kcatthedog
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Post by kcatthedog on Jan 26, 2021 20:15:26 GMT -6
Ah, gotcha!
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Post by mrholmes on Jan 27, 2021 6:39:27 GMT -6
You will be fine, the main thing is make yourself happy first. Focus on that you will love music. I was totally ITB for a few years, was very happy with a clean sound. That all changed as soon as I started getting hired for others. But then every client seemed to bring tape references. tape, tape, tape, tape. And they never liked the digital sound. They just had no interest AT ALL in actually using tape, just wanting me to get that “sound” because no other sound is good enough. But they wanted me to do it by using the latest ‘up to date’ tech, not some old junk. They were paying me, so sure.. For those thinking I didn’t go far enough ITB: I tried all the color plugins I could, they all didn’t get there. So I made my own massive plugin chains, tons of busses, sidechains, IR from all kinds of gear, even mics. Anything and everything was tried. But I just couldn’t like it. It sounded better bypassed to me. I just bring this up because one of the few clients shared with me this 2 days ago, and wishes I could dial in this sound ITB for him: Maybe some of you can get there? I’m just like.. For the life of me, I can't understand why anyone would ever want a "mix" to sound like that! Vibe, style performance, sure... but the actual sonics of the mix... Sounds like it was mixed by the guy who built the ride cymbal...LOL The vibe is great, performance is great etc... but the actual sonics... blech!! 8) Each to their own Cheers Wiz
Had time to listen in the studio and I have to agree the GERMAN word BLECH nails it. Yes hell I could do this in the DAW I don't see a problem to BLECH.....
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Post by Guitar on Jan 27, 2021 6:42:42 GMT -6
I love those old school sounding trashed mixes, all about that crunch. Funny thing I just realized this record was released in 2015. I fell for it, they got me. Gonna check out the whole thing now.
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Post by svart on Jan 27, 2021 9:20:10 GMT -6
You will be fine, the main thing is make yourself happy first. Focus on that you will love music. I was totally ITB for a few years, was very happy with a clean sound. That all changed as soon as I started getting hired for others. But then every client seemed to bring tape references. tape, tape, tape, tape. And they never liked the digital sound. They just had no interest AT ALL in actually using tape, just wanting me to get that “sound” because no other sound is good enough. But they wanted me to do it by using the latest ‘up to date’ tech, not some old junk. They were paying me, so sure.. For those thinking I didn’t go far enough ITB: I tried all the color plugins I could, they all didn’t get there. So I made my own massive plugin chains, tons of busses, sidechains, IR from all kinds of gear, even mics. Anything and everything was tried. But I just couldn’t like it. It sounded better bypassed to me. I just bring this up because one of the few clients shared with me this 2 days ago, and wishes I could dial in this sound ITB for him: Maybe some of you can get there? I’m just like.. I'm going to be *that guy* and say that this doesn't sound good to me. The vocals blooming due to something overloading are a huge huge distraction and there's peaking frequencies jumping out all over it. It sounds like it's trying way too hard to sound trashy and not really getting the smooth band-limited sound of old.
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Post by Guitar on Jan 27, 2021 9:24:27 GMT -6
I guess I agree also, now. I liked the song with the Youtube compression, but when I tried to listen to the record lossless it was so blown out and trashed I couldn't get past the second song. Fatiguing as hell. Too bright, too much THD, too limited. Recipe for ugly.
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Post by svart on Jan 27, 2021 9:26:46 GMT -6
But anyway, back on topic.. I removed the mixer from the desk last night and did a few more things on the new desk as well but scratched the paint on my metal brackets so I needed to repaint them. I'll start to pull the old desk out tonight but the base of it is welded rebar that I moved from one studio to this one and put it in place before I had walls up.. Point being that I can't remove it as-is and I'm going to have to cut it into sections.
At least then I can get behind everything and remove the snakes that I used for the mixer. I'm thinking I might remove the whole insert patchbay as it is. I have another smaller patchbay I was using for the effects rack which I might wire up direct so that I can patch back and forth more easily but I'm not sure about that yet.
I might also remove one of the racks altogether but I'm not sure about that either.
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bob
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Post by bob on Jan 27, 2021 9:59:33 GMT -6
..and here I am going in the other direction. I like working way too quick, way too dirty and way too much without any screens to keep doing ITB for everything. It's slowing me down and often making me fall out of love with the process. Plus I can't take the fussing that clients seem to think is necessary(very often to the massive detriment of the finished product). I want a couple of tape machines for the brave/suitable projects, an AWS 948 for recall and a patchbay/outboard that hopefully sees little variation/need for recall once it settles and matures... just Total Recall on the desk and perhaps a SSL rack with some more Total Recall dynamic modules. Not cheap, granted, but super flexible and immensely usable even if it's just as a daw controller for boring corporate bill-paying gigs, or stuff like post-production dub mixes. Covid slowed the plan down but I'm getting close to pulling the trigger. It's got to be done. I really did try the ITB thing in ernest for the longest time.. Each to his own I guess p.s. Oh wow I just noticed this is my first post here!! I've been lurking for ages. Nice to meet you all. Love it here. Bob
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Post by jcoutu1 on Jan 27, 2021 10:07:10 GMT -6
But anyway, back on topic.. I removed the mixer from the desk last night and did a few more things on the new desk as well but scratched the paint on my metal brackets so I needed to repaint them. I'll start to pull the old desk out tonight but the base of it is welded rebar that I moved from one studio to this one and put it in place before I had walls up.. Point being that I can't remove it as-is and I'm going to have to cut it into sections. At least then I can get behind everything and remove the snakes that I used for the mixer. I'm thinking I might remove the whole insert patchbay as it is. I have another smaller patchbay I was using for the effects rack which I might wire up direct so that I can patch back and forth more easily but I'm not sure about that yet. I might also remove one of the racks altogether but I'm not sure about that either. What ya selling?
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Post by svart on Jan 27, 2021 10:36:40 GMT -6
..and here I am going in the other direction. I like working way too quick, way too dirty and way too much without any screens to keep doing ITB for everything. It's slowing me down and often making me fall out of love with the process. Plus I can't take the fussing that clients seem to think is necessary(very often to the massive detriment of the finished product). I want a couple of tape machines for the brave/suitable projects, an AWS 948 for recall and a patchbay/outboard that hopefully sees little variation/need for recall once it settles and matures... just Total Recall on the desk and perhaps a SSL rack with some more Total Recall dynamic modules. Not cheap, granted, but super flexible and immensely usable even if it's just as a daw controller for boring corporate bill-paying gigs, or stuff like post-production dub mixes. Covid slowed the plan down but I'm getting close to pulling the trigger. It's got to be done. I really did try the ITB thing in ernest for the longest time.. Each to his own I guess p.s. Oh wow I just noticed this is my first post here!! I've been lurking for ages. Nice to meet you all. Love it here. Bob Heya Bob. I bought a 24ch tape machine a few years ago because I had tons of bands wanting to do tape.. Not a single band wanted to pay the price for tape though. "what do you mean a new reel of tape is 300$ and we only get 15 minutes on it??". "You mean we can't just punch in one note?" was also a common question when talking about doing tape.. It turns out that nobody really wants to use tape, they just want to believe that it'll add something cool to their sound.
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Post by svart on Jan 27, 2021 10:37:02 GMT -6
But anyway, back on topic.. I removed the mixer from the desk last night and did a few more things on the new desk as well but scratched the paint on my metal brackets so I needed to repaint them. I'll start to pull the old desk out tonight but the base of it is welded rebar that I moved from one studio to this one and put it in place before I had walls up.. Point being that I can't remove it as-is and I'm going to have to cut it into sections. At least then I can get behind everything and remove the snakes that I used for the mixer. I'm thinking I might remove the whole insert patchbay as it is. I have another smaller patchbay I was using for the effects rack which I might wire up direct so that I can patch back and forth more easily but I'm not sure about that yet. I might also remove one of the racks altogether but I'm not sure about that either. What ya selling? Might have some patchbay stuff for sale..
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bob
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Post by bob on Jan 27, 2021 14:43:24 GMT -6
Hey Svart, ye I totally get that. I’ve been there countless times down the years and it becomes a very boring conversation to have. I’m kind of a weird one though, and I’m actually flirting with the idea of a 1” 8-track as a multitrack deck, though I’m kind of losing heart about finding a great machine with good heads for reasonable money. When a project comes along that can afford all the 2” tape for the whole shabang everybody’s getting on the plane to somewhere fancy, I’m not interested in catering for that with my modest setup. It’s mostly to do with the way it makes people work, sonics are admittedly very much secondary to be honest But anyhow, tape is hardly the topic of the thread and I’d hate to hijack it. This post pushed me to finally get in touch with some dealers whilst stuck in traffic this afternoon and it seems I was MASSIVELY over-budgeting for the desk. Watch this space!! Horses for courses, as they say ..and here I am going in the other direction. I like working way too quick, way too dirty and way too much without any screens to keep doing ITB for everything. It's slowing me down and often making me fall out of love with the process. Plus I can't take the fussing that clients seem to think is necessary(very often to the massive detriment of the finished product). I want a couple of tape machines for the brave/suitable projects, an AWS 948 for recall and a patchbay/outboard that hopefully sees little variation/need for recall once it settles and matures... just Total Recall on the desk and perhaps a SSL rack with some more Total Recall dynamic modules. Not cheap, granted, but super flexible and immensely usable even if it's just as a daw controller for boring corporate bill-paying gigs, or stuff like post-production dub mixes. Covid slowed the plan down but I'm getting close to pulling the trigger. It's got to be done. I really did try the ITB thing in ernest for the longest time.. Each to his own I guess p.s. Oh wow I just noticed this is my first post here!! I've been lurking for ages. Nice to meet you all. Love it here. Bob Heya Bob. I bought a 24ch tape machine a few years ago because I had tons of bands wanting to do tape.. Not a single band wanted to pay the price for tape though. "what do you mean a new reel of tape is 300$ and we only get 15 minutes on it??". "You mean we can't just punch in one note?" was also a common question when talking about doing tape.. It turns out that nobody really wants to use tape, they just want to believe that it'll add something cool to their sound.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Jan 27, 2021 14:50:54 GMT -6
Just going to reply since you brought it up.. Just because something whines, or doesn't, doesn't mean that it's passing through the audio or not. It was still most likely a grounding issue since removing/lifting ground is the exact opposite of what you should do. The mixer was designed to be used with their ADAT devices, almost a loss leader. The ELCO inputs have a 2 pole RC filter with roughly 100KHz bandwidth. I spoke with one of the designers of the original X2 concept and have some of their prototype schematics given to me by them. I also have some of their hand worked rev A boards as well and there's no bandwidth difference between those boards and the later production rev B boards. Pretty sure whatever problem you had, it was with the ADAT machines not interfacing well with your gear, and not the X2 mixer. Nice if it was so simple. It wasn't. They brought in their "real engineers" to deal with the problem, and they acknowledged it as well, so no, not a simple problem. The conclusion that two very experienced studio installation guys, several audio engineers, and a couple of their tech staff was that there was indeed a problem. Again, feel free to ignore the evidence. No skin off my back - I was just a bystander trying to help. Way above my pay grade. Audio riddle how do you keep an X2 running if your not a tech? Buy 3 when they were new and 2 more since! True story a school I inherited as a Client had bought 3 from another dealer plus 2 more to keep one running, sold them a Yamaha O2r they have been happy ever since. even the Alesis rep though the 2 in the X2 meant how ever many you wanted running you needed to square that number.
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Post by EmRR on Jan 27, 2021 14:57:28 GMT -6
I bought a 24ch tape machine a few years ago because I had tons of bands wanting to do tape.. Not a single band wanted to pay the price for tape though. "what do you mean a new reel of tape is 300$ and we only get 15 minutes on it??". "You mean we can't just punch in one note?" was also a common question when talking about doing tape.. It turns out that nobody really wants to use tape, they just want to believe that it'll add something cool to their sound. God, it gets so old......yeah, they don't even want to pay for 1/4" to print mixes to my Studer......
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Post by svart on Jan 27, 2021 15:36:23 GMT -6
I bought a 24ch tape machine a few years ago because I had tons of bands wanting to do tape.. Not a single band wanted to pay the price for tape though. "what do you mean a new reel of tape is 300$ and we only get 15 minutes on it??". "You mean we can't just punch in one note?" was also a common question when talking about doing tape.. It turns out that nobody really wants to use tape, they just want to believe that it'll add something cool to their sound. God, it gets so old......yeah, they don't even want to pay for 1/4" to print mixes to my Studer...... I really thought it could be a cool niche thing, like nobody else is offering tape anymore in the area.. But nope. Lots and lots of interest until they hear that price and how much more work it takes.
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Post by drbill on Jan 27, 2021 15:55:12 GMT -6
Audio riddle how do you keep an X2 running if your not a tech? Buy 3 when they were new and 2 more since! True story a school I inherited as a Client had bought 3 from another dealer plus 2 more to keep one running, sold them a Yamaha O2r they have been happy ever since. even the Alesis rep though the 2 in the X2 meant how ever many you wanted running you needed to square that number. Haha! That's funny. Unless you own one. Great for a salesman though - right?
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Jan 27, 2021 16:10:50 GMT -6
Audio riddle how do you keep an X2 running if your not a tech? Buy 3 when they were new and 2 more since! True story a school I inherited as a Client had bought 3 from another dealer plus 2 more to keep one running, sold them a Yamaha O2r they have been happy ever since. even the Alesis rep though the 2 in the X2 meant how ever many you wanted running you needed to square that number. Haha! That's funny. Unless you own one. Great for a salesman though - right? Nah in those situations by the third one the customer figures you really owe him one. Now the funny thing on this one was that the customer was very much high maintenance and low margin. I had the whole deal setup at a reasonable price selling them the O2r with a meter bridge, Yamaha had given us a bunch of bridges for free, I was going to sell that bridge at close to regular price to pay for all the time spent on prior deals when my boss starts telling the client about the free bridges! I have to explain that I quoted the deal not knowing if we see the actual PO before we sold all the free bridges and that if it came before then I would include the bridge for free. He got the PO the next day. The funny part in all this is the woman in charge of writing the PO’s understood how much work her guy was and that I was trying to make money for once and that my boss screwed the whole thing up.
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Post by drbill on Jan 27, 2021 16:28:43 GMT -6
Oops!!
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Jan 27, 2021 16:34:53 GMT -6
Oops!! As time goes by and the LTL / Silverbullet grows you will find selling gear is as involved as production. You just don’t have as much say in who the clients are.
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Post by OtisGreying on Jan 27, 2021 17:07:55 GMT -6
“River” from that album is the best song and a really great mix imo. Beautiful character and not as seemingly overdriven as Coming Home.
Also listen to “July” with Leon Bridges and Noah Cyrus. Also great. Lots of color on his voice in that record and a great song.
Personally I think ITB can get you somewhere great if the stems your mixing have some real mojo built in. Which means whichever artist is hiring you to mix would have to have to used some serious equipment. That’s how these great ITB mixes are being done, those stems are coming from tracks recorded on consoles or really extensive outboard chains, so going ITB is enough in that scenario. Otherwise I am not so sure.
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Post by svart on Jan 27, 2021 17:19:45 GMT -6
Audio riddle how do you keep an X2 running if your not a tech? Buy 3 when they were new and 2 more since! True story a school I inherited as a Client had bought 3 from another dealer plus 2 more to keep one running, sold them a Yamaha O2r they have been happy ever since. even the Alesis rep though the 2 in the X2 meant how ever many you wanted running you needed to square that number. Haha! That's funny. Unless you own one. Great for a salesman though - right? I owned one. And a few spare channels. Worked great for me for 15+ years.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Jan 27, 2021 17:53:27 GMT -6
Haha! That's funny. Unless you own one. Great for a salesman though - right? I owned one. And a few spare channels. Worked great for me for 15+ years. Yeah but you are the exception, you can take everything apart and put it back together! That is not the typical X2 owner!
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Post by svart on Jan 27, 2021 17:59:20 GMT -6
I owned one. And a few spare channels. Worked great for me for 15+ years. Yeah but you are the exception, you can take everything apart and put it back together! That is not the typical X2 owner! The maintenance is no different than any other large format mixer.
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Post by svart on Jan 28, 2021 12:32:44 GMT -6
So many cables.
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Post by svart on Jan 28, 2021 12:44:43 GMT -6
So I disassembled the old desk and moved it out of the way for now and moved the new desk into place to get a feel for position..
I hate it. I had a visceral reaction to the new desk. Fung shui being what it is, it's much too small and cramped feeling.
It's crazy. I couldn't even stand to sit at it for more than a minute.
I feel like I need a much larger desk and to sit out further into the room, so I'm going to have to order a much larger desktop panel. I might need to remove one of my racks to get it to fit after all.
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Post by soundintheround on Jan 28, 2021 12:52:16 GMT -6
You will be fine, the main thing is make yourself happy first. Focus on that you will love music. I was totally ITB for a few years, was very happy with a clean sound. That all changed as soon as I started getting hired for others. But then every client seemed to bring tape references. tape, tape, tape, tape. And they never liked the digital sound. They just had no interest AT ALL in actually using tape, just wanting me to get that “sound” because no other sound is good enough. But they wanted me to do it by using the latest ‘up to date’ tech, not some old junk. They were paying me, so sure.. For those thinking I didn’t go far enough ITB: I tried all the color plugins I could, they all didn’t get there. So I made my own massive plugin chains, tons of busses, sidechains, IR from all kinds of gear, even mics. Anything and everything was tried. But I just couldn’t like it. It sounded better bypassed to me. I just bring this up because one of the few clients shared with me this 2 days ago, and wishes I could dial in this sound ITB for him: Maybe some of you can get there? I’m just like.. For the life of me, I can't understand why anyone would ever want a "mix" to sound like that! Vibe, style performance, sure... but the actual sonics of the mix... Sounds like it was mixed by the guy who built the ride cymbal...LOL The vibe is great, performance is great etc... but the actual sonics... blech!! 8) Each to their own Cheers Wiz Because it doesn't sound exactly the same as everything else out there with the same UA, Waves, Slate plugins. Its crazy how distorted it is, I listen back sometimes and like wow.... but they were just all-in and going for it, no looking back....which I think is what makes it unique.
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