Why do some guitars sound so different on CD's?

4 posts

I have a Gibson Les Paul with a Marshall Amp and I would say I am a good player, but no matter what I do I dont seem to be able to make my guitar sound as good as on the CD's, for example yes it sounds amazing when I play but I cant get the volume and depth in quality of sound without adding loads of effects and by the time I've got my guitar to sound like it does on the CD's its hardly even my guitar that's doing it!

Is there something I'm missing or do they just use loads of extra effects in CD's????

Just some information on making guitars sound as good as they can get with it still being the guitar that making the sound would be helpful.

From England, 6 posts

depends what quality equitment your usin to record.... i use the latest logic pc recording software, and a line 6 pod through my mixing desk into my pc, with a steinberg pro guitar.

im usually getting a good replica of the sound i get live..... and the speakers on your amp will be bigger and better quality than on your cd player so that will account for it too

From San Diego, 2 posts

What engineers do on recordings differs greatly from what you might see at a live performance, ie: your Les Paul and Marshall stack. In the studio people usually use smaller amps because they "give bigger sound" on recordings. There are also a couple other things taking place that will make the guitar sounds different. Microphone choice and placement will both drastically change your sound, as well as what you do with the signal after recording it ie: Equalisation, compression, effects. Also, there are a great number of digital guitar effects processors and modelers which I can only assume are frequently used in contemporary recordings. By just simply plugging your guitar into an analog amplifier your sound isn't being affected by any of these tools, each of which can drastically change what you hear. In addition, whatever your'e listening to a CD with, those speakers are built and set up much differently than the ones in a guitar amp.



To get a closer sound to what you hear on a CD, try turning your amp down pretty low, and seeing how each paramater (knob) changes your sound, and

how they affect each other. You should be able to achieve a basic relative timbre. Hope this helps.