Someone explain this to me.

['59]

If I want to listen to a recording of my own guitar, the signal comes out of two 12" speaker (subwoofers) is picked up into the tiny speaker of a microphone, and then comes out of the 5.25" speaker in my car sounding the same it came out the amp?

Why does my car need tweeters to accurately reproduce the high end of the signal that originally came out of a massive 12" speaker? Why don't guitar amps use varying speaker sizes like any other piece of sound equipment?

[Rex_Rocker]

The sound coming out of your car's speaker is certainly not going to sound the same as it did coming out of your cab. Mics color the tone, and then in mixing, processing is done to make it sound better, and, most importantly, to fit in a mix better. Plus you're only mic'ing a single speaker, and a 4x12's in the room sound is based on the interaction between all four speakers and the room itself. That's why so many people complain about mic'd and produced Youtube demos don't truly represent the tone of an amp. I disagree, but they're right in the sense that it certainly doesn't sound the same as standing in front of an amp in the room.

And guitar amps don't use varying size speakers just out of tradition, TBH. That's what we're used to hearing. Bass cabs do have tweeters, but if you ran a raging distorted amp through a tweeter, it would sound like ass, LOL.

[GuitarStv]

If I want to listen to a recording of my own guitar, the signal comes out of two 12" speaker (subwoofers) is picked up into the tiny speaker of a microphone, and then comes out of the 5.25" speaker in my car sounding the same it came out the amp?

Why does my car need tweeters to accurately reproduce the high end of the signal that originally came out of a massive 12" speaker? Why don't guitar amps use varying speaker sizes like any other piece of sound equipment?

Even the 'flattest' sounding guitar speakers are very, very coloured. They're not designed to reproduce sound accurately, they're designed to make guitar sound exciting. That's it. Usually they don't care about crossovers and tweeters because a single speaker is fine for this application.

Hi-fi systems (good ones anyway) are designed to reproduce a wide range of frequencies from a recording in an even manner across the spectrum. To do this they usually need multiple speakers of different sizes because smaller speakers tend to produce very high frequencies well but do lows poorly and large speakers do the reverse. So a hi-fi will use crossovers to isolate parts of the recorded sound and send them to the speakers that can best reproduce them. The best hi-fi speakers will be capable of significantly more detail than guitar speakers, and will reproduce bass and highs much better. (Try plugging your TV into your guitar amp and watching a movie - you'll immediately hear what I'm talking about.)

[beaubrummels]

If I want to listen to a recording of my own guitar, the signal comes out of two 12" speaker (subwoofers)

Guitar speakers are not sub-woofers. Their frequency response is well above what sub-woofers reproduce.

is picked up into the tiny speaker of a microphone,

A microphone element is not a speaker. They are both transducers, but they are not both speakers.

and then comes out of the 5.25" speaker in my car sounding the same it came out the amp?

I doubt it sounds exactly the same was what came out of the amp, but it should sound similar/recognizable.

Why does my car need tweeters to accurately reproduce the high end of the signal that originally came out of a massive 12" speaker? Why don't guitar amps use varying speaker sizes like any other piece of sound equipment?

Stereo systems don't need tweeters to reproduce guitar sounds. They need tweeters to reproduce the full range of frequencies found in music. The guitar recording most likely has very little energy up at that range, unless there were sympathetic/harmonic vibrations caught on the microphone when it was recorded, like scratches of the pick on the strings, reflections off the wall and objects in the room vibrating form the sound.

Guitar amps are not stereos. They do not need to reproduce the full frequency spectrum of overall music. They only need to reproduce that narrow band that guitars occupy. That said, people who use their amp as a pedal platform, where they get their 'amp' sound from pedals or emulation, will use a full-range amp and speaker to reproduce everything their pedal effects are putting out.

[Ewizard]

A 5" car speaker probably has a frequency response from about 100hz up to about 5khz on its own, so it doesn't need a tweeter per-se to replicate a guitar signal, it is essentially a 5" guitar speaker at that point.

The objective with car speaker systems and PA speakers as a whole, is to have a linear frequency response. This means covering as much frequency range between 20hz and 20khz as can be practically done. The tweeter in most car systems probably only reproduces frequencies between 5khz and 20khz and I would bet some are crossed over closer to 10khz. In PA systems, most crossovers start doing their thing around 1khz to 3khz ( 2khz being the most common crossover point ).

From a recording standpoint, the mic will pick up whatever it does from the instrument and the recording engineer will acquire the desired sound from it. Now just because the " usable " frequency range of a speaker might be 80hz to 5khz, for instance, does not mean that it doesn't reproduce frequencies beyond that. It just doesn't do it with enough level to be considered " usable ". So when an instrument is recorded and EQ'd to sound right on a full-range speaker system, it will generally sound OK on speaker systems with limited frequency response. The reason is simply that the speaker will reproduce the sound as it would anyway.

[Rex_Rocker]

Stereo systems don't need tweeters to reproduce guitar sounds. They need tweeters to reproduce the full range of frequencies found in music. The guitar recording most likely has very little energy up at that range, unless there were sympathetic/harmonic vibrations caught on the microphone when it was recorded, like scratches of the pick on the strings, reflections off the wall and objects in the room vibrating form the sound.

On distorted guitars, there is quite a bit of information up there, believe or not. There's obviously a HUGE rolloff above 5K on guitar speakers, but there's still some of it that makes it through, especially close mic'ing, and some mics pick it more than others. That's why it's so common to low pass distorted guitars at 12K. If you try to low pass a distorted guitar track at 5K, while do you still get like the "essential" freqs, it sounds so dull and lifeless.

[beaubrummels]

On distorted guitars, there is quite a bit of information up there, believe or not. There's obviously a HUGE rolloff above 5K on guitar speakers, but there's still some of it that makes it through, especially close mic'ing, and some mics pick it more than others. That's why it's so common to low pass distorted guitars at 12K. If you try to low pass a distorted guitar track at 5K, while do you still get like the "essential" freqs, it sounds so dull and lifeless.

Like I said, "likely has very little energy up at that range". If you hear energy up to 12k in your guitar tracks, I would be willing to bet you are mixing and using compressors that turn those weak frequencies up to where they are much more audible.

[Rex_Rocker]

Like I said, "likely has very little energy up at that range". If you hear energy up to 12k in your guitar tracks, I would be willing to bet you are mixing and using compressors that turn those weak frequencies up to where they are much more audible.

Nope. Just multiband compression to tame the palm-mutes. And not always. I avoid it, TBH. But the rest of the freqs are unaffected even if I am. I hate compression on distorted guitars, TBH.

Like I said, it's not really the core part of the guitar tone that's going up there. But if you don't hear it (while mixing, you are right, but also while listening to a mic'd recording even, if it has not been produced, on a decent listening environment), you might have to worry about some hearing loss. It's not the core part of the sound for sure, but it's very obvious if you just dump everything above 5K on a distorted guitar track.

[Rex_Rocker]

This is a pretty average EQ curve of a distorted guitar track. Yes, there is a steep rolloff of frequencies above 6K in this case, but there's still plenty going on there. Enough to notice if you decide to low pass below 10-12K.

[Ewizard]

Place that same curve next to a typical 12" woofer, and it will have a similar trace though. Most mid-band speakers roll off around 5khz. That's why a guitar sounds like a guitar regardless of what speaker you play it through.

A typical instrument microphone has a pretty much linear response from 100hz to 10khz and are able to at least collect some information above and below that range.
This is for an SM57, the most quintessential Guitar mic known to man. 100hz, to 10khz, is its " usable " range. But there is still information that it will acquire beyond that. Notice that it is more sensitive though around 5-6khz. This is why you often have to go off-axis with the mic to make it not be too brash sounding. A guitar speaker starts to ramp down about this point, whereas this is ramping up, and we often brighten the signal of our guitar to make the speaker have a more linear sound through the guitar speaker, which means it is often brighter than it needs to be from the amp by the time a mic is placed on it. If you were to place an equal energy slope on that above graph ( Of the guitar, not the microphone ), the response would fall right about in line with it till about 6khz.