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Post by Ward on Jan 18, 2021 6:49:23 GMT -6
I know platinum songs recorded on sub $200 Blue mics into mbox. No one is rushing out to buy X song cuz it was recorded w a 1949 Large Body U47 into Fairchild #7 into Neve 80 series. Better tools make the whole process more exciting & easier to get quicker high quality results. Efficiency & Enthusiasm:) that’s why I own the ( small amount of ) quality gear that I do! You almost say it, but pull back . . . so I'm gonna say it. The problem with Low End? It's uninspiring. I visited a client's home last night, I've done two records for he and his band so far and more to come, and he was going over some demos he and a couple of the fellas were working on. He has Pro Tools, and is using Steven Slate drums being triggered off pads into the samples. It sounds kind of ok . . . but has no feel, and therein lies the problem. The same can be said about amp emulators . . . only now am I starting to hear sounds that are truly realistic. Unless you fight with an amp to make that great sound, that right sound, and deal with the minor shocks sometimes (old amps), and the smell, and worrying about blowing out speakers or working around one that's farting out . . . it's not the same. If it comes so super easy, isn't the art getting lost? Without great drums, guitars & amps, keys, real quality vocal mics, good gear at every turn, it's often very uninspiring. Inspiration and perspiration are key. Some people can grasp that, others excuse and accommodate and compensate for the shortcomings. In our craft/trade/profession we capture great performances and we must do everything we can to inspire and improve them. Otherwise the comment "what do they need me for?" really does make complete sense. But hey, I'm 55 now and first walked into a recording studio in 1979 after junior high to merely sweep up and pitch in, and saw how much work it was and how rewarding it could be.
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Post by Guitar on Jan 18, 2021 7:59:19 GMT -6
Ward of the state I agree with that way of thinking. I was telling my brother about this. With an amp sim, it's totally boring. With a marshall half stack and a vintage fuzz pedal, you're "having fun." My personal opinion is that you can't tell the difference in the mix though. But the fun factor is a huge disparity between the two worlds. Surely having fun while recording could be a good thing, inspire the player and the performance. That's probably why I don't record amp sims much, even though I have some that sound great. You want that excitement in the playing. But on the topic of the thread, one of my main amps is a Boss Katana and that's not an expensive amp, it's something anyone can buy. I sold a handwired AC30 and swapped it for the Katana. I do realize this is yet another gear forum rabbit hole though, haha. On the other hand, when you're sitting alone with a mix, I don't think anyone really cares what gets used except for you, the person making the mix. If some certain kind of equipment gets you excited to mix, maybe that's great. I got frustrated and bored with rack mixing gear, plugins are faster and more exciting to me. Another huge rabbit hole. It's pretty obvious which one is cheaper. I guess that's the main point of this thread, the cheap options and whether or not they "work."
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Post by svart on Jan 18, 2021 9:10:54 GMT -6
A few facts:
Low end is whatever I'm not using.
What I'm using isn't good enough.
I'm going to spend more money trying multiple cheaper devices and selling them at losses than just buying something more expensive the first time.
Music quality is total shit unless it's what I like.
If the music is something I like then it can be recorded through a tin can and string to a playskool tape deck and I'll defend it as "artistic" and "about the songwriting".
Being out of tune and out of time is cool as long as it's explained as being "the feeling" or "not overproduced".
Editing and quantizing makes things sound "too perfect" but a hundred takes to try to get the playing perfectly on time is OK.
MP3's are shit due to their processing, but obscene dozen-pole RIAA filters on both printing and playing of vinyl records have zero adverse effects on the sound.
Despite averaging better fidelity than the high end gear from 20 years ago, today's low end interfaces need perfect THD, a noise floor equivalent to absolute zero and >9000db dynamic range so you can compress the daylights out of your music and add a hundred tape saturation plugs and mix-bus emulators to add all of that THD and noise back.
This one instrument through this interface sounds 0.5% different than this other interface therefor I need to spend 1000$ on a new interface instead of just adjusting the EQ a little.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Jan 18, 2021 9:27:19 GMT -6
This is an interesting subject. Just the fact that with a computer that records multiple tracks, plug-ins that emulate classic gear and even a $400 mic that can sound good if you choose well, opens a huge space for creative people. In my day, you needed a record deal or a manager to get to a recording studio, now you can work from a bedroom. Inevitably some of this work will rise to the top, some will be worthy, some gimmicky. I would say that content trumps quality with some hit songs.The idea is better than the recording of it, so people like it regardless of how it was done. The other side of this is obviously an ocean's worth of dreck will be put out alongside the interesting music.
Those of us lucky enough to have spent some time in high end studios with great rooms, classic boards and beautiful sounding vintage mics have been spoiled a little because that sound became our benchmark. So when I recorded on my Apollo's ( silver, black and now grey), I was always trying to get to the sound I knew my song could sound like if properly treated.
To answer cowboycoalminer's question, if you can't make a great record with what's available now at very low cost, it's not the gear, it's you.
Did you ever hear the lost Buddy Holly tapes? Buddy had moved to New York, married and somehow understood the importance of publishing before other rock stars caught on. He had a reel to reel on the mantle of a fireplace, stuck a mic in, (don't know what kind) and recorded some song demos. Guess what, they sound complete, all the parts were there, the songs were great, the performance was simple and perfect, just a guitar and one mic. If those tracks had been released, they'd have been well received I'm sure. So, it's the artist not the gear.
Now for those of us chasing a dream sound on a budget it's difficult to know where to stop. It ends when you have everything a studio had, but then you've become a studio owner in a way. I'm aiming for a middle ground. Right now I'm minimally set up, using a preamp into an Apollo X6 with some good mics, that's it. Where I'd like to land is a space of my own, a garage or basement or one nice dedicated room with a minimalist's idea of high end gear.
Things like Dangerous Music's gear for A-D, and D-A, a small collection of high end mics to track a combo of drums, bass, guitars, keys and vocals, even though most of what I do requires just me, and a well treated mixing space with good monitors like ATC's or Barefoot's.
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Post by chessparov on Jan 18, 2021 9:46:54 GMT -6
^^^^ This. I was going to say the gist of this, "in my own words". Thanks MJB. Many of Lee "Scratch" Perry's Black Ark recordings, are just tremendous... With very modest equipment, objectively inferior sonically, to something like AT 40 series microphones + a UA Plugin set up. BTW over the years, reading up on Buddy's "Apartment" recordings... He used a Shure 55 Unidyne for vocals. A number of those tapes, became hits, especially in the UK. It was common to over dub them, including adding the Fireballs. Chris P.S. Will catch up, more on this thread later-Thanks guys!
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Post by Omicron9 on Jan 18, 2021 10:13:10 GMT -6
My 2c: ....snip..... 9 times out of 10, high end gear just sounds right, and thus gets out of the way of the creative process. That's the real beauty in it ...... end snip....
^ This. Well-said, tkaikai. (emphasis added)
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Post by drbill on Jan 18, 2021 10:58:10 GMT -6
Ward of the state said it : The problem with Low End? It's uninspiring.Birthing music comes with doubts, reservations, fear and trepidation. We all internally compare our creative muse and music to others recordings or classics and wonder if what we are about to write / record / produce / mix will compare or perhaps even excel beyond the level of our peers. That is a very, VERY fragile place to be when it comes to creativity. And creativity is the essence of what we "sell". The grist for our mill. Yes, great recordings can be done with very inexpensive gear these days. But that's not even the question. It's not even a part of the conversation IMO. Is the inexpensive toy keyboard at a desk in a spare bedroom going to be as inspiring as walking into Conway Studio C, or Capitol, or NRG and sitting down at a 7' grand piano or 1956 B3/122? Is singing into a SM57 in your clothes closet going to elicit the same performance as singing into a vintage 251 in a dimly lit room at the Village? Will playing a $49 VSTI sampler give you the same inspiration that sitting down at a series II fairlight will? Will paying $100+ per hour and only having ONE more track (tape) make someone step up to the plate and deliver a more inspired performance that they would have captured with endless tracks in their buddy's basement? Will the embedded history at an iconic studio trump the creativity that you can illicit in your garage? Those are the questions serious artists and creatives should be asking - not whether the latest U87 clone is as good as a vintage 87. Everyone has to answer those questions for themselves. From decades of useful real world experience, I know what my answer is.....
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Post by gwlee7 on Jan 18, 2021 11:31:03 GMT -6
@ Martin John Butler has said pretty much what I have hoped to accomplish room wise except I am not going to try and track drums here. I consulted with GIK Acoustics to get my room right, and have acquired the gear I think I need to track and ultimately mix my own stuff. I wouldn’t have made what progress I have made if it weren’t for listening the people here.
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Post by svart on Jan 18, 2021 12:27:14 GMT -6
Ward of the state said it : The problem with Low End? It's uninspiring.Birthing music comes with doubts, reservations, fear and trepidation. We all internally compare our creative muse and music to others recordings or classics and wonder if what we are about to write / record / produce / mix will compare or perhaps even excel beyond the level of our peers. That is a very, VERY fragile place to be when it comes to creativity. And creativity is the essence of what we "sell". The grist for our mill. Yes, great recordings can be done with very inexpensive gear these days. But that's not even the question. It's not even a part of the conversation IMO. Is the inexpensive toy keyboard at a desk in a spare bedroom going to be as inspiring as walking into Conway Studio C, or Capitol, or NRG and sitting down at a 7' grand piano or 1956 B3/122? Is singing into a SM57 in your clothes closet going to elicit the same performance as singing into a vintage 251 in a dimly lit room at the Village? Will playing a $49 VSTI sampler give you the same inspiration that sitting down at a series II fairlight will? Will paying $100+ per hour and only having ONE more track (tape) make someone step up to the plate and deliver a more inspired performance that they would have captured with endless tracks in their buddy's basement? Will the embedded history at an iconic studio trump the creativity that you can illicit in your garage? Those are the questions serious artists and creatives should be asking - not whether the latest U87 clone is as good as a vintage 87. Everyone has to answer those questions for themselves. From decades of useful real world experience, I know what my answer is..... Inspiring to whom? Most clients don't even care about the gear as long as the result is good. Clients might be WOW'd by a lot of gear for a few minutes, and they might even feel intimidated instead. I doubt the actual feeling is as much "inspired" as it is simply "unconcerned". Seeing a ton of professional gear seems to settle worries about getting good tones. It's the visual link between "pro" gear and knowing that above a certain threshold, getting better tones is faster and easier. I recently had a producer lock out the studio for a week. The band he was working with was one I worked with many years ago and they suggested my place as an alternative to a more expensive (and totally booked) place. Why did he agree to come to my place? He "liked the gear I had in the racks" which he said made him "feel like it was going to be a professional place". He used a few preamps and my converters and that was it. Didn't even patch anything else up nor try anything else out. I suggested some things, but he declined because he would just do it ITB with his plugins instead.
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Post by jmoose on Jan 18, 2021 13:26:37 GMT -6
Ahoy! Short time lurker first time poster. This thread convinced me to join...
I was the guy who, years ago at the "purple place" moderated and named the "Low End Theory" forum.
The name was a nod to the still most excellent Tribe Called Quest album (which if you've never checked out should immediately) because A) I thought it was a fitting name for a forum based on inexpensive gear and B) it was way hipper then whatever stupid name Jules picked, which completely escapes me. And FWIW I gave up on that spot a lotta years ago...
The original thought was that nobody needs any or all of the top-shelf gear to make a really compelling record, from the standpoint of either or both sonics & songwriting. It was true damn near 20 years ago (?) when that corner of the interknot launched and its especially true today.
Back then we could look at things like ADAT's and POD's. Now its a $199 interface and amp sim plugs... drum machines replaced with Superior Drummer.
At the bottom end the tech has gotten more & more inexpensive. The top end hasn't changed much if at all. Great digital is just as expensive as great analog.
If anything, the one thing that's completely flipped in that time was the wholesale move to digital recording as the primary medium. In 1999 analog 2" tape was the dominant format and just about every studio had a machine. Almost nobody had a DAW system and if you did it was in a really expensive room with a rented Monkey Toolz rig that came with an operator.
Fast forward and now everyone has a DAW and only the very best studios on the planet have analog tape machines as an option.
All the other other stuff though? It never changed. At least for me... having good sources and solid mics and preamps. The requirement of excellent monitoring never went anywhere. And there's a lot of other stuff inbetween that also never changed, other then possibly in form but certainly not in execution. Like the move from rack gear to plugins... a compressor is still a compressor.
"Low End Theory" was more about the idea that there's some truly excellent inexpensive gear that can certainly hang with and be just as valid as the top shelf stuff. It was more about state of mind and the process and execution then what specific things you had available. And the idea that not having a bunch of hi fi stuff shouldn't hold anyone back from making music & cutting tracks. But maybe, just maybe, the super cool kids would find that as their skills & collection of tools grew they'd find that some of that cheap shit was worth keeping because it makes dope sounds.
FWIW - At the time that forum came into existence I owned a Trident 65 desk, JH24 and Studer A80 1/4 deck. Certainly cool stuff, and I guess some would consider it hi end but in reality it was "budget" stuff that I could afford.
The Trident wasn't an SSL 4K or an 80 series Neve. The JH24 wasn't an A800 and the Studer? Well, I happened to like 1/4 at 15ips anyway but it wasn't a half inch machine. And the whole reason I bought the A80 in the first place was because a tech buddy found it for I think $250? Whatever. It was certainly a whole lot less money then an ATR102 which I couldn't afford!
Coming up as an assistant engineer in the late 90s, the tail end of the analog dinosaur days I had experience with all that excellent top shelf gear. I knew what the standard was. To this day I continue to work with and book those sort of rooms when the artist has the need and budget for it...
But the question at the time was, how can I maintain that same level of integrity... be on the level of say, Electric Ladyland when there certainly isn't anywhere near the same level of budget for the equipment?
THAT was "Low End Theory" then and I think it still is now. As always YMMV!
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Post by Ward on Jan 18, 2021 13:33:48 GMT -6
Welcome jmoose. Thanks for joining us. I enjoyed your post!
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Post by drbill on Jan 18, 2021 15:35:05 GMT -6
Ward of the state said it : The problem with Low End? It's uninspiring.Birthing music comes with doubts, reservations, fear and trepidation. We all internally compare our creative muse and music to others recordings or classics and wonder if what we are about to write / record / produce / mix will compare or perhaps even excel beyond the level of our peers. That is a very, VERY fragile place to be when it comes to creativity. And creativity is the essence of what we "sell". The grist for our mill. Yes, great recordings can be done with very inexpensive gear these days. But that's not even the question. It's not even a part of the conversation IMO. Is the inexpensive toy keyboard at a desk in a spare bedroom going to be as inspiring as walking into Conway Studio C, or Capitol, or NRG and sitting down at a 7' grand piano or 1956 B3/122? Is singing into a SM57 in your clothes closet going to elicit the same performance as singing into a vintage 251 in a dimly lit room at the Village? Will playing a $49 VSTI sampler give you the same inspiration that sitting down at a series II fairlight will? Will paying $100+ per hour and only having ONE more track (tape) make someone step up to the plate and deliver a more inspired performance that they would have captured with endless tracks in their buddy's basement? Will the embedded history at an iconic studio trump the creativity that you can illicit in your garage? Those are the questions serious artists and creatives should be asking - not whether the latest U87 clone is as good as a vintage 87. Everyone has to answer those questions for themselves. From decades of useful real world experience, I know what my answer is..... Inspiring to whom? Most clients don't even care about the gear as long as the result is good. Inspiring to whomever is doing the creating and/or paying the bill. If the "studio" is claustrophobic and the AC doesn't work and it's hot, how creative is that? If all they have is a laptop, and an 8 channel converter to record a band, how will that work out? Every person's requirements will be different. Some want amenities, or great photo ops, or to work with a famous person, or to work with experienced staff, or to work where their hero(s) worked. Some want gear, some want location, others want mics, others want zero hourly payments with a laptop. Everyone has to make a choice every time they decide to record. Some make great creative choices that suit their personal esthetic, others gravitate to the lowest common denominator. IMO, gear is one of the least important aspects.
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Post by jmoose on Jan 18, 2021 15:51:56 GMT -6
Welcome jmoose . Thanks for joining us. I enjoyed your post! Thanks. Found this place a few weeks ago while digging for info on interfaces/converters. Seems pretty laid back, good signal to noise ratio with some familiar names so for better or worse I'll probably stick around.
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 18, 2021 17:29:41 GMT -6
I agree, they are surprisingly decent. Not too bad at all. I've heard better and I've heard worse. Fun fact the Scarlett interfaces dominate the Reverb.com interface sales top 20 list. Of course they do - they're cheap as dirt and Focusrite markets the hell out of them, playing on the rep of their high level (expensive) stuff.
Over at the GC guitar forum we probably get more complaints from people running Scarletts than any other brand - maybe even all other brands put together.
Yeah, it's GC - but that's where Scarlett customers generally hang out.
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 18, 2021 17:38:54 GMT -6
Ward of the state I agree with that way of thinking. I was telling my brother about this. With an amp sim, it's totally boring. With a marshall half stack and a vintage fuzz pedal, you're "having fun." My personal opinion is that you can't tell the difference in the mix though. But the fun factor is a huge disparity between the two worlds. Surely having fun while recording could be a good thing, inspire the player and the performance. That's probably why I don't record amp sims much, even though I have some that sound great. You want that excitement in the playing. Maybe you can't hear a difference in the audio side, but you sure as hell can hear it in the MUSIC. It's the difference between a competent part and an inspired part.
Also, when using sims and that mode of recording many people have a tendency to be too "picky" in editing, killing the more inspired off the wall stuff in a search for "perfection".
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2021 18:06:02 GMT -6
There is no real low end theory anymore. It's more just crap vs not crap. Crap being things that are full of crap that will just break. Good parts, manufacturing, and support costs add up. There is not a lot of old Tascam, Mackie, Alesis, type of gear anymore. A lot of that gear is still kicking around and serviceable if it doesn't involve tape. The move to made in China with knockoff Chinese surface mount parts basically made all of this into even worse disposable crap. Meanwhile brands like RME, MOTU, and Drawmer steadily clawed themselves out of the low end where a lot of more prestigious companies dug themselves. That being said manufacturers like Focusrite have driven themselves into the toilet. What's in even the expensive current Focusrite gear is so bad and fragile. Yuscon caps and power supplies fit for no-name Chinese LCD TVs in products that cost thousands of dollars. Crap parts, crap drivers, and crap sound. The converters have minimum phase DA filters with thousands of degrees of phase shift in the high end like the ADATs. The only saving grace is Dante and the rebranded Audinate cards being super solid. Other high end manufacturers also drove themselves off a cliff into tone wrecking territory. Mackie got ruined by private equity capital. They want from low end to "I can't believe it's that bad." Tascam finally got cheaped out by Gibson a while back. DBX has made WTF gear for a while now. Harman is Harman and got worse support wise when Samsung bought them. Yamaha, FMR, Speck, Emotiva, and Drawmer are still making solid workhorse gear. There are a ton of good unique 500 series stuff. The older stuff got replaced by very solid new manufacturers popping up and recreations and clones of old higher end gear. The DBX 160a might be discontinued Monitor wise, the low end is better than ever outside of the fragile oem plate amps and shelf turd sizes in lineups of powered monitors and the underbuilt cabinets versus solid cheap stuff like NHT and current ELAC. The Chinese company that bought ELAC did a bang up job improving them. You just won't see those two and other cheap but very solid passive speakers on the front banner of gearslutz.
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Post by mrholmes on Jan 18, 2021 19:10:03 GMT -6
This is an interesting subject. Just the fact that with a computer that records multiple tracks, plug-ins that emulate classic gear and even a $400 mic that can sound good if you choose well, opens a huge space for creative people. In my day, you needed a record deal or a manager to get to a recording studio, now you can work from a bedroom. Inevitably some of this work will rise to the top, some will be worthy, some gimmicky. I would say that content trumps quality with some hit songs.The idea is better than the recording of it, so people like it regardless of how it was done. The other side of this is obviously an ocean's worth of dreck will be put out alongside the interesting music. Those of us lucky enough to have spent some time in high end studios with great rooms, classic boards and beautiful sounding vintage mics have been spoiled a little because that sound became our benchmark. So when I recorded on my Apollo's ( silver, black and now grey), I was always trying to get to the sound I knew my song could sound like if properly treated. To answer cowboycoalminer's question, if you can't make a great record with what's available now at very low cost, it's not the gear, it's you. Did you ever hear the lost Buddy Holly tapes? Buddy had moved to New York, married and somehow understood the importance of publishing before other rock stars caught on. He had a reel to reel on the mantle of a fireplace, stuck a mic in, (don't know what kind) and recorded some song demos. Guess what, they sound complete, all the parts were there, the songs were great, the performance was simple and perfect, just a guitar and one mic. If those tracks had been released, they'd have been well received I'm sure. So, it's the artist not the gear. Now for those of us chasing a dream sound on a budget it's difficult to know where to stop. It ends when you have everything a studio had, but then you've become a studio owner in a way. I'm aiming for a middle ground. Right now I'm minimally set up, using a preamp into an Apollo X6 with some good mics, that's it. Where I'd like to land is a space of my own, a garage or basement or one nice dedicated room with a minimalist's idea of high end gear. Things like Dangerous Music's gear for A-D, and D-A, a small collection of high end mics to track a combo of drums, bass, guitars, keys and vocals, even though most of what I do requires just me, and a well treated mixing space with good monitors like ATC's or arefoot's.
Nice Martin.
IMO you even do not need to be the greatest talent in music to be creative with the modern tools. I met more than one time kids which knew their limits, and they tried the best they can. I don't blame them for making music with the computer, as long I can hear creativity - I feel happy for them.
Here and now 2021 we also suffer from a second virus ...
My gear needs to be perfect, the best etc. at least it has to do with entitlement, one of the most famous GS topic is "which is better" or "which is the best one"... Am I guilty of this myself?
YES big time.
With my last song I threw all of these thoughts out of the window because I knew they are wasted energy. They hold me back from being creative with the gear which I own. All this talk about it needs to be X or Y otherwise it will never sound like a record...
WOW.
This can make you feel you can't create music if you do not own 150K in HW. It can make you feel very small.....
With my last two arrangements I was extremely unhappy, and I started over again. But this time I was like OK I stay all ITB and I just try to create what intuition gives me, creating into the blue.
All spontaneous, gut driven: Mixing recording and arranging at the same time....and it works, it frees my mind.
One song was meant as a traditional song, and now it turns out to be more like something they do in modern songwriting today.
That was the moment when I recognized that working ITB gives me creative freedom.
I can have a longer break because COVID-19 forces me to take care of loved ones.
Or maybe I just had no time to hypnotize myself that it only can be done with EXPENSIVE hardware. Saying it only can be done with the best of the best gear is a self-fulfilling prophecy. IMO there is no big gap anymore.
My last WOW moment was the brainworx Neve strip. If you don't like this sound, you don't like the Neve sound.
This thing sounds so close to my hardware; the EQ is nothing but heavenly.... a smooth wide open-top end - just yaw dropping.
It's amazing.
We are blessed, and I just wish I had more time to write/arrange my music. I am always busy with keeping my business up during LOCKDOWN. And I hope it will survive... LOCKDOWN NR.3 here in Germany... Hope I can handle all this, I had a few dark days....
Guys I know this is a gear talk platform. Create something "it's later than you think"
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2021 23:15:12 GMT -6
@bat Lanyard okay here are my thoughts:
Contemporary rock and metal (I'm not going to say modern because that implies something else that's very commercial) is mostly low end and low effort. The VSTi drum kit and DI guitar stuff extremely low effort. It doesn't matter how popular they are. These bands often can't play or if they are established and have member problems, can't find musicians who can play the songs. That's happening to a friend's band who is going to record soon right now. Technology got better but the recordings got worse. These groups can't frickin play their own stuff together all at once and their stuff is barely worth playing. A lot of these bands seem to be really cover bands, which is why their material is derivative and lame. They often just copy an old band they like but make it more boring, tamer, and more repetitive. They need all the help from modern computer technology they can get and they better be recorded cleanly or with a vibe you've given them that you will be able to fix it up efficiently. This is where clean but with some vibe gear rules and API and Neve style things can fail if you try to get it in the box ready to go like a record because the band does not sound like a record. These bands aren't ready for the studio yet they're in the studio and paying to get their stuff recorded or have already recorded it and are paying to have it "mixed" when they should've been practicing and rewriting their material. Analog niceties alone won't save this stuff even if having a nice bus compressor or FET comp is useful.
The drummers can't play to an kit miced up old school: two decent condensers for overheads, SM57 or something on snare, 635a room, kicks RE20 for real deal stuff, Beta 52 for modern, Audix H6 for boom click. They can't do it and need a ton of channels so everything is miced up so it can be fixed later. These are mostly bad musicians who refuse to go to decent studios or buy some decent mics themselves. The drummers, bassist, and usually one guitarist are typically not capable of playing their own material live on real instruments. If they record themselves, which they are wont to do, rightfully distrusting very cheap studios who can't seem to even get their performances in the box without screw ups, they mostly don't have the preamp quality to use a lot of good mics. Most of these guys are incapable of playing a midi kit too. Even that needs to be patched up and you'll be manually adjusting the velocity of everything.
Anything gridded ruins the feel. It just sounds awful. Sample blending can be cool but can also kill drums. Amp sims and IRs all sound static. The best I've heard is the Fuse Tweed. There's nothing close for Marshall. Those all need a ton of work.
As for digital low end, price and hype doesn't matter for digital. There are great plugins for 30-300 dollars. You just have to be sure to not get ripped off. PSP was selling one of the cleanest eqs around, MasterQ2, for 20 bucks a few weeks ago while the much worse PA Amek 200 was 200 bucks. I also like the 70s preamp in the Infinistrip more than the Lindell 80 drive but the bus is cool. Slick EQ GE and M are dirt cheap and have way more vibe than the Plugin Allance EQs. Their Dangerous and Bettermaker EQs are clean. There are no harmonics. The Burr Brown sound in everything Dangerous is just not there at all. All of these opamp distortions and most old solid state like API, are not component modeled really at all. The Amek 200 THD seems to be a chebyshev third order and a non-oversampled soft clipper of some kind in the Amek most API type plugs, including the Lindell 50, are some kind of assymetrical fold. The VQA-154 seems to be too but it sounds more 70s and less like modern, almost band-passed API sound. Compare APIish plugs to the Nevey plugs, and they're usually just low end. You really have to do your homework with everything digital, use the demo period wisely, and figure out what you're doing to the sound to get repeatable results. It's not correlated to how much you spend at all given that the Tokyo Dawn suite is 260 euros and one of the best audio purchases around.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2021 23:30:18 GMT -6
even though most of what I do requires just me, and a well treated mixing space with good monitors like ATC's or Barefoot's. The monitoring is the problem with low end gear. And not just the low end. Beneath a certain price point for active speakers, the cabinets are so bad and under damped, they can't hear what they're doing in many parts of the mid range. When the typical beginner buys the bigger sizes, not only does their square bedroom get overwhelmed, there's often black holes in the crossover and bigger resonances. When they walk into a guitar center or browse amazon or sweetwater there's not really any active monitors cheaper than the Yamaha HS8 that will give a reasonable representation of 70 hz to 10khz or so now. And almost everything more expensive than the HS8 is a good deal more accurate than the HS8, as are some cheaper passive hifi speakers but a good bang for buck amp is above the low end price range now.
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Post by cowboycoalminer on Jan 19, 2021 8:15:18 GMT -6
There is a lot of terrible music being made on great gear. Touché
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Post by svart on Jan 19, 2021 8:29:27 GMT -6
There is a lot of terrible music being made on great gear. Agreed, but that's a different discussion. It's interesting how a conversation about the quality of gear always gets steered to the quality of music writing or the type of music. It's almost as if people inherently know that it's not the gear..
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Post by Martin John Butler on Jan 19, 2021 8:46:31 GMT -6
I think it often comes down to the artist's abilities. I was listening to a 30 second snippet of a song idea a couple of months ago. It had a simple drum beat with an acoustic guitar and vocal. Immediately I noted how the mic was sibilant, but even more, I didn't like how hard it sounded on the first vocal transient. Only after did I remember I had recorded it on my iPhone. I had the drum pattern coming through my speakers and sang and played from the chair of my desk into the phone.
The thing that bugged me was all my critiques of the vocal sound were the same critiques I have of many microphones ranging from $600 -$2,500. So in the end, the problem with mics has actually been my voice, the problem was with me, not the mic. Sure certain mics were better, a vintage U67, a Chandler Redd, but on most everything, I didn't like what I was hearing as much as I wanted to.
So, I sound like me on an iPhone, a Shure SM58 or a high end tube mic.
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Post by gwlee7 on Jan 19, 2021 9:02:40 GMT -6
So, I sound like me on an iPhone, a Shure SM58 or a high end tube mic. It is amazing how clearly I hear my horrible singing on my newly acquired M92.1s.
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Post by svart on Jan 19, 2021 9:56:52 GMT -6
Anyone who read JohnK's thread about the vocal track he received from a singer using consumer-quality gear witnessed exactly why better gear is.. well, better.
Sure there are lots of folks that will continually promote the "it's the ear, not the gear" mantra, but the truth is that better gear gets out of your way and gets you farther, faster. You can bugger anything up, including using good gear and still producing bad results, just the same way you can crash a ferrari just the same as a kia.
The ferrari gets you more performance if you can actually use it but it also doesn't limit you to school-zone speeds either.
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Post by Mister Chase on Jan 19, 2021 10:10:04 GMT -6
Man, I hate to be the "that guy" on this stuff, but even though no one listens on anything "good" anymore, the shit still has to be tits out the box or it's not going to sound good on anything. Shitty mixes today aren't going to gain forgiveness on shitty listening sources. Ugh. I dunno, a lot of stuff sounds "good" on average playback, more than good enough to convince the creators they don't need to enter a studio. An uncomfortable truth.
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