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Post by thecolourfulway on Sept 9, 2021 14:35:08 GMT -6
I’ve had that happen to me twice…long story short - I was selling (or buying can’t remember) an LA2A…went to the guy’s house. Older guy with a ponytail. He asked if I was a writer and I had something on the charts at the time so I was probably a little proud of myself. We talk about it for a while and he mentions he was a writer but really only had a couple songs…I asked him what and he tells me “Seven Bridges Road.” It was Steve Young and that song had probably been on 50 million records (Eagles Greatest Hits Vol. 2). I felt kind’ve stupid. Wait you bought an LA2A from Steve Young? Man, that is amazing!
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ericn
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Balance Engineer
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Post by ericn on Sept 9, 2021 15:09:55 GMT -6
In 2003, I was at Dark Horse Studio in Nashville. I was in one of their smaller studios that's very "cabin-like", if anyone's been there. It was a fairly small room, and in between takes, I was chit-chatting with this older gentleman who, to me, seemed to be acting as a guitar tech for a band that was laying down tracks. After half an hour or so of that going on, I said goodbye and snuck out to go talk to some friends that were there with me. On the way home, I learned that the really friendly "guitar tech" I was standing next to was... Larry Carlton. (I had no clue.) A couple of years later, I shared this story with one of my guitarist friends who rolled his eyes and said, "It WOULD happen to you. I would have DIED to get to stand there and chat with Carlton!" I’ve had that happen to me twice…long story short - I was selling (or buying can’t remember) an LA2A…went to the guy’s house. Older guy with a ponytail. He asked if I was a writer and I had something on the charts at the time so I was probably a little proud of myself. We talk about it for a while and he mentions he was a writer but really only had a couple songs…I asked him what and he tells me “Seven Bridges Road.” It was Steve Young and that song had probably been on 50 million records (Eagles Greatest Hits Vol. 2). I felt kind’ve stupid. I’ll give you the reverse of this, a rep who will remain nameless, was in town pushing one of his company’s latest mics as we drinking at the bar across the street from one of my all time favorite apartments. He was going on and on how This mic was all over the new Garbage album, Butch loved it Shirley loved it all the AE’s loved it. The thing was the guy didn’t know when to shut up or who he was talking about, because I turned to the guys next to me and asked “ is it that good on her” I was sitting next to Billy Bush Garbages Main AE and later Shirley’s husband and Mike Zirkel SMARTs studio manager, they had never heard the mic.😜
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Post by ab101 on Sept 9, 2021 15:22:06 GMT -6
I went to High School with Mick Guzauski. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_Guzauski I was in his basement studio and he was telling me about recording tricks and ideas. (He had Shamrock tape from Radio Shack He showed me a microphone that cost $100. I could not believe it. ) We were young. Anyway, at one point he told me he was looking for someone to assist him. I thought of offering to be that person - but then I thought - nah - he will not be successful. Next thing I know, he is recording Chuck Mangione and a full orchestra - perhaps before he even graduated High School. And the rest you likely all know. Bottom line - just because you know someone, does not mean that they will not be a great success!
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Post by superwack on Sept 9, 2021 15:59:55 GMT -6
I was on the other side of the stupid. Back when people called operators for phone numbers, I was assisting a guy who asked me to call to get the number for Fantasy Studios in Berkley. The operator, who sounded maybe college-age, asked "oh is that a recording studio?" I said it was and he proceeded to talk about how he really loved music and was interested in recording and asked me a couple of questions about getting into it. We chatted for a bit and he said his uncle (or maybe cousin?) Bruce was involved in the business somehow so I asked "who's your uncle?" it was Bruce Swedien - I told him he should call Bruce.
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Post by jmoose on Sept 9, 2021 17:38:27 GMT -6
3. When I first started recording other people, many would tell me - OH - this will just be an hour or some other short time period. And then it would really take many hours, if not another day! Fortunately, I no longer believe people when they say it will be a short time period. I do not argue with them, but in my mind, I plan for a whole lot more time! Many years ago I had a guy call and ask to book one hour of studio time because he wanted to record an hours worth of music... All I could think, and asked him was... Don't you want to at least listen back to it? Tried to explain a couple things, like time to setup a microphone... playback..?! He just didn't get it. Think I might've even hung up. Not recognizing someone... sure been there more then once. Hard to beat is the time I met Heather Graham. Was at the backstage VIP bar at a Stone Temple Pilots show... Was trying to lasso the bartenders when this women stood next to me and we made with the small talk for about 20 minutes. She was getting ignored by the bartenders too! Finally got our drinks and went back into the crowd and my friends immediately asked/blurted out Doooood do you know who that was??! I turned around for another look and... yeah... she did say her name was Heather. Hindsight? Glad I didn't recognize her. Roller Girl... Boogie Nights... I'd have probably said something incredibly dumb.
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Post by Johnkenn on Sept 9, 2021 18:40:01 GMT -6
I’ve had that happen to me twice…long story short - I was selling (or buying can’t remember) an LA2A…went to the guy’s house. Older guy with a ponytail. He asked if I was a writer and I had something on the charts at the time so I was probably a little proud of myself. We talk about it for a while and he mentions he was a writer but really only had a couple songs…I asked him what and he tells me “Seven Bridges Road.” It was Steve Young and that song had probably been on 50 million records (Eagles Greatest Hits Vol. 2). I felt kind’ve stupid. Wait you bought an LA2A from Steve Young? Man, that is amazing! I honestly can’t remember if I bought one or sold one. I might have sold him one. I remember him having some Brent Averill racked 1290’s. Super nice guy. I failed to tell my other story. Sitting at Broadway Brewhouse - this was probably 2006 ish. Pull up to the bar waiting for my usual crowd. Start talking to this guy. Looks to be mid 50s early 60s. We start talking. Land on music and he asks me and I tell him about a song I have on the radio…pretty proud of myself probably lol. Anyway, he tells me he’s a bass player - name was Bob. He’s done a bunch of session playing…Bob fucking Babbitt. As the title of the post says - I felt stupid. Bernie Leadon used to hang out there too. Just spoke to him in passing. Lots of fun stories.
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Post by bossanova on Sept 9, 2021 19:20:38 GMT -6
Hour 4 of working on a mix in headphones, 3 in the morning, debating the my reverb and panning choices, switching between mono and stereo and swearing I hear a difference. You guessed it: I accidentally had the mix summed to mono at 2 points in the monitoring chain and was only switching one back to stereo. That mix sounded godawful the next day, by the way.
Along OP’s lines: trying for years to get the sound I was looking for from ITB instruments and quantizing, etc. Now I get a live instrument sounding good in the room with hardware FX to get it as close to the final sound as possible, and I plug it in direct or put a mic in front of an amp. Fin.
Lastly: using broken or bafflingly low quality mics with tons of processing and wondering why I’m not happy with the vocal sound. Upgrading to high quality mics, get the placement and add a little EQ. Boom. So much wasted time.
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Post by reddirt on Sept 10, 2021 6:50:02 GMT -6
Recorded a cello with my CMV 563 the wrong way round. A tribute to the quality of the mic and the player that I didn't realise initially and that I can still use the take albeit somewhat compromised. I kept wondering why such a low level considering the gain i was using on the pre. ( recording in the same room and close to the instrument, monitoring on cans at a lowish level can be fraught - fooled by the bleed) . I did tell the artist and I made the call not to re-record as the cellist was time strapped - it ain't perfect but we'll live.
Cheers, Ross
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Post by Deleted on Sept 10, 2021 7:09:22 GMT -6
Bought a clean one-owner '57 Chevy back around 1972. I think I paid a couple hundred bucks for it. I was on the road and needed some basic transportation. Those cars were pretty easy to work on, and it was easy to rebuild the carb and the generator (no alternator). But I was a little less smart than I thought I was. I thought I was doing the car a favor by filling it with high-detergent oil. Within a couple of weeks it started to smoke as the oil found its way past the now-clean piston rings. A couple of months later it was making more smoke than James Bond's Aston-Martin. Engine needed a rebuild that I clearly wasn't qualified for. Got a few bucks in trade, but I'd basically ruined a nice, solid car.
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Post by Guitar on Sept 10, 2021 7:19:01 GMT -6
Recorded a cello with my CMV 563 the wrong way round. A tribute to the quality of the mic and the player that I didn't realise initially and that I can still use the take albeit somewhat compromised. I kept wondering why such a low level considering the gain i was using on the pre. ( recording in the same room and close to the instrument, monitoring on cans at a lowish level can be fraught - fooled by the bleed) . I did tell the artist and I made the call not to re-record as the cellist was time strapped - it ain't perfect but we'll live. Cheers, Ross I did that over a drumset once with a Peluso 2247 SE. Lucky for me it was an extra mic, and the client never had to know, haha.
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Post by Chad on Sept 10, 2021 9:34:16 GMT -6
Bought a clean one-owner '57 Chevy back around 1972. I think I paid a couple hundred bucks for it. I was on the road and needed some basic transportation. Those cars were pretty easy to work on, and it was easy to rebuild the carb and the generator (no alternator). But I was a little less smart than I thought I was. I thought I was doing the car a favor by filling it with high-detergent oil. Within a couple of weeks it started to smoke as the oil found its way past the now-clean piston rings. A couple of months later it was making more smoke than James Bond's Aston-Martin. Engine needed a rebuild that I clearly wasn't qualified for. Got a few bucks in trade, but I'd basically ruined a nice, solid car. Ouch! I hate car issues. Ugh. I feel your pain! I have some stories about cars, myself, but those will be for the "I FEEL STUPID - PART 2" thread somewhere down the line. ;-)
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Post by lpedrum on Nov 7, 2021 18:26:02 GMT -6
Cubase External Effects Question: I think I know the answer but this is the thread where I can ask a stupid question so here goes! Lately I've been doing a lot more hybrid mixing and Cubase is my DAW. If I insert two separate external hardware effects on one channel (such as a compressor and an EQ not chained together) am I doing two round trips through the interface? I would assume yes, but I'm not 100% sure.
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Post by Tbone81 on Nov 7, 2021 21:06:25 GMT -6
Cubase External Effects Question: I think I know the answer but this is the thread where I can ask a stupid question so here goes! Lately I've been doing a lot more hybrid mixing and Cubase is my DAW. If I insert two separate external hardware effects on one channel (such as a compressor and an EQ not chained together) am I doing two round trips through the interface? I would assume yes, but I'm not 100% sure. Yes…yes you are
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Post by lpedrum on Nov 7, 2021 21:34:18 GMT -6
Cubase External Effects Question: I think I know the answer but this is the thread where I can ask a stupid question so here goes! Lately I've been doing a lot more hybrid mixing and Cubase is my DAW. If I insert two separate external hardware effects on one channel (such as a compressor and an EQ not chained together) am I doing two round trips through the interface? I would assume yes, but I'm not 100% sure. Yes…yes you are Thanks for the confirmation! And following that logic, if I set up a hardware stereo SEND such as a reverb unit, and then use that reverb on multiple channels, I'm only experiencing one trip through the interface, correct? I'm having a new desk/gear rack built for me, so I'll be redoing my patch bays soon and will set up everything so I can chain channel effects when they're on the same track.
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Post by EmRR on Nov 7, 2021 21:35:08 GMT -6
Shoulda never sold my Altec 1567 No, that was a good move. I have a couple here I've been working on for someone on and off for almost a year, they ain't getting any quieter than they are, they don't hold a candle to any of my Gates/Collins/RCA/etc, and I'll be happy to never see one again. They look kinda cool is the best thing about them.
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Post by jaba on Nov 8, 2021 11:53:05 GMT -6
More than once I've decided that after a few back/forths, +2dB @ whatever Hz definitely made a part sit in the mix a bit better only to realize the EQ was bypassed.
Humbling, but also a great reminder how easy it is to convince yourself that A sounds better than A.
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Post by enlav on Nov 8, 2021 13:41:55 GMT -6
I feel stupid looking at the available update/upgrade plans for Pro Tools. I've been rocking Pro Tools 11 since I really didn't want to get on the update train, and at the time, I wasn't really in need of any of the new features, but between this aging PC and picking up some mixing work again, I'm starting to feel the pain of not having Commit/Freeze capabilities. It seems like surrendering my perpetual license is the only way to get an update and discount on Pro Tools... like.. what? Am I dumb?
edit: I think the issue is, I should have updated to Pro Tools 12 before deciding to quit the update game cold-turkey.
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Post by thecolourfulway on Nov 11, 2021 20:50:08 GMT -6
Shoulda never sold my Altec 1567 No, that was a good move. Haha, see that makes it even worse! Mine was nice and quiet and someone had modded it for line inputs….I used to just toss a vocal through that and it was pure fairy dust.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2021 22:23:28 GMT -6
Wasting time and money on constant upgrade cycles.. For the last year I've been trying out mic's to replace my current "main" toob mic (ISK 2B Gen2) simply because it's cheap (dumb reason) but you know what it wins out on my vox / in a mix / instruments every time. I have to finally throw in the towel and say it, there's no reason to replace it with anything else..
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Post by plinker on Nov 12, 2021 5:12:52 GMT -6
Thinking that switching between high quality preamps would make a difference (at my level). How much money/time Ive wasted.
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Post by bossanova on Nov 14, 2021 19:24:04 GMT -6
I got to sit in on some tracking at a very nice sounding, professionally designed studio today. It's been a couple years since I got to spend time in one.
I cannot adequately describe how much better their rooms sound than anything I've been able to rig up at home.
I feel like I've put so much time (and some but not too much dough) over the past few years into learning about turning 11x11 rooms and untreated foyers into passable recording spaces, and learning every little hack I could to squeeze that last bit of recording quality out of really bad sounding rooms.
It's the kind of thing that just makes me want to abandon any further room treatment, and make music with a dynamic mic in a moving blanket cave, because I've learned a lot for maybe a 5% return in quality, and there's a lot of that time that I could have spent making music instead of obsessing about the sound.
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Edit Update: I had my mini dark night of the soul and talked myself down off the ledge, and I still wish that I hadn’t spent as much as I have on plugins and band-aid room treatment over the past couple years, but it is freeing to just accept that if I’m going to record at home, it’s never going to sound like a “real” studio, so just accept it and make sure it’s something interesting.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2021 17:46:44 GMT -6
I got to sit in on some tracking at a very nice sounding, professionally designed studio today. It's been a couple years since I got to spend time in one. I cannot adequately describe how much better their rooms sound than anything I've been able to rig up at home. I feel like I've put so much time (and some but not too much dough) over the past few years into learning about turning 11x11 rooms and untreated foyers into passable recording spaces, and learning every little hack I could to squeeze that last bit of recording quality out of really bad sounding rooms. I dunno, moved into a new residence and have a choice of rooms.. For recording I'm using a 13X11 but I have another room which is 25X16, let's just say the large room isn't better for tracking. That being said the cost of treatment in my smaller room was eye watering to say the least but there's a reason for that. In my old house (which was even smaller than my current room) I bought some cheap GIK bundle traps which had a habit of just soaking up HF's whilst the room would still reflect sound back into the mic. So I did the whole deaden everything whilst recording approach and that's what it sounded like, dull, lifeless. Anywho in my studio from the ground up approach I've replaced everything with all in one scatter plate diffusors / absorbers / bass traps, I even had GIK design the room over multiple iterations (they were awesome in those regards may I say) and it's just not an issue anymore, a bit dry for sure but I've been in far worse treated larger spaces. I have spare traps I can use for further insulation if needed whilst mic'ing but it's not really necessary..
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Post by svart on Nov 16, 2021 18:02:54 GMT -6
I got to sit in on some tracking at a very nice sounding, professionally designed studio today. It's been a couple years since I got to spend time in one. I cannot adequately describe how much better their rooms sound than anything I've been able to rig up at home. I feel like I've put so much time (and some but not too much dough) over the past few years into learning about turning 11x11 rooms and untreated foyers into passable recording spaces, and learning every little hack I could to squeeze that last bit of recording quality out of really bad sounding rooms. It's the kind of thing that just makes me want to abandon any further room treatment, and make music with a dynamic mic in a moving blanket cave, because I've learned a lot for maybe a 5% return in quality, and there's a lot of that time that I could have spent making music instead of obsessing about the sound. - Edit Update: I had my mini dark night of the soul and talked myself down off the ledge, and I still wish that I hadn’t spent as much as I have on plugins and band-aid room treatment over the past couple years, but it is freeing to just accept that if I’m going to record at home, it’s never going to sound like a “real” studio, so just accept it and make sure it’s something interesting. Don't take it so hard. That room might have just fit your idea of perfect whereas another might not. I've been to longtime pro studios that sounded strange and home studios that sounded good. Either one can produce good or bad products depending on who's working them and what they're doing. There's a local guy here that spent a huge amount of money renovating a space for drum tracking and my treated basement studio has (IMHO) turned out better results. At least two bands I've worked with have agreed, but the bands also didn't want that spanky early reflection type drum sound either, which I couldn't possibly get.
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