the other hand you've got the flappy bits on the side of your skull that feeds your brain.

Now your brain - despite your best efforts to dull it down with drink and drugs - is a very clever processor. But, you can see it's history by the way it behaves.

Many thousands of years ago, when we were living in caves and clothed in fur, our senses especially sight and sound, were the things that would keep us alive...by either locating prey, or by alerting us to the fact that something large and hairy...with sharp teeth...was headed our way.

Our senses are attuned to change.

So the ears - like the microphone - are just dumb transducers...whatever they "hear" is just passed through unaltered. But the brain...in an effort to minimise the effort required to process this information while it is still doing everything else required to keep the body functioning...will process the audio by analysing what is constant, and what is new information. It basically ignores or filters the constant, steady-state information. This is how you slowly stop noticing your fridge after it switches on.

I'm sure there is a really clever name that describes this phenomenom...but frankly, I have no idea what it is.

Now, when we add a microphone to the equation...all of that stuff goes out the window. For some reason, our brains cannot do that filtering trick.

Here's a cute experiment for you to try. If you have a little DAT walkman or some easy to set up portable mixer, plug in a microphone and set up some headphones to monitor the microphone.

Set up in your kitchen or loungeroom and read the newspaper or a book, or surf the net...whatever...without the headphones on. Just let your brain get comfortable in the surroundings...

Are we all sitting comfortably?

Good.

Now put on the headphones.

Different innit?

If you leave the headphones on, and try and go back to whatever you were doing previously...reading or whatever...you'll notice that it's much harder to concentrate because your brain is devoting more interpretive processing to your sense of hearing...because the brain is unable to filter the constant, steady-state input...even though it's the same input as you were hearing unaided.

You know about/have heard of the "cocktail party effect", right? You cannot do that trick with a microphone...this is why people with hearing aids have a greater deal of difficulty in understanding a person when in a group social situation.

The short answer is that a microphone will never give you the same results as your ears...because a microhone does't have a brain at the back end of it.

Cheers,
Tim

[Immanuel]

What is the engineer trying to achieve..I always thougt it was true rep but now I'm thinking its just an impression.:Confused:

What are people trying to achieve when using big Mesa Boogie amps? Certainly not a true replica of the sound of the guitar.

I see it the way, that you can go 2 ways with a sound source.
1) You can try to make a replica as true as possible.
2) You can do what ever you like to make it sound in different way, which you prefer over the original sound.

When was the last time drums sounded like drums on a pop record? I tend to think, that different genres often have different paradigms about what something should sound like. Also time is a factor. In the the late 90s it was less trendy with gated snare, than it was some time before that.

There can also be practical reasons to make something sound different than the original. Take a speed metal record as an example. It is really convenient for the perception of the individual kick drum beats, that the sound is altered into a more "clicky" thing.

What you do with mic selection and eqs are just previous steps to, what you later on do with delays and reverbs. It is altering the sound in a way that you feel is an improvement ... or even actually compromising the individual sound somewhat for the greater cause of the mix.

[otek]

I sorta gave up on the idea of making things sound like they do in "reality".

In some cases because it's not possible. No mics or recording techniques are gonna replace what I hear when sitting 20 feet in front of an orchestra.

In some cases because I don't want to. I've stood in front of many a band in many a rehearsal room, and god forbid any of my recordings should sound like that.

Instead, I try to create the best representation of the idea of a sound.

[Chris Lambrechts]

I have my own opinion on the 'you should try to capture what you hear with your ears' thingy.

Like some have said here ... it is never going to sound exactly the same now is it ? And that's true BUT :

I do feel , at least that is how I approach recordings , that one should try to do exactly that.

First and farmost it is a matter of knowing that what you hear through the speakers is 'true' to the source. And often that has little or nothing to do with reproducing the exact same sound. More so it has to do with capturing the 'essence' of what is going on in the live room.

One should ask oneself this question :

WHY do I want or need to go into the live room and listen to how the source sounds over there with my EARS ?

Well .... because you want to make sure that you KNOW what it is you are capturing. For a TON of reasons. Does the performance come over ? Does it sound as good - presuming that the source sounds good of course and if it doesn't sound good - well then the FIRST place to find out that it doesn't is IN the live room listening with your own ears.

From there on you make a judgement call on wether possibly to change the signal path, or actually work on the sound IN the live room and make it sound right over there.

Granted, the cleanest most transparent signal path will not be able to give you the exact same listening experience through speakers then when you actually sit next to the source. But that's not what you're after. What you're after when recording is capturing a TRANSLATED version of the source that is worthy of the source?

Performance / sound / vibe / energy ... and if possible the combination of all those things ... that's what you should hear both in the live room and in the CR through the speakers. If you can do that you're well on your way to make a good sounding record.


Chris

[weedywet]

Just as a matter of a small nit-pick...
in response to:
"In reality we don't deal with proximity effects and cardoid patterns...I mean what is the cardoid pattern of the human ear?"

the name CARDIOID, means 'heart-like' (CARDI, as in CARDIAC arrest), referring to the heart shape, more or less, of its POLAR, or pick-up, pattern.

the human ear functions much like an OMNI microphone embedded in the head, its directionality being shaped by the ear canal and outer ear.
Not really much like a CARDIOID at all.

[Brendo]

to clarify: a mic has a pickup pattern, a polar pattern.

common polar patterns include cardioid, omni, figure 8.

i thought i noticed lebouche misusing this in another thread but wasnt quite sure..

[lebouche]

Yes I did misuse the term...but I knew what I meant and so did you:grin: . So weedy wet has directly answered that part of the question. All the other input on this has also been great. I'm quite suprised at the feedback. I was under the impression that the engineers primary job was to be able to get a true depiction of the source and to work from there. A bit like studying fine art before you become a cubist.
Thanks for all the great replies.

[meLoCo_go]

What you get from the microphone is much closer to what you actually hear, than what you hear in most mixes with all the processing.

And to come reasonably close to what an ear would hear is possible - there's that binaural system with two mics mounted inside head/ear channel imitatation. But I've never heard of any use of them to record actual music)))

[DaveC]

I agree that this is a very interesting question and one that perplexed me a while back.

I think the key to it is what Chris said above about capturing 'the essence' of the real sound. I remember when I first got to work in a big studio, the engineers and producers often saying 'yes! That sounds exactly like the drum/guitar/singer does in the room!'. To my relatively untrained unfiltered ears, the difference was like chalk and cheese. What came out of the speakers might be nice, but it wasn't at all like the real sound in the room. Work your best magic, blindfold me, I would always instantly be able to tell you if I was in the room with the instrument, or in the control room listening through the mic(s). The differences seemed to far outweigh any similarity.

Now after getting more used to mics and speakers, I am one of the people saying (and hearing) that what is coming from the speakers is just like the instrument in the room.

What has happened is that I have learned the conventions of modern western recording, my ears have been trained in the style of modern recording to select certain qualities as relevant, and discard the unimportant/inevitable differences in modern sound reproduction technology. (ear training isn't about having been born with better ears or frequency response, it is about your brain understanding what is coming from your ears, what aspect of the sound is important, and in AE - understanding how that sound might react to the tools we have available)

imho stereo reproduction at its most realistic is generally as realistic as a colour photograph, and in pop/rock, things get much more stylised. Its probably only in Classical and Jazz that the aim is to really create a true representation of what someone would have heard if they were actually there.

[Tim Halligan]

What you get from the microphone is much closer to what you actually hear, than what you hear in most mixes with all the processing.


True.



And to come reasonably close to what an ear would hear is possible - there's that binaural system with two mics mounted inside head/ear channel imitatation.


Yes...but a qualified yes. :D

Yes it's very good at simulating the way we hear stereo...primarily because of the interaural time difference.

It isn't able to give us positional cues in the vertical plane, and it isn't so great due to the limitations of the microphones in terms of frequency response.


But I've never heard of any use of them to record actual music)))

There is/was some classical stuff - string quartets from memory - floating around which sounded pretty good, and not surprisingly were fairly life-like on headphones. :D


Cheers,
Tim

[HOOK]

imho stereo reproduction at its most realistic is generally as realistic as a colour photograph, and in pop/rock, things get much more stylised. Its probably only in Classical and Jazz that the aim is to really create a true representation of what someone would have heard if they were actually there.

YES!!!!! :D A photo is just the right picture for this thing!! :Roll eyes:

...like in this other thread (TwoBussEQ) I do think there is two ways to record/mix/produce. And it´s mainly in your head, kind of a philosophical question really, but not uninportant for the endproduct!

...and its not only in classical and jazz, but in all acousticallyoriented music that you try, not to create a true representation of what someone would have heard if they were actually there, but to make as good a picture of the instrument/voice/room as possible. In pop/rock/contemporarymusic (remember Stockhausen-Gesang der Jünglinge) the pallette of the painter and the nr of styles available are greater, and thus making it easier and more difficult!

HOOK

[airborne]

I was under the impression that the engineers primary job was to be able to get a true depiction of the source

The simple response to that would be, not [always] in this day in age. That's what recording started as, innit.

[eagan]

And to come reasonably close to what an ear would hear is possible - there's that binaural system with two mics mounted inside head/ear channel imitatation. But I've never heard of any use of them to record actual music)))

I have.

Years ago a friend who was teaching electronic music at a local university had to give a faculty recital. He put together a group to perform, decided at some point they should do a quad PA, and then decided it would be nice to capture all that as closely as possible to what was happening in the hall.

It ended up being recorded using a binaural head mic into a cassette deck. Worked pretty well, too.


JLE

[myrtlebacker]

And to come reasonably close to what an ear would hear is possible - there's that binaural system with two mics mounted inside head/ear channel imitatation. But I've never heard of any use of them to record actual music)))

Yeah in my youth, the local classical radio station had some weekly "Kunstkopf" recordings, which I always missed, because I wasn't allowed to have headphones...

I never really understood the theory behind, because it would seem the soundwaves would pass the ear channel twice in that system. Once during recording and once on playback.

If I had the money and the time I'd experiment with a three mic per ear setup for a total of six channels and headphones with three speakers per ear :)

[dwoz]

Slipperman has devoted ENTIRE DIATRIBES to this topic.


What you are trying to achieve as a recordist, is not realism...no matter what the genre, what the situation, what you are trying to achieve is SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF.

that means, you're trying to "build a little world that's consistent unto itself", and that convinces the listener that its real, and that it exists.

for example, in this little audio world you build, there are no cows making nests in trees. It seems consistent to itself. It appears logical.

BUT, the underlying premise that it is all built on may be INSANE. However, as long as it is consistent unto itself, and doesn't give the listener audible cues that something is amiss, the listener will buy your faulty premises HOOK LINE AND SINKER.

dwoz

[AxeSlash]

IMHO at the end of the day, whether it sounds "natural" or not is immaterial if the end result sounds like cock & balls.

The difference is knowing when NATURAL = GOOD and when NATURAL = C&B.

Like someone mentioned, there's some great debate over this in one of the other threads.


In my experience, like someone else said here, there are very few occasions where I would WANT to capture what I'm hearing in the room. Most sound sources invariably sound "worse" (and I mean "worse" as in "don't fit into the conventions of western recording") before all the miccing/EQ/dynamics/effects/whatever tomfoolery that we do in the control room later downstream.

Of course that's only true for certain styles & genres of music. Others have different conventions, where "natural" is the trend (mainly because in these styles, the source you are recording generally DOES sound bearable. Unlike a screaming 4x12 being driven by the world's shittiest digital distortion line 6 head).

$0.10

[HOOK]

Unlike a screaming 4x12 being driven by the world's shittiest digital distortion line 6 head).

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :Roll eyes: Line 6 is like plastic gold; It´s nice and shiny and looks(sounds?) real................ from a distance!

"All that glitters is a Maresnest!!" :Wink:


Speaking of Binaural recording; Japanese engeneers have build a robot that can hear both right/left (differences in time between two mics) AND up/down. They have put the two "earmics" in bowls with somewhat different top and bottom surfaces and by analysing the reflexes the robot can determine if the sound comes from above or below.
...should be useable...someway.....:)


HOOK

[Tim Halligan]

Speaking of Binaural recording; Japanese engeneers have build a robot that can hear both right/left (differences in time between two mics) AND up/down. They have put the two "earmics" in bowls with somewhat different top and bottom surfaces and by analysing the reflexes the robot can determine if the sound comes from above or below.
...should be useable...someway.....:)


Wow.

That must have some serious number-crunching happening on the back end to make it work accurately.

Interesting.


Cheers,
Tim

[Jeff_C]

So with my new mics I been trying to make things sound like my ears hear them. Its a big revelation for me...things aren't actually that loud if you take the headphones off and listen.
In reality we don't deal with proximity effects and cardoid patterns...I mean what is the cardoid pattern of the human ear?
What is the engineer trying to achieve..I always thougt it was true rep but now I'm thinking its just an impression.:Confused:

lebouche,

You might be interested in an article I just read in the May 07 EQ magazine. They interviewed mic designer/modifier Klaus Heyne. Mr. Heyne had several comments on this topic scattered throughout the interview.

At one point he said,

"A mic is incredibly primitive compared to our ears, and the best mics work not by being the closest to how our ears work but by having the best euphamistic additions/alterations that make us feel good about what we hear. No mic is realistic."

It's a good article that really drove home how ethereal mic design and selection can be. Made me wonder what one of his mics would sound like.

I think I'll set up a favorite search on ebay in case one of those Brauner VM1-KHE mics he designed ever goes up for auction at less than $500.00. Sure they're $10k new, but I bet they lose most of their value as soon as they leave the store. Here's hoping...

[Spock]

I think some other people said it but the thing we can not take out of the equation is what processing your brain does.

For example how do we locate a sound.

Based on the location you can tune out other sounds that are happening at the same time.

Some have said that brain compares phase to dertime location. I'd debate that for a bunch of reasons. However the brain does compare the difference in arrival time between the two ears.

This difference in time is not enough to do the job. With that information alone and also with difference in level the source between the two ears, you can't tell if the sound is in front of you or behind, above of below.

For a long time the folks that worked in the field thought that people slightly move their heads which would then give another data point and brain could then figure it out.

Experiments showed that this was not the case.

Turns out that the things on sides of heads do a lot more than provide a place to hold up eye glasses. The external part of your ears along with your head provides a filter with a different response when the sound comes from different directions.

Now if you think I'm full of it.

Someone the wife went to grad school with got a job about 15 years ago working for the US Air Force. With all the stuf that happens in a high speed fighter they wanted a way for a pilot to quickly know what direction a missle was coming from. They have warning lights and sounds, but then the pilot needs to look around and then figure what to do to avoid the missle. So if the sound for a missle seemed to come from the direction of the missle, it would help him make the right move quicker.

Seems like an easy thing to do now days, change the delay, EQ and few other things in real time. But 15 years or more it required top of the line speical DSP hardware.

What does this have to do with the difference between a mic and you ears? Easy plug up one of your ears and cut off the outer part of the other and I'd bet what you would hear would be much like a mic.

[robmacki]

A very interesting topic.
I don't want to get off topic but want to share this story.

I was mixing location audio for a documentary at a private but exceptionally well equipped studio owned by a well known AE school owner. (I only say that to set up the story so you know that any mic and pre config was available)

The session was tracking, of all things, a musical saw! Not just any musical saw but the world champion. The tracking room is perfectly tuned to 'D' and the acoustics of the room are amazing.

The first mic was a Royer ribbon, close prox, mid prox, high, low, it just could not capture the acoustics of the saw and bow. The 2nd engineer asked if he should set up a Telefunken? "No" I don't think that's the direction we need to go.
The 1st engineer for that session grabbed a Neumann "Head" and then asked the artist to play. He found the sweet spot of the room and placed the "Head" exactly where his own head had been. Voilà! The control room was now representing what was being heard acoustically in the tracking room.

It's not just that the Neumann Head is an amazing mic(s) but finding the sweet spot was just as important.

[HOOK]

....finding the sweet spot was just as important.

Isn´t that true for almost everything!?!?
...mics, listening, women....


HOOK

[DaveC]

The control room was now representing what was being heard acoustically in the tracking room.(my bold)

'Representing' is the key. Every instrument, and musical context is different. The parts of the sound which are important to us vary depending on context.

If the neumann head + studio speakers (or any other capture/repro pairing) could duplicate the sound from another room, then we would assume it would be ideal for any instrument and context.

Send a metal-head in to hear a heavy guitar in the room, and then let him hear a heap of mic set-ups to say which one sounds 'the same as the amp in the room'... I think he would be swaying towards a close mic 57 rather than a distant neuman head - because the important and relevant sonic information is captured more accurately that way.

[Tim Halligan]

Send a metal-head in to hear a heavy guitar in the room, and then let him hear a heap of mic set-ups to say which one sounds 'the same as the amp in the room'... I think he would be swaying towards a close mic 57 rather than a distant neuman head - because the important and relevant sonic information is captured more accurately that way.

Yes...but no. :D

He may prefer the sound of the close 57...it may be more relevant to the recording because it contains the more important information...but unless his head was shoved up against the grille there is no way he would be answering "duh....the 57 shoved against the grille sounds prezackly like what I heard in the room...dude."

If he did, he would be lying.

It depends on exactly where his head was in relation to the cab, the walls, and the floor to name 3 fairly critical measurement criteria.

The correct answer to your question in this hypothetical is that none of them will sound the same as what he heard with his own ears. Some setups may sound subjectively better or worse...but none can possibly sound the same.

Cheers,
Tim

[DaveC]

ahhh Tim - that is exactly my point, and I stand by what I said.

Another example: Most non-AEs will talk to their friends at a party. Their friend's voice will sound exactly the same in the tiled kitchen as it did in the soft furnished living room. They will not hear the rooms.

Play them back a recording of the same voices from the same event on headphones, now they will hear the different ambiences, and think 'that sounds different to what I heard, it's all echoy in the kitchen'.

Similarly, a non AE will not hear the boxy qualities of a room if they hear an acoustic guitar played in a bad sounding room, they will hear the nice music. However, they will hear the nasty room if it is recorded with a distant mic.

(these are examples of the converse - where the recorded sound is ostensibly the same as what the listener heard, but where they would say things sound different)

But yes - I subscribe totally to your final statement that the reproduction will in actual fact not be the same as the sound originally was. Imho perception and convention are exactly the issue.

[robmacki]

(my bold)

'Representing' is the key. Every instrument, and musical context is different. The parts of the sound which are important to us vary depending on context.

If the neumann head + studio speakers (or any other capture/repro pairing) could duplicate the sound from another room, then we would assume it would be ideal for any instrument and context.

Send a metal-head in to hear a heavy guitar in the room, and then let him hear a heap of mic set-ups to say which one sounds 'the same as the amp in the room'... I think he would be swaying towards a close mic 57 rather than a distant neuman head - because the important and relevant sonic information is captured more accurately that way.
agreed:Thumbsup:

[Tim Halligan]

Their friend's voice will sound exactly the same in the tiled kitchen as it did in the soft furnished living room. They will not hear the rooms.

Play them back a recording of the same voices from the same event on headphones, now they will hear the different ambiences, and think 'that sounds different to what I heard, it's all echoy in the kitchen'.

<snip happens...>

But yes - I subscribe totally to your final statement that the reproduction will in actual fact not be the same as the sound originally was. Imho perception and convention are exactly the issue.

Bingo.

Perception...or self-delusion :lol:

We don't actually want anything to sound like it really does in the room...we want it to sound like it does in our head.

And my head sounds different to your head :D

Cheers,
Tim

[HOOK]

And my head sounds different to your head :D

What are your decay time? :Roll eyes: :very happy:


HOOK

[Tim Halligan]

What are your decay time? :Roll eyes: :very happy:


HOOK

Ask my dentist... :Roll eyes:


Cheers,
Tim

[Mixerpuppet]

One of the biggest differences I've noticed between my mics and my ears is that my mics seems to have no waxy build up or sparsely patterned hair protruding from it...

and my mics are smaller and more attractive... almost pretty even...

I just wanted to note the brains incredible power to analyze, process and filter in real time...

I fell prey a few weeks ago to my brain and ears...

While video taping my kids track meet during a rainy day, a small leak in the roof led to a drop of water hitting an aluminum bleacher. I heard it and ran over with my camcorder and captured the event... What an awesome thing I thought to myself...

I got home and transferred the video and inserted it into Vegas....

Only to hear a weak splat noise with a funky ambience nearly drowned out by people talking, coughing, laughing and footsteps from little children running around like politicians...

If I had listened to the room more accurately I would have realized I need to yell at people to shut up and stop moving because they were corrupting my little splat recording....