Quote from: Salamanauhat on December 11, 2017, 05:11:38 PM
Often the contact mic is not necessarily best for loud and powerful sounds of that type. The sound often benefits from the actual room acoustics, the 'feeling' of a loud impact on metal. So it's more a question of mic placement, like in a studio. But experimentation is the key, there are other factors at play also. So maybe it's best to just try it out...
Sound is not only caused by microphone, but other elements as well. Few things to consider is, that actual physical loudness and act of utmost power may not transform well into recording. Meaning, to have sheet of metal and sledgehammer it as intensively as you can, may result very shitty sound. Contact mic merely suppressed by shock of sound, resulting tinny and shitty "click" instead of good sounding crash. They are very sensitive. Same may happen with regular dynamic microphone too.
Too much distortion, too much efx in general usually flattens the sound. Using too big and loud amps may flatten the sound as well, just make it kind of crude mid-range crackle instead of using full spectrum of possibilities.
First of all, metal needs to be good. I'm surprised how many attempt to survive with little shakerboxes or little slice. As if would be too big task to elevate beyond
"that'll do" -attitude. Looking around a bit more, and testing what kind of object, made out of what kind of metal, will give good result, is not
that huge task. When one got the source material that is good, then actual creation is far more better than trying to "mix" or "process" good stuff out of lame sounds.
Second, of course it is possible to make colossal sounding and brutal metal junk in typical digital gear, but there is often drastic difference, and most of all easiness of using analogue recorder. Natural analogue compression of all-on-red recording of acoustic metal junk, even merely microphone plugged directly to 4-track or tape deck, with zero efx, mixers or such, may have greatest results.
It's worth to investigate what happens in quiet metal sounds, recorded with intense gain levels. To capture not only object, but entire room. Possibly multiple microphones, in different places. Things like having 4-tracker, with 1 line with contact mic on sheet of metal, 1-3 more dynamic or condenser microphones on other channels. In different places and angles. Mere acoustic
no-overdubs metal junk sessions may sound complex, multi-layered and utterly detailed when few different objects are captured with different microphones and blending and saturating with high-gain-input method of recording.
This doesn't necessarily require having rehearsal place as actual volume may remain moderate.
Good examples could be some early The New Blockaders, where metal sounds are highly interesting. Rarely brutally loud, but full of detail and texture. If one looks for absolute ripping loudness, doing same as mentioned before, but connecting 4-track output to PA/Stereosystem/amplifier to involve needed level of feedback. When recorder is part of the feedback process, rather than capturing feedback of other objects, there are quite many possibilities. Inserting feedback loop via aux or whatever, what can be used to enhance live recording process even further, which creates often better results than editing the source material.
To record high volume, and very large objects, is difficult task. Often not very satisfactory results. It may look impressive, and sound huge at the moment of making, but result of recording may be way "smaller" and weaker sounding than rather quiet recording where one manages to get full sound spectrum of objects.
