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I've finally put off buying a set of monitors for way too long. Looking around it seems like I'm going to be looking $300 minimum for a set. I'm really just trying to get away from playing guitar through headphones. An amp is unfortunately out of the question because of my new born baby. I use my pod xt and vst amp plugins for my sound. I do light recording, guitar direct, bass direct and ez drummer, in an untreated room which I probably won't ever spend the money on treating. With that being said should I go ahead and buy a pair of JBL LSR305 or is there a cheaper way I could go about this?
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Feb 9, 2015 07:39
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Whale Cancer posted:I've finally put off buying a set of monitors for way too long. Looking around it seems like I'm going to be looking $300 minimum for a set. I don't know anything about the JBL monitors and have never actually heard of them, but the bog standard choice in this price range seems to be the KRK GP5. If you're not too picky about the sound you could look at some Alesis, like the M1, they're not that bad, and for an unadapted room they should probably work well enough.
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Feb 9, 2015 08:20
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I just bought a pair of KRK Rokit 5 G3s and they're pretty drat nice. It's not saying much, but they're the nicest speakers I've ever owned. I thought the left one was hosed because it was "sometimes" buzzing slightly, but it's because the cable on that side currently has to go near my PC and "sometimes" turns out to be "when my graphics card is working hard" (ie, playing a game). I just need to re-arrange my desk and I can fix that easily. My setup is currently bass/guitar into a Komplete Audio 6 into the Rokits. I use Guitar Rig 5 and do some (very amateur) recording into Cubase with Addictive Drums as my drummer. I'm also in an untreated (and cluttered) room that I will never get around to improving. It sounds good enough to me. I guess. I'm no expert. The Rokits sounded good sitting on my desk, but raising them to ear level with a couple of half cinder blocks (painted black and with vinyl floor tiles on the top and bottom) made them sound way way better.
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Feb 10, 2015 05:14
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For recordings to sound good in mono is the trick just really aggressively notching out space for each track with EQ?
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Feb 10, 2015 19:54
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himajinga posted:For recordings to sound good in mono is the trick just really aggressively notching out space for each track with EQ? Lots of high pass filters and checking phase constantly works for me, but my idea of "good" is not particularly high!
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Feb 10, 2015 23:50
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I pulled the trigger and bought the JBL LSR305's today. They will be here Thursday.
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Feb 11, 2015 07:22
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Whale Cancer posted:in an untreated room which I probably won't ever spend the money on treating. Treating my recording room made one of the biggest differences in the quality of my mixes and if I could do it all again I'd do that first before dropping hundreds on recording equipment. You don't even have to spend real money, a couple padded moving blankets on each wall and the ceiling will do the trick pretty well. As long as you're properly using reference tracks during your mix, not having bass traps or all that fancier treatment won't make a huge difference for bedroom recordings. You can get a bag of this stuff for $50 and it will more than outfit your room. http://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/insulation/rolls-batts/r13-15-x-93-ultratouch-denim-insulation/p-1689680-c-5780.htm Just wrap a couple 4-foot rectangles of it in a bed sheet and hang from the walls. The Shep fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 09:21
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The way the room is setup and shaped is probably exactly how you don't want to set a room up haha. I'll more than likely end up doing some minor treatments. Tomorrow I'm going to try to build some monitor stands.
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Feb 11, 2015 10:31
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What's the trick to recording acoustic guitar with a cheapish (hypercardioid) condenser mic? Actually maybe it's the room that's the problem (but I can't really do anything to it, unless I could just move the furniture around; if so, what shape should I strive for? Currently it's a bit of a labyrinth). But I'm hoping it could be all down to the relative placement of the guitar and the mic. This is the latest attempt (it may be a bit loud also, apologies; although hopefully not criminally), during which I put the mic right in the face of the guitar based on the fact that people clip (other kinds of) mics directly on the body. I turned the volume down until the interface gave green throughout the song, but still you will notice that there's some... er, distortion? I also added some reverb because I like reverb, and I feel this may have exacerbated the problem, but without the reverb it's dry, which may have to do with the size of the room, which I definitely can't do anything about. On the other hand, it kind of starts to boom when I move the mic away, although I can't provide a demonstration because I've broken a nail.  I have one truly unpalatable example, I'm not going to share it, but the basses kind of dominate the background disproportionately, if that makes sense, that is they are well sustained thoughout the duration of the note, and maybe that's a good thing, except it seems on professional recordings they are less pronounced.Er. Maybe scratch that? Cmdr. Shepard posted:Treating my recording room made one of the biggest differences in the quality of my mixes and if I could do it all again I'd do that first before dropping hundreds on recording equipment. You don't even have to spend real money, a couple padded moving blankets on each wall and the ceiling will do the trick pretty well. As long as you're properly using reference tracks during your mix, not having bass traps or all that fancier treatment won't make a huge difference for bedroom recordings. Edit: I think there might be problems with two wardrobes and a bookcase, plus a bunch of pictures covering one wall, not to mention two big windows? I guess the room could be called large, though. supermikhail fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 19:44
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I think it's just the mic, honestly. It sounds like it is introducing background noise and maybe can't handle the range. Someone here will have actual advice, but my friend lost his laptop and is recording his electric guitar on his phone mic (!!!) and by experimenting with just how far away the mic needs to be he found a balance where it wouldn't clip much at all while still sounding near enough to the listener. I've also been using this little boom arm you can attach to desktops with my mic and it's awesome. You can move it around exactly to where you want the mic. I've been using a Blue Yeti Pro with my little recordings and I've found it to be an excellent value. The non-pro is usb only (no XLR) and 96 instead of 192 but otherwise they are identical and you probably wouldn't notice the difference at all. You can pick one of those up for like $120 bucks on Amazon. I'm a piano guy but I've started playing guitar and actually just used the Yeti to record a little guitar thing in just a plain room. I just did three quick passes in a row - center was the mic just facing forward and a bit away from the soundhole and for the side channels I just put the mic into the stereo pattern. I rotated the mic right/left for the sides so that each track would sound more like it was coming from that side (and then panned the tracks over to their side a bit in Audacity for effect).
Incredulous Dylan fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 20:23
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Mine is this one: http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/9422f1bfa84aa873/ It has some kind of pattern, it turns out. But not a stereo one, I think.
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Feb 21, 2015 20:34
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Put the mic about 6 inches to a foot out from the 12th fret and you'll probably be fine. The further out you go, the more you'll have to deal with room interactions and off axis coloration. Alternately, try positioning on-axis with the soundhole or off-axis pointing up and toward the body and soundhole.
strangemusic fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 22:13
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Can anyone recommend a mixer appropriate for my needs? I have a turntable and two samplers. I'd like to be able to sample from the turntable into either sampler, and I would like to be able to bounce samples between samplers without plugging/unplugging cables. I'd have: TT - RCA outputs Sampler1 - 2 inputs, 2 outputs 1/4" for both Sampler2 - 2 inputs, 2 outputs RCA jacks for both Monitors - 2 XLR inputs So it looks like I'd need 6 channels for the inputs and 6 for the outputs. I've been eyeing this one: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/802VLZ4 Looks like it would suffice strictly from a specifications standpoint. Is this the best option for me in this price range? I'm really looking for reliability more than anything else.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:41
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So, what kind of microphone should I buy? I'm taking drum lessons and am just starting to learn real songs, and I'm looking for a way to record myself playing along to da music. From reading the OP and Colorfinger's post, I think I want a condenser mic XLR'd to a FireWire interface. Since I'm just starting out I'm looking to do this pretty cheap right now, just a few steps above the literal garbage of recording through a headset mic. I'm just gonna get one mic to start, so I'm looking for something that can record an entire drumset reasonably well. Something like an M-Audio Solo and a starter Oktava, I guess? All the OP links and rules posts are pretty old, are there any updated recommendations for babby's first recording setup?
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Feb 26, 2015 07:30
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You could get one of the zoom or tascam handheld recorders around the $100 price range, they make really good sounding recordings and you'll at least have stereo, and no mucking around with daws and interfaces etc, just grab the wav file off the device when you're done.
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Feb 26, 2015 08:42
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Takes No Damage posted:So, what kind of microphone should I buy? Covering a drum kit with one mic is... an adventure. The times I've done it I've used a large diaphragm condenser or long ribbon mic of some kind and moved it around a lot. Start with it overhead directly above the snare, adjust from side to side if the hats or some other piece is too prominent, and possibly move the mic out in front or elsewhere around the kit to find the best spot where the kick, snare and rest of the kit sound balanced. You can do pretty drat good with a pencil condenser set up at just below snare height, out front of the kit by about five or six feet, pointing at the crook of space between the kick shell and the bottom of the snare. strangemusic fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 08:43
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Takes No Damage posted:So, what kind of microphone should I buy? I've actually had really good results with a large diaphragm condenser on a stand at about eye level with the drummer about 3 feet back from the kick, it's mono, but fairly well reproduces the sound of watching a drummer play. These were recorded this way with basically no fussing with the mic, I just plopped it about 3 feet from the drummer and recorded live. It's distorting slightly on the kick on purpose because I'm hitting the tape pretty hard with it, but if I wanted to I could have just turned it down slightly and it would have sounded clear as day. My actual setup is AT3035 into M-Audio 2626 into Fostex X-77. You could just replace the Fostex with a laptop or desktop and scale the price point of the interface and mic to fit your needs and I think it would be fine for your purposes. https://soundcloud.com/voyeurism/only-wasted-anymore-vox-demo https://soundcloud.com/voyeurism/park-day-vox-demo
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Feb 26, 2015 17:40
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I was about to finally test strangemusic's suggestion when I discovered that the screw holding the mic stand together is completely worn out. (I bought the stand in the summer.) It would probably be pretty easy to replace it (and the part which I don't know the name of, but they connect together almost like certain parts of human anatomy), but I'm not sure there's much point. The stand doesn't keep the mic still without a lot of pressure on the screw, and not at all with the pop-screen. This is the pop-screen I have: I'm probably doing something wrong. First off, I only need the screen when I'm sitting at my desk, and I figure if I get a desk stand it would take the strain better since it wouldn't have long levers in its construction. But then I'm not sure this screen variety would fit with a desk stand. If this can be sorted out, I could then replace the screw on the stand I have now and use it without the screen, and hopefully it will last for some time, although I had to screw it up quite tight even for the mic alone. Help?
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Feb 26, 2015 18:05
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I'm really not sure what you're getting at here. Your stand is drooping? That can happen when the clutches wear out (don't over-tighten them, it just makes it worse!) If it's drooping horribly there's not a lot you can do. Hang a couple of cables or something heavy on the arm to act as a counterweight. Or get at that sucker with some duct tape. Alternately, try to get the placement you want with minimal extension of the neck so there's less torque. As for a pop filter: you shouldn't need one in front of your mic if you're tracking an acoustic guitar. strangemusic fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 21:59
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supermikhail posted:Help? Strangemusic was talking about micing a drumset with a single mic... You don't need a pop-screen for drums, those are only for micing close vocals. supermikhail posted:Are there any recommendations for the shape of the room? For mixing, or for recording? For mixing, you want ideally a squarish/rectangular room with space to keep your mixing station centered and several feet off the back wall. You want to cover your early reflection points at the bare minimum with some type of sound absorption material. Just google for early reflection points and there are a ton of sites on it. You can mix in any room though (if necessary) if you use reference tracks properly and get a feel for the acoustics of the room. For recording, room size and materials will make a difference as far as recording and echoes/reverb. I like to record with as dead and dry a sound as possible so I can control all the reverb and delay in the mix. I went so far as to build an isolation box for my guitar amp. I don't record acoustic guitars though so that would pose some challenges definitely! The Shep fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 23:29
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RandomCheese posted:You could get one of the zoom or tascam handheld recorders around the $100 price range, they make really good sounding recordings and you'll at least have stereo, and no mucking around with daws and interfaces etc, just grab the wav file off the device when you're done. Thanks for the advice bros, I decided to go the digital recorder route as an intermediate step with the plan to graduate up to something like an 8-port XLR FireWire thingy when I'm ready to start micing individual drum set components. I chose the TASCAM DR-05 Portable Digital Recorder, sounds like I can mount that on an old tripod and swing it around to some of the locations strangemusic suggested and get at least a decent recording of my whole kit. I'll try and post a clip or something when I get it so we can compare it to a standalone XLR microphone.
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Feb 27, 2015 04:44
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I meant this strangemusic's reply, which was addressed to me. I'm now realizing that it was quite indecently way back, so maybe I shouldn't have referenced it to avoid confusion.strangemusic posted:Put the mic about 6 inches to a foot out from the 12th fret and you'll probably be fine. The further out you go, the more you'll have to deal with room interactions and off axis coloration. Alternately, try positioning on-axis with the soundhole or off-axis pointing up and toward the body and soundhole. As for today strangemusic posted:I'm really not sure what you're getting at here. Your stand is drooping? That can happen when the clutches wear out (don't over-tighten them, it just makes it worse!) I have also been recording voice, and I thought this stand would work nicely in this dual purpose, being able to reach over the desk. But obviously I need the pop-filter then, and that's when it does its nefarious work on the mechanism of the stand. Sorry for being such a noob.
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Feb 27, 2015 06:30
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supermikhail posted:I meant this strangemusic's reply, which was addressed to me. I'm now realizing that it was quite indecently way back, so maybe I shouldn't have referenced it to avoid confusion. You've discovered the primary reason why engineers get frustrated with mic stands - they're inevitably mistreated and/or go out of tension unless you get the really nice ones. Unfortunately if the clutch is worn out or stripped there's not a ton you can do. The best thing is to actually NOT crank down the tension too hard, but to set up the mic so it goes where you want it without fighting gravity/creating a hanging mass on a thin rod and thus torquing the stand a lot. Also make sure to treat the stand nicely - like, don't yank on the arm to move things around once it's tightened. If the added weight/leverage of the pop filter on the arm is causing drooping, try clipping the pop filter to the neck rather than the arm of the stand if you can, or to something else like your desk.
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Feb 27, 2015 07:07
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drat. I can totally fit the pop-filter to my desk... Although now, to be safe, I have to ask: will its bendy arm fall off if I twist it in/out of my face too much. Or is it better to screw the whole pop-filter on every time?
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Feb 27, 2015 07:26
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supermikhail posted:drat. I can totally fit the pop-filter to my desk... Although now, to be safe, I have to ask: will its bendy arm fall off if I twist it in/out of my face too much. Or is it better to screw the whole pop-filter on every time? I would not Hulk out on it or anything, I suppose, but they're built to be adjusted/flexed to a comfortable degree. It will lose its ability to stay up the more/harder you flex it over time. (That's what she said! Heyoooo!)
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Feb 27, 2015 07:33
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Ooooo-snap! Well, considering I manage to record once a week, if that, but I will need to turn the pop-filter arm from generally vertical to generally horizontal, and vice versa, what are my chances? I mean, it's screwed onto the desk rather neatly, and it would be nice if it could remain there.
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Feb 27, 2015 08:26
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Once a week is nothing, flex away.
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Feb 27, 2015 10:15
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Worse comes to worse if you're not doing anything with your hands you can always hold the pop screen like you would a microphone.
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Feb 27, 2015 17:44
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Two things: 1) I've been considering getting an XY pair of mics to record string instruments, these are well reviewed and excellent value. http://www.thomann.de/gb/m_audio_pulsar_ii.htm Would I notice much difference over the Rode NT1A I use at the moment, given that the room I record in isn't super? I'd like a bit more space in my recordings, what ever that means! 2) What options do I have for acoustic treatment in a rented place where I can't affix anything to the walls or ceiling? Primarily to make recording a little deader, but mixing is another consideration. I've seen lots of home made absorbers which need screwing or drilling into walls and that isn't really an option where I am.
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Feb 28, 2015 10:47
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The squares of acoustic foam (500x500x50mm) help with deadening a room and can be held up with double sided tape fairly effectively, that shouldn't leave a mark on the walls (test first!). There are also those little adhesive picture hooks that use a strip of tape to attach and you stretch them to remove it, they definitely don't leave marks and you could loop some thread through the foam to hang them that way. The big absorbers are better at sucking up low frequencies but the 50mm foam is pretty good at anything higher than 500hz or so, will take a lot of the high end ringing out of the room and kill a lot of reflections (great for tightening up stereo imaging as well if you put them to the left and right of your monitoring position. Use a mirror to see where on the walls your direct reflection points are and stick foam there). If you are allowed to put picture hooks in the walls (a lot of landlords let this happen, I'm ok with my tenants doing it) then just push a drawing pin in and hang the foam from that. If you have access to cheap carpet then standing some thick rolls up in the corners will act as decent bass traps. Also having bookshelves or couches or anything big and oddly shaped in the room will be good for diffusion purposes and will help kill reflections of all frequencies.
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Feb 28, 2015 11:05
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I've had good results with throwing up some padded moving blankets in a room especially if it's an emptier room with just bare walls, won't help with any low end stuff though.
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Feb 28, 2015 22:05
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my studio is in a mental institution so my mixes really come out great e: actually i did order some padding, should i just throw it on the wall behind me? the desk i do music poo poo at is kind of in a corner, so probably on the wall next to the desk too right? Tetramin fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 08:07
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Butt Bidness posted:Please critique my setup Don't buy a 2i2 or 2i4 if you want to plug a guitar straight into it. There isn't enough headroom to not clip even with the gain knobs all the way down. Get the 6i6, though. Doesn't have any issue with the instrument inputs, sounds awesome and has been totally solid for me.
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Mar 1, 2015 08:31
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DEUCE SLUICE posted:Don't buy a 2i2 or 2i4 if you want to plug a guitar straight into it. There isn't enough headroom to not clip even with the gain knobs all the way down. Do you have a guitar with EMG's? I'm ready to pull the trigger on a new interface and I'm worried everything is just going to clip on me. I'll probably just wait until I can find a good deal on a used 11 Rack.
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Mar 3, 2015 21:28
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Another question I've been meaning to ask. I use Reaper as my DAW. After I get done laying my tracks down and render it to an mp3 the volume is a lot lower than when monitoring it in reaper. How do I correct this? I'm going to guess it has something to do with mastering which I know gently caress all about.
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Mar 4, 2015 00:50
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Whale Cancer posted:I use Reaper as my DAW. After I get done laying my tracks down and render it to an mp3 the volume is a lot lower than when monitoring it in reaper. How do I correct this? I'm going to guess it has something to do with mastering which I know gently caress all about. What are you using to play back the mp3?
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Mar 4, 2015 01:15
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Whale Cancer posted:Another question I've been meaning to ask. Make sure your master channel in reaper is at 0 and not like -3 or something. Seems dumb but it's happened to me plenty of times.
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Mar 4, 2015 01:33
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snappo posted:What are you using to play back the mp3? Doesn't matter, windows media player, mp3 from my phone in the car, winamp. Its all a lot lower than everything else I'll double check my master channel.
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Mar 4, 2015 02:54
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I asked that same question when I first starting using Reaper. Didn't get any replies but after sleuthing around I figure it's a "feature" of Reaper. It's just balanced to sound like that. If you drag a finished MP3 from somewhere into Reaper it'll be louder than other things too. I have no idea how to change it, so if you find out let me know.
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Mar 4, 2015 03:31
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Whale Cancer posted:Doesn't matter, windows media player, mp3 from my phone in the car, winamp. Its all a lot lower than everything else It sounds like there are two issues here. One is that playback in REAPER is louder than other apps, and two, that the songs you render in REAPER sound quiet next to professional releases when played back to back in the same app. The REAPER vs. Windows Media Player/WinAmp issue probably can be chalked up to those other apps having a volume attenuation control, while REAPER will always send full volume to your audio driver. If you import an mp3 into an empty REAPER project and compare it to the same mp3 in WMP with the volume slider all the way up, are they still different? If so, it's probably due their respective levels in the Windows audio mixer. As for why your songs are quieter than professional releases, you have to understand that most current releases are compromised to hell in order to get them to be loud. The arrangements are constructed to be deceptively sparse to begin with--a small number of elements playing at once tends to sound much louder than a dense, layered mix, since everything needs to be turned down to fit in the same box. All of the dynamic elements, especially drums and vocals, are probably brickwall limited in the mix, and then the stereo mix itself is multi-band compressed and parallel compressed and distorted and limited in order to squeeze a few more dB out of each stage. I wouldn't get too hung up on emulating that process. Listen to how Metallica's insanely loud Death Magnetic opens up after being recreated with Guitar Hero stems, minus the mastering chain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyIACDCc1I
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Mar 4, 2015 22:55
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