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Could someone explain or give some links as to why m-audio has a lovely reputation for audio gear?
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| # ¿ Jul 22, 2011 22:41 |
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| # ¿ May 23, 2013 17:21 |
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Are there books or articles online about beginner's acoustic theory? I'm starting an independent study in engineering this semester, and one of my problems is it looks like I can only track in lovely rooms with lots of walls, not a lot of room, and drop ceilings. Using Rivensbitch answer of "Acoustic solutions to acoustic problems" is there anything I can do to help the situation and get maybe a little bit better sound using some basic fundamentals of Acoustic sciences? I understand that it is literally a science, and some people devote their lives to it, but I would like to be able to walk into a room, listen to a drumset, and say "ok I hear a very boomy overtone in the kick/floor tom, we should hang up blankets/gobos in these specific locations to help it even it out a bit"
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| # ¿ Jan 23, 2012 21:02 |
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IS there any way I can ball park Sound pressure levels with instruments and mics? I'm interested in using a stereo pair of Rode condensers as overhead drum mics but I'm unsure if I risk blowing the capsules.
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| # ¿ Feb 9, 2012 21:49 |
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The only info I can find is for the capsule SPL rating: 143 dB.
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| # ¿ Feb 10, 2012 01:27 |
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I just had a bad experience using an AKG C 1000 S on a guitar amp. There was a sudden loss of signal and fidelity/resolution to the sound. I recall replacing the battery, but I just assumed in retrospect because I didn't really know what I was doing I blew the capsule by putting it in front of a guitar amp that was too loud for the SPL rating (137), but I don't know if that's actually the reason why it doesn't work anymore.
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| # ¿ Feb 10, 2012 05:46 |
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Hogscraper posted:@Noise Machine So basically it'd be extremely hard to blow a capsule on a condenser unless it's stuck inside of a bass drum. Huh, I'm gonna give that mic another shot and see just what the gently caress is going on with it.
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| # ¿ Feb 10, 2012 23:30 |
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I just finished engineering a session for my friend's band. I was running Pro Tools and I tracked the band a tad bit hot. Nothing that didn't clip any individual tracks, but there were more than a few times I saw the master bus clip. I just dropped the bus down a dB ( ) but both me and the band couldn't find anything that was audible to our amateur ears. I fear this might be the by product of growing up in the middle of the loudness wars, using only cheap ear buds for the first years of my developing musical interest. We're meeting tomorrow to finish up overdubs and start vocals. Do I have a chance to rescue this thing and just track everything not as hot, or should I just go hog wild and keep tracking everything really hot?
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| # ¿ Feb 25, 2012 08:23 |
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I ended up using the FreeG plugin on my master bus, and took the trim down 3 dB and just turning up the volume on the Big Knob the studio had. Again, to my amateur ears it sounded fine and wasn't as fatiguing on the ears. I'd like some opinion on the rough mixes, but I will say I had worked an 8 hour day with really no breaks, so I had to go from a headphone mix, to a rough mix within 10 minutes at the end of the day, so there's some of it that I want to go back and change ASAP, but I'm happy with the sounds and timbres we captured over all. http://www.sendspace.com/file/hluepb
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| # ¿ Feb 26, 2012 19:22 |
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Two questions after some people started asking me questions I didn't know the answer to: 1. What seperates "good amateur gear" from "good pro gear"? I know enough to know that behringer sucks, but what is it about Presonus or Mackie interfaces that wouldn't be useful in a "professional" setting. Edit: My dad has a M-Audio Delta1010 card that from what I've read, is ok. What should I look for? I want something I can "grow" into but not have to upgrade immediately. 2. Would buying one of those 24 packs of Auralex 1' squares be a good idea? I know I'll be moving a lot in the next few years, going from one practice space to the next and while I'm sure I won't be engineering a classic album I'll probably be doing a lot of demos for people. Are these removable or do they fall apart after a few years? Noise Machine fucked around with this message at Mar 2, 2012 around 20:14 |
| # ¿ Mar 2, 2012 19:19 |
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@Hogscraper and @wixard I'll be blunt in what I'm looking for, I'm looking for an interface with 4 to 8 channels with built in mic preamps so I can get a fairly good "picture" of drums but also track guitar and bass while we're at it for scratch tracks. This is where I start to get overwhelmed, as it seems that anything in my price range (~600 but it's flexible) is deemed not worth it (M-audio, Presonus, Focusrite) but if I want to "go pro" then it's the same old problem of "Want all the gear, can't afford it" so I have to decide what I invest in in the right-now and what I can put off, and it looks like I'll be left with the same decision my dad made (Went with the Delta 1010 interface, is using a Behringer 8 channel mixer for his mic preamps). So, while I want to make good sounding demos for me and my friends, should I say "gently caress it" and not really worry about all this "Pro Gear" and "Amateur Gear" and just get something that at the end of the day, sounds good my ears and is reliable? Right now, say within the next 5 years, I'm still looking at commercial studios to go and record my band's next full length, I understand that the amount of gear they have will still make it sound hundreds of times better than whatever I produced, even if Alan Parsons gave me a Vulcan Mindmeld... Hogscraped, regarding the room: It's a difficult situation as the rehearsal space I'm in now will be gone at the end of May. Our guitarist and drummer are moving into a loft, but I haven't seen it yet, but they say it has high ceilings and are thinking about putting up some dry wall to section off a rehearsal/recording area. The room that I have access to now is about 12x14 feet with about 10' high ceilings, but these are rough estimates. It's the studio at the University I'm enrolled in, and the Communications department spend a bunch of money on Auralex foam things like bass traps for the corners and wall foam to help the reflections. For a rig they're using a Digi 003 with a Presonus Digimax 8 channel preamp into Pro Tools 8 Am I just over thinking this whole thing completely? It seems the more I think about this the more I can hear my brain saying if I just make good recordings it doesn't matter what gear I used for the process. Also, I've been making lengthy posts in this thread lately, so thank you two very much for being patient. Edit: gently caress it lets talk about monitors. I've heard arguments for having dedicated studio near-fields but I've also heard arguements for just using a pair of speakers that you know the sound of. Thoughts? Noise Machine fucked around with this message at Mar 5, 2012 around 22:54 |
| # ¿ Mar 5, 2012 22:11 |
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Again, @Wixard and @hogscraper: So what I'm getting out of this is that a tracking room doesn't really have to be "tuned", except with some gobos or isolation to minimize the room sound. With everything I've heard and read about getting a good drum sound is you have to start with a good sounding room. From my experience recording my band's debut, the biggest thing I've learned so far is "garbage in, garbage out" right down to "if it sounds like poo poo in the room it's gonna sound like poo poo on tape". So shouldn't you treat the room with things to absorb the sound, to at least get a fairly "neutral" sound room? It makes sense to me to have the control room/mixing room be acoustically treated. This is where I think my problem, or questions, split off into two different groups. First, I actually don't have access to the delta1010 on a regular basis, but I am looking at what my next computer is going to be. I'm using a macbook but am not happy with the walled garden approach to their hardware. I know the standard answer is "get a mac" but I'm just exploring my options, but right now I am just a musician who wants to improve his engineering skills and wants to record his friends for a six pack of beer or someday a nice mic. The second is actually that the topic of doing the tracking outside of a commercial studio has come up. Our sax player actually did live sound and field recording for a musicologist/music therapy conference in Toronto and told us about the wonders of rented gear, and one of the bands we've played with recorded with a local freelance engineer with nice results (although our drummer says he rarely finds a snare sound on record he likes) I'm located in New England, but I'm sure we can find a place that rents gear. It definitely would save the cost of the production of the album. If you guys wanna take this to a PM to not clog up the thread I'd be fine with that.
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| # ¿ Mar 6, 2012 05:35 |
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Here are two questions about two different sessions. The first is, how do I deal with vocalists? I've actually never been in a "serious" (touring and having official releases) that had singing in it, so I feel like I am the least qualified person to make critical statements about their singing. I realize I'm not being a producer here, but I feel that an engineer today has to help with the band by being an arbitrator for if a take was good or not, by simply not being the performer. The vocalist for the band I recorded a month or so ago has really never been in a studio environment before. I've actually heard this guy sing very well live, enough so that he definitely has an idea in his head about what he wants melodically and structurally for his vocals, he just doesn't have the musical training to be able to think about his overall performance in those terms (at least not to me.) It seems he is just clearly having trouble getting comfortable. We had a lot of great success when I went with a Senn 835 for him to yell into. One idea I had is for him to play his P-bass unplugged while he's cutting the vocal. We tried one session to lay down the vocals and his ideas weren't fully formed, but it took him a little while to loosen up (I think it was the better part of 2 hours, about 4 "scratch takes" that we never actually finished and quarter to 3/8ths of a bottle of gin all on his end) He sounds a bit more like Tom Waits singing for The Melvins when he gets into it. What do you do to help someone get relaxed in the studio? This one goes beyond "Home Recording" The second is my band is starting to think about tracking for our next record, and the concept of us all playing live in room came up. We don't have a vocalist, but we do have a sax player and the two are more connected than you would think. I really, REALLY like the idea of having the sax play live with us on the floor, since a lot of our sound live has to deal with the blending of it with the fuzz boxes the guitarist and I use. Our drummer is hesitant about it with issues of bleed, and is worried if one of us fucks up than that's it for the take. My argument is that if we're paying for a nice studio, hopefully that has an in-house engineer that knows what they're doing, we should be able to control the bleed for close micing, and be able to punch in/comp anything that is not the drums and still actually have it sound like we tracked it live. Is this a feasible option for recording?
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2012 18:18 |
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My bandmembers moved into their new loft. It's big. Not like massive but have currently a 20'x20'x20' room that is going to be soundproofed with GreenGlue, but I'm worried about treating the inside of the room. Three of the walls are drywall, one is brick and mortar, and the ceiling is wood. Just whistling in the room right now (not quite finished) is extremely resonant. In the mean time my band has been practicing at the end of the big hall this room is partitioned from. My rough estimates is that the hall is 40x80x20 feet, with that 20' partition. It sounds fuckin' awesome when we play and it's amazing to listen to it. I really love the idea of tracking the record at the space, either in the band room or in the big hall and then sending the tracks to be mixed professionally. The biggest thing I'd worry about is that the tracks sound completely different than it did in the loft while tracking, or that there would be a SNAFU with the session when it comes time to mix. I realized when searching for answers to this problem, this is quite a nice problem to have from my perspective.
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| # ¿ Jun 11, 2012 06:35 |
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wixard posted:What is your intended purpose with this product? I've never used it, but I've also never seen anything other than several tons of sand soundproof a room. There is no material you can coat a wall with to stop it from passing sub frequencies through it. You can maybe stop resonances in the material of the wall from adding to noise, but you aren't going to stop them from transmitting through it. Our intended purpose was to give the girlfriend's of the band members living in the loft space a little give so they can possibly get some sleep. We're aware that such a thing as "perfect" soundproofing doesn't exist, so this is just something that can allow us to practice later than 9-10 PM without people seeing it as a nuisance. We're not expecting miracles but from what I know we'll still have to treat the inside of the room.
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| # ¿ Jun 11, 2012 21:05 |
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wixard posted:I'm just afraid that in practice you're going to be muffling the sound of a band playing, but that a C-weighted dB meter on the other side of the wall might not change all that much because of the low-end. It will sound like you rolled the window up more on a thumping car stereo. I'm sure it will be noticeable, I just question whether it's worth the money for your purposes. If you said you were trying to keep the girlfriends' chatter and neighbor's sprinkler out of your recording takes, I would be more confident in its results. I'm not sure if we're RIGHT under someone, but I know that someone does live underneath the actual living space of the loft, which has hardwood floors instead of stone slab. The landlord came by the other day and walked in on us practicing and said it was an acceptable level. It's a little too late as the stuff is already bought, but I will report back with findings once we've installed it.
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| # ¿ Jun 12, 2012 05:01 |
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Mradyfist posted:Uh Noise Machine, you are hanging an additional layer of drywall using the green glue right? Not just slathering it on some drywall that's already there? Yes we're hanging an additional layer of drywall using the green glue. I myself am not doing anything, I don't even live in the space currently.
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| # ¿ Jun 12, 2012 17:28 |
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The Mystery Date posted:I don't know if these guys work for sound isolation as well as they work at taming bass resonance, but I made six bass traps and they've done wonders for my home studio. I made them using the instructions from this video for ~$150 total using 6pcf Knauf Ecose board from a local supplier (shipping is killer on Corning 703). Thanks! This is what I was looking for.
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| # ¿ Jun 12, 2012 18:03 |
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Rotten Cookies posted:Thanks for the encouragement. This definitely gives me some confidence. Nice tracks. I hope I can do that. I want to say that I can tell you'll be fine. I'm just starting to really get my feet wet with sessions and engineering, but I can say the actual work with this stuff seems to be actual engineering, as in finding or improvising fixes or solutions for problems that become apparent as time goes on, a lot of which you will never see coming no matter how much anal planning you do (see all my posts in this thread) So update on my situation... Yes, the GreenGlue is going to be used with two separate pieces of drywall, and the floor is concrete that is a foot thick before you reach the ceiling of the room below it. With regard to the loving can o worms I opened up with the acoustics question...  Knowing that there are no quick fixes, is this something that's going to rely on trapping bass frequencies than anything else? Should I just start a 101 course on acoustics or should I pay a professional in the field to come look at the space and run some tests?
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| # ¿ Jun 16, 2012 05:53 |
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Brettbot posted:So I have a Lexicon Alpha, and I just got a new SM57 as a gift. When I plug the microphone into the back of the Alpha, I hear everything fine through my headphones, but nothing shows up on the recording (Audacity). If I plug my guitar straight into the mixer, through the instrument input, I record fine. Does this mean I need some sort preamp for the SM57? Just briefly looking at the specs I'm gonna vote yes. You could try an XLR female to 1/4" male cable and plug that into the instrument input.
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| # ¿ Jul 24, 2012 03:03 |
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Can you use an external hard drive for recording if it's connected via a USB hub? I have this nice keyboard and mouse but my macbook only has two usb ports.
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| # ¿ Aug 7, 2012 22:05 |
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nimper posted:The latency there would get pretty high, I would think. Yeah I thought that too. I need to plug in my keyboard, mouse, USB interface and my external. I figure I would just record everything to the internal harddrive on my macbook, then just dump everything over when I'm finished with the session. I really need the keyboard and mouse as the macbook hurts my wrists for long periods of time.
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| # ¿ Aug 8, 2012 02:21 |
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Mradyfist posted:Latency doesn't come into play in that situation, even assuming you're not using direct monitoring your computer doesn't need to write the recorded audio to your hard drive first and then play it back. Signal flow (if you can call it that) for audio that you were monitoring through your DAW would be interface, RAM, CPU, RAM, and back out to your interface, with a copy being spat out to your HD at the same time. Thanks. my ultimate plan is to get a 16 channel i/o firewire interface, would it still matter if I used my external HDD via USB2.0? FWIW I did a session in February that was a Digi 003 connected via Firewire (I believe) and wrote it all to my external which was plugged into the USB port. I was running 24 bit/44.1 for it. What's the general capacity for USB2.0? I'm planning to run sessions at 24/96 in the future. Would I just have to get a firewire HDD and patch it in first before I daisy chain the interface(s)?
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| # ¿ Aug 8, 2012 03:31 |
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Christ, after breaking in my new monitors with all my favorite albums, I try to do an overdub using an ART USB Dual Pre and Record as a DAW. It was going fine until whenever I added a new effect/amp simulator/whatever into the chain, and then it sounded like shiiiiiit. My sound source sounded like a lovely soundcard, and had a noticable delay behind it (although the delay was much cleaner than the actual sound). So I try and swap over to the USB codec (I had set it up as an aggregate device earlier), but I have no input controls for the USB codec, and the only answer I can find is "use it as an aggregate device". I try and adjust buffer size and that does the trick for about 5 minutes tops. Edit: yeah my input goes from great sounding to sounding like it's being put thru a poo poo ring modulator into a lovely peavy overdrive pedal followed by a clean sounding 300 ms one repeat delay. Noise Machine fucked around with this message at Aug 8, 2012 around 07:15 |
| # ¿ Aug 8, 2012 06:59 |
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MockingQuantum posted:Can anybody recommend a good, flexible, non-DAW specific mixing control surface? Basically I don't need an actual digital or analog mixer, since I rarely deal with more than a couple of inputs and the rest is sequenced, but I work a lot faster on an actual physical surface than with an on-screen mixer. 8 channel strips minimum, ideally assignable on the go, would be great. WAH BAM: http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/BCF2000.aspx My dad has one and loves it, everytime I use it I love it as well. Noise Machine fucked around with this message at Oct 3, 2012 around 01:50 |
| # ¿ Oct 3, 2012 01:47 |
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MockingQuantum posted:I'll see if I can find one and mess around on it for a while, but I have to admit that Behringer has left a bad taste in my mouth as a brand. I tend to neither like nor rely on their gear, but I'll give it a fair shake. For audio, yes, I would be as skeptical as well. For just a hardware interface that doesn't actually carry any audio information? It's pretty well built, he's had it for about 8 years and he's still working like new.
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| # ¿ Oct 3, 2012 03:46 |
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Christopher posted:
The newest version of Reason can actually do this, FWIW.
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| # ¿ Oct 17, 2012 03:27 |
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Rageaholic Monkey posted:Yeah, Reason 6 integrated Propellerhead's Record interface, so now you can hook up an audio interface and record guitars, bass, synth, etc. and incorporate those recordings with Reason's softsynths. That's what I'm doing now, and I love the way it ties it all together. I'm close to finishing an album full of stuff I've recorded like this and I feel like it's given my stuff more variety. Yeah, I've actually been using it as my main DAW for about 3 years. I feel INCREDIBLY comfortable mixing on it, I love the interface, but there are somethings I can't really get behind. No VSTs is fine because I work around it, especially when the tools they do give you to work with are incredibly flexible. I also find it cuts out a lot of time in "Screwdriver World" where you're just changing patches endlessly but not making a commitment. But no text markers! Text markers have been around since the loving 80s! What the hell were they thinking with that? I can't imagine why the hell they decided to 86 that. Some of the vernacular is a little strange too, especially when I was first trying to sidechain stuff.
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| # ¿ Oct 17, 2012 14:55 |
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| # ¿ May 23, 2013 17:21 |
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LordPants posted:So, I've made my mix, sounds amazing in headphones, slightly base heavy through cheap speakers. Do I just pull the bass back a bit to play it safe so that the average joe in his car isn't getting killed by the bass player or do I trust what my headphones tell me? Make two versions of the mixes. One with the bass cut and one without. Take a track you know well that has a bass sound or general "feel" that you're going for with this track. Play them in your car or a friend's car and make notes about what's acceptable and unacceptable going back and forth. Radio will usually put a limiter on everything (if we're talking about the more commercial stations, they slam the poo poo out of everything) just to get THAT sound like it's oozing out of your speakers. In my experience I've found actually adding a master compressor to the track using a VERY low ratio and VERY high threshold will keep your track from sounding different if it gets any radio airtime. Like, there should be no dB reduction that you can see. If you have a plugin with a virtual vU meter, you want to "tickle" the needle verrry lightly, were it's very slight movements.
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| # ¿ May 6, 2013 19:27 |
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