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Gear Test: Mesa Boogie 4x12 Cabinet Test (For Each Speaker)


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I couldn't hear any difference at all. If you wanted to highlight the differences you need to play solo tracks. When you have it in a mix like that most of the guitar is being masked by the other instruments.

 

You would also need to re-amp the same signal each time vs having a guitarist play the part 4 times because his string touch and placement picking between strings will vary.

 

I also noticed your mic placement over the cones was slightly different on several of the speakers beginning nearly over the cone center in the first then moved off center on the others. On a good set of speakers the off center placement will have a larger difference then the speakers themselves.

 

You can often hear tonal differences with speakers when you have them out of the cab and simply thump the cone lightly with a finger. You can hear thump like a drum head. When one cone is tighter or thicker it produces a different tone.

 

How much of that will you hear micing up a cab? Probably little to zero when you have a guitar electronically gained up as in your example. If you have say 50% saturation and more of it coming from the amp then pedals you can sometimes hear a difference in resonation from the speakers. Sometimes there's slight differences in sensitivity and frequency response.

 

Its allot easier hearing differences with a mic when you have an open backed cab because the back waves aren't being reflected off the back of a sealed cab and out through the front. Paper on speakers is very thin and the back waves of a stronger speaker simply reinforce a weaker speaker. Where you do hear the differences is in the upper mids mostly, but like I said, the mic has to be placed exactly the same on all. Moving the mic placement even slightly can completely change its response.

 

 

What I suggest you try, since you are obviously into recording, is to take a frequency analyzer plugin like Voxengo Span, and stick it on your track and set it to monitor the mic in real time. Then you can actually see the differences when you swap speakers or move the mic around. Again, the differences may be small and the more gain and volume you use the less likely you may be to actually hear it, but you should be able to identify which speaker actually produces the best frequency response and where the best placement is.

 

The differences again may be small, but the key to getting the best recording possible is to zero in on the best tone possible using small tweaks throughout the recording, mixing and mastering chains. The big differences are easy to detect, its the small differences that take skill to find and can add up to give you that slight edge that makes the difference.

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There was a clear left vs right distinction in sound as if there were two channels going into the cab

 

1) TL - smoothest across the range.

 

2) TR - mother of all transistor radios by comparison

 

3) BL - darker than TL but similar enough in sound

 

4) BR - like TR but not as trashy; more balanced and IMO "good sounding" like TR but in a different way.

 

 

So question; what is this supposed to help? :)

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^^^^ If you look at the placement over the cone you can see the mic is placed further to the right on each one.

 

If you're going to offset the mic to the right on the left speaker (Towards the center of the cab) you may get a closer match on the right speaker offsetting it to the left (towards the cabinet center) on the right speaker. You may get more bass frequencies towards the center of the cab then towards the side of the cab. (or just use the center of the speaker on all of them)

 

What you don't know is if the mixing change had plugins that made differences. If a speaker had a high output and there was an compressor plugin running (or the track was normalized) its going to produce very different results compared to a lower output speaker, even if none of the settings on the compressor were changed. The compressor will compensate differently based on signal strength and frequency content.

 

 

There's just to many variables going on to determine what might be good or bad. Much of it has to do with the music you're mixing the guitar to match with. A Transistor radio sound may sound great with one song and something smooth may sound lame in another mix. We don't even know if the cab has matching speakers. Unless all those variables are minimized down and the guitar is re-amped, so the exact same part is played through each speaker each time, its hard to say where the variances really come from.

 

In my experience the differences between matching speakers is very small and you probably wouldn't hear it come through in a completed mix, especially with all the other instruments masking it.

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I did notice the varying mic offset but as you might recall I've been using phones with the computer and the differences are as obvious as different eq settings. whether this translates into a mixing / mastering issue would be a function of the kind of product. I do think that if the focus is on say, guitar artistry, You would get unique results per individual driver and good sound / bad sound conflicts and related aesthetic issues.

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