Daily Blog - May 3rd 2021

...might be the one you already have. Because limiting yourself forces you to learn everything about your signal chain. It forces you to experiment. It forces you to figure it out and make it work. 

We often try to solve a problem by throwing money at it.

But this might not be the best solution. And it might slow down our progress as we try to get better at engineering.

Part of the problem is that we tend to like the thing we've just spent money on. We want to justify our purchase. This means you're probably gonna like that new mic you're about to buy. Whether it's truly a good choice or not. 

And it might even sound better right away, so you'll be happy and stop experimenting for a while, but you'll never know how amazing your old mic would have sounded in a different spot at a different angle with a different setting on your amp.  

Then, as soon as you get tired of the new sound, you're gonna buy something new again. Because you'll remember that it solved your problem last time. So you'll never really learn that second mic and all its potential, as well. 

And you still won't know all the details about your signal chain, your room and all the options you already have available. All the cool things you could already do with your gear if you tried harder. You'll never figure out that changing the mic position, setting up your instrument differently or improving your playing technique often makes a bigger difference than switching to a new mic.

I had a whole mic locker full of wasted potential until I began to use my mics on things you're "not supposed to use them on" and started paying more attention to everything that happened in front of the mic. Once I started experimenting more, once I really committed to learning my gear and always trying hard to get the best possible results with whatever I have available, I began to discover the coolest tones and most exciting textures I've ever recorded. And I haven't bought many mics since then.

Happy experimenting!

-Benedikt

PS: You'll also find these daily blog posts in my Instagram Stories: @benedikthain