Acoustic Playing Sweet Spots near the Wall

[Mark Mazurek]

Yes, in a nice 'lively' room, it's very easy to place things and hear the differences.

Most studio 'problem rooms' have heavily treated walls and possibly carpet.
This kinda 'masks' the obvious high end spacial 'cues' you hear and drives people NUTS on why their low frequencies seem 'all over the place'.

To complicate the problem more, you find a great spot in a room (where you love your bass sound), but it doesn't sound like that on the recording, and wonder why. It's because you put a mic in front of your bass, not out in the room (or where your ears are).

When 'working' a room (or wall combo) like this, you need to look at the room as part of the instrument. Sound sources never sound good in anechoic chambers (no reflections). Play the room as part of the 'rig'.

This is the foundation of all the frustration with amplification when playing 'out'. Every room has different size, reflection, absorbtion, shape, etc...
It's why 'swiss army knife' amps include phase switches, high pass filters, notch filters, fancy eq, etc...

Sellers of live equipment should have generous return policies, because you rarely can tell an amps true potential/pitfalls in the one room you try it in.