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strangemusic posted:For what it's worth, Cubase has a headlock on just about any other DAW when it comes to editing in my opinion. What makes Cubase particularly good at that?
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Oct 7, 2013 13:56
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CisSTAR 19 posted:What makes Cubase particularly good at that? I too would like to know. I can edit like a motherfucker in Pro Tools.
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Oct 8, 2013 01:04
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I was trained to use Cubase and I still get lost in that bad boy.
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Oct 8, 2013 03:07
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Cubase has one of the more elegant lanes/takes system I've come across. It gives the act of comping more of a "sipping margaritas in a tropical beach resort" sort of feeling. As for the rest of its editing functionality, it's really no more advanced or primitive than any other with-the-times DAW. As long as you can group, cut, slide, stretch and crossfade audio regions--hopefully with ergonomically sensible keyboard shortcuts--editing goes as fast as your screen will refresh once you are reasonably well-practiced at it, regardless of your chosen platform.
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Oct 8, 2013 19:16
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strangemusic posted:For what it's worth, Cubase has a headlock on just about any other DAW when it comes to editing in my opinion. The only thing Cubase has a headlock on is "confusing interfaces". Most any professional DAW works fine for editing (i.e. anything but Garageband).
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Oct 11, 2013 14:07
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Any thoughts on the MXL 990? I'm primarily recording acoustic strings and percussion. I'd like to have another reasonably price option for when my SM58 is out on its travels with others.
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Oct 12, 2013 15:36
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11 Rack purchased. Pro Tools 11 installed. Loving it, but I'm so loving lost. Any advice on good sites/books/resources for figuring all this out and exploring the depths? Books are preferred, I'm a bit limited with my data cap.
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Oct 13, 2013 20:25
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iostream.h posted:11 Rack purchased. The included documentation is actually really, really thorough, and comes in the Help menu of the software so I'm pretty sure it doesn't need data.
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Oct 14, 2013 16:40
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Slimchandi posted:Any thoughts on the MXL 990? I'm primarily recording acoustic strings and percussion. I'd like to have another reasonably price option for when my SM58 is out on its travels with others. Slim, the MXL 990 is fine for what it is. I have had the 990/991 pair for a longtime, they are perfectly serviceable mics, not quite as polished as Way more expensive mics, but easy enough to get decent results with. Iirc I got the pair for $60 with case and hard mounts.
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Oct 15, 2013 16:05
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strangemusic posted:The included documentation is actually really, really thorough, and comes in the Help menu of the software so I'm pretty sure it doesn't need data. Here's a sort of off the wall question about my hardware configuration that I haven't been able to find an answer to: I have an Mbox 2 (non-mini) that I leave on my desk with my monitors plugged into. It in turn is plugged into a USB hub that also has an external HD, an extra USB cable and an iPhone cable connected. I've been using it as a makeshift 'dock' for my MacBook Pro, so I just sit my laptop down and plug one connection in. This also lets me use my monitors as external speakers if I'm watching/listening to other media instead of just recording/working. What I'd LIKE to do is also plug my 11 Rack into the same USB hub and route audio through the Mbox 2 to my monitors, this would save plugging/unplugging things every time I move stuff around. The 11R is portable for me (I use it at practice and will be using it for performances as well). Is this something that's possible? Maybe with SPDIF to the Mbox? I've no idea and like I said, haven't really found the documentation covering this yet. Or, is this stupid and I've missed something glaringly obvious? (short of dedicating a computer just to recording?)
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Oct 16, 2013 05:35
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You should have no problem running SPDIF from the 11R to the MBox, assuming your MBox has the input. You shouldn't need to connect the 11R to the computer at all, SPDIF will be a bit-perfect copy of the digital audio created by it. If you've never dealt with SPDIF outside of your home stereo, you need to make sure both devices are running at the same sample-rate and you need to make sure the devices are clear on which one is clock master and which one is slaved/chasing/sync'd to the master clock. They may decide this automatically when you hook them up, but if you end up with popping/clicking or no sound at all, that's how you troubleshoot it. Technically SPDIF wants a special RCA-ended cable with a different impedance than your typical RCA A/V cable, but as long as you use a cable under 6ft it doesn't matter. In practice cables under 10ft are usually fine, but the first thing you'll want to do if you have a problem with a 10-12ft A/V cable is switch to a real SPDIF cable or a shorter A/V cable before you decide something else is broken. e: But unless you have another program in mind that just routes something it sees on an input to the speakers, the easiest way to get it out of your monitors still involves firing up Pro Tools or another DAW and arming a track to record so you can listen to yourself playing. ChristsDickWorship fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Oct 16, 2013 |
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Oct 16, 2013 14:02
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some_admin posted:Slim, the MXL 990 is fine for what it is. I have had the 990/991 pair for a longtime, they are perfectly serviceable mics, not quite as polished as Way more expensive mics, but easy enough to get decent results with. Thanks for the info. The pair are selling for £100 in the UK (~150 USD). Is there anything else in that price range I should consider? I don't desperately need TWO more mics.
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Oct 17, 2013 18:32
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Getting back into sound design (theater, as well as basic music production) after a two year sabbatical. Now that I'm out of university, I no longer can use their version of ProTools/Qlab, and need to purchase my own setup. I'd love some input. My computer specs: Model Name: iMac Model Identifier: iMac11,2 Processor Name: Intel Core i3 Processor Speed: 3.2 GHz Number Of Processors: 1 Total Number Of Cores: 2 L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 4 MB Memory: 4 GB Processor Interconnect Speed: 5.86 GT/s I was thinking of the ProTools/Mbox Pro setup. I have my own massive SFX library, so I'm good there. In school we had a super handy little mixer that would chill on the desk, but with the Mbox and the software I don't believe it's necessary. I used either ProTools 7 or 8 so it's been a little bit, but I imagine that if I could learn the basic program I can learn all the bells and whistles of the new versions. Qlab Pro is $400 vs the Qlab basic for $200 - I can accomplish all the FX stuff in Protools before I bounce the files, so I shouldn't need the added FX features the Pro bundle comes with, right? I'm a little out of my element when it comes to the music side though. A good compact midi keyboard recommendation would be amazing. I was looking at the Rode NT2-A for a mic. My main goal with the music side of things is to be able to line in my guitar, record vocals, get a midi keyboard that can model the sounds of many instruments decently, and the capacity to create a good beat behind all that. I'm trying not to spend more than $1800. $1000 for the Mbox/Protools setup leaves $800 for the rest. Can you think of anything else I'm forgetting? Should I opt for a cheaper mic or throw down the cash now on one that will hold up for a long time? Thanks for the help, I'm really looking forward to getting back on this. EDIT: Forgot to add I have my own studio headphones, so I don't need to throw down cash on those. Some studio speakers might be nice so I'm not constantly tethered down though. Sweet_Joke_Nectar fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Oct 18, 2013 |
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Oct 18, 2013 04:27
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I've had my eye on Amplitube 3 for months, but kind of held off because then I knew I'd need to get a midi controller and a bunch of interface stuff that I don't know anything about. I picked up a Behringer FCB1010 midi foot controller as part of a package deal recently. Getting that was enough to convince me to finally buy Amplitube 3. That's all installed and seems to be working, but I'm still at a point where I need to hook all the hardware to my PC and I really don't know what I am doing. If I have to buy and install a PCI card, that's fine. I also have a slot free for a 5 1/4" front panel module. I'd just like some advice on what I should get to tie everything together. This will be just be for me noodling around at my computer and maybe doing a bit of recording, so just one guitar or mic at a time. Also, is there any way to use that Behringer FCB1010 to control a Line 6 Spider III? Skunkduster fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 20, 2013 23:17
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SkunkDuster posted:I'm still at a point where I need to hook all the hardware to my PC and I really don't know what I am doing. You'll want to check out this thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3278830 Any decent audio interface with a 1/4" line in and a preamp that can impedance match a guitar will work.
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Oct 21, 2013 16:17
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Thanks! I think I've found something I'm going to try (E-MU 0404 USB).
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Oct 22, 2013 01:15
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I teach high school concert band, and I'm trying to troubleshoot my recording set up. I recently purchased a steinberg ur22 to record straight to my laptop, and I have access to the following mics, 2 AKG C1000s (not sure which generation, not the current gen. though), and 1 Shure SM-81 (omni condenser). I tried the 2 AKGs today. With the size of the ensemble and the size of the room, the mics were pretty much back up against the wall (not in a corner though). Recordings had way too much bass (muddled concert bass drum, tuba, and timpani sounds). I'm going to try the shure sm-81 tomorrow, but what are some tips and tricks to minimize the enormous amounts of bass my mics are picking up? The room has OK acoustics, but it could use a higher ceiling and more overall space. Maybe there just isn't much I can do... edit: looks like the shure is a sm-81 with an sm-80 omni cartridge in the box along with the sm-81 unidirectional cartridge edit2: \/\/\/\/ thanks for the tips, will try some things tomorrow. dcgrp fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 22, 2013 23:21
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Any mic near a wall is going to sound bad, unless the capsule is flush against the surface. There are specially designed boundary/pressure zone mics that are optimized for this purpose. Here's what's probably happening: When a cardioid mic is near a wall, facing into the room, sound waves coming from the band will enter the mic, proceed towards the wall, bounce off the wall, and then enter mic a second time. Since cardioid mics tend to be omnidirectional at lower frequencies (below 200 Hz or so), only the low component of the reflected sound is going to be heard by the back of the mic, unlike the high frequencies which will be mostly rejected. Since the mic is "hearing" the low frequencies twice, they are mechanically summed by the capsule as a boost in bass. Not to mention all the nasty comb filtering you're probably getting from the bits of reflected high frequency that do manage to make it into the rear axis. There are a couple of things you can try. 1. Position the omni SM80 flat against the wall, so that the body is perpendicular to the band 2. Get something like this http://www.fullcompass.com/product/399932.html and mount it on the wall 3. Find a way to get the mics away from the wall and closer to the band, while hopefully maintaining the correct balance of sections. Perhaps on a very tall sandbagged stand in front of the woodwinds? 4. Use a shelving EQ on your bass heavy recording to attenuate the lows (will not help the comb filtering)
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Oct 23, 2013 20:44
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Also... if the room itself is on the small side, it probably has standing waves at low/mid frequencies that will either boom or disappear depending on where you're standing. Bass trapping is the way to go.
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Oct 23, 2013 21:06
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Monitor placement question: I've always read that ideally the listening position should be the same distance from the the monitors as the monitors are from each other. In other words, the triangle created by the listening position and the monitors should be equilateral. How much will accuracy be reduced if the listening position is significantly closer to the monitors than the monitors are from each other? Is this a big concern, or minor?
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Oct 25, 2013 00:12
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Have some drum mixing questions for you audio gurus. So basically I have a few songs recorded, just some guitar, rhythm and lead, and some bass. A couple of the guitars are double tracked. Now my interface has only two inputs and I have two different condenser mics, a large diaphragm condenser at2035, and some small condenser mic a friend gave me. So, is using two different condenser mics for a whole drum set going to be a problem? I am trying to use that recorderman technique but would using two difference mics effect the phasing at all or is that just a matter of distance. Should I purchase another at2035? I should note that the songs are in an old school black metal style so looking for tje best quality out of the drums isn't a huge deal but I would like to get the best with what I have.
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Oct 25, 2013 00:19
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dcgrp posted:I teach high school concert band, and I'm trying to troubleshoot my recording set up....  They all involve matched pairs of cardioid microphones, which you already have in the AKGs, you just pan each one symmetrically left and right when you mix/edit them. Just ignore the M-S setup unless you have a ton of money to spend. A wall is 1/2 or 1/3 of a corner. They all suck for microphones. Placement equidistant from all surfaces (possibly including the floor, which you might want to carpet as much as possible if its not, at least for 8-10ft in front of the microphone) is "ideal" because you should be getting the maximum amount of direct sound and minimum of any one reflection, but this will vary room to room (sometimes certain reflections sound "good"). Reflections will never be accurate, if you want to stand in the best sounding place in the room it will never be right next to a surface. There is a mic technique called boundary mic'ing where you use a cardioid or hypercardioid mic to capture one reflection and the direct at the same time instead of mostly the direct (you basically point the mic at a 45deg angle at the surface), but you usually don't want to do that on a wall, you would do it on the floor in front of a step dance troop or under the hood of a closed piano where you can't fit real mics, on a horizontal surface and far from a corner. Because your AKG mics have no high-pass filters built-in, you'll want to process them with a HPF plug-in before you really even know what kind of balance you have. The Cubase that came with your interface could definitely do that. Start at 150Hz and move it up and down a few hundred Hz to get a feel for what you're doing then decide where you like it best. With what you have I would normally say your goal should be to buy another SM81 (which has a very useful HPF dial), and Shure is a great manufacturer so it would be OK to buy another one made a few years apart and expect them to sound close enough to actually be a stereo recording. But I've worked with literally 100s of SM81s made over the last 20 years, probably opened dozens of them new out of the box in the last 6 or 7, I've never seen an SM80 capsule. I would guess you didn't buy that mic recently and it's old enough that if you want a stereo SM81 recording, you should buy 2 new SM81s. But in the immediate future, use your built-in stereo pair of microphones (your ears) to decide where to start placing a stereo configuration of those AKGs. Learn to use a HPF filter and export/bounce tracks without a bunch of uncontrollable bass garbage and then go from there. When you find a balanced placement you like, move on to learning how to use more full-featured EQ plug-ins and compression to get the most out of the raw recordings in a "regular" listening environment, like tossing it in the home stereo or the car instead of playing it with headphones/monitors out of your interface.
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Oct 25, 2013 15:16
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Splinter posted:How much will accuracy be reduced if the listening position is significantly closer to the monitors than the monitors are from each other? Is this a big concern, or minor? I'm going totally off the cuff here but if you want to scientifically convince yourself that your placement is still "within phase tolerance" (or something), reverse the polarity of one of the speakers then listen to the resulting weird sounds from the listening position and move them farther apart until it starts to sound significantly better. That's where it's going to start sounding significantly worse when they are in-phase. Only catch is I would only recommend doing that with a physical phase reversal, either swapping pins 2 and 3 in the XLR feeding the monitors with a soldering iron or using an adapter that does the same thing. Also do it as quietly as possible, you don't want to hear much of the room. To Battle posted:Have some drum mixing questions for you audio gurus. ChristsDickWorship fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Oct 25, 2013 |
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Oct 25, 2013 15:41
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wixard posted:Depends heavily on the speakers. Imaging ("soundstage" in consumer audiophile parlance) is 100% black arts voodoo magic and different speakers do it very differently. An equidistant setup should always work well but may not be your ideal placement anyway depending on the speakers.
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Oct 25, 2013 22:21
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Because I haven't seen very many situations where clicking the phase reverse button in software works exactly how it should (in the most expensive digital speaker processors that button triggers a relay that physically reverses polarity instead of trying to do it perfectly in real time). When you're trying to be exactly 180deg out of phase, any minor latency difference is going to have a pronounced effect, you can ignore that entirely if you do it at the electron level in the cable. Of course it's also because I'm a live sound guy by trade and I don't consider the fact that you can probably create a perfectly out of phase sample to play very simply "offline" in a DAW rather than trying to do it in realtime. Doing that will probably work fine. 
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Oct 25, 2013 23:19
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So I just bought a new M-Audio interface to delve into the next step of home recording (this one, for reference: http://www.amazon.com/M-Audio-M-Tra...io+m+track+plus) It comes packaged with Pro Tools Express. Having only used Garageband before, I am at a loss on how to do practically anything in it. Out of the thousands of online guides out there, can anyone recommend a solid tutorial/guide to learning how to work with Pro Tools?
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Oct 31, 2013 16:40
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edit: figured it out. ignore this post!
K-Flow fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Nov 3, 2013 |
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Nov 3, 2013 06:12
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Anyone want to give me a walkthrough on how to record guitars using 2 SM57a and Mackie Preamp/USB interface? I feel like i have this great gear sitting around i almost never use and when i do, i got discouraged because the takes sound like a garbled mess. I want to just record some simple guitar comps and leads to just practice, well, recording i suppose. My process right now is cable everything up, open up Reaper and get that to work (used to take me at least 30 minutes just to do this) with the Preamp/interface, and then begin recording. After i get a decent take, I usually try to EQ that guitar part and pan it so that there is room for other guitars in the mix My methods are not scientific enough, because i have trouble getting 2 guitars to sit in the mix well (unless they are playing the same exact part). On the other hand, I have used amp sims to some better effect, but still run into some of the same issues. There isn't enoug space inthe recording for more than one guitar part.
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Nov 3, 2013 20:51
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coolbian57 posted:Anyone want to give me a walkthrough on how to record guitars using 2 SM57a and Mackie Preamp/USB interface? I feel like i have this great gear sitting around i almost never use and when i do, i got discouraged because the takes sound like a garbled mess. I want to just record some simple guitar comps and leads to just practice, well, recording i suppose. I'd love to talk about this! Maybe post some clips if you feel like it, it might help to get a picture of what you feel needs improving with the sounds you're getting. In general, you want to concern yourself with mic placement, phase coherence, separation of frequencies in the mix (avoiding "mud"), and tonal variation/blending between mics. I can go into greater detail on all that stuff if desired. strangemusic fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 00:02
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strangemusic posted:I'd love to talk about this! Maybe post some clips if you feel like it, it might help to get a picture of what you feel needs improving with the sounds you're getting. In general, you want to concern yourself with mic placement, phase coherence, separation of frequencies in the mix (avoiding "mud"), and tonal variation/blending between mics. I can go into greater detail on all that stuff if desired. I would love for you to go into greater detail if you'll indulge me
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Nov 4, 2013 01:01
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strangemusic posted:I'd love to talk about this! Maybe post some clips if you feel like it, it might help to get a picture of what you feel needs improving with the sounds you're getting. In general, you want to concern yourself with mic placement, phase coherence, separation of frequencies in the mix (avoiding "mud"), and tonal variation/blending between mics. I can go into greater detail on all that stuff if desired. Yes, this is exactly the kind of stuff I need to know. Here I will add more detail about what I've been doing. I position both SM57s about 1 inch away from the center of the amp. I turn the amp volume up to about 3, and use between 25-35 dB of gain on the preamp. This gives me a nice medium volume when recording (I've heard to get as close to clipping as possible, without going over which is what I'm trying to do here). I position both microphones directly next to each other and the same distance from the amp, to try to avoid any phase problems. I don't really understand phase so I try to do this as a workaround, but I'm afraid that positioning both microphones right next to each other like this probably causes more mud. I usually have to fiddle with the microphone placement quite a lot until I get something which I think is working. Then, I record onto two tracks in Reaper (I have also tried doing one stereo track of both mics). I try to pan one of the mics slightly off from the other so they can breathe more. I usually pan anywhere from 30% to 100%, I feel that I am pretty good at panning but then again I have a lot of mud. I then EQ the guitars, trying to remove "bad" frequencies, although I am not technical in this at all and just use my ears. I usually fiddle around with the two tracks until I get something I feel is decent (which thus far has not been good enough to have room for drums or bass, or any other instruments). I'm not sure if I should be full cutting the EQ on some points on one guitar, and not the other, or some other technique etc. My issue is that there is no "definition" in the guitars, when I play distorted power chords for example you can't even tell when is the pick attack, the notes all bleed into one another. Perhaps I need to crank my amp louder to resolve this. Plus all of the mud makes it hard to fit anything else in. I have tried to correct this in my arrangements of the guitars (separating them by an octave or more, and trying more sparse parts generally) but it didn't really resolve the issue, and much of the music I would like to record has very dense harmonies. coolbian57 fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 02:25
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I'm out at the moment but I'll put together a post on some guitar things soon! EDIT: OK, I'm back. Guitars! The first thing to figure out, which is totally peripheral to actual engineering but ideal in making a production decision, is where your amp sounds best for the tone you want, whether that's full-on loud or not, etc. Dial it in! If you multi-mic a guitar amp, generally you might want to do so with mics of two different types (or more if you're getting really technical and/or have a huge board and want to do crazy stuff like miking the back of an open cabinet.) I work as an each-mic-gets-its-own-track kind of guy, personally. This is done purely to achieve tonal variation and give you choices in the final blend of the guitar sound at mix time - is your SM57 giving you a sound that is a little pointy or nasal? Blend it with a darker mic that you've got on the same cabinet and you can adjust those tonal colours in your DAW. The SM57 is, however, a really good standard choice. If you have enough inputs that you can take a DI signal to the DAW and pass through to your amp to record the mics as well, it's a nice safety net (throw an amp sim on it maybe) but by no means a necessity. If you've got two 57s as stated, multi-miking isn't going to broaden your tonal palette quite as much right off the bat as having two mics with different signatures. Two 57s right next to each other on a speaker are just going to sound like... two 57s. This is where you can start to look at mic positioning. In essence, fiddling can be good! The tone at right dead centre on the speaker cone is not going to be exactly the same as the tone off-axis by a few degrees, or off to the edge of the cone, and so on. Different cones in the same cab can also sound different. Place one mic straight on, and experiment with placing the other in alternative ways to see what you can get out of the cab. With an SM57, the closer you get to a source you will experience a gradually increasing proximity effect, or a deepening of low-end that may help bring more body to a small or thin-sounding source. This brings us to phase relationship, which is, in essence, determined by time synchronization between the sound waves that are hitting different capsules. If your mics are out of phase, the resulting signal will sound thin and boring (and quieter) because of frequency cancellation. Generally, try to get both capsules the same distance from the grille to achieve good phase relationships. Always check your work: if your preamp or DAW has a phase flip button (Ø), flip one of the two mics and see what happens. If it sounds terrible all of a sudden, you probably made a good placement choice and should switch it back the way it was. If it sounds better with the flip on (and you're sold on the positions you have), keep it! For a traditional guitar sound I generally like to mic quite close to the grille. The further away you place the mics, the more roomy the amp will start to sound. Once you've got a placement you like and have a sense of what the amp is doing and how the mics are hearing it, you should be good to record. To keep things from getting muddy at mix time, consider the different parts and how they interact. Amps tend to hum or rumble: use a high-pass filter with a corner set in the tens of Hz (somewhere from 30 to 70Hz probably) at a relatively steep slope to eliminate this waste energy from clouding the picture of your mix as it grows. If you have, let's say, a rhythm line with full chords and a lead line with higher single notes, carve the excess low-end or low-midrange flab out of the lead and it might sit better on top of the bass and body notes in the chords. Consider the mics you're using: 57s tend to be a bit midrange-heavy so the more parts you stack, the more you might end up with an overall midrange honk to your tone. This is where EQ comes in and you really have to use your ears. This chart may be of use in terms of putting the idea of "it sounds tinny/flabby/shrill/warm/punchy/defined/growly" into the realms of certain frequency bands. If you're doubling parts, you may want to change something slightly in the tone stack/signal chain or even the playing style so it doesn't sit exactly in the same territory as its partner - this may add to the sensation of "thickness" in layered guitars. No two takes (at least on guitar: synths can get annoying) are going to be ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL even if you don't change anything, so there's a natural sense of variation in the layers that helps them add together instead of sucking the life out of one another. Making some tonal changes at the source when doubling or multi-tracking parts can add to this variation. To take this to an extreme: on big studio days I've done, there is a certain engineer who will often request a wall of five or six cabs/heads fed from one guitar, all with multiple mics, just to get tons of thickness via different tone characteristics and different blending possibilities from having the same part done with many different amps. Of course, this also goes very loud, looks extremely  and impresses the poo poo out of clients, so there's that.Panning may be dependent on what else is sitting in the mix and how you want to present that to the listener. Maybe you want to give the impression that you have two distinct guitarists playing two parts on a stage: imagine them standing on opposite sides of that stage and pan them likewise. Experimentation is welcome. If you've got your drum overheads panned hard left and right with the kick and snare in the middle, for example, consider which frequencies are occupying those "lanes" - the overs/cymbals are going to have a lot of high end, the snare has midrange crack and resonance, and so on. If you send the guitars into the same lane, they're going to interact with those other elements. EQ again becomes your friend in terms of sorting this out when things pile on top of one another, but positioning with panning can free up a "lane" so there's more clarity to each element. With guitars in layers I tend to think of each part (rhythm, lead, etc.) like a point source or a person on a stage: I wouldn't generally pan two different mics on the same cab playing the same part in two (drastically) different directions. drat, this is a lot of  and I hope I've been helpful in some way!
strangemusic fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 04:34
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strangemusic posted:I'm out at the moment but I'll put together a post on some guitar things soon! Interesting idea to send two signals, and amp sim one of them and mic a real amp on the other. For now though, I've taken away that I should probably experiment to get a good tone with just one mic for now, write down/describe the mic placement and tone achieved. Then, add the second microphone, perhaps on a different mic placement or tone setting on the amp, and on a different play. Then pan them in the same lane, with one at maybe 50% left and the other at 53% left (or something similar). I said I have 2 SM57s, but actually I have one SM57 and one GLS Audio ES-57 (a knockoff), so maybe the slightly different signatures of the mics would help get more tonal variation.
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Nov 4, 2013 16:52
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coolbian57 posted:Interesting idea to send two signals, and amp sim one of them and mic a real amp on the other. For now though, I've taken away that I should probably experiment to get a good tone with just one mic for now, write down/describe the mic placement and tone achieved. Then, add the second microphone, perhaps on a different mic placement or tone setting on the amp, and on a different play. Then pan them in the same lane, with one at maybe 50% left and the other at 53% left (or something similar). I said I have 2 SM57s, but actually I have one SM57 and one GLS Audio ES-57 (a knockoff), so maybe the slightly different signatures of the mics would help get more tonal variation. I guess, at least in my perspective, the DI/amp sim route would be if you're eventually unsatisfied with the amp tone or need a tone you couldn't get otherwise. Hence safety net. I've seen some people blend the raw, unprocessed DI signal in with their amp tone, but I generally don't. Good luck!
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Nov 4, 2013 16:57
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coolbian57 posted:Interesting idea to send two signals, and amp sim one of them and mic a real amp on the other. For now though, I've taken away that I should probably experiment to get a good tone with just one mic for now, write down/describe the mic placement and tone achieved. Then, add the second microphone, perhaps on a different mic placement or tone setting on the amp, and on a different play. Then pan them in the same lane, with one at maybe 50% left and the other at 53% left (or something similar). I said I have 2 SM57s, but actually I have one SM57 and one GLS Audio ES-57 (a knockoff), so maybe the slightly different signatures of the mics would help get more tonal variation. No those mics aren't really going to do anything different, they need to be completely differenrt types of mics. For guitar cabs I genreally use an SM57 on axis pointed at the spot where the dust cap meets the cone about 3" back and a Cascade FatHead ribbon mic pointed right at the dustcap and try to line those two up to keep the phase coherent. The SM57 captures a nice "sizzle" and the Fathead captures the mids and lows, sometimes I blend the 2 or sometimes I don't depending on what the part needs and how it fits with other stuff. I have gotten good distorted sounds with an LDC about 3' back pointed 90 degrees at the cab.
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Nov 4, 2013 19:04
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Are there any good tutorials for a basic introduction to mixing/EQing acoustic instruments together? I am making recordings which have a classical guitar, rhythm and solo ukulele tracks and couple of percussion tracks as well. How can I help each instrument sit right in the mix, where should I start?
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Nov 4, 2013 22:59
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Computer upgrade talk. I'm considering upgrading my MBP, 2012 model to either a MBA or MBP Retina. I'll be running primarily Pro Tools 11, and I'm fairly sure that an i5 is more than enough CPU for anything I'll ever do. My big concern is whether or not 8GB of RAM is sufficient or if I need to save up more for the 16 GB upgrade. Thoughts? Any reason to get the MBP over the MBA? Edit: The main reason I want to upgrade is that the display on my MBP isn't the best resolution and it's just a bit bulkier and heavier than is convenient to travel with.
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Nov 7, 2013 07:35
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I just bought one of the new 13" MBP Retinas because my 2011 15" MBP poo poo the bed while I was traveling for work. I don't use my Mac as a traditional DAW, I use it to run Smaart, run several channels of music playback (like theatre cues basically) and maybe record 2ch at the same time. I don't edit much or load up on plug-ins for mix sessions so I'm out of touch on how much RAM Pro Tools might eat up, but I would think 8G is enough to load all the audio for most entire songs into RAM. My main concern is OSX Mavericks isn't really behaving for me yet, it crashes sometimes and some common program features don't seem to work quite right with it (like Esc doesn't exit fullscreen video a lot of the time, and Chrome's presentation mode is pretty buggy). I've had my RME Totalmix software crash once, which I've never seen happen before. The audio programs I use regularly (Smaart, QCart, iTunes, Logic) haven't given me any particular problems yet, but I have run into a general OS bug where sometimes the mouse and keyboard stop responding and I have to hold the power key to reboot. edit: Just installed a firmware update that's supposed to fix the key/mouse issue... Also, on the 13" at least, if you actually want to run at close to the true resolution of the Retina display, it chews through battery 2-3 times as fast. Otherwise the battery life on these things is ridiculously good. I flew from LA to the east coast, 7hrs in the air total, 9hrs including layover, used it most of that time to surf the web and listen to music, watched an hour of video and was still at 40% battery when I got home. YMMV (depending on your video codec especially) but I was pretty damned impressed - my iPad mini couldn't do that last time I tried. My only other nitpick is this machine doesn't feel as snappy as my 2011 15" with its 2.5" SATA SSDs. The PCIe flash drive in this one should probably outperform those drives on paper, and it can copy data around plenty fast, but right now I'm a little underwhelmed with how the OS generally responds. Of course my old machine is still running Lion so this could just be another Mavericks thing. IMO the new MBP Retinas are really impressive machines. With their PCIe internal drives and 2 thunderbolt ports, I think they're a great hardware configuration for portable DAWs. But if your primary use is as a DAW and you don't have to upgrade now I would wait. Wait until you at least see 1 Pro Tools update that specifically says it supports Mavericks because AFAIK you can't downgrade the new machines to Lion or Mountain Lion (if Chrome is stumbling with a new OS, Pro Tools will probably just bounce in the dock in my experience). Maybe the more traditional hardware in the non-Retina models behaves a little better, but I'm chalking up most of my issues to the early version of a new major OS update. ChristsDickWorship fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Nov 10, 2013 |
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Nov 7, 2013 21:16
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Could someone recommend a DI box for my Ampeg J20? I've got an external speaker jack (8ohm) open and I'd like to try an alternative to my SM57. Under $100 would be great, the cheaper the better.
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Nov 8, 2013 05:14
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spider wisdom posted:Could someone recommend a DI box for my Ampeg J20? I've got an external speaker jack (8ohm) open and I'd like to try an alternative to my SM57. Under $100 would be great, the cheaper the better. NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER plug your ext speaker jack into anything but another speaker cab. It's already post power amp, so there is a LOT of juice running thru it. If you plugged it into a DI box it'll probably fry it instantaneously. That being said, Radial DIs are kinda the "industry standard"
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Nov 8, 2013 05:16
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