Posts tagged with “microphones”
Signal Chains (beta)
Matt and I have been working on Signal Chains for a few months, and are finally somewhat ready for the public to see it. I’m going to create a crisis here to make what we did seem so much cooler:
The Problem: Audio gear is expensive. Few brick and mortar stores carry expensive audio gear and will let you get your grubby little hands all over it before purchasing. Conversely, when people post audio samples online, you’re not always sure what is involved. Is it really that mic that sounds that way? Or is the preamp they’re using coloring the sound?
The Solution: Signal Chains is essentially a way for audio engineers (or those who call themselves audio engineers) to share their signal flows through audio samples, documenting each piece and process involved. It does this by providing a somewhat standardized method of doing so.
Doby Watson “22” Track Sheet
Here’s the track sheet I made for the Doby Watson “22” session, if anyone is curious.
Artist
Doby Watson
Date
April 8, 2009
Studio
THE PUNCH at Premier Studios
10000 Marshall Dr
Lenexa, KS 66215
Engineer
Sample Rate
44.1kHz
Bit Depth
24bit
Notes
All songs tracked Live in the big ol’ live room.
Tracks
- 6 String Body (ORTF)
AKG C451 → ATI 8MX2 - 6 String Neck (ORTF)
AKG C451 → ATI 8MX2 - Mandolin/Slide Guitar Body
AKG C414EB → ATI 8MX2 - Mandolin/Slide Guitar Neck
Microtech Gefell UM70 → ATI 8MX2 - Tenor Guitar Body
AKG C414EB → ATI 8MX2 - Tenor Guitar Neck
Cascade Fat Head → ATI 8MX2 - Room Overhead Left (From Doby’s Perspective)
AKG “The Tube” → ATI 8MX2 - Room Overhead Right
AKG “The Tube” → ATI 8MX2 - Doby Vox
BLUE Bluebird → Focusrite RED 8 - Austin Vox
EV RE20 → Focusrite RED 8 - Matt Vox
EV PL10 → ATI 8MX2
everyday/everynight tracking
I spent last weekend recording a nine song album for everyday/everynight at home. Everything went fairly well and we were able to track all instruments for every song and three vocal parts for three songs.
We scrounged together enough equipment between Jerad and me to be able to track guitars/keys and drums live. Ryan from The Punch was gracious enough to lend me an Audix drum mic pack, two AKG C451s, and three AKG C460. Two PreSonus Firepods (pre FP10) were daisy-chained together for the interface. Mics got some love from an ART MPA Digital, a couple of the older, noisier Presonus BlueTubes, and an ART Pro VLA. In most cases, this is what was used:
I’ve posted a mic list on RedMinutes for anyone who is interested. The password is mics
We used what we had and got a pretty good sounding result. I was pretty happy with Jerad’s Dragonfly. It was very smooth but still had a nice crispness. Nowhere near as (sometimes) harsh sounding as the MXL 992 on vocals. It fit Jerad’s voice nicely and made a killer guitar amp room mic.
All the tracking was done in Ableton Live 7. I’ve said it before and I’ll stand by it: I think Live is pretty darn quick and easy to track in. It’s not as powerful as a lot of other things and it’s not really tailored toward multitrack recording, but for getting stuff to tape it’s pretty handy.
I did encounter some problems a few times with buffering the samples. On a couple occasions the audio would actually drop out in the middle of tracking. I’m not 100% sure what caused this. It could have just been the speed of the hard drive.
At one point we went back to a song to record the beginning after we had recorded the end with different instrumentation. Somehow I had accidently cleared some audio regions from the session and my Undo history was toast. I had to manually locate the files and drop them back into the project. Part of that final section we had recorded, however, had a punch-in towards the end of the track and I thought I was going to have to adjust the clip length to fit it back in with the original take. That is, until I remembered that Live saves an analysis file2 with each audio file in a project, containing information about clip length, Warp, and placement. All I had to do was drop the file back into the project and bump it over to where the original take ended. The clip bounds were exactly how they were after I edited the two takes together.
File management is also pretty slick with Live, as long as you can get used to the concept of Projects. Basically, the Project contains all the audio and analysis files that the “sets”3 within it access. This makes session-wide file cleanup possible in a few clicks. Finding unused audio files does so across all sets.
Live 8 will apparently include some things that will make it a little friendlier to multi-track recording. We’ll see.
1 Nice balanced sound. Might be a new favorite.
2 They have a .asd extension and are in the Samples folder of your project.
3 .als files
“Cascade Fat Head Test Song”
UPDATE: Hear more audio of the Cascade Fat Head on Signal Chains.
Here’s a little test song I did mainly with the Cascade Fat Head.
Drums: MS Stereo — MXL 991 as Mid and Fat Head as side. In front of and about two feet above kit. About a foot right (low tom side) of snare to try and stereo image the toms a bit more. My high tom is right above the snare, and MS accurately depicts that. SM57 on snare and some cheap Nady kick mic in front of the kick. I was more concerned with the overhead sound. No EQ on Fat Head, scooped out some high mids on the MXL.
Electric Guitar (both): Fat Head about 6” from speaker, on-axis.
Acoustic Guitar: MS Stereo with Fat Head and MXL 991.
Bass: Fat Head about 4” from speaker, on-axis. Rounded off low frequencies at 100hz.
Tambourine: Fat Head. Duhhhh.
There are no effects on any tracks, save for some EQing I talked about above and light compression on the drum bus and master track.
I talked about the Fat Head a little more in my original post.
Growing a Fat Head
UPDATE: Hear more audio of the Cascade Fat Head on Signal Chains.
Today I received my Cascade Fat Head ribbon mic. I ordered the one with the Lundahl transformer just for the heck of it. This is my first ribbon mic, and I’m going to have to say this thing was worth every penny. It comes in a box within a box. That’s almost my favorite part about it.
I’ve used it on a few instruments today and it has proven to be pretty versatile. I mic’d bass through my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe and the low end response is amazing on this thing! I had to round off some lows starting at about 100hz to tame it. This probably also had a lot to do with mic placement.
I tried it as an overhead in MS Stereo with a cheap little MXL 991 as the mid signal. I originally paired it with a Rode NT1-A, but I didn’t really like the sound I was getting and it was a pain to position with the stands I have. I’m pretty happy with the sound I got out of the two; a pretty dark sound. I did have to EQ the MXL a little to match the Fat Head’s high end response, as it’s not as bright.
For acoustic guitar (again in MS stereo with the MXL) it gave a nice flat sound. It may not be sparkly enough for some people’s taste, but I really like it.
But where I think this thing really shines is electric guitar. This is the best sound I’ve gotten with my Blues Jr., and with only one mic and minimal to no EQing. It seems to give it even more bite and character. I have yet to try it with another mic, but it seems like it would do well for room sound.
Sometime this week I’ll put up my Fat Head test song. If you can think of any preloaded DAW demo song, you’re probably not too far away from what it sounds like.
Update
Here it is.