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Oh god how did my name end up in the title of this thread? I have a confession to make - I am a bitter recording vet who works in a magical studio located at the peak of a mountain in the himalayas, and if it doesn't involve a pure analog signal path plated in gold diapers then I'm probably going to grumble and moan and cause a ruckus, and generally be more of an annoying troll than any actual help to a recording newbie. So instead of answering the age old "Should I use a SM57 or (brand x condenser)" question for the millionth time, I think I'd rather just pop into this thread once in a while and mention some neat trick I ran accross or re-remembered, or maybe even post some random pictures from some of the sessions at my studio. I'm pretty certain that I can still share stuff with people here that will be useful, but I've become jadded and cranky and bitter enough about cheap recording gear and the DIY minimalist budget enough that attempting to answer the millionth "Is the MX002 really worth it?" thread might just get me banned.
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Jan 26, 2007 21:51
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Zaxxon posted:admit it dude, you're stuck on a pro-tools HD rig, using the limiters in the waves diamond bundle to crank the last painful DB out of some lovely bands drums that they can't even play on time so you just spent the last 45 minutes dragging blocks to match the click track. We had a band in the other day, bunch of high school kids, really nice guys, but the drummer could NOT play to a click. He'd just play at his own speed no matter how loud we turned up his headphones, so finally they just did it without. If the drummer is so lovely that you have to run beat detective or try manually dragging/dropping hits, you might as well drown yourself in the studio bathroom.
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Feb 5, 2007 22:18
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It's a decent explanation of the typical uses of a compressor, but honestly he didn't touch the main use of compressors on rock records. Compressors are a tool to not only regulate the dynamics of a recorded sound and to make it fit in a mix better, but they're also creative tools used to bring life and variation into what may otherwise sound flat and boring. Our ears are used to hearing rock records where guitars jump out at us in certain parts and pull back in others, we like it when volumes vary and pump. Guitars in particular can sound dull, boring, or even harsh when they are just a wall of sound at a single dynamic. Distorted guitars tend to have almost 0 dynamic range which is why they're a great example of compression being used to CREATE dynamics and life. Often when mixing guitars at my studio we'll run an 1176 on an insert with a all the buttons pushed in. This produces a result that is far more extreme than the 20:1 ratio button, which is supposed to be the highest setting. We then use the attack and release knobs in extreme settings to make the compressor react to minute dynamics quickly, while holding the results for up to half a second. This will take a bland guitar and CRUNCH it right in your face, and make it pump in and out of the mix. This may not be appropriate 100% of the time, but it often gives life where there once was none. Another great place to use compressors to CREATE dynamics and life is with synthetic drums. Often programmed drums have terribly boring dynamics, because the sample isn't really manipulated even with velocity changes, it's merely triggered at different volumes. Using extreme ratios and low thresholds with slow attacks and medium releases, you can make a hi-hat bounce in and out of it's own dynamic, surging when it's not supposed to in a way that makes it much more real. An often forgotten and unused, yet highly important feature of compression is the key input. You can actually trigger the threshold of your compressor with another instrument. Let's say you have a part in a song where the bass is playing long, deep and sustained notes that eat up a lot of low end. Often these type of lines make the kick drum dissapear, especially if your drummer is playing softer during these parts, as he may be naturally inclined to do. If you put a compressor on the bass and send the kick to the key input of the bass compressor, you will compress the bass ONLY when the kick drum hits. If you play around with the settings you can make this subtle, so that it doesn't sound wierd but instead naturally allows the kick to poke out only when it needs to. This technique can also work well to let a vocal sit on top of guitars that may be a little too muddy or thick, eating up the vocal range. By using key inputs and pumping and breathing you can inject life into a static mix and make the instruments interact with each other. This is the "higher level" of mixing that goes beyond "I'm limiting the dynamic range so the levels don't get into the red". This is where you make decisions about orchestration and which instruments need to be accented where, in ways that go beyond simple volume envelopes and fader automation. This is the subtle art of using the tools to their extremes. It should also be noted that software compressors do not give anywhere near the results that hardware compressors do when used in these ways. Software presets often hamper our creativity by giving us a starting point that's too close to something that doesn't really work and too far from something we'd have to actually play around with to find. Knobs, tactile feel, and of course actual analog circutry give personality and character to an instrument that mathematics in the land of ones and zeros simply does not offer. Not only that, but our ears were trained on records made with analog equipment. Part of the reason some recordings sound amatureish is that they are missing some of the fundamental tones and tricks that have been done for 40 years now with tape playing through a console with outboard gear at the insert points. RivensBitch fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Feb 7, 2007 |
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Feb 7, 2007 02:10
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WanderingKid posted:What you are describing is a mixer routing trick or the use of a side chain input (if you mixer has them). You can side chain all kinds of things - like delay plugins when you want a singer's voice to echo when the vocals duck out but you don't want the slap back delay to make the words unintelligible. You probably already know that though. I'm not sure what you mean by this. The AMEK console at my studio does not have "side chain" connections anywhere. The technique I'm referring to uses the buses on the console to send a signal from another instrument (such as the kick drum) to the side chain or "key" input on the compressor thats being used on the affected signal (the bass). The sine wave kick drum technique you mentioned uses a gate, not a compressor. It's still an excellent technique, but not compression. In this instance a sine wave is sent to a gate, and then a send from the kick drum is connected to the side chain input on that gate. This opens the gate only when the kick drum is hit, in effect "triggering" the sine wave with the drum. A gate reduces volume when the signal falls BELOW the threshold A compressor reduces volume when the signal pushes ABOVE the threshold While a side chain (aka "key") input can be used to trigger the threshold on either, these are still two very important distinctions.
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Feb 7, 2007 23:22
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Pablo Gigante posted:What's a good setup for recording drums? Is it best to actually have each individual drum/cymbal mic'ed, or can I get away with say, micing the kick drum and having one or two other mics for the snares/toms/cymbals? honestly you should be concerned much more with the room than the mics, as a poor room will ruin your sound no matter what mic techniques are used. Treat your room with equal parts of the following: 33% reflection - flat surfaces such as drywall or windows 33% absorption - acoustic foam, carpets, pillows, mineral fiber etc 33% diffusion - Multi-faceted surfaces. This is harder to make on your own, but think multi-stepped pyramids, wood panels with gaps and different levels/layers. Objects that have many different small surfaces that will "diffuse" sound in many directions. (one for each corner) Bass traps - Large/thick baffles place in the corners of your room. These break up standing waves and make your low end tight and solid instead of boomy and muddy. Dont forget your floor! Is it carpeted, wooden or tiled? Believe it or not the ideal setup is to have a mix of all three ! This is a decent way to start from with room treatment. Obviously over time you will want to modify your placement and ratio of reflection/absorption/diffusion to fit the needs of your room. Something to keep in mind is that when treated equally this way, the bigger the room is the better it will sound. If you had access to a high school gym with 50 foot ceilings and you could treat it properly, it would sound amazing - however doing so would be incredibly costly and would render it useless as a gym. In general the best rooms have high ceilings (20 feet or more is nice) and are at least 30-40 feet long in both width and depth. Once you have a room that sounds good, start micing your drums with a simple three mic setup. Put one mic in the kick and two condensers in a stereo configuration. I actually prefer to put them just below ear level, 3 feet behind the drummer, forming an equilateral triangle with his drum throne. This gives a better balance of drums vs cymbals. Other people mic in front of the kit or above in an "overhead" fashion. Experiment and see what gives you the best results. As you work with different mixes you should try experimenting with more microphones on the drums themselves, I would start with the snare and toms. I wouldn't worry about spot cymbal mics, in general you will have too much cymbal in your stereo pair of microphones. An important note on adding microphones to individual drums and mixing their signals in with a stereo pair. The key here is to get "more" of the drum than the surrounding drums and cymbals. If you're micing a tom and there is a cymbal above it, make sure to use a microphone with an EVEN cardioid pickup pattern. (By "EVEN" I mean that the pattern is actually cardioid at all frequencies. Many cheap mics have cardioid patterns at 1k but are omni by the time they get to 100hz.). When positioning a drum mic it is most important to aim it's rear axis at the nearest and/or loudest cymbal. Your mic picks up EVERYTHING in the room, not just what you point it at. A drum's sound will be blended with every other sound in the room, the angle of your off-axis rejection will determine what that other stuff sounds like and how it fits into your mix. This is the end-game of mic-technique, as when you mix later on and start applying EQ and compression to your individually mic'd drums, you have to live with HOW your mic affects the sound of everything that you didn't point it at. =============== The point to take from all this is that microphone technique and room acoustics go hand in hand. The way your room reflects and deals with sound will greatly affect the tone and mix of what your mics pick up. When you start spot-micing drums and mixing those signals with overheads or room mics, the sound reflected within your room is going to affect your mics much more than the placement of those mics. If you do not take your room into consideration and attempt to control the way it handles sound, it wont matter what mics you use or where you place them. RivensBitch fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Feb 8, 2007 |
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Feb 8, 2007 21:59
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Swivel Master posted:Keep in mind that aside from the room, the kit and the player are the most important aspects. Keeping the heads tuned and the player... uhh... good... is also a good method of getting a good drum recording. One of my chief duties at my studio is preparing drums. I get paid $10 a drum to remove the old heads, clean the shells and bearing edges, seat new heads (either overnight or with a heat gun), and then tune the drum based on the resonant pitch of the shell (resonant head at the pitch, batter head a 4th or 5th below it). It's actually pretty cheap considering the results and time saved (I might spend 2-3 hours working with the drums. If the drums don't sound good an engineer can spend days trying to fix them and it still wont sound as good as if I'd been allowed to prep them). I know many studio owners that spend thousands of dollars on microphones and preamps when they could just buy a nice kit for less money and it would sound a million times better. There is nothing more important for an engineer to learn than how to tune instruments and make them sound good before a microphone is ever even plugged in. as for the player and their skill level, back in the 80s if your drummer couldn't hack it in the studio they'd hire a session player. Now they use protools and beat detective and sound replacer, and it sounds awful. Give me the session player any day, PLEASE.
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Feb 9, 2007 00:07
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fun fact: chinese mics cost less to make than an SM57 (which are made in mexico btw), yet cost the same to an end user. Why is this? Because 57s have been selling in bulk since 1966, and have actually come down in price from what they used to be, which was (taking inflation into account) more than what you pay today. Bottom line, the SM57 is a better value and the cost to produce it is proof of that. Someone trying to move you from an SM57 to a cheap chinese condesner is doing so because they make $50 profit on the condenser and $15 profit on the SM57. Also contrary to popular belief the SM57 and SM58 are simmilar but not identical. The SM57 and SM56 use the R57 cartridge, the SM58 uses the R59. The beta57 and beta56 use the R174 cartridge, while the Beta58 uses the R176. While the cartridges may use the same diaphragm, the housing and transformers are usually very different, and this affects the sound.
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Feb 9, 2007 05:49
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yes, in fact AT does all their manufacturing in asia. Their higher end stuff is decent, but that is the same mass produced chinese capsule that everyone else sells, it's just in a different body.
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Feb 9, 2007 06:50
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Crystal Pepsi posted:Protools was designed for the Mac, I guess it runs on XP as well, but I wouldnt trust it on one, personally. I've heard Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny share your view, but they are also known to drop presents down chimneys and hide chocolate eggs for baby jesus to find after he sees his shadow on the first day of spring. Here in the world where we actually try things out and try to share constructive opinions based on experience, I'd recommend you come and join us in the 21st century where we don't make major studio purchases based on the gut feelings of someone on the internet who admittedly doesn't know what they're talking about. Works fine on XP for me.
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Feb 16, 2007 23:08
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Crystal Pepsi posted:He's here asking for opinions. Mine is obviously different from yours, try not to be an rear end. What part of "I guess it runs on XP as well, but I wouldnt trust it on one, personally" do you think will be useful to him? At least I'm an outright, unashamed rear end who is capable of spouting usefull and relevant poo poo when prompted correctly. Posting baseless "I guess, personally" opinions in a technical thread simply paints you as a useless, incontinent rear end that occasionally likes to dribble runny, watery poo poo on what otherwise could be solid, plump and useful conversation. For YEARS now protools has run fine on windows XP (We're on version 7.x now and PT has been perfeclt fine on XP since 6.0). In fact if I were to give any reason NOT to go the mac route with PTLE it would be that since PTLE 6.0 came out OS/X has had 4 paid upgrades that have been required to use the latest version of PTLE, whereas XP has been compatable with no paid upgrades the entire way through. We might finally see a required paid upgrade on the windows side when PTLE drops XP compatibility, which is still probably a year off. Note I'm speaking of paid OS upgrades, either way you've had to pay the same for PTLE upgrades mac or win side. As for stability go check out http://duc.digidesign.com and you'll see the WIN/MAC userbase is about the same for LE systems. HD is a different matter. When I worked at GC I sold systems with confidence to both user groups and have run BOTH platforms myself since 2003 with no problems. But yeah, I guess having an experienced opinion is different than having no useful opinion whatsoever. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) RivensBitch fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Feb 17, 2007 |
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Feb 17, 2007 02:47
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If you want the most control I would reccomend recording him in studio in a booth, then can run a speaker outside of your studio and mic that up with a shotgun boom mic. Obviously if you live in the city that wont work for a nature scene, so you might want some portable recording equipment (laptop) with speakers to take on location. Once you have your "outside" version you can dump that back into the project and blend the direct mic with the ambient and get whatever sound you need.
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Feb 17, 2007 03:57
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Swivel Master posted:The first response to your post is, in my opinion, poor advice. The version coming out of a speaker is going to sound dramatically different from what you'd get recording at a distance. This is probably the first time I've really disagreed with RivensBitch, but I don't think he's got film sound training or experience. While I don't have specific experience working on films on location, I have used this technique with voice and ambient spaces and had great results. My question to you would be, have you ever actually done this yourself, and if so what kind of speaker did you use? Studio monitors work great, you just have to adjust the volume to an actual speaking level. edit: as for my being very vocal about audio etc, I have strong opinions that are based around solid experience and application in the studio and the live sound world. I don't shy away from calling people out when they are spreading mis-information as fact (see- SM58 and SM57 being completely indentical internally when they aren't, see not trusting Windows XP with no experience in that regard). I understand that people get excited about audio and working with gear and getting into techncial things, especially when they're new, and I'll even admit that having dealt with the unwashed masses on this issue for years now I have become bitter and jaded. As a result when I see someone talking out of their rear end in a technical forum where someone might take them at their word, I respond by calling them out as the blowhards they are. I don't think that negates my contributions to the ML which in addition to dozens of threads on specific recording and live techniques, and countless technical questions answered *acurately* from real world experience, I've also saved goons tens of thousands of dollars with discounts on gear/equipment. In any case there are other people here who are just as knowledgable as myself and I applaud their ability to show restraint when someone comes out of the woodwork and through ignorance or incompetence compeletely misleads an audio-n00b in the wrong direction, I simply don't have the patience and honestly don't think such behavior should be tolerated. RivensBitch fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Feb 21, 2007 |
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Feb 21, 2007 18:43
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Funny enough I was using my Rosetta 800 last night with my MX002 while tracking guitar, the thing sounds like a wet dream  I've had nothing but success with the 828mkII, including recording 18 tracks live at the shoreline ampitheater on a P3 800mhz laptop w/ 512mb of ram and a firewire hard drive. The new 8-preamp motu box looks pretty sexy as well. I would chock up any trouble using MOTU boxes to incorrect drivers, poor chipests on firewire interfaces, or even poorly set up windows boxes. That said I have a lot of faith in the RME gear, I've heard a lot of glowing things from people whose opinions I trust but have not actually used the boxes myself.
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Feb 23, 2007 19:52
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the motu drivers stack very nicely, your software will report all inputs as a single entity which is nice. I've never heard of the converter you linked, if I were you I'd go with a DigiMAX or whatever the current flavor of 8preamp -> lightpipe is. Avoid behringer please. As for the "fortunate $2k converter guy" comment, I paid for the thing out of my own pocket, and I'm not a millionaire, so how does that make me fortunate? Anyone can budget for good gear, it just means setting your priorities to allow that kind of expense and saving up your money instead of spending it sooner on something cheaper. I stopped wasting my money with the "upgrade path" a long time ago, if I need something I either get a pro piece or I wait until I can afford one.
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Feb 26, 2007 22:49
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Create an audio track, put an oscillator plugin on that track (this plugin comes w/ protools). Set the oscillator to 50hz or whatever. After the oscillator put a gate plugin. Ctrl+click the output of your bass drum audio track and add an output to a bus, say bus 10. Now back in the gate plugin window on your oscillator track, engage the key input and select bus 10 as the source of your key. Set the threshold so that the gate only opens when the kick drum hits. Adjust the attack and release to shape your sound. Voila- you now have a low rear end bass drum sound that you can mix into your track, or completely replace your kick drum.
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Feb 27, 2007 09:03
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Yoozer posted:That's indeed very nice and pretty much what I was looking for. Goodness the clock in my rosetta is the same as in the big ben, and there are no mic pres.
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Feb 28, 2007 04:02
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). What I meant was that you'd be fortunate to have the thing because it's better and you can justify the spending on it because it makes more of a difference in your actual job, while for me it won't.
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AtomicManiac posted:Here's a question: Could you go cheap and skip out on buying monitors in exchange for buying some really high-quality headphones? I mean for 2-3 hundred you can get a drop dead sounding pair of headphones vs. the 500-thousand you'd spend on a really nice set of monitor speakers. no pair of headphones will reproduce the sound of your mix in a room. also for the "protools sucks" crowd, how do you use side-chain/key inputs with other DAW software? Short of plugins that specifically support this, I've been unable to figure out how to use this trick with the plugins included with cubase/nuendo or cakewalk.
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Feb 28, 2007 12:59
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Practicing in "headphones" isn't fun but my band uses in ear monitors for rehearsals and we're all convinced that it's WAY more fun to be able to hear yourself at intelligible volumes. Get some Shure E2 or E3 earphones, a few mics, a mixer with multiple aux outs and a few headphone amps and you can actually get by with the silent practice setup. That said I think the real lack of "fun" in the electronic drums practice is the lack of real drums.
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Mar 13, 2007 23:44
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Swivel Master posted:Berhinger is one of the shittiest brands in the market, so almost anything with preamps is going to be a step up. But the manual SAYS they're INVISIBLE! That means no noise!
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Mar 23, 2007 00:18
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invisible also refers to behringers research and development department 
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Mar 23, 2007 17:56
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I still love the aphex lawsuit where they opened the behringer unit in court and printed on the circuitboard was "(C) APHEX TECHNOLOGIES". The chinese had copied the unit so well they even got all the labels down perfectly....
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Mar 27, 2007 00:47
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I'm lollin at that zzounds ad, it's below their cost and undoubtably a typo, I'm surprised they haven't noticed yet (although mackie recording products = lol so maybe no one has ordered any). As far as corners to be cut, the alesis stuff in my experience has a poor build quality, is prone to failure within a year or two, and the converters are pretty crappy, but I'm sure they work and sound fine to the untrained ear. also elder- I PMed you about getting those mics cheaper. RivensBitch fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Apr 18, 2007 |
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Apr 18, 2007 22:41
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SSLs come with either a built in patchbay or a remote patchbay, it's an option when the console is commissioned. The patchbay we have on our amek is actually just a rack of 19" TT patchbays but there are multipin connectors on the bottom to allow easy switching between tape and protools.
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Apr 23, 2007 01:12
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Reason only supports REWIRE which is a competing format to VSTs
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May 21, 2007 00:21
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VST isn't a plugin, it's a standard for communication between audio programs, same as re-wire. The difference is in the common application of the two. If a plugin uses VST as it's form of communication, we call it a "VST-Plugin" the same way that if we have a soft synth that uses VST to communicate we call it a "VST-Instrument". But there are other soft synths that support re-wire as well as VST, and we can call those "Re-Wire Instruments" the same as we might call them "vst-instruments". In fact when I use reason from within protools I use re-wire, I can consider it a rewire-instrument because I may not use it's sequencing at all but I will use the built in sampler as a sound module for drums that I program within protools. When I do that I simply create a midi track and pipe it's output to the reason sampler, same as if it was an RTAS sampler. But this is all semantics really, the point is that all of these protocols are different ways of accomplishing the same things. They're all simply different methods of exchanging midi, audio, and time code.
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May 21, 2007 05:14
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re-wire is a standard of communication between applications vst is a standard of communication between applications while reason may or may not receive audio via re-wire, that doesn't mean it couldn't. Fruityloops will act as both a re-wire host and a re-wire instrument, meaning it can both send and receive audio via re-wire. Absynth is a stand alone synth application that uses VST to communicate to the host program. While cubase SEES it as a plugin, that's only because cubase is designed with VST plugins in mind. You could easily write a program that acted as a VST plugin but was actually a stand-alone audio recorder. You could have it send audio straight through or mute it or put other plugins on it or nothing. If you've ever worked with max/msp you know that you can use VST to communicate between stand alone max patches that might act as plugins or they might be ANYTHING else. Cubase and protools and reason are all programs that are designed to behave certain ways and interface with various protocols. The user interfaces they put up around those protocols make it seem like vst is only for "plugins" and re-wire is only for reason, but that doesn't mean those protocols are actually limited to those uses. A perfect example of this trickery is the FXPansion vst/rtas wrapper. It basically creates an rtas shell plugin that acceses your vst plugins and pipes the audio/midi through. It literally takes the vst plugin and compiles an rtas plugin around it, creating a new plugin that's basically a stand alone program with an RTAS interface that's running a VST plugin inside of it. RivensBitch fucked around with this message at 08:51 on May 21, 2007 |
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May 21, 2007 08:47
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ampleforth posted:... beyond the obvious midrange jumble that male vox and guitars and pianos are fighting for. It depends on the sources obviously, but I find that "mids" covers a lot of territory and those three instruments have their different spots. You have to use your ear of course, if you're using a plugin the with your mouse drag a greatly boosted width of frequencies across the spectrum slowly and listen to what you hear. it should become clear which frequencies matter and which dont, if you hear frequencies that sound bad pull them out, if you hear frequencies that are good leave them alone. Never boost. Take notes of the frequency bands that you pull out of certain instruments. If you are having problems making two instruments fit together in a mix, try to coordinate which frequencies you pull and which frequencies you leave in. Always remember that sometimes what you do to an instrument will make it sound good in the mix but might make it sound not so good on it's own.
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May 30, 2007 07:25
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WanderingKid posted:I tend to prefer using linear phase EQs for very sharp, very narrow notch/bell filters. Linear phase EQs are dead perfect and sterileand some of them sound it (Waves LinEQ for example). Did you make this up or did someone else actually create that bunch of disinformation? what makes you thing that digital EQs are inherently phase linear? the waves linear EQ is a resource hog because it's attempting to make up for phase smearing, which to me digital EQs are more prone to than analog. That said filtering is perhaps one of the tougher/expensive processes to create in a way that sounds pleasing to the ear. I don't think there's a clear dilineation between the mid range analog and digital EQs, although with analog you really have diminishing returns until you have a high quality console to connect everything (and those usually have top quality EQs on each channel). I would say that once you get into the high end, I really prefer the analog EQs regardless of the Q setting. Most of the time they're much more musical and I think a mouse is the worst way to adjust EQ in general.
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Jun 7, 2007 22:58
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I think you bring up some good points but my specific criticism was with this statement:quote:So yeah - digital EQs for precise surgical cuts and boosts. Analogue EQs for broad sweeping cuts/boosts. By your own logic a home studio isn't going to be equipped to use analog EQs as outboard gear, so what exactly are you trying to say here? Don't use digital EQs with wide Q settings? What do you do when you don't have a console and good converters then? I have the full waves bundle so I know what you're talking about with linear phase EQing, I just think you're equating something here that isn't necessarily true. Some analog EQs have a lot of phase smear, others don't. Depending on the application sometimes phase smear sounds good. Now I Haven't used the IzoTope plugins so maybe you'd care to enlighten me as to what you're talking about there. It could be that their reccomendations for using their plugin may not in fact relate to all eqs in general, but I couldn't say with an informed opinion. All I know is that in general I don't see digital EQs as being good for one application and analog EQs being good for another, I see it as there are some good digital eqs and some good analog eqs and in the end whatever sounds the best from what's availabe is what I'll use. also quote:'musicality' is a bullshit term when used to describe tools like EQs and compressors. It depends entirely on what application you use them for. Even the most 'musical' compressor for instance can be made to sound very 'unmusical' if you apply enough gain limitation. I think it's very important to always try and think of your tools in context, and since most of my work is done with music I try to think of how effective my tools are at musically affecting sound. You're right, an empirical labs distressor can be used in non-musical ways but I consider it capable of being very musical. This is of course an opinion and there is no spec to measure it other than a lot of people agree with me. But if we try to divorce ourselves from our subjectivity when working with music I think we do ourselves a disservice. Now as for mapping midi controllers, I'm going to call you out on this one. Midi controllers have a range of 0-127, would you like to explain to me how you're going to get a clean sweep of frequencies by dividing a 20khz range into 127 values? I'm sorry but even the digidesign controllers (I own a control 24 btw) don't give you adequate control for dialing in an EQ, and they have 16,129 values. EQ is where analog has a much greater advantage and I think even the most scientific minds can agree that right now hardware controllers for digital equipment don't let you both broadly and minutely tune in the way an analog knob does. When using our amek at my studio I can with a single knob run the entire frequency spectrum and at the same time barely nudge and squeeze until I'm dead on. With an EQ plugin at best I can activate a "minute" adjustement feature but I've never had that form of control be as intuitive as a knob.
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Jun 8, 2007 17:44
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I understand the mechanics behind trying to work around digital controls for digital plugins, I think my point was that it's still trying to recreate what comes naturally with an analog knob, and the feel to me is very important in the same way that the fretboard on a guitar is important to a guitarist. The results I get when I EQ that way are just better, and I credit both the quality but also the control.
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Jun 9, 2007 00:41
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logic is MUCH more expensive
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Jun 9, 2007 20:45
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wixard posted:Obviously they're not useless or anything, I just have come to appreciate the sound of drums and vocals without them. I look at reverb as kind of messy now and when I do use one it's usually not one that many people would call "nice" or "natural." What kind of verbs are you using? The TC plugins like VSS3 and DVR2 are actually really nice and are not convolution. We're lucky to have an EMT250 and two PCM70s on hand at my studio, I think once you get into the really hot boxes and add them subtly reverb suddenly makes sense again. That said I think delays are the end game of mixing, that and side chain inputs on your compressors and gates. The truth is all reverb does is emulate a room that's created through a bunch of complex delays anyways. In a way a reverb is a preset for those complex delays, and if you really want to make something sound more crisp you probably want to cut out all that reverberation anyways. Especially in a live setting where you're fighting to kill delays as much as possible.
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Jun 12, 2007 04:25
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Concatenation posted:I'm after a first microphone to mic my guitar cabinet, any recommendations? The obvious answer seems to be an SM-57, but I've been recommended a Beyerdynamic TG-X 47 which I can pick up for a fair bit less money. this would be a penny-wise, pound foolish mistake to make. The nice thing about a 57 isn't just it's excellent off-axis rejection or it's universally renowned versatility on a guitar cabinet, it's also the fact that it "just works" on about anything you could put it in front of. It also has great resale value even though you'll never get rid of it.
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Jun 21, 2007 18:02
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To be fair I've had to send a few 57s back to service because I hit the heads too hard and broke the plastic grille housing. That said I'm also a VERY loud, hard hitting drummer and have also broken the lower left lugs (the rimshot lugs) on my snare drums
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Jun 25, 2007 23:03
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nothing is indestructable, I've shattered a 58 and sent a few broken one's back for other people in my time. But there's a reason why these two mics have sustained for over 40 years now. Also someone was asking me about markup the other day and I pointed out that if you want your money's worth you should buy high quality items that have been out for a long time, because the longer a product is on the market the thinner the margins get, meaning the price comes down. A 57 and 58 might have 10-15% markup depending on what kind of deal you get, an Audix I5 or OM3 has at least 40% markup. 57s and 58s are simply a better value, higher build quality, better off-axis rejection.
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Jun 28, 2007 18:01
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Boner Slam posted:The i5 sounds better on snare hows the off axis rejection? to my ear it's awful, especially if you hit a hi tom and sure 1k is attenuated but 100hz is right there in your face. also when audix first sent me my i5 I broke it within 5 minutes of playing. sure the rep sent me a new grille but not everyone knows the rep like i did. protip- off axis rejection has more to do with how good something sounds through a mic than anything else, especially if there are other instruments in the soundfield and you are going to be heavily processing with gates, compressors and eqs. If your bleed from these other instruments is not even across the frequency spectrum then you're going to get some very unnatural sounds that do not please the ear. RivensBitch fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jul 1, 2007 |
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Jul 1, 2007 21:06
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Slowfuse posted:This is a little less encouraging if what you say is true; I like a bit of room and sizzle in my snare sound. As far as experimenting goes, the price is right though. perhaps you don't understand what i'm saying, all mics have bleed the question is how even is that bleed across the frequency spectrum. I don't mind if I get bleed in my snare mic, I do mind if that bleed is completely skewed and bottom heavy. Admittedly I work for Shure so I'm biased, but one of the main reasons we remain so dominant in the pro sound world is because of how our mics perform, and this is one of those areas that keeps people coming to us. You'd be surprised how little we do in terms of giving away our microphones for people to use. When I worked at guitar center every mic company other than Shure would GIVE me their microphones to try out. My I5 has my name engraved on it, they wanted to win me over that badly. Shure never had the need to do these kind of promotions, and they remain on top when it comes to mics on riders.
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Jul 2, 2007 06:01
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wixard posted:Well, the proximity effect doesn't affect what RB was talking about. Bleed pretty much by definition is not from sources close to the microphone. And the frequency response graphs aren't entirely the damning part. I'll disclaim this though by saying that I honestly don't really trust any of these charts as gospel for any microphone, but they can give you an idea of what to expect. All of Shure's polar plots are made in house. They have a large anechoic chamber (which I actually got to spend some time inside of when I last toured the Illinois facility), they put a reference speaker in that chamber and connect the mic to a robot arm, then with software make their plots. I just contacted the applications department and they said that the edges of the plots, which are normally jagged, are smoothed out to cosmetically look better in the user guides. That said the actual shapes of the patterns are still accurate. Same goes for the frequency response charts, the minute jagged edges are made a little smoother but the actual edge itself is correct. Also as long as we're talking about opinions, I have an old SM98 on my snare and swear by it. Sounds much better than an i5, and give the 57 a run for it's money.
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Jul 5, 2007 22:29
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Blackadder posted:Matched pair mics would be very nice and I could probably use them for instrument/room acoustics and drums. I don't know if something like a Rode NT4 or two SM81s would be the way to go. Shure claims that their microphones don't need matching because of their manufacturing produces every mic with the same characteristics. Calling RivensBitch? Confirm. All of their mics (except for the PG series) are made to military specifications, meaning that the frequency plots from mic to mic are at a consistency equal to or better than typical matched stereo pair limits. The matched pairs of their KSM137 and KSM141 mics that Shure sells are pulled from the same production stock that the singles come from. The only reason they package these as stereo pairs and not the rest of their mics is due to marketing demand, they could just as easily put two SM57s in a box and call them matched pairs.
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Jul 9, 2007 21:07
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 20:19 |
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my understanding is that the smoothing is done for cosmetic and printing reasons, and that otherwise they're as accurate as could be reasonably expected. In the case of stereo matched pairs the tiny zigs and zags are the same from mic to mic, and with shure their mics are that close to each other with any given model.
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Jul 10, 2007 06:20
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