DI acoustic guitar, can it ever sound good?

Kuras

Hi all

I’ve been recording acoustic and I’m realising that it’s never sounded great when I DI instead of mic. It stands out in the mix too much and doesn’t fit well with other instruments, despite it being so easy when I am writing and coming up with ideas.

What are your experience?

Stratavarious

I invariably load an acoustic IR and mix it in with the DI to add some natural body.

You can find plenty online… http://acousticir.free.fr/

You don’t have to have one to match your guitar, just the pick-up type

A very high impedance DI box can help depending on the pickup to get a less piezo quack sound into the desk/interface.  Then the rest is EQ, scoop the mids a bit.

At least that is what works for me.

I find my K&K transducers give the most natural DI sound.

Kuras

@Stratavarious Thank you. That’s interesting. I’ve not come across an acoustic IR. I will look into. 

To be fair, the acoustics I record with are at my friends and are fitted with a piezo and on the cheaper side. 

Musical_Mystery_Tour

You can usually sort it out with some EQ and convolution reverb. The EQ can be used to trim out the plasticky frequencies of a piezo pick up and the convolution reverb will replicate the room's effect on the sound you get with an actual recording. It won't beat a real recording, but with some effort it'll get close enough to be tolerable.

If you aren't familiar with what a convolution reverb does to achieve that, when creating a VST plug in effect which uses that method, a base sound is recorded in a selection of different rooms, then the various different delayed responses of that sound off each surface are mapped. Thus a cathedral setting on a convolution reverb will have been created by literally going to a cathedral, setting up a mike (or mikes for stereo etc), firing off a sound and then mapping the response times off the walls and ceiling etc, to create an audio replica of that room's reverb.

So the response patterns in the various presets which a convolution reverb will have, apply lots of combined (aka convolved) mini reverb effects together to give a more realistic replication of a room. In most convolution reverb VSTs, once you have selected a preset, you can leave it all 'as is' or you can then further tweak the settings if you need to. As with all VSTs, there are some freebies, some inexpensive ones and some super-duper costly ones, which means you can try it out with the free or cheap ones and see if they float your boat, or you can get your big wallet out and spend some more cash to get the fancier ones.

Kuras

@Musical_Mystery_Tour Thank you, what frequencies are the plasticky ones on an acoustic?

Musical_Mystery_Tour

I'd say a starting point would be to cut it a bit at around 550Hz and 2.5kHz. You might have to boost some of the other frequencies too. Or you could simply just move the sliders about on your EQ until you like what you hear.

goldtop

I've got a magnetic pickup on one acoustic and a fairly simple piezo on another and neither sound great with a simple DI.

But I'll be trying some acoustic IR profiles on my Kemper next week. If I can get them to sound like this, I'll be happy:



(I suppose something like the Mooer Radar should do the same for fewer £££s.)

JohnCordy

I personally did a little thing with this where I used a tone match EQ on the piezo versus an actual recording of my same guitar with the condenser mic and it actually ended up proving really satisfying and totally improved how I feel about recording with piezo pickups now, I just run it into my hx stomp preset.

I can share the video if you want to show the process

Kuras

@JohnCordy yes please

Winny_Pooh

Definitely an IR

drofluf

Think it depends on the pickup. I’m pretty impressed with the one in mine. 

https://on.soundcloud.com/WeZ9k

In the sample I recorded the pickup and mic simultaneously to left and right. I then duplicated the track and gave one version with just microphone, another just the pickup and another with the two mixed. I’d need to check my notes as to which way round the individual sources are.