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Post by joseph on Sept 27, 2018 20:48:12 GMT -6
Along the lines of what Svart says, it's a trade off. Generally speaking, for me vocals sound better out of a 6 inch woofer, and everything else sounds better out of an 8 inch woofer.
But while everyone fetishizes tweeter material, Eric is right to point out woofer construction is just as important, if not more so. Think of a guitar cab. Size doesn't matter as much as material and enclosure in terms of focus and fine frequency resolution rather than coarse impression of moving air.
Because even when I don't like the sound of a tweeter if it seems unnatural on strings for example I can often judge the highs just fine, yet the woofer being off is a big problem, particularly for judging depth and effects.
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Post by joseph on Sept 12, 2018 18:29:26 GMT -6
One of my favorite quotes about music:
"For me, security and beauty and not compatible. When you seek beauty, you have to forget security, and you have to go to the rim of catastrophe. There you find the beauty. If a musician makes a mistake, a crack, because he risks everything to get the most beautiful thing and he fails, then I thank him for this failure because it is only with this risk you can get the beauty, the real beauty. The real beauty is not available at all. If you seek security, you should make another profession."
-Nikolaus Harnoncourt
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Post by joseph on Sept 12, 2018 14:16:34 GMT -6
I'm not in a position to judge this technology, which may increase professional efficiency and consistency, but I do worry sometimes that the general mindset encourages perfect mixing, rather than the product and personality of an individual studio and flawed space.
To give a couple examples - Wings' Let Me Roll It, the guitar is too loud and there is a ground hum (in the vocal echo I think). Not sure if the guitar level is intentional. PJ Harvey's Working for the Man - The vocals and top are quite dull and the bass very heavy and blown out. Sounds intentional.
Both mixes would sound less interesting if you fixed these problems. Or the whole record of the Amps' Pacer.
The flip side of this is the standard intentionally fucked up neo-soul heavy bass, smashed drums, mono sound, parallel everything which sounds canned and boring as hell these days.
Other examples are the Kempe's Strauss recordings, the strings as recorded are slightly too edgey and the brass ensemble work a little fiery and uncontrolled by today's standards. But it makes the Dresden orchestra sound more alive.
Or Deutsche Grammophon's 70s piano records have a glassy unnatural quality people often criticize, but I think this is more articulate than the reverberant recording style popular with some labels today where you hear the piano from too many perspectives at once on account of the engineer going crazy with the mic mixes.
Anyway, just reflecting a bit, sorry!
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Post by joseph on Sept 12, 2018 13:48:39 GMT -6
Albini's tip - I like to put a ring of keys in the hihat.
Tape sounds like shit. I also hate the sound of wimpy over-dampened drums in general, so cliched these days.
It's a pastiche because you listen to old recordings, every track has a distinctive drum sound, often with a lot of sustain.
I'm also not a fan of perfectly tuned and overly close miked drums, as I like happy accidents and particularly too much subkick messes with the groove of any moderate to fast tempo songs. I'd rather just record a different day if the drums are not really working for a given song.
But it's a taste thing. I kind of like the sound of drums after a drummer tunes them to his liking with some back and forth listening to speakers not headphones, and then really lays into them, so they are a little off. That way they don't call attention to themselves so much in the mix and sound a little loose.
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Post by joseph on Sept 11, 2018 11:02:08 GMT -6
The thing with stereo vs dual mono is how is the stereo detecting ? Dual mono can kill a stereo spread, but so can a stereo that keys on one channel. I’ll say it depends on the situation and program, but take the time to figure out how your stereo or linked comps are detecting, use some tones and play around. Yeah that reminds me of the whole dual sidechain SSL thing, and how the GSSL didn't originally have that, so the middle would get compressed more than the sides.
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Post by joseph on Sept 11, 2018 10:32:58 GMT -6
I have Pro Tools but rarely use it. I use both PCs and Macs and do a lot of technical work.
Logic is good because there is no dongle and no licensing issues. It's bad because sometimes they abandon a version in the switch to a new yearly OS and break everything; a lot of people got screwed from 9 to X. But that's true of Pro Tools as well, where I have 12.6 and am stuck there and don't want to pay anymore. Foolishly I thought permanent license meant for all of 12 and bugfixes, not simply . updates which are mostly bugfixes which is bullshit and makes me want to give them my money even less.
I also like the manual latency pinging in Logic. I find hardware inserts and midi much easier to deal with there. And the comping is very simple.
Drivers are definitely more stable on Mac, no question. Because there are fewer of them, fewer conflicts, and they are not updated automatically as they often are on Windows. So is Kontakt, it seems.
I have a Symphony MKI, and while I'm not happy about fan noise bs i.e. it not actually being modular, it is stable and sounds great.
If I were buying today, I'd take a serious look at the UAD Apollo X though.
Ableton is also a totally different experience, and might be good for certain types of songwriters these days.
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Post by joseph on Sept 10, 2018 11:05:04 GMT -6
Given the choice, when inserting a plugin on a stereo track, under what circumstances do you choose one over the other? I'm mostly thinking about compression, but thoughts/comments about any and all other effects would be great. Stereo - but I generally never have a stereo channel panned hard left and right. I treat it as one “instrument” and prefer for both “sides” to compress together. Very rarely will the narrowing effect have any bearing on what I’m doing - and sometimes I prefer it. Just want to state the obvious, but if you mic a source with a true stereo near-coincident etc technique, then it will usually sound best and still have a strong center when hard panned. Conversely if you mic two sources and treat them as stereo, then hard panned sometimes sounds too much (like with Glyn Johns overheads). Because it's not really stereo and the center image is off. The funny thing is that dual mono will sound best when you have a stereo-miked source because the balance is already there or a natural presentation of an ensemble in a room/hall (like divided strings) that you don't want to change, but sometimes I use linked stereo when I want drums to sound a little narrower with hard panned or half-panned mono sources. So the narrowing effect of stereo-linking seems most appropriate to me for a bunch of non-stereo sources that need to be reined in on a sub bus. I almost always prefer dual mono otherwise. But I also like real stereo sources where possible, and I don't care when an overall mix is lopsided, it can sound cool.
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Post by joseph on Sept 9, 2018 8:05:29 GMT -6
I really like the sound of the Valvet X, has a more transparent midrange than the 87i, smoother upper mids and more open top than ai or i.
Josephson C715 is probably my favorite modern design, though, probably because it has a darkish liquid midrange but delicate not super-bright top and has no sibilance ever.
Just sounds really nice in a mix for indie stuff where the vocal needs to be articulate but not sitting on everything else, and I feel like it could be molded easily with eq.
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Post by joseph on Aug 8, 2018 18:42:51 GMT -6
Glorious!
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Post by joseph on Aug 3, 2018 11:35:09 GMT -6
I just had 666 posts! Which pattern is best to record "Hail Satan"? I'm going with omni.
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km84s
Aug 3, 2018 11:05:08 GMT -6
Post by joseph on Aug 3, 2018 11:05:08 GMT -6
I think it would be foolish to scrimp on the most important sounding component of a vintage classic mic when its capsule is still in production, to the same specs, by the greatest microphone company the world has ever known. Unlike the modern K87 capsule, no one is complaining about the modern capsules for the KM series. You scored a great deal on those KM84s. If you don't like the sound of the caps (and that poor sound follows the switching of said capsules), maybe take that savings and go get some new real Neumann capsules for them and make great music! A reskin will lower their resale value significantly regardless of how they look or sound. Regarding the 4dB output difference, are you sure they're both strapped for 200 ohms? Some of them (the ones with the red dot) were set for 50 ohms to be compatible with the older USA consoles which couldn't handle the hotter level. See attached pic for what a 200 ohm strapping looks like on the transformer for a KMi body. Note the solder bridge between the transformer terminals 2 & 3 for 200 ohms and the lack of the bridge between 1&2 and 3&4). Since the serials are so close, I can't imagine they're not strapped the same but it doesn't hurt to look before buying new capsules. I actually have one KM84 with adapter that is European and strapped for 200 ohms and another US one that is 50 ohms for US market. The difference is actually 6db. Interestingly enough if you make up the gain, they still work together well as a stereo pair, which I did not expect! I checked with a meter to make sure my ears weren't deceiving me.
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Post by joseph on Aug 1, 2018 13:34:52 GMT -6
Yeah, to me it just sounds like it has 50-70ms built in. There was a shootout vs real EMT140 on gs where this difference was noticeable. Well, maybe they'll offer a full version with predelay control. I kind of like the sound of drums with less predelay than vocals, which is why I noticed in the first place. I would pick up a free copy of Voxengo Latency Delay and offset the reverb track if you want 0 pre delay. Will that actually work? Isn't the latency in the algorithm onset of reverb itself, not the plugin reporting? I will give it a try.
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Post by joseph on Jul 31, 2018 15:12:20 GMT -6
The only thing I don't like about the Soundtoys plate is that you can't adjust the predelay fully to zero. I suppose the real one they modeled is like this. Otherwise it's great. The AR plates sounds very complex, so I eq the send/return to this one a lot. Also it murders the CPU. I like the chambers in Nimbus a lot, and VSR S24 has some nice plate and especially stage sounds, very immersive. Plates have zero predelay, so it can’t be that. Weird! Yeah, to me it just sounds like it has 50-70ms built in. There was a shootout vs real EMT140 on gs where this difference was noticeable. Well, maybe they'll offer a full version with predelay control. I kind of like the sound of drums with less predelay than vocals, which is why I noticed in the first place.
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Post by joseph on Jul 31, 2018 14:25:34 GMT -6
The only thing I don't like about the Soundtoys plate is that you can't adjust the predelay fully to zero. I suppose the real one they modeled is like this. Otherwise it's great.
The AR plates sounds very complex, so I eq the send/return to this one a lot. Also it murders the CPU.
I like the chambers in Nimbus a lot, and VSR S24 has some nice plate and especially stage sounds, very immersive.
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Post by joseph on Jul 30, 2018 12:26:19 GMT -6
I wonder if the Softube Weiss changes the equation a bit.
When I demoed it, it fared well versus my hardware comps. For anything I wanted transparent without too much mid push, I might choose it, and instead use some hardware eq for more euphonic highs.
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Post by joseph on Jul 30, 2018 12:19:11 GMT -6
Hmm, if I had to choose one mic that sounds good on everything, and a mic that I have regular access to, then Josephson e22s. It works better on more sources than KM84s, and that's saying a lot.
If not access to, then U67. But I'd be worried about abuse.
If two mics, U67 and KM84.
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km84s
Jul 27, 2018 20:56:33 GMT -6
Post by joseph on Jul 27, 2018 20:56:33 GMT -6
Go there, listen to them there, buy all of em if they are working. Then listen again back at your own studio and keep the 2 best. Then sell the rest at market value and essentially you'd get two for the price of 1. Smart man. Just be sure none of capsules are fucked. Pretty easy to tell.
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Post by joseph on Jul 27, 2018 20:54:05 GMT -6
For synth, I’ve been using an MPK49 for years and I like it. Feels very solid to me (too stiff for some people). Knobs and faders and buttons all feel solid. For piano stuff I somewhat recently picked up a Yamaha KX88 (at the recommendation from some people here) for a couple hundred bucks and I love the thing. Feels great to me. Heavy as hell though. Moving it sucks. Yeah I have a KX88 and it is heavy as shit. About as heavy as my wurly ha ha. It has by far the best keyboard action of any midi controller I've used though. Even on synths I prefer weighted keys because they're just more expressive, if you can modulate the amplitude with velocity.
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Post by joseph on Jul 27, 2018 20:49:27 GMT -6
If you appreciate real acoustic space then do it because you enjoy it, much like anything about taste.
I think first step is to see whether you like being in a studio or whether you just like the sound of nice rooms. To be honest a lot of "real" studios sound like shit too.
I think a mobile rig and nice mics makes more sense these days.
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Post by joseph on Jul 27, 2018 20:38:21 GMT -6
Definitely comp.
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Post by joseph on Jul 13, 2018 9:05:56 GMT -6
Forgot to mention, the most realistic studio tapehead slapback delay I've heard in the box is u-he Satin. I think it sounds more realistic than the Strymon emulations, for what it's worth.
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Post by joseph on Jul 12, 2018 11:02:19 GMT -6
Try the Catalinbread Belle Epoch Deluxe for Echplex stuff. It's rad. Strymon El Capistan rules, too. It can do mono in, stereo out. Their EchoRec is really cool! Have wanted to try the Belle Epoch for a while. Just make sure you check out the Deluxe version because that has the EP-3 preamp.
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Post by joseph on Jul 12, 2018 10:51:01 GMT -6
Just wanted to mention that Strymon also do a delay (somewhat like an expanded Capistan) for eurorack and it can handle line level signals apparently.
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Post by joseph on Jul 11, 2018 16:02:27 GMT -6
Primal Tap is pretty great.
Love my Boss DM-2.
The OTO BIM is a nice stereo delay trying to capture the old school sound.
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Post by joseph on Jun 27, 2018 18:09:42 GMT -6
Great cover!
My son is not much older than yours and also has a rare genetic disorder caused by a random deletion. For a while we thought it was degenerative, so I know the fear.
The important thing is to be there for him and your wife, and not blame yourselves or feel there is anything fundamentally wrong with your son, who is a complete person just as much as any typical person, and just as miraculous. We evolve as a species because our DNA is variable; each of us includes countless mutations, deletions, and other genetic changes.
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