|
Post by noah shain on Aug 19, 2017 19:36:08 GMT -6
I got a pair of them. I'll get another pair.
So flexible.
Yes, intense and steep learning curve but there is NOTHING that does what this box can do...unless you combine about 8 pieces of really specific gear.
I love Overstayer. This is the gear that gets the journeyman engineer in me pumped!!
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Aug 12, 2017 15:28:58 GMT -6
In my experience, the less I'm getting paid, the more difficult the job/client.
I wanna hear it so bad JK!
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Aug 5, 2017 13:38:20 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 31, 2017 20:53:29 GMT -6
I'm in LA but I'm very much a workaday, journeyman engineer/producer/mixer guy.
Bad years for me have been around 60k (gross). Average years are 80-100k. Good years are 100 and up. The most I've ever grossed is around 180k.
But I gotta factor in $2200 a month for my studio, $150 a month for internet (it's commercial and only 1 choice in providers so...no choice), $200 a month for insurance.
LA is an expensive city to live in as well...it's a hustle for sure.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 30, 2017 21:26:11 GMT -6
Yeah...I got Magic Alex'd all the way. I shoulda known.
It wasn't a fortune but...I feed my kids with my studio. I can't exactly afford to throw money away.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 30, 2017 21:15:45 GMT -6
www.overstayeraudio.com/modular-channel/Going up to the Overstayer shop tomorrow to check these out. I'm jonesing hard. Gave Jeff a deposit for one of these two years ago. These promise to be game changing. Check out the 877 modules too. It's a scaleable console-1 channel at a time. I'm pretty sure the real info is coming soon. Jeff's stuff is so good.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 30, 2017 18:16:50 GMT -6
I'm curious how many, if any of y'all who ordered KTs also own top tier or mid tier clones?
I own a Retro and bought a KT.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 30, 2017 16:56:45 GMT -6
It was that seller, yes. The design was based on that unit but we added a ton of features and functionality.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 30, 2017 15:43:29 GMT -6
Just ordered a 1A and a pair of 2Ns. I'll report my findings here.
These mics are just too cool looking. Had to have em.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 29, 2017 21:16:55 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 29, 2017 19:26:25 GMT -6
Yeah...I should've known better. We took the transaction off of eBay. I felt okay at the time and I was excited because it was a great idea, he sent me pics, price was great, etc.
3 years later...
Nada.
Such a bummer. He still has his eBay store up and running.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 29, 2017 19:16:27 GMT -6
This guy was supposed to build me a summing mixer...we talked through the design and made a bunch of tweaks.
He sent me some pictures and I paid him in full.
He never sent the unit...almost 3 years ago.
We emailed a bunch and he always put me off with some bs about how the design was complex blah blah blah.
Thief.
npwdesigns on eBay
Bummer. I just wanted my mixer. It was an awesome design with mults and sends and stuff.
Anyway...y'all are warned.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 29, 2017 12:14:26 GMT -6
Since we're kinda drifting in to a general slate discussion...
I been using the heck out of the mixrack. Just to get a feel for the plugs.
The air plug is great. The one at the top. I use it at default setting and add just a pinch on vocals...really cool lift.
I'm loving the bomber in combo with air on pianos in a dense, rock mix type situation where I'm really only after the right hand stuff. Probably wouldn't be great on an exposed piano in a more sparse arrangement.
The tube suite stuff is ignorable for me...when I've used it I like the Altec one.
The cs eq is cool...I like where the freq points are.
But the air is the ticket for me. I'd pay 15 bucks a month for that alone.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 29, 2017 12:00:49 GMT -6
Downloaded these and started using them on a mix yesterday. They're good. Overall I like the verbsuite a lot...mostly using the bricasti emulations. I just finished a record where I used it all over the place in combination with a couple outboard units I have. Mastering engineer actually asked me about the reverb. Unusual...
I dig it
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 26, 2017 9:08:13 GMT -6
I dig it. In 10 years I will have paid $1,495 for everything he develops... and I can quit whenever I want? Not a bad deal. What's the resistance guys? Honest question...I never see the angles.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 25, 2017 23:17:21 GMT -6
So... I didn't get a phone call or an email from Sweetwater telling me my ordered and paid for units were shipped when the rest of y'all did. Hmmm.... I ordered and paid BEFORE the stock arrived. They best not be meddling with me. Same here
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 25, 2017 22:39:20 GMT -6
I swear I can hear a difference between master fader and no master fader in PT. Am I crazy? Is it dither or some such? Tdm systems Master Faders were fixed point architecture 48 bit and yes that was changed and you do not need one in your session.. They don't dither output anymore as well... in depth PDF explains below akmedia.digidesign.com/support/docs/48_Bit_Mixer_26688.pdfDoes this mean there USED TO BE a difference and now there isn't? I'm just holding on to the romantic notion of vintage PT master faders?😂
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 25, 2017 22:24:59 GMT -6
John...I worked in Hollywood. My family is in the film business. Video is THE standard capture medium now. MOST movies at ALL budget points are shot on digital video. Have been for years. Film is a novelty now just like tape is in music recording. Your points are incorrect there. In fact, there's a process called film out which is the transfer of video (a much more cost effective and efficient capture MEDIUM) to film. Sometimes it's for creative reasons (film as effect) sometimes for economic reasons, sometimes for film projection of archived footage stored on video but shot on tape. I do agree that our debate is mostly semantic and I concede that tape is a physical storage medium but I would propose that it has come to have another definition...one spawned by and characterized by its use to describe an effect. I guess we all make up our own minds about what we believe but young people are making great recordings that use tape as one small part of the process and some of them do it well. Also I concede that it's an abused and misused term (tape) and a misused and abused concept. I do enjoy all the knowledge I get from you but I think this ship here has run aground and I call uncle. I had a singer ask me in his mix notes last month to pultec his voice. I wish I'd had my EQP-KT to do it with. I taped it instead. OK. It's essentially a philosophical question anyway - how you think about and relate to your tools. Fair enough...we'll agree to mostly agree.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 25, 2017 21:34:40 GMT -6
I can't believe I'm sucked in to this. The film analogy is totally misused. People shoot on film for effect every single day here in LA. People combine film with digital tech every single day. After they develop the film they scan it in to a computer and manipulate it digitally. Jeez. My dad is a cinematographer. My mom is a fine art photographer. I worked for Alan Daviau for years. They all shoot film, develop chemically and dump to digital. They oversee the process carefully, because they're good artists but they don't get all spun out about the immersive process of "film" photography. They just get about their business of making art. Just like I and tons of other people do with tape. They do it for the effect. Just like I do. They don't give a shit about process. They care about result. People have mixed oil and acrylic paint for decades. They just aren't good analogies. I have 3 machines. An mm1000, an mm1200 and a 440b. If you don't look at the vus on a 440b it will destroy you. There's just no possible way you have heard MOST of what young people are doing with tape. Just totally not true. Impossible. I would wager you don't listen to much music made by young people. I could be wrong but I doubt it. This argument is a classic troll. You're wrong on this one John. I know you have a lot of knowledge...way more than me. I try not to enter the threads you argue in and I'm kicking myself for entering this one. But your self certainty doesn't make you right. In this case, in fact, you are wrong. So dead wrong that I can't believe I am engaging. You got me...that's for sure. I USE TAPE AS AN EFFECT. I do it well. Some of my records give listeners the feeling that you get from older records. Some don't...on purpose. Even some of the ones I've used tape on don't give you that old record feeling...because I don't want them to. They just have some cool transient shaping and some of the subtle eq characteristics of tape...effects. You're trolling John. I ain't mad but you're busted. I'm having difficulty understanding why you're not getting it. "The film analogy is totally misused. People shoot on film for effect every single day here in LA. People combine film with digital tech every single day. After they develop the film they scan it in to a computer and manipulate it digitally." Actually it's spot on. You're just refusing to think about what i'm saying for some reason. People shoot on film because they want the result of using the film medium as the base for their creation. That's what a MEDIUM is. Then they apply digital EFFECTS on top of the essential charcteristics established by the medium. Effects are something that gets applied on top of the base character established by the medium. It's the same thing in audio - you track to tape to establish the essential chacter or feel provided by that medium. Then you can dump to digital for mixing, editing, FX processing, whatever - but the essential character is established by the medium. You don't get the same impression on the observer if you record to digital and then dump to tape. There's somethat happens with the initial recording that somehow defines the essence of what goes after. Think about that for a while before reacting. " Jeez. My dad is a cinematographer. My mom is a fine art photographer. I worked for Alan Daviau for years. They all shoot film, develop chemically and dump to digital. " Of course they do because they know that for the work to have the character that people have come to expect from a real movie it has to use film as a capture medium. People have tried making movies using digital video as the capture medium and have have discoveredf that it really doesn't work very well - the final result pretty much always comes off with the aesthetics of a video, not a movie. That's what an understanding of the differences between "similar" media is all about. Film people have understood this for a (relatively) long time now. "They oversee the process carefully, because they're good artists but they don't get all spun out about the immersive process of "film" photography. They just get about their business of making art. " Of course they don't. That's these questions were settled in the film world a long time ago. It's understood on a level that really isn't open to discussion. You want to make a real movie you shoot film, then do whatever. It is my belief that the only reason there's any question about it the audio is due to the pernicious effect of marketing campaigns by digital companies peddling products to the mass market where they're denying the basic diffgerences between the two media so theuy can sell product. Can you imagine someone shooting a commerial movie on digital and then running through a "film simulation" program (yes, they do exist) to add scratches, noise, and artificial grain so that it "looks like film"? They'd be laughed out of the business. Does anyone shoot video, dump to film "for the effect" and then finish up in digital? No, they don't, because it doesn't work. I think that a major problem with this conversation is symantic. Specifically that the word "effect" has at least two different meanings. A medium has certain chacteristic effects. It does certain things to to the content. That doen't mean the medium IS an "effect". It has "effects" but isn't an effect, it's a medium. The effects are kinda like adejectives describing a noun, if you get what I'm trying to say. An "effect" where the effect is the "noun" (like echo or compression, whatever) is a specific thing with an additional characteristic that gets applied on top of the basic medium and modifies the essential character of that medium or of the content in some way. I'm afraid I may not be expressing this all that well, it's a somewhat tricky distinction/concept. I like tape as a medium for a lot of what I do because it imparts a particular set of characteristics that I find desirable for the base of the recording. I like what it does. Am I thinking about tryng to sound like an old recording from some past era? Generally not. Am I looking for a sonic quality that complements the music? Most certainly. It's just like what the film guys are doing - they shoot film because it does what they want it to do. And they don't overthink it. Because film people are generally pros and props don't waste time prevaricating about crap like this, they just do what works. And in their field they don't have to put up with legions of gear pimps trying to sell them on "film emulators" that will make video "look just like film". John...I worked in Hollywood. My family is in the film business. Video is THE standard capture medium now. MOST movies at ALL budget points are shot on digital video. Have been for years. Film is a novelty now just like tape is in music recording. Your points are incorrect there. In fact, there's a process called film out which is the transfer of video (a much more cost effective and efficient capture MEDIUM) to film. Sometimes it's for creative reasons (film as effect) sometimes for economic reasons, sometimes for film projection of archived footage stored on video but shot on film. I do agree that our debate is mostly semantic and I concede that tape is a physical storage medium but I would propose that it has come to have another definition...one spawned by and characterized by its use as an effect. I guess we all make up our own minds about what we believe but young people are making great recordings that use tape as one small part of the process and some of them do it well. Also I concede that it's an abused and misused term (tape) and a misused and abused concept. I do enjoy all the knowledge I get from you but I think this ship here has run aground and I call uncle. I had a singer ask me in his mix notes last month to pultec his voice. I wish I'd had my EQP-KT to do it with. I taped it instead.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 25, 2017 8:33:59 GMT -6
I swear I can hear a difference between master fader and no master fader in PT. Am I crazy? Is it dither or some such?
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 24, 2017 23:30:34 GMT -6
In pro tools the master fader is pre insert like a console. If you pull the master fader down you decrease the level to your compressor eq chain. I suppose it's not an issue if you've already mixed yourself in to a corner. In Cubase you have both pre and post fader inserts you can use. Brad Now there's a useful feature
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 24, 2017 22:22:41 GMT -6
You have to do all that stuff no matter how you're recording. You just do it a little differently with tape. Without realizing it you just put your finger on the reason the tape myth persists...it's not that hard to do well. It's not trigonometry or playing piano or pedal steel and there isn't some hidden cabalistic masonic code to doing it well. You just practice and study and pester the old guys to teach you. I'd say that, in fact, It's easy to do. Any dummy willing to put in the time and effort can learn it. And I would STRONGLY disagree that nearly all the young guys using tape are failing to meet their goals. That's just not true at all. I'm a young guy using tape and I'm booked til next year. My records are immersive and challenging and cool as hell. Goals achieved. I mean, it's just gain staging and learning VU meters and a few other really simple techniques and concepts. Then it's about practice. Turn things down a little...not rocket science. VU ballistics...stare at anything long enough and you'll get a feel for what it's telling you. A little extra forethought and planning is NOT beyond the grasp of the young. I mean cmon John...you gotta concede on this one. You CAN use tape as an effect and nothing more once you learn how to use tape. Come on... Just say it...it CAN be done😉 That's like saying you can use traditional chemical photography as an effect. Or oil paint. Sure, you can DO it - but it's really missing the point. Smearing a few strokes of oil pant on, lets' say, oh, an ink jet print on 'artist quality" canvas, is not gong to evoke the same sort of feeling that you get from The Mona Lisa, Water Lilies, or Guernica. It's going to be "Oh, the artist tarted up his (gallery quiality) ink jet print with a bit of oil. I guess he's trying to make it look like a real painting." So maybe if communicates the idea that the artist was thinking, but it doesn't really have the ontended effect, at least not to people familiar with the real thing. BTW, when you say that you "use tape" are you talking about using a real tape machine? And if so, where do you use it in the process? If it's not a real machine, what is it? I find some of the hardware devices, like the Zulu (which I have not had an opportunity to check out in person) to be a very interesting idea if used properly. In other words, track into the device before any digital conversion. But that requires having a channel of hardware for each channel you're tracking, so a lot of people won't make the investment. Most of the software sims seem to me to be largely missing the point, at least in terms of how they present using tape to the public. The result is that an awful lot of young, aspiring recordists think that what makes tape cool are in fact malfunctions that no self-respecting engineer would tolerate. (I run into this all the time at The Purple Joint.) Noise, wow, flutter, stuff like that. I'd like to see some company do a tape sim that just concentates on emulating the behavior of tape with the heads, with the usual alignment controls, without any of that fake hiss, background noise, and mechanical instability, because those are things that should not exist in a well maintained, professional quality machine. Giving the user controls for dialing that stuff in communicates the wrong idea. And they all seem to be somewhat heavy-handed in what they do. As far as meeting goals is concerned - if the goal is to evoke the feeling of a traditional tape based recording, I would definitely say that at least most of them miss it. That's because they're missing the point. They believe (because that's the way "tape sound" has been widely promoted to them) that it's about artifacts. They think tape needs to be noisy and have poor pitch stability. If my tape machine were to start audibly doing those things I'd be shooting an email off to my tape tech immediately. (I own a 24 track Studer A800 MKIII), or calling him if I was in the middle of a time-critical project. The real benefit of tape is much more subtle than that. It makes stuff sit together better, it de-emphasizes certain aspects of my voice I don't like, and it seems to reduce the need for excessive processing in some ways. It just makes things easier in a musical sense (while being a royal PITA physically.) It also shapes the workflow in ways I find beneficial. OTOH, if their goal is to make their recording sound like it's being played back on a half broken home machine of mediocre quality, maybe it's a success - but why would anybody want that? BTW,I'm beginning to suspect that we're maybe not talking about the same bunch of "young guys". The ones I'm talking about don't hang here. Concerning VU ballistics - once things are set up, machine aligned, gain structure set, I rarely if ever look at the meters unless something is going audibly wrong. Ears, not eyes. And yes, it's easy to do. It's not rocket surgery. And no, it's not an effect. Is water an "effect" to a fish? It's a medium. Many artists in various fields work employing different mediums, depending on the project and intent. Audio is no different, or shouldn't be. Choosing your medium is part of the choices you make for a given project. That doesn't make the medium an "effect". It's something that works on a different level from effects, something lower, more basic, intrinsic to the project. I can't believe I'm sucked in to this. The film analogy is totally misused. People shoot on film for effect every single day here in LA. People combine film with digital tech every single day. After they develop the film they scan it in to a computer and manipulate it digitally. Jeez. My dad is a cinematographer. My mom is a fine art photographer. I worked for Alan Daviau for years. They all shoot film, develop chemically and dump to digital. They oversee the process carefully, because they're good artists but they don't get all spun out about the immersive process of "film" photography. They just get about their business of making art. Just like I and tons of other people do with tape. They do it for the effect. Just like I do. They don't give a shit about process. They care about result. People have mixed oil and acrylic paint for decades. They just aren't good analogies. I have 3 machines. An mm1000, an mm1200 and a 440b. If you don't look at the vus on a 440b it will destroy you. There's just no possible way you have heard MOST of what young people are doing with tape. Just totally not true. Impossible. I would wager you don't listen to much music made by young people. I could be wrong but I doubt it. This argument is a classic troll. You're wrong on this one John. I know you have a lot of knowledge...way more than me. I try not to enter the threads you argue in and I'm kicking myself for entering this one. But your self certainty doesn't make you right. In this case, in fact, you are wrong. So dead wrong that I can't believe I am engaging. You got me...that's for sure. I USE TAPE AS AN EFFECT. I do it well. Some of my records give listeners the feeling that you get from older records. Some don't...on purpose. Even some of the ones I've used tape on don't give you that old record feeling...because I don't want them to. They just have some cool transient shaping and some of the subtle eq characteristics of tape...effects. You're trolling John. I ain't mad but you're busted.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 24, 2017 21:05:26 GMT -6
In pro tools the master fader is pre insert like a console. If you pull the master fader down you decrease the level to your compressor eq chain.
I suppose it's not an issue if you've already mixed yourself in to a corner.
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 24, 2017 0:18:52 GMT -6
While tracking to tape is great, I would argue with the idea that tape isn't an effect. It's absolutely become an effect and not much more. As a medium it is totally valueless to me. As an effect is the only way I use it. Why on earth would I use it as a medium only? The "effect" of using it is the only good thing about it. As a medium, tape is just completely obsolete. As an effect it's great. Thus...the tape sim craze. Plug in sellers keep making them because people keep buying them. People keep buying them because the effect sounds good...not for data storage. You may be slightly off the mark on this one John. Or maybe I'm nit picking semantics, which my wife would tell you I love to do. <chuckle> Without realizing it, you just put your finger on the primary reason that nearly all young guys using tape, and even worse all those godawful overblown tape sim plugins fail to achieve their goals, assuming that the goal is to evoke the feeling that people talk about getting from favorite analog recordings. They treat it as an effect and it's not, it's a medium. When you work in a tape based studio it isn't just about the sound of the tape in the machine. The reality of working with tape infuses everything. Gain structure, workflow, you have to be conscious of physical limitations and plan how you approach the production accordingly. You have to make decisions. It's a medium, and quite an immersive one to work in. BTW, the reason people keep buying that stuff is because all the gear pimps tell them they have to have it. You have to do all that stuff no matter how you're recording. You just do it a little differently with tape. Without realizing it you just put your finger on the reason the tape myth persists...it's not that hard to do well. It's not trigonometry or playing piano or pedal steel and there isn't some hidden cabalistic masonic code to doing it well. You just practice and study and pester the old guys to teach you. I'd say that, in fact, It's easy to do. Any dummy willing to put in the time and effort can learn it. And I would STRONGLY disagree that nearly all the young guys using tape are failing to meet their goals. That's just not true at all. I'm a young guy using tape and I'm booked til next year. My records are immersive and challenging and cool as hell. Goals achieved. I mean, it's just gain staging and learning VU meters and a few other really simple techniques and concepts. Then it's about practice. Turn things down a little...not rocket science. VU ballistics...stare at anything long enough and you'll get a feel for what it's telling you. A little extra forethought and planning is NOT beyond the grasp of the young. I mean cmon John...you gotta concede on this one. You CAN use tape as an effect and nothing more once you learn how to use tape. Come on... Just say it...it CAN be done😉
|
|
|
Post by noah shain on Jul 23, 2017 21:33:24 GMT -6
Why are you guys buying in 5's? You need even numbers so that your PT inputs/outputs stay logical and so that you can do stereo. Minimum order - 6. 5 SBs covers 10 mono busses! Nice round, even number and I'm done building my mix rig! I'm borrowing 10 AWTAC channels amps right now but Dave is gonna want them back soon☹️
|
|