PZM Microphone and Profiling

    Since this flat mic for profiling has had great results, I thought of another type of mic, that might also be worth trying, but I don't own one. If any of you folks have a real time analyzer, with the special mic for it, the mic maybe could be used for an un colored input into the KPA. The only potential caveat might be that these types of mics are usually omnidirectional, which could be good or bad, but without trying it we won't know.


    Quote

    "Can you explain your profiling technique in detail brush ( mic placement ..) ?"


    I took the cable, looped it through the handle, turned the element side of the PZM so it was facing the speaker, and let it hang vertically centered over the speaker, and about an inch to the right of center horizontally, which probably placed the element at the edge of the cone. That is all there was to it! Magic results. I have friends with new, vintage, and boutique amps, that I am hoping will allow me to take my trusty, el cheapo mic, and profile these amps, but it am playing on the road 4 days a week, in Chicago, so time is a luxury. This will lighten up a bit in September and October, so, maybe I'll get a shot at a few of these killer amps. I don't own a single amp myself, other than PA powered speakers.

    ok here are the clips : the princeton sounds great on the tele and the jazzbox ( raw profiles, no tweaks - I just lowered the huge verb !!! )


    https://soundcloud.com/sound-music-sonic-lab/pzm-clips



    The triple recto seems profiled from the floor ??? anyway it sounds promising regarding driven profiles :) I had to tweak this one a bit ( but no cab change )


    No post EQ & FX on mix , raw recording.



    1 tele on clean princeton
    2 Jazzbox on clean princeton
    3 strat on crunch princeton
    4 strat on triple recto ( pushed mi... )

    I had a really quick go last night, in less than optimal circumstances and the results were favorable over my previous efforts. I'll spend some more time on this today and upload the results a little later on.

    OK I've uploaded a couple of profiles from playing around this morning. I did a bit of experimentation and the best results (for my tastes) were with the PZM as close to the grille as possible, and right in the middle of the speaker. Moving the PZM off centre (even by 30mm) made the tone too scooped for my tastes, these profiles are quite trebley, so you may want to wind down the Treble and/or Presence to taste. I also prefer to upload RAW profiles with no tweaking apart from refinement.


    The profiles are:


    PRS HXDA HXHXHX 3-2 PZM : I went for a versatile gain setting, this should clean up a lot with the guitar volume yet still retain a lot of crunch at max guitar volume.


    PRS HXDA HXHXHX 3-2 FD3 PZM : I added in a Fulltone Full-Drive 3 Custom Shop for a "bit" of extra drive, this is with the boost and dynamics engaged before the OD section, so it won't be as responsive to the guitar volume.


    OK for some reason it doesn't look like the 2nd rig has uploaded properly? The file name is cut short and most of the info is missing. Can anyone confirm there's 2 different profiles from me there? There should be a difference in gain...


    Hope you like them (if they work!)

    I got a Realistic PZM 33-1090B today, at a local used music gear store. I would have ignored it, if not for this thread.


    I'll add to the PZM profiles, relatively soon. It may be a couple of weeks, though. Four gigs this week, three more next week.


    BTW - for electric guitar amps, the Crown literature suggests:
    putting it on the floor, a few feet in front of the amp
    or, on a 2' x 2' panel, in front of the amp (the panel adds more low end)
    or, inside the cabinet.


    Cool, I'll check these out over the weekend. Thanks!


    Cheers,
    Sam

    Trying out stuff and experimenting is great. But in this case many of you probably will be disappointed with the results. The idea of using more linear mics to create more realistic "in the room" profiles is hardly possible. I tried it myself with all sorts of ultra linear RTA and condenser mics and never was really satisfied. Perhaps i cannot give the correct scientifical proof for this but i guess it´s just the fact that microphones and the human hearing are simply not comparable. Each and every profile i tried to capture with higher distances resulted in very poor sounding profiles. For myself i gave up and stayed with close miking.


    If you really think that the lack of the "in the room" feel affects you playing experience i would try to create an impulse response of your room and let the KPA pass through a convolution reverb.

    Quote from tylerhb

    Trying out stuff and experimenting is great. But in this case many of you probably will be disappointed with the results. The idea of using more linear mics to create more realistic "in the room" profiles is hardly possible. I tried it myself with all sorts of ultra linear RTA and condenser mics and never was really satisfied. Perhaps i cannot give the correct scientifical proof for this but i guess it´s just the fact that microphones and the human hearing are simply not comparable. Each and every profile i tried to capture with higher distances resulted in very poor sounding profiles. For myself i gave up and stayed with close miking.


    If you really think that the lack of the "in the room" feel affects you playing experience i would try to create an impulse response of your room and let the KPA pass through a convolution reverb.


    I don't miss any "in the room feel" with conventionally mic'ed rigs - for me, that feel comes from speaker placement, and the sound of the room.


    There is a difference, though, between the sound of a close mic'ed amp, and listening to the amp from a foot or two away (even if you do it on an outdoor stage).


    There mics are supposed to be more phase coherent at a distance. If they can capture a wider area of the sound of a speaker cabinet, the results may be very interesting.
    The Rigs may sound more like the amp, and less like the mic'ed amp (and, ironically, would likely need post EQ to be used live, or fit in a recorded mix)

    Quote from tylerhb

    Trying out stuff and experimenting is great. But in this case many of you probably will be disappointed with the results. The idea of using more linear mics to create more realistic "in the room" profiles is hardly possible. I tried it myself with all sorts of ultra linear RTA and condenser mics and never was really satisfied. Perhaps i cannot give the correct scientifical proof for this but i guess it´s just the fact that microphones and the human hearing are simply not comparable. Each and every profile i tried to capture with higher distances resulted in very poor sounding profiles. For myself i gave up and stayed with close miking.


    If you really think that the lack of the "in the room" feel affects you playing experience i would try to create an impulse response of your room and let the KPA pass through a convolution reverb.


    When you tried distance miking, was it on the ground and in a big enough space so that there weren't any wall reflections to create phase issues?


    Quote from Jay Mitchell


    A ground plane measurement technique helps minimize this problem: place the microphone on the floor (needs to be a hard surface) aimed at the speaker. The floor reflection will then sum coherently with the direct sound at all frequencies of interest. If you put the mic at ~2 meters from the cab, with both the mic and the cab 10 feet or more from the nearest wall sufrace, you can get a clean 20-ms farfield IR that contains direct sound only.


    Also, as paults mentioned, I don't think the point is to capture in-the-room sound, quite the opposite. Doing this properly removes all room sound from the profile but captures the tonal color of the entire cab rather than just the sound you get 1" away from the cone.


    That being said, you may be right that the results don't quite reward all the effort involved. We'll have to see how everyone's profiles turn out.

    Quote from tylerhb

    Trying out stuff and experimenting is great. But in this case many of you probably will be disappointed with the results. The idea of using more linear mics to create more realistic "in the room" profiles is hardly possible. I tried it myself with all sorts of ultra linear RTA and condenser mics and never was really satisfied. Perhaps i cannot give the correct scientifical proof for this but i guess it´s just the fact that microphones and the human hearing are simply not comparable. Each and every profile i tried to capture with higher distances resulted in very poor sounding profiles. For myself i gave up and stayed with close miking.


    If you really think that the lack of the "in the room" feel affects you playing experience i would try to create an impulse response of your room and let the KPA pass through a convolution reverb.


    I've been following the "amp in the room" issue since a while, because I've always found it intriguing. Studying what Jay Mitchell has been saying on the forums since I started being interested in the Axe-Fx first and in the Profiler later, I could realize a few things.


    First, as much as it may sound counterintuitive, an IR of a room is not necessary, since you'll play... in a room anyway.
    You'll have to take a FF IR of the cab paying close attention to *exclude* the earliest room reverberations. These two requirements are not trivial to achieve, and by themselves make the goal elusive.


    In order for the capture to be realistic, the mic has to impart no character to the IR. Most mics are then excluded from the potential choices. The best mics for the purpose are the so called measurement mics, which are the most linear ones. They are not necessarily expensive, and can be rent as well.
    When you play, you'll need two further critical elements: a device whose amp simulation is able to reproduce a realistic interaction with the cab simulation, and an extremely linear loudspeaker system.


    Failing in even one of these requirements will jeopardise the goal.


    Now, the most interesting aspect for us Profiler users is IMO the fact that we have no actual control over the way the "cab IR", so to speak, is aquired. Under this respect, getting the FF while excluding the earliest room reflections could be tricky.


    It would be worth trying and profiling an amp placing a very linear mic (feeding a very linear preamp) say 3-4 feet away, with the cab placed no closer than 8-9 feet from any wall.
    Since common people hardly have access to anechoic chambers, this would seem to me the best approximation to the requirements.


    Last but not least, the reproduction system has to add no colour to the profile and - if 2-way - be phase-coerent.


    According to Mr. Mitchell, this would lead to the best possible approximation of the amp in the room, where the profiling technique, the device and the loudspeaker supply the amp, and the room supplies... the room. Then we are free to play with reverbs, echos and delays of course.


    HTH

    I may have caused a misunderstanding of the term, "amp in the room", so I should clarify this term, from my perspective. When I did the first profile with my PZM, 65 Princeton Clean, and I referred to the profile as the "amp in the room", I did not mean to infer that the PZM right against the grill, would pickup the room sound. Rather, I mean that the profile has an unfiltered sound, unlike profiles which are normally created by mics used that are not flat. So, when I reported that the 65 Princeton clean profile sounded like the "amp in the room", I meant that it sounded exactly like what I heard from the actual amp(in the same room of course).Unlike a miced version, which is common to most other mics, such as an SM57, which causes a lot of similarities between amps, that, when playing them side by side, they are not the same, yet when miced by a non flat mic, their resulting profiles end up sounding very similar(because of the 57). If I were trying to capture the amp AND the room, then I would Velcro the PZM to a concrete wall, and face the cabinet, at different distances, at that PZM. I have a very short time at home, next week, but have contacted a close friend with another vintage amp, and if I have enough time, before I hit the road again next Thursday, I will bring his amp to my house, and try the "amp AND the room" sound with my PZM. in the meantime, I would invite such experimentation, since many of you now have the PZM. Forget the manuals - just go for it! Forgive the pun, but I now call it the "Magic Mic". ;)