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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 14, 2016 10:36:10 GMT -6
I had put a JBL in my first Princeton Reverb blackface, one of the orange D-120 that came from my Twin Reverb. But luckily it developed an intermittent short after a year or so, and so I put the Jensen back in, which really sounded way better. I think a lot of the sound of the original amp is the the open back combined with the Jensen, just my humble opinion but I had three of those blackfaces at one time. When they went through the roof in value compared to the 50-75 bucks I originally paid, I gave into greed and need. Still my favorite amp, the new reissues don't seem to sound the same, hope the kit works out for ya. Find some NOS 6v6, that might get a more vintage sound.
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 13, 2016 3:01:52 GMT -6
When i think useless and graveyard, after a few seconds my first thought is: AKG C1000s I bought it and have no clue why i did that. Or whatfor? Or why it sounds so shitty by design. Or why so many people bought it nevertheless. Or where it actually is and that i couldn't care less about it. I never used it, just tested, lend out 2 times and that's about it. It just does not sound good. On anything, i guess. R.I.P. whereever and whenever i will find your lifeless body. Couldn't think of something more useless. Did you ever take the plastic widget out, that gave it that "worst tendency of AKG" presence boost? I worked at a music store for a little while before phantom power was common on little personal recorders and a myriad of PA mixers, just because of the battery power option. and unleashed a lot of the useless little buggers on the world. Sort of surprised they still make them, now with bass roll-off, just in case you have lost all your hearing above 1200 cycles....
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 13, 2016 2:38:46 GMT -6
Although I have a very cool tube amp by Sano and was a Princeton Reverb devotee for ages, and of course as a seventies kid I had the obligatory 45 watt half-stack, and Ampeg V4, and Twin with orange D-120s, I think just like amps, sims are about how you set them, and how you play. I have about six that I use for various colors, all freeware, Shred by Acme Bar Gig (now defunct) JCM 800??? with the plain jane GUI, Pod Farm, which I mainly use stand alone to play along with Youtube, but I do use the spring reverb, and the amps on occasion, and the B15 for bass. Fretted Synth, Cali Sun, Boogex, Poulin, I do a lot of mults and combine so it is hardly ever just one sim. But the main reason they work for me is my no.1 guitar, a custom built strat made for a buddy back when his bAnd signed a million dollar deal with Geffen, hand wound pick ups and really great components, plays itself, and sounds good no matter what I plug it into. Thanks, Pete. And i do mean seventies, at times, like this here number with quite a few of the sims at work..... soundcloud.com/jjinvegas/hold-on-to-your-dream-jj-johnson-and-the-mullahs-of-methodonia-mix-1
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 13, 2016 1:44:01 GMT -6
Aaaawwww, cute! If it does not already have one, stick a hell(o) kitty sticker on it and sharpie a pirate's eye patch on it and call it a day. ;-) (Yes, the thread is nearly a month old, but i saw the picture right now for the first time...) I just found the strat version (both Bridgecraft) at a goodwill auction, arrived yesterday. I am not sure about the eye patch, but I think there is definitely a spot for a Hello Kitty sticker. It needs a lot of work to function as well as its pink sister, but as it cost less than the thirty five I paid for the first one there is a little room to ditch the microphonic pickups. Although both are mainly wall art, I do use them for variety, and the Tele is a shockingly good rig, no matter what the cost. I have a client with one of those Esquire/Broadcaster custom shop money pits, with the stealth pickup. We did an A/B comparison for tone, RF, and general playability. He left wondering exactly what he got for his 2500 bucks, although it is very purty. But lots heavier, and not pink.....
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 11, 2016 10:33:49 GMT -6
I also dislike singing with headphones, and even though I prefer the sound of omni, I just set the mic up about six feet back from these monitors that are similar to auratone that don't have much bass signal. Headphones make most people sing sharp, which is way worse than flat. When I track people without a lot of recording experience I hand them an old Groovetube FET 55, no stand, and tell them to just experiment with where the sweet spot is and as you can feel the wind on your hand holding it they start to tune in to LDC mics and how your position affects the sound. Your typical pop filter on LDC hanging upside down invites little interaction, almost like playing guitar with gloves on.
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 11, 2016 10:15:59 GMT -6
CAD Trion 7000 dual ribbon. Rode NT2, The CAD just doesn't seem to be that useful, looks very cool and I bought it for peanut shells, it sounds good on overly bright Fender-style amps that need a roll-off upstairs. The Rode I seem to forget about, probably ought to leave it on a stand so i remember I have it, as the box it came in is kind of clunky and in the way so it sits in the closet of forgotten toys.....
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 6, 2016 10:47:24 GMT -6
you put ReaFIR across the L/R buss, insert some kind of media file, and put it into subtract mode. There is a box you check "automatically build noise floor" Play the track, and then switch it to compression mode. Then play something else into it, and adjust the comp ratio and use the control key and mouse to pull the learned profile towards the audio playing. I notice that gentle settings work best, 1.6 or so on the ratio.
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 6, 2016 10:37:13 GMT -6
"clyp.it/u2fnyk5x" 404 this time. is this a conspiracy against you Try it again, I don't get why everyone is against me.....boohooboohoo
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 6, 2016 10:11:51 GMT -6
Some great tools. ReaEq above to isolate freq, ReaFir to kill em. Hadn't thought about analyzing songs though, I know Izotope can do that. Regarding m/b compression on individual tracks, would that cause additive problems further down the line ( eg buss comp / master comp )? What makes it different than say, ReaXComp, eg, is that there is no automatic make-up gain. So it is a cut only application in compression mode. Although the EQ seems very neutral even in boost mode without the usual problems, I typically cut only. Which you could obviously think of as boosting everything you didn't cut.... What is sort of a cool application for getting a consistent sound over a project is that if you have an EQ treatment or maybe you borrowed a microphone or hardware no longer around, that you are fond of, you can use its ability to learn that curve and store it as an FX chain, and call it up whenever you like. One of my favorite bus comps is the 1136 Peak Limiter, another native plug. It also has a sort of unique EQ function, called tilt. You can set a point like the bar of a teeter totter, and boost either the lows or highs on either side, without some of the artifacts associated with EQ. Excellent on grouped guitars and bg vox. And that Event Horizon Clipper Limiter has that control labelled ceiling, you talk about making a bad dog sit and stay, wish it worked on my actual dogs.... Here is that song I put that Beatles curve over the whole song, it was the second song I recorded when I came back to recording, and lots of it was recorded with a shaky mic and a Saffire 6, which was all I could muster then. So it was several generations, and was getting way off course.... clyp.it/u2fnyk5x
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 6, 2016 9:43:24 GMT -6
There. Now I can read your very interesting, informative and enlightening post. And it is appreciated! Thank you. Okay, you're hired.....
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 6, 2016 7:09:38 GMT -6
I don't recommend many things, but Reaper has a native VST called ReaFIR, that is the absolute bomb when it comes to dealing with so many issues. I downloaded the Soothe demo, it is okay, but you are still sort of whistling in the dark while setting it. ReaFIR uses FIR filtering, in several ways. First, the waveform is displayed like an analyzer so you can get a visual clue about where problems might exist. It has infinite bands, and introduces no phase issues, unlike regular EQ. It also has a compression mode, where instead of a straight EQ adjustment, you can draw a wave form, or pull the static line down in areas, and then set a ratio that you wish the EQ to operate from. It also has what is called Subtract mode, if you select it to build a noise profile you can play something into it, and it will learn its equalization curve, and then you switch it to compression mode and it will apply that curve to your material. Just for an experiment I applied Soothe to a song fairly liberally, and then played pink noise through those same settings in Soothe and ran that to ReaFIR so it could learn the curve that Soothe was applying. Then I A/B'ed the track with ReaFIR and Soothe, and although they were basically indistinguishable, the artifacts left by Soothe and its effect on neighboring bands weer audible, ReaFIR was noticeably more transparent. But what is even more useful is how I used it earlier today, I am trying to prepare a record, and this particular song just didn't sound as good as it could. So I went to Youtube, found "Penny Lane" by the Beatles, which has this wonderful bass curve and lots of interesting instrumental and vocal parts artfully blended, and played that into the Subtract mode, where it learned the frequency reesonse curve of a well remastered song. Then I played the problem child through that, and just had to smile at all the hair-pulling and repeated listening and tweaking it let me avoid. There are so many interesting things in Reaper, and as it is a free trial with a ridiculously cheap license if you decide you just have to have it (although the license is on the honor system, they never disable the trial version). PC or OS, recognizes any hardware, downloads in two minutes, it is a miracle of goodwill and excellent software design......
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 6, 2016 0:32:50 GMT -6
I blame the family stereo/radio/television for my life-long fascination with audio. It was a Magnavox/Phillips, but actually made by Telefunken with fifteen inch woofer and a horn, obviously tube since i am ancient, and the thing just glowed. From Beat the Meatles to Yes Fragile that thing got a total workout. But Ray Charles "Modern Sounds In Country And Western" was the one I recall most fondly.....honorable mention Sly Stone's Greatest Hits...
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 4, 2016 14:19:33 GMT -6
Logged in to google account, that comes up on the player - never seen the player before so not sure why? I have contacted the third party that provides the player to see if I can get this straightened out somehow. Because the player is the bomb from a fidelity standpoint, it plays WAV files direct from the source, no compression, and you can upload folders full of material and it posts the folder as one upload, plays the songs in order and and would be ideal for those of us who prefer services that aren't already hacked to death with bots and webpages dedicated to overcoming the "streaming only" restriction to give creators some kind of assurance. In the meantime I did post some of the LP on Reverbnation, with the dreaded mp3s.... www.reverbnation.com/jjjohnson8
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 4, 2016 13:20:18 GMT -6
Well, I guess Google player is out, I had no idea you had to download the player, and so I made some mp3s and stuck them on Reverbnation. Maybe someone has a good idea for distribution songs without too much piracy or bot responses trying to get you to buy or join something, that is streaming only..... www.reverbnation.com/jjjohnson8
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 4, 2016 12:21:32 GMT -6
I really think there is a hierarchy, and it is pretty consistent. Song/Performing Talent/Production Talent/Equipment. Sometimes one or the other might jump ahead in line, but rarely if ever is it equipment. Would the first Velvet Underground record be more influential if it was a "better" recording? For lots of people, the DAW has leveled the playing field so that working in one of the recording meccas is no longer a requirement to have access to tools that used to be out of reach. There is more than just oxide to consider, I bet I wasted at least a couple of months of my life waiting for locators to park. Hundreds of rolls of two inch tape, the expense of which came right off my bottom line. And really, I hear no significant difference in the work I do now, I still have the same ears for good or ill. Well, almost the same, NS-10s still give me an adverse reaction. Shameless plug time, I have been doing some preliminary sequencing of my first LP, only thirty five years in the making. Please rake it over the coals, I only wrote all the material to learn how to use recording software after a long hiatus due to format war fatigue and disgust with the industry in general. And just like a person on trial who chooses to represent himself in court, anybody who self-produces their output also has a fool for a client. And in my case the dang fool was broke to boot....smile...IGNORE THE GOOGLE LINK< this one works, however......https://www.reverbnation.com/jjjohnson8 https://plus.google.com/108160675808711007132/posts/Vb9WxxGAZBZ
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 4, 2016 12:12:29 GMT -6
I aggravated quite a few people last year over at the slut site when I posited that with the fiftieth anniversary of Frank Sinatra's "September Of My Years" recorded by Mr. Putnam at United and Western, it has all been downhill since then.......
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 4, 2016 11:44:40 GMT -6
I really think there is a hierarchy, and it is pretty consistent. Song/Performing Talent/Production Talent/Equipment. Sometimes one or the other might jump ahead in line, but rarely if ever is it equipment. Would the first Velvet Underground record be more influential if it was a "better" recording? For lots of people, the DAW has leveled the playing field so that working in one of the recording meccas is no longer a requirement to have access to tools that used to be out of reach. There is more than just oxide to consider, I bet I wasted at least a couple of months of my life waiting for locators to park. Hundreds of rolls of two inch tape, the expense of which came right off my bottom line. And really, I hear no significant difference in the work I do now, I still have the same ears for good or ill. Well, almost the same, NS-10s still give me an adverse reaction. Shameless plug time, I have been doing some preliminary sequencing of my first LP, only thirty five years in the making. Please rake it over the coals, I only wrote all the material to learn how to use recording software after a long hiatus due to format war fatigue and disgust with the industry in general. And just like a person on trial who chooses to represent himself in court, anybody who self-produces their output also has a fool for a client. And in my case the dang fool was broke to boot....smile.....IGNORE THE GOOGLE LINK----too much hassle I was unaware of, go to my R-nation page instead------ www.reverbnation.com/jjjohnson8https://plus.google.com/108160675808711007132/posts/Vb9WxxGAZBZ
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 4, 2016 9:25:06 GMT -6
I didn't learn these things from a youtube video LOL I was there too. I was born in 1977 and started in studios in 93. Definitely a tape only environment, gear was very small range of choices, one console, one tyoe of mic pre, one type of EQ. Everything we do on a DAW by contrast is basically informed by an entirely different set of rules. So to answer your question, what we are doing now is not to fully represent the past but to improve this platform we have now. Hi hats to tape, I could spend hours talking about that. LOL Thanks -L. I have spent hours talking about hi hats, for a slightly different reason. So many drummers I encountered were right-handed and hit the hi hat twice as loud as the snare drum, making a contemporary snare level really difficult. I think part of the charm of what we associate hi hats sounding like on "tape" was off-axis pickup on snare mics, the SM-57 being particularly distinctive in that regard. Which is why I still use it strapped to a pencil. Also why after a bit of fooling around, I abandoned any Kepex fantasies on snare drum. I doubt it is the reason Charlie Watts has that odd skip as he avoids the hat when hitting the snare, he was doing it long before anybody was crazy enough to put a microphone close to a snare drum, but some of the eighties and later Stones drum mixes, that snare just explodes.
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 4, 2016 3:26:30 GMT -6
Well, if all the console is used for is as a summing device, I am curious if anyone has done any kind of analysis of the perceived benefits of electrical summing versus the possible drawbacks of an extra layer of AD/DA conversion. If you are making all your dynamic choices and EQ in the vacuum of initial tracking that would seem to be very limiting, even as you are printing what your ears tell you is a superior sound, most of us traditionally preferred to make those choices in context. Back in the strictly tape days, a fair amount of agonizing might occur as you decide how much compression might be appropriate to maximize S/NR with about 55 db of dynamic range. 24 bit digital has made that calculation moot, so now you are compressing on the way in exactly why? Because you love the sound of compression? Applying EQ without the context of where something might reside in a mix seems to lend itself to everything being way forward in a mix, as our ears always love the extremes of the frequency range, and older practices like brightening something that you suspect will be brightened at mix to decrease tape hiss are obsolete. Just because you have hardware does not mean you have to use it, most of us who did much work in multiple places eschewed inserts simply because we were unsure if the inserts were truly balanced (most weren't) and as we didn't wire the places we had no idea about termination protocol. In those crazy days we were avoiding summing amps like the plague, we didn't bus signals to tape, we patched at the nearest exit. Now, everyone is convinced that the things we avoided are somehow an advantage, but based on little verifiable data. Because it feels better? I used to print with lots of effects, not because of ease of mix, but rather because of limited effects at hand. Like one poster remarked, most places had a couple of each kind of processor, so to expand your palette you simultaneously limited your choices later. Now is there is no need, save for a comfort zone of practices, or tactile urges to touch controls. Odd, when considered unemotionally.....
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Post by jjinvegas on Dec 4, 2016 1:59:02 GMT -6
I think what constrained anything beyond +3 was the inability of the erase head to cope with anything hotter on a lot of machines still in service back then, even as Ampex 456 and AGFA 469 could handle the hotter signals. Not everybody could afford one-pass two inch tracking of basics. Or even 30 ips in lots of cases. I did have an Otari half track machine that was set up +6 for a bit, the first project that went to a duplicator convinced me that that it wasn't worth a bit of complaining on the other end about possible distortion. I hadn't forewarned them, and they called when they put up the test tones wondering what I was thinking. Funny thing, that tape ended up a national release, with those same masters. Really, there was no talk of oxide compression at all until the ADAT format became commonplace and engineers tried to figure out why things they had done a certain way for a decade suddenly sounded weak. I initially loved digital, I was an early user of the the Sony PCM F-1 with a Betamax for stereo capture, even using it to record two live-to-stereo LPs with the Coctails from Chicago. In keeping with their retro image we claimed that they were recorded on my Ampex 354 which made for a better photograph. When Akai introduced their 14 track digital multitrack that used videocassettes I did an analysis of tape costs and found that the machines ended up being basically free but I demurred out of caution. A few months later I saw a demo of the ADAT machine, looked at the MAP and decided that owning a music-oriented recording shack was likely to be a less exclusive enterprise and sold all the gear about six months before it became boat anchors in terms of value. Most of the ADAT-enabled studios ended up DAW victims, technology marches on, and you can adapt or perish. As someone who started at the dawn of the DIY recording era, I can certainly appreciate the democracy of the DAW, even as it has spelled disaster for entrepreneurial types who parlayed their knowledge of music and audio into some kind of enterprise. If the public doesn't understand that the number of people who are adept at multi-track recording hasn't really changed even as the number of people offering the service has exploded, well, the majority of recording has always been more about desire than actual need. Same as it ever was.....
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Post by jjinvegas on Nov 30, 2016 21:03:17 GMT -6
I have found that Roughrider, a pretty well-known freeware color compressor, when used lightly, in combination with a 6 db/octave HPF set at 50hz does a pretty fair job of emulating the sound of oxide compression. But a significant portion of the drum sound we are discussing has to do with playing style and tuning. The big G symbol will take you to a song cut here at home with significantly less legendary gear, bur it isn't the gear, it is what you do with it. Although I was initially channeling Dee and Nigel while I played the drums and bass, once I picked up the guitar the song (especially starting about 2 minutes in) wandered into the pink. A bit of Iowa Piano from Bit Cat audio and AZR by Rumpelrausch, two excellent freeware instruments, and at least from an instrumental standpoint the period is evoked. It is also a song about the big gig in the sky, a very early production client had to leave for that gig far too early, I found out several years after it happened but the song wrote itself in a very few minutes on the piano. Channeling? Or just a bit of grief, I don't listen to the song very often, but it has a mood..... https://plus.google.com/108160675808711007132/posts/JSg4iBcRFtr
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Post by jjinvegas on Nov 29, 2016 17:39:05 GMT -6
Cut some tracks recently with EV 666, it automatically does that thinner thing, no real bottom octave but very clear and full sounding. Kinda thinner RE-20 thing, maybe better in some ways. Although not the first Variable D the 666 is really the first of that design to really popularize the concept. I used to see them basically being thrown away, they were sort of clunky and had their own connector that didn't match anything else, and it seemed that every school and Elks lodge and armory had one laying around. Wish I would have grabbed every single one. Replaced with the RE 15, Frank Sinatra's favored live mic, one of which sits permanently mounted in my converted floor tom/kick drum....
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Post by jjinvegas on Nov 29, 2016 12:50:07 GMT -6
Slamming the tape is a relative term. The ballistic meters in use back when were too slow to really tell you how hot the drums were, what looked like -5 on the meter was probably 15 db hotter. Obviously these people opining about how you were supposed to use a tape recorder didn't consider this. As for louder records, distortion beddy beddy good on Ludwig with coated Ambassador, not as sweet on final mixes. If you ever heard the playback from a 3M M79 with 16 trk heads, with glowing transformers sweet FET Vaseline on the lens, spinning Scotch 206 and just burning holes in the mylar, well, things were far more fun back then......
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Post by jjinvegas on Nov 29, 2016 12:25:58 GMT -6
Personally, I thought the eighties were really annoying in terms of kick drums. Brighter and thinner until the snare had more bottom, and for certain genres this is still the predominant mode. When even German microphone companies ditch your second favorite in-the-kick mic for a clicky-sounding ostrich egg, well it really made me mad when my D12E decided to get stretched and finally failed. They still make my favorite, but as studio rates have gone into a deep sleep it is hard to justify having an RE-20 on hand, as it is not that useful anywhere else. But it has the dry thunk I associate with my favorite drum recordings. Surprisingly, well, sort of, if you work enough swap meets and off-beat stores you are eventually going to come across an RE-15, or 16, or even 10. For peanuts, and it does a very nice job of that same thunk. Put some kind of LDC in front for some air, where my U-47 FET used to be parked as it was not very highly regarded back when. Lots of people don't seem to consider tempo when they are making microphone choices down there, and placement. HPF fixes some of the issues, but also strips all the visceral punch.
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Post by jjinvegas on Nov 28, 2016 4:52:26 GMT -6
Brecht and Weill take the Three Penny Opera to Oklahoma. Cool song and performance. I didn't vote although the tail on A seemed to have just slightly more noise but so slight that perhaps I was being psyched out by my expectations. As probably everybody is going to be, blind tests without identifying which team you are already cheering for is probably going to make for a more interesting result. Check your PM for additional comment.....
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