Recording Bass-Cabinet: Microphone Choice and Microphone Placement

Abstract: Research on microphone choice and placement has been previously made for a variety of instruments, such as drums, vocals, and guitar, to name a few. However, in comparison, very little research has been made on the bass-cabinet. With help of the different methodologies used for previous research on electric guitar and snare drum, the optimal placement and choice of microphone for a 4x10” bass-cabinet were investigated. In a listening test, pre-recorded basslines were mixed with other instruments since it is more common to hear it in a mix of instruments rather than listening to it by itself. To make sure that the topic is not too broad, focus on the genre of rock was taken for this investigation. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected in a set of listening tests where the subjects rated their preference for their most and least preferable basslines. The subjects were asked to describe their preference utilizing different characteristics of the stimuli. An ANOVA test provided evidence that there is a statistical difference between the preference of one microphone model at a 15 cm distance from the bass-cabinet, in the category bass with band.