Old 04-07-2009, 03:39 PM   #521
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For my understanding I will summarize what I learned for bass and treble for the poor man's one room studio (and please correct me if I'm wrong):

Roll of bass and treble on most tracks to get rid of rumble and hiss as much as possible for that particular track. Cut more than the unexperienced would think. That process is called cleaning and should be done first in mixing.

Keep the bass on just the necessary tracks, typically BassDrum and Bass. Shape these tracks differently with EQ to seperate them spatially and achieve a clean, not boomy fundament.

Keep the air (above 10 or 12k) on tracks only which can contribute hiss-free and non harsh treble. That could be hi-quality samples of Cymbals or HiHat, Triangle, Chimes and so on. If there is NO such airy-track it is better to accept that fact. Excellent mixes do exist without too much going on beyond 12 kHz.


----------------

Could this be a way to go - or would it sound amateurish?

After cleaning try to "generate" some air - if necessary - from hiss-free and non-harsh treble (7 to 10 kHz) by means of an exciter (the kind which actually adds freqs one octave above).
Please don't use these or any other settings as "recipes." The point is not to tell anyone where to boost or cut, just point out some counter-intuitive things to look for that a lot of beginners miss. ALL YOU NEED IS EARS. really.

Go Red Sox.
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Old 04-08-2009, 01:17 AM   #522
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Please don't use these or any other settings as "recipes." The point is not to tell anyone where to boost or cut, just point out some counter-intuitive things to look for that a lot of beginners miss. ALL YOU NEED IS EARS. really.

Go Red Sox.
OK, got the message.

But what does that mean: Go Red Sox ?
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Old 04-08-2009, 08:01 AM   #523
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But what does that mean: Go Red Sox ?
"Go" is being used as a word of encouragement for the Boston Red Sox baseball team. I think Yep wants the Red Sox to win something. Similarly, at the Olympics for example, American fans might chant "Go USA." What might fans of Germany chant at the Olympics?

Oh, and what would be the best way to record that with Reaper? (Just to keep this on topic ha ha.)
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Old 04-08-2009, 04:41 PM   #524
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Actually I think yep is referring to a little known practice in many of the older
major record label studios where the head producer wears red socks.

In the event that their is a serious and heated disagreement between the artists and the producers as to the final artistic or sonic outcome of a particular song, the head producer has the option of displaying his socks, thereby exerting his control and dominance over the situation.

Once the socks are displayed the artists have no other recourse but to accept the final decision of the head producer or risk having the entire project scrapped.

It is rare that a head producer would resort to this drastic an intervention since it is considered by most to be heavy handed.

In most cases a more diplomatic and tactful approach is used to resolve any issues that may arise during the course of production.

Correct Yep ?

Last edited by TedR; 04-09-2009 at 03:31 AM.
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Old 04-09-2009, 10:17 AM   #525
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Actually I think yep is referring to a little known practice in many of the older
major record label studios where the head producer wears red socks.

In the event that their is a serious and heated disagreement between the artists and the producers as to the final artistic or sonic outcome of a particular song, the head producer has the option of displaying his socks, thereby exerting his control and dominance over the situation.

Once the socks are displayed the artists have no other recourse but to accept the final decision of the head producer or risk having the entire project scrapped.

It is rare that a head producer would resort to this drastic an intervention since it is considered by most to be heavy handed.

In most cases a more diplomatic and tactful approach is used to resolve any issues that may arise during the course of production.

Correct Yep ?
ha ha I love it! Especially when looking at the original post and how he just mentioned it as a btw - I have to get me a pair!
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Old 04-09-2009, 02:32 PM   #526
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Originally Posted by TedR View Post
Actually I think yep is referring to a little known practice in many of the older
major record label studios where the head producer wears red socks.

In the event that their is a serious and heated disagreement between the artists and the producers as to the final artistic or sonic outcome of a particular song, the head producer has the option of displaying his socks, thereby exerting his control and dominance over the situation.

Once the socks are displayed the artists have no other recourse but to accept the final decision of the head producer or risk having the entire project scrapped.

It is rare that a head producer would resort to this drastic an intervention since it is considered by most to be heavy handed.

In most cases a more diplomatic and tactful approach is used to resolve any issues that may arise during the course of production.

Correct Yep ?
Nail meet head. That's it exactly, and my sign-off had nothing to do with opening day of the 2009 baseball season.
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Old 04-12-2009, 10:38 AM   #527
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Yep,

I've been reading this thread since day one and I just wanted to give a big thank you! Like others have said, you have a way of describing things that helps people "get it."

The posts by you and others in this thread have inspired me to become "experimental" again with effects, except now I have a better understand of why things work the way they do.

Keep up the great work!

(Also, thanks to Smurf for the PDF files. They come in handy.)
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Old 04-12-2009, 12:34 PM   #528
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Yep,

You wrote here (from memory) that the fx chain on most tracks contain 2+ stages of compression.

Could you give one or two examples of this, with a brief description of what each compressor is trying to achieve?

Thanks! Also, this thread has been most helpful!
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Old 04-12-2009, 07:13 PM   #529
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You are very Welcome d.bop, and Welcome to the forum also!
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Old 04-13-2009, 02:29 PM   #530
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Well, i just wanted to thank yep and the rest of you guys for this incredibly informative thread. I've been playing guitar for 25 years, but have yet to record out of fear of digital recording and a general lack of any idea as to where to start. I've had a digital workstation for a few years now, but haven't been able to figure out just what the heck to do with it. Yeah, i'm pretty much an idiot. But this thread has gotten me to climb in from the ledge and close the window. So again, thanks so much for the info.

I don't mean to threadjack, so feel free to ignore this yep, but if you or any of you other guys could give me a little advice, i'd be most grateful. I fingerpick on an old gibson, don't use picks, pretty much hillbilly and mississippi blues type stuff. I have a fairly cheap tube preamp, an cheap condenser, and an sm57. Oh, and one of those sure elvis mics. I realize my gear is a bit lacking, but i'm not really interested in creating a sound to compete with anything modern (those 20 foot tall acoustic guitars you spoke of and so on). Honestly, if i could capture a sound in the spirit of those first two Dylan albums, from songs like "Dont think twice" and "Boots of Spanish Leather," i'd be ecstatic. Just one track of nice, natural, warm, fingerpicked guitar.
I live in an old farmhouse, with the main room being about 35 by 15 with 9 foot ceilings. If i understood the earlier posts, this would be a good room to record the guitar with the mic pulled back, to bring in the natural room sound (i could have completely misinterpreted that.) So, should i use the condenser? And would there be any need to bring in one of the other mics for close miking? What would such a step seek to achieve? And are there any other glaring concerns or processes i should consider? Again, just looking for a simple old folk sound, nothing fancy. Sorry if these are vague questions - just looking for some general tips. You guys have been a great help to this old newb, so thanks again. And props to yep for using "embiggen" in a sentence. Most cromulent.
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Old 04-13-2009, 03:40 PM   #531
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Yep,

You wrote here (from memory) that the fx chain on most tracks contain 2+ stages of compression.

Could you give one or two examples of this, with a brief description of what each compressor is trying to achieve?

Thanks! Also, this thread has been most helpful!
This a good and timely question, and invites re-visiting some of the stuff from earlier in the thread in terms of overall process.

Without checking back, I'm not 100% sure whether "most" fx chains would have this, but it certainly is very common to have more than one stage of compression (and more than one stage of eq and maybe other effects, as well).

Before we proceed with compression (I promise I will get to it), much earlier in this thread I went through some very detailed and picayune advice on wringing out your signal chain, gain-staging, etc. I suspect that probably 90% of the people who have got this far never bothered with that stuff, but I started with it for the benefit of the 10% who are really interested in a systemic approach to getting the best sound quality.

The subsequent pages have been a lot more casual and theoretical about doing stuff like using filters and effects and mics and whatever, because they are starting from the presumption that you already know and trust your gear. Which as I said right at the beginning, is more important than having great gear. And as a shitload of threads on this site and on other sites prove, there are an awful lot of people who know every preset, recipe, and "magic setting," and who own good equipment, and who also have know idea what half the controls, plugs, and switches are for. And when their expensive magic box doesn't sound as good as they expect, instead of reading the manual and actually wrapping their head around the basic technical operation, they start a new thread asking whether they need a new plugin or a different brand of magic box.

When you flick the hi-pass or lo-cut switch on your mic or preamp, that's EQ. I don't know whether it's good or bad EQ. When you push the "limit" button on your preamp, that's compression. I don't know whether it's good or bad. If you paid $200 for a little mixer or audio interface that has 8 channels of preamps and AD conversion and compression and EQ circuits on every channel, there is a significant likelihood that some or all of those features will either sound bad or rapidly become noisy or degraded with age or will not have consistent controls or God-knows-what.

Everybody has had headphones or guitar cables that get crackly or dull-sounding or cut in and out due to partial shorts or whatever. You can buy very good-sounding equipment very cheap these days but the quality control, durability, and mechanical and electrical integrity is probably not going to be military-spec, last-forever, heirloom-type.

You may have had the experience of trying to use a screwdriver where the bit was kind of worn out, dull, or notched. And you may have found that using this half-dead screwdriver just strips and kills the screws, and then you have to go back and drill out the screws to extract them. You may have had similar experiences using a perfectly good screwdriver that was the wrong size for the screw you're trying to drive. A bad tool, or a good tool used badly is worse than nothing at all. It's better to hold off on a project than to actively ruin it.

If you have decent monitors and more or less functional hearing, then all I or anyone else can do is to help you think through the stuff you're hearing. There are no rules. If it sounds good, it's good. And all you need is ears. Not magic ears, not golden ears, just ears. If you can hear the difference between good recordings and bad ones, if you can hear good sounds, then you can tell far better than I can what's working or what is not.
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Old 04-13-2009, 04:32 PM   #532
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Let's walk through an entire process for, say, a clean-ish electric guitar.

We could do this for any instrument, but let's say you have a very punchy, spanky Fender guitar sound on the bridge pickup with a close-miked amp. Let's say that the waveform has a sharp, near-instantaneous pick attack ("transient") that is some 10 or 12 dB louder than the average RMS "body" of the sound. And let's say that the "body" itself consists of a fairly short sort of stringy "thunk" that quickly decays into a low-level "note", which in turn decays more slowly into noise. The above is all pretty common. So far, we're just talking about the signal coming right out of the mic cable into the mixing console or preamp or whatever (or, for that matter, the signal coming out of your POD or amp plugin).

There are some frequency issues that might crop up immediately, even with a good basic sound. Some kind of DC-offset-type thing is pretty common with guitar rigs, especially in close-miking. If you look at the captured waveform, this is when it looks like there is sort of more "stuff" either above or below the zero-line, i.e. the waveform is not symmetrical. So a simple high-pass filter to cut the extreme lows will help "re-center" the soundwave and open up some headroom as well as cleaning up rumble and mic thumps. So that might be step one, either at the mic's hi-pass switch, or at the console's input, or even in your recording software, depending on how you roll. This will also improve your downstream compression and other effects by eliminating non-musical and irrelevant content that the compressor would otherwise try to track and respond to.

In a similar vein, there is probably a fair amount of hiss and not much worth keeping above a certain frequency, so a high-cut or low-pass filter maybe somewhere between 7 and 15k might be in order. There might also be some obvious lower-midrange murk or soupiness to scoop out in the 150-400hz range, and/or some obvious low-end thumpiness that is going to conflict with the kick drum. Whatever.

Here we come to some divergent schools of thought when it comes to processing at the tracking stage, especially if we're talking about irreversible processing before the signal hits the recording medium:

1. Moderate: get rid of stuff that you obviously don't want in the track. Clean it up, erring on the side of caution. Pros: makes life easier further downstream, forces you to make sure you have a sound you can work with now, so you don't uncover a horrorshow at mixing, opens up headroom and flexibility for later processing. Cons: you might overdo it and wish you could take it back later.

2. Purist/conservative: Leave everything for mix-down. No reason to commit before you have to. Pros: you'll never regret a decision if you don't make it in the first place. Cons: leaves a lot of basic clean-up work for mixing, which is a pretty big and complicated project to begin with. And commitment doesn't necessarily get any easier when you have 40 tracks to deal with instead of just one.

3. Liberal/aggressive: Keep only what you're sure you want, and get the track as close to perfect as you can as early as you can. Pros: maximum headroom/resolution, makes mixing a much easier and more creative process assuming you get it right, may help fire inspiration and creativity throughout the process by sounding more like a "record" from the get-go, forces you to critically evaluate the tracks and arrangement as you track, avoiding potential wish-I-coulda/woulda/shoulda at mixdown time when it's too late to re-track (e.g. this approach heads off "we'll-fix-it-in-the-mix-itis" by forcing you to confront the real evolving sound of the record as you go). Cons: big risk of getting it wrong if you don't know what you're doing. Beginners especially have a big tendency to misunderstimate what kinds of sounds will work in the mix as opposed to sounding good solo.

These decisions are more critical when recording to tape, since the natural effects of hiss, tape compression, and the uneven frequency response of tape mean that certain kinds of tracking mistakes will end up as semi-permanently embedded artifacts in the recording. DAW makes it pretty easy to undo if you do everything digital, but negates some of the headroom/resolution benefits of cleaning up the signal in analog before "printing to tape" so to speak.

However, even if you have only a soundcard and a computer and do everything 100% in the box, I recommend at least considering experimentation with a moderate or aggressive approach, where you set up one set of effects while "tracking", then render all the processed tracks, delete the effects chains, and save as a new project. A lot of the benefits of these kinds of approaches are in freeing up pyschic and creative energy downstream, and also in the fact that it is often easier to make specific, targeted corrections one-at-a-time as opposed to, for example, trying to recreate a wholesale dynamic profile with a single compressor. Not to mention the fact that upstream processing certainly has an effect on downstream processing.

So, specifically to the topic of compression, it is extremely common at this stage (especially when tracking to tape) to either engage a limiter switch or some mild compression or both to do any or all of the following:

- Knock a few dB off some of those 15dB transients with some limiting or fast, high-threshold compression (note that we are not even close to approaching modern "loudness race" debates at this stage, just getting the guitar into audible range if we have an average -14dBFS mix).

- Even out some of the differences between chords and single-note passages with some very light (maybe 2:1) compression at a low threshold.

- "Punch up" some of the thunky "body" that lives below the transient attack but above the "note decay" with medium-attack, gradual-release, medium-threshold compression that will exaggerate rather than compress the average dynamics of the track

Any of the above might just be regarded as part of the "tracking" process, just getting the pure instrument sound that you want to work with.

When it comes to mixdown, let's say you've got a good bass/drums/vocal mix going that's averaging around -15dB, and you need to bring in the guitar. And maybe this "spanky" guitar sound is having a hard time fitting in the mix without overwhelming everything else. Here you might want to pull up the average level and the decay a little bit, to get the guitar to "sing" and fill out a little more, so you might put some short-attack, medium-release, medium threshold heavy compression on the guitar track, to get the sustain to "swell" a little bit compared with the attack. And maybe that gives a little pumping/sucking effect where the initial "spank" rapidly drops down and then the sustain swells back up as the compressor releases. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad. Maybe you need another stage of compression to further control or smooth out the front end of the pick attack, or to clamp down on the very tail to prevent pumping hiss.

And then maybe as the mix finally starts to come together, you through a little bit of compression over the whole rhythm section of drums, bass, and guitar to "glue" the whole thing together, and sort of tighten up the sound and timing a little bit, and to get the overall dynamics to "seat" a little better.

Sometimes a pair of jeans fits better after you wear them and wash them and wear them wash them again a few times. A sculptor usually works by first cutting out the rough shape, and then by blocking out the important features, and then finally by cutting the important details and then finishing the smooth curves. Painters very often paint many layers of color on top of each other. Writers almost invariably rewrite and revise. Whether these steps are theoretically "necessary" in a technical sense is almost irrelevant. The practical reality is that small, obvious, gradual improvements often lead to a better overall result than, for instance, starting with a block of raw marble and trying to perfectly carve one finger and then the next, and so on.
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Old 04-13-2009, 06:04 PM   #533
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Well, i just wanted to thank yep and the rest of you guys for this incredibly informative thread. I've been playing guitar for 25 years, but have yet to record out of fear of digital recording and a general lack of any idea as to where to start. I've had a digital workstation for a few years now, but haven't been able to figure out just what the heck to do with it. Yeah, i'm pretty much an idiot. But this thread has gotten me to climb in from the ledge and close the window. So again, thanks so much for the info.

I don't mean to threadjack, so feel free to ignore this yep, but if you or any of you other guys could give me a little advice, i'd be most grateful. I fingerpick on an old gibson, don't use picks, pretty much hillbilly and mississippi blues type stuff. I have a fairly cheap tube preamp, an cheap condenser, and an sm57. Oh, and one of those sure elvis mics. I realize my gear is a bit lacking, but i'm not really interested in creating a sound to compete with anything modern (those 20 foot tall acoustic guitars you spoke of and so on). Honestly, if i could capture a sound in the spirit of those first two Dylan albums, from songs like "Dont think twice" and "Boots of Spanish Leather," i'd be ecstatic. Just one track of nice, natural, warm, fingerpicked guitar.
I live in an old farmhouse, with the main room being about 35 by 15 with 9 foot ceilings. If i understood the earlier posts, this would be a good room to record the guitar with the mic pulled back, to bring in the natural room sound (i could have completely misinterpreted that.) So, should i use the condenser? And would there be any need to bring in one of the other mics for close miking? What would such a step seek to achieve? And are there any other glaring concerns or processes i should consider? Again, just looking for a simple old folk sound, nothing fancy. Sorry if these are vague questions - just looking for some general tips. You guys have been a great help to this old newb, so thanks again. And props to yep for using "embiggen" in a sentence. Most cromulent.
Well, without knowing anything in particular about your sound, I will say that the particular combination of "fingerpicking," "old gibson", "old farmhouse", and "playing for more than 25 years" sounds like the audio engineering of a romance novel encounter. I mean, that's about on par with "concert pianist", "Mason & Hamlin baby grand" and "18th-century cathedral."

My first reaction is just to limit background noise, walk around to find the spot where it sounds best, and then set up the best mic I can get my hands on and count my lucky stars. Not much for me to do but to push the record button, keep quiet, and then send the file to duplication.

Really well-practiced solo musicians and ensembles with good instruments tend to engineer and mix themselves. The original "audio engineers" were people who wore lab coats and kept spare boxes of capacitors and tape rollers and and who aligned tape heads and adjusted capstans and that kind of stuff. Totally different from the modern role.

Really skilled musicians (including just about anybody who has been playing for 25+ years) tend to control their own sound. One really obvious example of musician "self engineering" is the simple fact that musicians tend to play single-note leads in the peak fletcher-munson frequency range (i.e. the upper midrange). This makes the "lead" sound louder proportionate to lower-range full chords, for instance.

Far subtler variations are the ways in which experienced musicians will, for example, play higher notes or lower notes with a different "touch," to get appropriate and balanced variations in dynamic and frequency profile. But even more important is just having mature, sensitive, balanced arrangements, even on a single instrument.

A lot of the stuff that is applicable to making a young garage band sound polished and professional is kind of beside the point with an artist who already sounds polished and professional.

What marks a great young pop/rock/R&B/hip-hop/electronic act is very often having fresh, imaginative ideas and an energetic, charismatic, and sort of "cup overruneth" creativity. Often, by definition, their inspiration outpaces their technical competency and musical maturity. And this is where a skilled engineer or producer can really help to turn an overloaded imagination and hyperactive creative vision into a polished, professional recording. That's where the 20-foot-tall acoustic guitars and so on come into play.

But at the risk of over-generalizing, as musicians get more experience, and as dedication and practice start to outpace fevered and unrealized imaginative vision, the performances start to become more sophisticated and complete in their own right. And the production and engineering roles start to diminish into a purer, more technical, and less-intrusive utility.

So, with all that in mind, this is not at all a threadjack, but an absolutely fantastic way to bring in the topic of more naturalistic forms of recording.

Specifically to your question, "cheap condenser" is a pretty broad term. An SM57 would not be my first choice for recording solo acoustic guitar, but it is certainly an adequate mic. Whether your specific "cheap condenser" is better or worse is impossible for me to answer.

For a whole lot of reasons, I'd prefer to avoid talking about specific gear in this thread, especially along the lines of "best mic under $XXX for acoustic guitar." Partly because there are about a bazillion other threads on exactly that topic, and partly because I have certainly never systemically tried every cheap condenser under $XXX on acoustic guitar and I'm pretty sure nobody else has, either, and even if they had, their results on, say, a strummed Talkamanie Artist Series would almost certainly be different from your results for fingerpicking an old Gibson.

There a lot of really good and also pretty bad Chinese-capsule condenser mics on the market in the sub-$400 range. Unfortunately, there are excruciatingly few people in the world who have extensive direct experience in this market. Professional engineers who might have the budget to buy all 300 of these mics and try them all out on a wide variety of real-world recording projects usually don't bother, because they can instead buy a handful of proven performers for the price, and frankly because their livelihood depends on getting professional results every day, not to mention on having big-name gear. The cost of the mics is hardly relevant to a big-name commercial studio (they could get them for free, anyway).

Their real cost to test them out is not the cost of the mics but the cost of studio time that they're not billing for (or worse, the cost of making real artists sit around playing the same stuff over and over) while they're conducting "shootouts" to see which $100 mic comes closest to sounding like a U47 or whatever, when they already have a U47 sitting there in the mic cabinet. I mean, if you were suddenly given a six- or seven-figure business loan to launch your music career, would you go out and buy hundreds of cheap instruments to try and find the one that sounds "almost as good," or would you simply get the real deal? Even if you also had free access to a truckload of the cheap knockoffs, would you even bother?

Moreover, there is a serious and fundamental problem with trying to conduct a clinical "shootout." Real mics are used in the real world in different ways. A good mic with a flat frequency response and a broad pickup pattern is going to sound completely different from an equally "good" mic with a tight, focused pickup pattern and a "big"-sounding proximity effect, depending on how you use them. Do you put them both in an iso booth or an anechoic chamber 4" from the source pointed dead-on? If so, then you've completely negated the very significant differences in pickup pattern, and the "proximity effect" mic is going to sound a lot more bass-heavy than it would if it were a little further away... if you put them both in a "live" room 3 feet from the source, then the sound of room is certainly going to compete with the sound of the mic when it comes to the broad-pickup one (for good or for ill, depending on the room), and the "big proximity" mic might get cast to the wayside only because it was being used in completely the wrong context.

So anyway, having now ranted and raved against "recipes" presets and "best X for $XXX" kinds of stuff for umpteen pages, I'm about to take a step backwards and offer some cheap gear and "purist" mic recipes, with significant caveats. Anyone is of course welcome to join in, but if you find this thread helpful, I encourage you to keep it so by focusing only on stuff borne out by competitive real-world experience. I.e. if you have only ever tried one condenser mic in a particular price bracket, please abstain.

Onward...
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Old 04-13-2009, 07:10 PM   #534
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Keeping in mind all the caveats in the above post (and throughout this thread in general), here are the mics that I have used in (I think) the sub-$100 category that are really head-and-shoulders better than other super-low-priced examples, and specifically how they compare to an SM57 (which is sort of the de facto sub-$100 studio mic). Bear in mind that I have not even come close to trying everything, and that most of these examples have been around for a few years, and there may be better alternatives. And none of them are necessarily "best value" mics, just standouts in the "super-cheap" category. I.e. sub-$100 mics that I would personally be okay with using on a paid project

Vocal mic: MXL V67G-- extremely "big" sounding LD condenser with massive "movie announcer" proximity effect. Very forgiving near-range placement/pickup that picks up minimal room sound while still sounding consistent when recording a moving head. Very hype and "big" sounding, with a forward, slightly crunchy top end that smooths and flatters dull, weak singers but that might turn a little brittle on airy females or whispery males. Like a slightly overdone impression of classic tube mics. Most "expensive" sounding mic I know of under $100.

Close instrument mic: MCA SP-1-- at $40 apiece, this is an unbeatable deal. Like a condenser version of an SM57--forward, present, but slightly faster and more sensitive, and with more depth and low-end clarity. Very focused polarity makes it tough for vocals and might be a little fizzy/"too sensitive" for close-miked heavily-overdriven electric guitars. Awesome on drums, not least because you don't have to worry about the drummer killing an expensive mic.

Far instrument/all-purpose wide-pickup mic: I have to split this between two picks. Probably the most useful to readers of this thread will be the line of MXL 603s/604s, which are wide-pickup, extended-range small diaphragm condensers. Very accurate, very "airy." Almost too airy, in fact. The sensitive high end has a tendency towards brittleness compared the German pencil mics it's modeled on, but at 1/15th the price, who's complaining? Good for OHs and room mics, and not bad for acoustic guitars, piano, or clean guitar amps where slightly hyped clarity and realness are desired. Second pick is the Behringer ECM8000. This is an absolutely fool-the-ear accurate omnidirectional mic that looks and sounds like a knockoff of Earthworks reference mics that cost about 100x the price. If you throw this mic in the room while people are talking and then play back the recording through decent monitors, people will start responding to the recorded conversation. It's that accurate. For good or for ill. If you have a great room and $100, then a pair of these might be all you need. If you have a bad room, then these mics will pick up all it's badnesss with nary a trace of flattery or forgiveness. Note that both of the above mics have high-ish self noise and will produce more hiss than their more expensive inspirations (or an SM57, for that matter).

-Last but not least, all the above reviews were written in reference to the venerable SM57. Originally made under contract to the US military, the SM57 is designed to deliver accuracy, clarity, rejection of feedback/background noise, and ease-of-use/placement. It delivers all in spades, and is arguably the most useful mic ever made. It is unarguably the most widely-used professional mic ever made. It is a dry, direct, very forward-sounding mic with a slight "flattening and fattening" effect, almost like a high-grade telephone. If you look at those frequency charts above of produced records, they are pretty close to the frequency response of an SM57. It has a very forward presence range but would never be described as an "airy" mic, and lacks the fast response, depth, richness, and detail of more sensitive condenser mics. It is no surprise that its most popular studio applications are electric guitars and snare. Its sister mic, the SM58, is basically the same mic with a wider pickup pattern and a built-in windscreen, and has become the de-facto live mic for rock vocals.

So having said all that, companies like Behringer and MXL also make a lot of crappy mics. Endorsement of one model is not endorsement of a brand, and "cheap condenser-itis" is not a good sound, compared with the all-57 ADAT sound of budget studios from 15 years ago.

If anyone has used these mics and prefers other in the same price range, then you may well be better-informed than I am. I hope anyone offering suggestions will be clear and honest in their experience of other mics. There is nothing more useless than 100 people all recommending the only condenser mic they've ever used.
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Old 04-13-2009, 07:23 PM   #535
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A year or two ago, some guy in a music snob chatroom was telling me that neither his studio nor any pro studio he'd ever been in had a single SM57, nor would any of them ever want such a shitty mic. I almost died laughing.

When most studios have at least one, if not three/four/ten, I think it's a pretty safe bet.
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Old 04-13-2009, 08:36 PM   #536
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A year or two ago, some guy in a music snob chatroom was telling me that neither his studio nor any pro studio he'd ever been in had a single SM57, nor would any of them ever want such a shitty mic. I almost died laughing.

When most studios have at least one, if not three/four/ten, I think it's a pretty safe bet.
As much as is pains me and runs against my nature to take sides with audio forum wankers, he might not have been that far off if it was recent and he's only been in studios for a few years.

Recording studios are dying out left and right and pro audio engineers are lucky to make minimum wage, in the US (even ones with gold-record resumes). On the one hand, the commercial record industry is rapidly eroding due to the vicious cycle of piracy and the accompanying consolidation and conservatism of major labels and distributors. On the other hand, cheap digital recording has empowered musicians who, a decade ago, might have saved up $2,000 to record an album to instead spend the money on mics and a better soundcard.

As a result, recording studios are under increasing pressure to find some way to set themselves apart, and a lot of them are in a desperate scramble to do so with gear lists that do not include anything that a home recordist could afford. The irony is that, as home recording has exploded, and with it an increasingly affluent hobbyist contingent, the prices and demand for "vintage" and "boutique" stuff has shot up. The manufacturers want to get their stuff into "pro" studios, so they can use the name to sell to amateurs, and the remaining "pro" studios are eager to showcase a gear list of all-boutique stuff, so they are happy to trade endorsements for free or discounted gear.

As a result, you get studios with a name engineer (who might be having a hard time affording his daily Ramen, but who once set up mics for a Judas Priest record) replacing all of his SM57s with free or discounted boutique mics from some guy's garage, who in turn wants to use the endorsement "Joe Blow (judas priest, et al) says 'Great mic! I've scrapped all my SM57s and replaced them with XXX! I wish I had them when I recorded JUDAS PRIEST!'"

Now, never mind that the only gold record the above engineer was ever affiliated with was a Judas Priest record recorded with 65% SM57s. If you call him today his first line over the phone is going to be, "lemme guess, you're trying to make a record with an SM57-- we throw those things in the trash around here. All our mics are handmade from solid blocks of aluminum by this expert guy in his garage who does magnetic imaging tests and only makes 83 mics a year and they cost $1,000 apiece, retail. No wonder you can't get good results."

Bash him all you want, but you're not 60 years old with a Billboard resume and nothing to show for it but bad tattoos.
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Old 04-13-2009, 09:19 PM   #537
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Oh that's so sad. So mean. So funny!
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Old 04-13-2009, 09:55 PM   #538
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Vocal mic: MXL V67G-- extremely "big" sounding LD condenser with massive "movie announcer" proximity effect. Very forgiving near-range placement/pickup that picks up minimal room sound while still sounding consistent when recording a moving head. Very hype and "big" sounding, with a forward, slightly crunchy top end that smooths and flatters dull, weak singers but that might turn a little brittle on airy females or whispery males. Like a slightly overdone impression of classic tube mics. Most "expensive" sounding mic I know of under $100.
i can second this as a stunning mic for vocals (and absolutely horrible on everything else i've tried it on, weirdly). it has this crunchy, low-fi upper mid thing going on that ruins most instruments but seems to make singers sound a lot better than they actually are. i love my one, it's great.
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Old 04-16-2009, 02:17 AM   #539
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Sonar interloper here. Thanks for the point, yep. I'm glad I found this. I just stayed up until I finished.

And, man, I wish it was around when I was making the plunge into digital home recording oh those 8 years ago. So many missteps, pointless cross-grades and blind alleys pursued that really had nothing to do with getting the job at hand done. The synchronicity of this thread with my own thinking about my music, my studio, over the past few months is a little spooky.

... the early pages of this thread, about getting a working studio rather than a collection of gear you're kinda always sorting through, esp. resonated. I got hooks for my cables, I got a decent hardcover notebook, I sorted my equipment into what is set up and ready to use, and what is the 'meh' pile. Set up a bench for fixing and testing. Your ideas will work really well with how I'm thinking.

I just got a decent if not glamorous FNR pre-amp. Now, until that time I can significantly improve upon my gear (i.e. better nearfields), I'm staying put.

Likewise, all your words about relative levels dovetails to everything that I have been forcing myself to learn about mixing my own music. I backed into it by trying to teach myself to understand K-Metering. But in the process I made a heap of embarrassing and horrifying discoveries/realizations about the way that I'd been mixing.

Anyway... blah, blah, blah. ;-P I signed up because I had a tip that might fit in with a lot of stuff you touched on. Thought I'd add it to the public record.

<!-- begin tip --> ;-)

When you are 'setting up' your studio/workspace, build a dedicated vocal effects chain. There are a thousand ways to accomplish this depending on your particular gear. But essentially you want to record the vocal directly from the pre-amp while allowing the vocalist to have a dedicated *out-board* reverb. If you can/want, record the verb output to a separate channel.

Why out-board? I'll leave it for better ears/minds than mine the quality/merits of software v. hardware reverbs and comps. But not having to worry about real-time monitoring an audio track while recording is invaluable, working alone or working with a vocalist. There are so many benefits to having this set up and ready to go that it seems redundant to list 'em.

In the vein of 'just getting the job done' this is a simple way to get you away from the screen and focusing on a getting a good vocal performance and track. You can get a decent verb or digital multi for not much buck; the actual quality is rather immaterial in the end. It's primary purpose is monitoring. (Though, yeah, there are a lot of other applications for being able to do this on the fly with any instrument/sound.)

I guess it's kind of basic, but it was a newbie oversight I wish I'd corrected earlier.

<!-- end -->

So, yeah, really great stuff. I'm looking forward to digesting it more thoroughly.
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Old 04-16-2009, 02:38 AM   #540
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A year or two ago, some guy in a music snob chatroom was telling me that neither his studio nor any pro studio he'd ever been in had a single SM57, nor would any of them ever want such a shitty mic. I almost died laughing.

When most studios have at least one, if not three/four/ten, I think it's a pretty safe bet.
I never had one and wouldn't buy one either, not because I want boutique mikes instead though - just because there are better all rounder mikes for less money available. The Studio Projects B1 is one such mike that is apparently as good on drums as it is on guitar amps and also very nice on acoustic guitar. How it does that I don't know, however it is unlikely to be as good a hammer as the sm57
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Old 04-16-2009, 06:46 AM   #541
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The synchronicity of this thread with my own thinking about my music, my studio, over the past few months is a little spooky.
I know what you mean. Me too!
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Old 04-17-2009, 08:49 AM   #542
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Best thread ever! :-)

Thank you soooo much for this, yep.


I'm still kinda hoping for the unorthodox bass exercises you hinted at.
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Old 04-18-2009, 05:32 PM   #543
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Best thread ever! :-)

Thank you soooo much for this, yep.


I'm still kinda hoping for the unorthodox bass exercises you hinted at.
Care to refresh my memory?
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Old 04-18-2009, 08:20 PM   #544
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SM57 is only the second most popular mic ever. SM58 being the most popular. Well, according to this guy.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=E...esult&resnum=2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33QPLbQi9FI

ns

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Old 04-18-2009, 10:11 PM   #545
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So if we want to have a fat, punchy bass, then we need to leave room in the lows for the bass to breathe and punch. There has to be an empty space between the notes. If we also want to have a punchy kick drum then we have to find a place for the kick drum to punch that is't simply eating headroom from the bass. Good luck. So maybe we're better off just getting "fat" from the bass, and getting "punch" from the kick. Or vice-vesra (this can work great, actually).
Yep, great threat. Could you elaborate on this? Lets say we have a mean four on the floor Rock groove @ 120bpm with drums playing a straight 4/4 beat. Kick on 1 & 3 snare on 2 & 4 and a Fender Jazz Bass pumping 8th notes. In very general terms (since I know this will vary a lot) could you describe how you would EQ the two scenarios you mentioned.

scenario 1: fat from bass, punch from kick
scenario 2: punch from bass, fat from kick

and how they sound different, maybe with some examples of songs you know.
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Old 04-19-2009, 05:03 AM   #546
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Hi Yep


In your opinion, would you say the Marshall MXL 604 compares favorably
to the Shure SM 81 on acoustic guitar ?

I haven't heard either but I was considering purchasing the 604 as a less expensive alternative to the SM 81 and would appreciate your opinion.

Oh ! Do you have any idea where to find an MCA SP-1 ? I've
read they are discontinued ?

Thanks Bud

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Old 04-19-2009, 04:57 PM   #547
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yep, I found out about this thread from a link in the Tapeop forum. I've read the first few pages in one sitting and intend to catch up and follow along from this point forward.

You seem to have a lot of firsthand knowledge and not just book-smarts. Do we get to find out who you are (there is no information in your forum profile and all we learn from this thread is that you're in Boston), or will you remain as "Batman", hiding under your yep mask?
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Old 04-19-2009, 08:30 PM   #548
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New yep file is up!

http://www.filesavr.com/01yepthreads...19-09thread536

Enjoy!
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Old 04-19-2009, 08:34 PM   #549
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Thanks Smurf !
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Old 04-20-2009, 08:38 AM   #550
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Your very Welcome TedR!
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Old 04-20-2009, 08:46 AM   #551
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Thanks yep for all your great advices and everyone else who contributed into putting together those .pdf representations. I actually did not read everything yet. Such great advices should be maybe in a more beautiful latex output .pdf documents? This would fit more to Reapers and yeps class imo.

Thanks yep many times, both you and Reaper are cool!
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Old 04-21-2009, 01:22 AM   #552
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Maybe leather bound? Gold edged pages?
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Old 04-21-2009, 12:50 PM   #553
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Absolutely great. This stuff usually isn't clear to me as I'm not a "pro" or even ever been in a "real" studio. But the way it's written is clear and entertaining. Great stuff.

Thanks a ton yep!
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Old 04-21-2009, 05:09 PM   #554
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Wow, I have been paying money buying books, and instructional dvd's that dont come close to what this gentleman has offered. I too started on tascam portastudio's and reel to reel, and the importance of gain staging then, absolutely applies now. My first experience's with digital were less than rewarding and that was because I failed to adhere to the standard practices I grew up with. I now track very moderately and make sure that my entire system is referenced to 0dbvu. Something so simple to implement has drastically improved my mixes. I also tend to use less effects as the samples I use have already been processed to death. As for guitar and keys, maybe a little more.
I concur with this gentleman, and wish him all due prosperity in the future as I see it to be a very bright one indeed.
thank you Mr."YEP" for sharing your wisdom , taking time out of your day, and giving of yourself. you will "REAP" (haha) the benefits.
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Old 04-23-2009, 12:49 AM   #555
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I've been plugging away and re-mixing a bunch of songs following all of the great advice on this thread. It's night and day.

My biggest problem before was I could not get a mix that sounded good on various systems. I've been comparing mixes on my "mixing desk" (okay some old stereo speakers and cheap monitors), headphones, two cars, and an ipod dock. Could never get a mix that sounded decent on all. I was a dog chasing my tail as I went around these systems, tweaking. Each time I ended up with something that only sounded good on the last thing I mixed on, and pretty much crap on everything else.

I've been following the advice here. In summary, I'm mostly deeply cutting fundamentals, bass and high cuts on almost all tracks. Then I'm being very selective on a few tracks for each song that will hold the key positions - bass (usually bass and kick, nicely separated); mid-range (mostly vocals); mid-highs (mostly guitars - a lot of cutting required here); and highs (mostly snare and cymbals). In those few cases, I'm letting those instruments form the foundation - everything else has to get out of the way and make room.

What a difference. Finally, I can mix something on my desk that sounds OK on other systems. A few tweaks while I'm listening in other locations (mostly things like volume) and back at my desk it still sounds good.

It really seems that there was a lot of clutter in the songs. With each re-mix it sounded better, but it was just hiding the clutter on that one system. When I went to another system, all the clutter re-appeared. Trying to fix it, I was just moving things around. Finally by removing all this clutter, things sound "clean" no matter where I go (at least I hope over time).

I've begun to think of it like a messy office. Sure, I can stack all my messes into neat little piles, hide things in drawers, and it looks pretty good - my office looks clean. But taking my song to another system is like moving to another office with totally different furniture. Now all my little piles that looked so good in my old office, just look like a mess in the new office. The right thing to have done was to get rid of all my junk before moving offices.

Thanks again Yep and everyone else. This is great stuff and I'll keep watching and learning.
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Old 04-23-2009, 11:56 AM   #556
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Yep, great threat. Could you elaborate on this? Lets say we have a mean four on the floor Rock groove @ 120bpm with drums playing a straight 4/4 beat. Kick on 1 & 3 snare on 2 & 4 and a Fender Jazz Bass pumping 8th notes. In very general terms (since I know this will vary a lot) could you describe how you would EQ the two scenarios you mentioned.

scenario 1: fat from bass, punch from kick
scenario 2: punch from bass, fat from kick

and how they sound different, maybe with some examples of songs you know.
Well, it's not just eq, and sometimes "fat" and "punch" mean different things to different people. And if the kick only hits on the 1 and the 3 but the bass plays every 8th note, then that's going to dictate a lot in terms of the approaches that will work. Same if you have a DW kick drum and a flatwound Gibson bass, for instance.

But let's say there was a really "deep," "punchy" electric bass sound that could be gated and compressed to get a sharp, somewhat percussive dynamic profile and that didn't have a lot of lower-midrange harmonics "fattening up" the sound. This might complement well with a "big" "vintage" drum sound where the kick drum sounds an actual note that sustains for a quarter-note or more, and a snare sounds that might sustain for a half-note. This could be accomplished with reverb decays and/or compression to extend the sustain, assuming there is something there to work with in the first place. That would be sort of opposite of how most modern mixes are done.

Again, it's not about "settings," and you can't just take an eq and turn one bass or drum or mic position into another. It's about everything from the song to the arrangement to the instrument selection to the playing style to the setup to the initial gain-staging and so on. That shouldn't stop your from trying, though. In the long run, the way to get good is to push the limits and figure out where the boundaries are, and you'll start to develop an intuitive sense of which kinds of bass sounds will work well with which kinds of drum sounds and song arrangements and mix approaches, for instance.

Specifically, the problem with trying to say "how I would EQ" the instrument that is supposed to sound "fat" is hard, because usually the "fat" instrument is the one that already SOUNDS "fat." So I might actually be *cutting* the "fat" frequencies on that one. It's not like sound design on a synthesizer, where you just create the sound out of whole cloth. You're taking pieces of an imperfectly-made jigsaw puzzle and trying to trim them to fit each other as best you can.

Last edited by yep; 04-23-2009 at 05:07 PM.
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Old 04-23-2009, 12:14 PM   #557
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TedR
In your opinion, would you say the Marshall MXL 604 compares favorably
to the Shure SM 81 on acoustic guitar ?

I haven't heard either but I was considering purchasing the 604 as a less expensive alternative to the SM 81 and would appreciate your opinion.

Oh ! Do you have any idea where to find an MCA SP-1 ? I've
read they are discontinued ?
There are literally *thousands* of threads on the web comparing various cheap mics to more expensive mics, and to other cheap mics, and medium-priced mics, and so on. You can't swing a dead cat on a stick without hitting a "best mic under $X" thread these days.

I'm sorry to say I have nothing to add to that line of discussion, and no advice on where to buy. The mics I mentioned are all really good mics that also happen to be very cheap. Whether they are better/worse than anything else or how close they are is not something I even really know how to talk about intelligently.

Quote:
Originally Posted by soul&folk View Post
yep, I found out about this thread from a link in the Tapeop forum. I've read the first few pages in one sitting and intend to catch up and follow along from this point forward.

You seem to have a lot of firsthand knowledge and not just book-smarts. Do we get to find out who you are (there is no information in your forum profile and all we learn from this thread is that you're in Boston), or will you remain as "Batman", hiding under your yep mask?
I'm nobody important! (At least not in the audio world...)

But I am somebody that has a day job and other pursuits that require me, sadly at times, to maintain an illusion of respectability, and I'd rather not have my name or personal details show up in Google searches with pages and pages of me talking about how to record guitar in your bedroom. (Believe it or not, in some fields, that kind of stuff can make it hard to be taken seriously. Now, if I were a golf forum regular, on the other hand...)
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Old 04-23-2009, 08:28 PM   #558
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...I've been following the advice here. In summary, I'm mostly deeply cutting fundamentals, bass and high cuts on almost all tracks. Then I'm being very selective on a few tracks for each song that will hold the key positions - bass (usually bass and kick, nicely separated); mid-range (mostly vocals); mid-highs (mostly guitars - a lot of cutting required here); and highs (mostly snare and cymbals). In those few cases, I'm letting those instruments form the foundation - everything else has to get out of the way and make room...
I'm glad to hear that this has been helpful.

I also want to respond specifically to the stuff that you cite as being "the advice in this thread" RE: cleaning up the tracks with EQ and such. My guess is that those kinds of mixing strategies will be the first take-away that most people get from a thread like this, as much as I've tried to stay away from "presets" and "recipes." After all, a simple eq rip to roll off the lows and highs works wonders on most home recordings, and is probably the fastest path to improvement.

That said, the REASON why these kinds of things offer such a blanket improvement is because most home studio tracks were recorded wrong to begin with (not to mention that many amateur arrangements are flawed from the outset, although these days the line between "mix" and "arrangement" is often a very blurry one).

Going back to the post by heater, who said he wasn't interested in "20 foot tall acoustic guitars" but just a clean, accurate recording of his sound, how many home recordists (or professional musicians, for that matter) really subscribe to that notion? If I were producing your record and offered you the choice, would you really say "oh, no, I Don't want that big modern sound, just an accurate recording of how I sound live..."?

When you look for reference material on the radio or among your record collection, do you try to duplicate all the thousands of subdued, well-placed, well-seated acoustic guitar tracks that back up the melody and reinforce the bass and drums, or do you always go for the one "sound of God" 20-foot-tall version?

There is nothing wrong with the latter, except when you also do the same with the drums, and the bass, and the vocals, and the synth, and the electric guitars, and the piano, and so on. When everything is huge, it's like trying to take a picture of the sky over the ocean-- it just looks flat, and boring, with no sense of scale. And that's a best-case scenario. Worst-case, everything is fighting and burying everything else and it all sounds small and annoying under a big crush of conflicting mud and fizz.

What happens is that everyone is chasing that one awesome bass sound that totally sold the song, and also that one awesome guitar sound that totally stole the show, and also that one screaming synth lead that blows everyone away, and that massive vocal that seems to come from all around and above, and that huge drum kit the size of mount everest, and so on, all at the same time. Which is really hard to pull off. The thing is, if we really stop and listen to those reference tracks, the REASON those drums sound as big as mount Everest is because they DWARF the guitar sound and everything else. If the guitar is trying to be bigger than the drums and the drums are trying to be bigger than the guitar and everybody is trying to be bigger than everybody else, then you just end up with a shirtless David Hasselhoff lying drunkenly on the floor of a hotel room trying to shovel a disintegrated Wendy's cheeseburger into his mouth, moaning,"This is a MESS..."

This instinctive draw towards everything bigger, hyper, and hotter afect mic choice, mic placement, gain staging, processing, everything. In a solo shootout or A/B test, we always reach for the mic, preamp, eq curve, etc that has more, bigger, hyper. And ears calibrated to modern loudness-race records don't help matters. So we track every single source with the hypest, hottest, loudest, biggest-sounding signal chain we can, and end up with David Hasselhoff. Then some jamoke like me comes along and suggests a few eq rips to undo all the bigness that we worked so hard for, and all the tracks sit better and sound cleaner and flow and breathe better.

But hopefully these exercises start to lead to better, more tasteful, more judicious tracking in the first place, and to a better understanding that what sounds best solo does not always work in a mix. Moreover, something that was tracked right in the first place often sounds a lot better than using eq to undo something that was tracked with the mic shoved right in the source and the preamp gain cranked and so on.

A lot of that "air" and "warmth" and "smoothness" and "punch" that we attribute to vintage gear actually comes from vintage *PRACTICES* and *TECHNIQUES*. When we start with good arrangements, good performances, good instruments, good setup, a good environment that is free of rattles, squeaks, electrical noise and undue resonance, then we can record a naturalistic-sounding representation of the instrument with authenticity as the main goal. And when the musicians have a live, rehearsed, polished performance that has natural dynamics and instrument balance, and that doesn't count on the studio to "make it sound right," then authenticity becomes a perfectly acceptable goal.

And when we're starting from the proposition of trying first CREATE, then CAPTURE or "record" a finished soundscape, then maybe we don't need all the whispered vocals and triple-tracked guitars and soaring strings and growly bassleads and clicky whirring synth sweeps to make the music sound good. There is nothing wrong with that kind of "manufactured" soundscape, but if your recordings don't sound good WITHOUT all the icing and sprinkles, then maybe it's time to get back to basics. And if you need a lot of hot tips n' tricks and cool eq curves and vintage compressitubifiers to make the tracks sound "warm" and "punchy" and "musical," then maybe something is missing at the source.
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Old 04-23-2009, 08:59 PM   #559
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As much as it feels like asking a doctor how best to use cocaine;

What general rules and philosophies (as opposed to specific plugins and presets) would you suggest for mastering (and indeed mixing, if it applies) for the times when you want to compete in the loudness race?
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Old 04-24-2009, 01:39 AM   #560
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Please watch Steely Dan's Aja DVD (kind of "making of").

You have the chance to listen to soloed tracks of these songs. Its not only that most of the soloed tracks sound "thin" - which we expected now following that thread. Many of them sound completley weird, odd and surprisingley "unfitting" to the mix. But somehow they DO fit.

The background singer sung weird chords (multitracked, one note after the other) which sounded like a joke when soloed. Like a machine or robot. But IN the mix that vox suddendly contributed to this ultra-easy-laid-back-feeling.

Some of the used keyboard sounds were "worse" and more cheap-sounding than today's $9.95 toy instruments! No ultra-cool-over-hype-20-feet-high. Not the slightest.

The funny thing is that even Becker and Fagen had to laugh behind the desk when they soloed this or that track and commented: listen how whimpy that sounded... cant remember it was in there.

I am personally far away from precisely predicting how this or that solo sound will really affect the mix (except from the very standard instruments). But I am willing and prepared to try very whimpy sounds as well
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