Impact of microphones on a profile

  • I have been a happy owner of a kemper head now for some months after using a Helix and Atomic Amplifire for some years. Great products - and I still own my Helix - but let’s say I have not used them since getting the Kemper.


    Lately I have been wondering about the influence of microphones on a profile and hopefully someone here has a/the answer. When miking up a cabinet, the nature and quality as well as the placement have huge impact on the captured tone: both in terms of frequency response as in detail. A Royer 121 for exemple has a reputation for great nuances in the projection, more so than the more affordable, but also populair ribbon mike offerings like a fathead.


    Many (commercial) profiles I have and use are made with a Cascade Fathead II (and the sm57), and that got me wondering: how does the quality of the ribbon mike used affect the amount of detail in the profile? Does the profile only store the frequency response, or is there more to it? Can someone elaborate on that?

  • Don’t think in terms like "detail" because this is detracting from the matter in question.

    Any microphone's task is to capture sound.

    And any microphone will do this putting a different EQ stamp at the end of the signal chain.

    This will inevitably lead to a coloration of some sort, in the end the question is if you like the end result or not.

  • the mic(s) chosen, it's position, distance etc. plays a huge role in the resulting Profile.

    just because a mic is expensive doesn't mean it is automatically better than a standard like the SM57.

    It's really more about the person making the Profile, what he or she wants to achieve, musical context, the cabinet and speakers in question and their ability to make an informed decision about which speaker to mic with what microphone and how to mix multiple mics.

    It's a science and an art and one needs to spend a lot of time with it to know how to get certain results consistently.

  • thanks gentlemen. By the way: I understand the impact of the placement and choices of microphones and that they have a huge influence. It is one of the reasons I quit using miked up tube amps on stage and went digital years ago.


    So if I understand it correctly: only the EQ curve of the microphone translates into the profile, other aspects like detail etc do not? So that should mean the detail in the produced guitar tone comes from the profiler and not from the profile. The reason behind the question was my observation that (in video and sound clips) the kemper seems to have a level of detail in the sound that I have not found in my Helix. As a matter of fact: that is what turned me over to the green side.


    A thought that occured to me last night was that dynamic response might have an influence as well, but how that translates is a question for another day.

  • Don and Ingolf are correct I think.


    Detail is a term used in recording and audio tech and can be read as code for clarity and/or extended frequency response. If the mic introduces distortion (ie adding harmonics to the incoming waveform) or noise (adding harmonically unrelated frequencies) that would tend to mask parts of the audio signal and contribute to a lack of perceived clarity.


    Detail also involves the capturing of high frequencies that could get filtered out by mics that have limited treble extension. In recording applications, particularly on cymbals, strings and human voices, capturing all those frequencies can improve the perceived realism of a recording.


    Most mics and even the amplification signal chain (mic pres) colour the sound. These colourations may or may not be desireable when it comes to something like a guitar cab. It is really a matter of the preferences of the profiler and player.


    A mic like the SM57, which is probably the most frequently used mic on guitar cabs, adds it own significant colourations (eg a big presence peak just above 5kHz and attenuated high end) and is - at least in part - chosen over other mics for that very reason.

  • I think I might have a different definition for detail than audio engineers ;-). For me it is like HD vs 4K etc. Maybe complexity might be a better term for my idea about detail? For example I have heard clips that sounded more or less the same in terms of overall sound between modellers, but the differente was the amount of complecity on low strings, or in harmonic content/overtones.


    Anyway, thanks for the insights everyone, really helps!