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Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2021 22:19:11 GMT -6
Where do you draw the line? I mean I'm on the final push here meandering over options, the last leg is an ATV Adrums w/ a Pearl mimic and I'm still pondering over the WA-8000 as an alternative (just because I don't have a mic like that).. My mic's are generally either neutral or tube character.
Although we're talking another $7.5K, I could get an EXS-5 and an SE 1A which would probably do a similar job even if it is somewhat (probably unnoticeable to most) inferior. On top of what I've already spent to renovate / upgrade it's getting a bit daft at this point.. It's not like I can't get the no compromise options but I gotta ask, what for? Why am I bothering in this climate?
Sorry for relaying my rant(ish) musings here but is it just me? Have I finally gone audio nuts? Anyway, I tell myself that if I go for the decent options I only have to buy it once for example I've had a rack mount e-drum kit before that just fell to pieces.. It wasn't a cheap one either. On the other hand, I could buy four of them for price of the ATV / Mimic.
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Post by gravesnumber9 on Nov 16, 2021 23:56:07 GMT -6
I don't really know anything about e-drums but I can share with you my general thinking. I apply this to audio gear, furniture, clothes... whatever.
1) I don't have enough money to buy cheap stuff. Old timey phrase... just means that cheap stuff often needs to be replaced. Measure twice, cut once.
2) That said, we live in times (especially in audio world) where sometimes you're paying for things that aren't real. It's one thing to "get that extra 10%", it's another to just be paying for a brand. My favorite go-to is my Epiphone Masterbilt guitar which is just simply better than guitars costing 2x that much. I don't care if those guitars have a "better" name on the headstock, they're not better. Same applies to cars and a lot of other things. I don't mind paying for things I think are better (I own Neve gear, Neumann gear) but I don't mind buying things that are good and cheap (I use my DBX 160x on literally every mix). The two favorite cars I've owned were a Honda Fit and a BMW 328i. I loved them equally.
3) I'm starting to think that there are some things that you just get what you pay for. Those things are shoes and microphones.
4) I'm starting to think nobody gives a shit if my shoes are Goodyear welted or not and I'm wondering if everyone I know is tired of me trying to push the Beyer m160 on them.
5) Most of my shoes and most of my mics will still be great 20 years from now. And I could very easily never buy another pair of shoes or another microphone and be just fine.
6) MOST IMPORTANT... does it get multiple uses? And if I hate it can I get rid of it? Those are the real keys, especially the first one. I really don't like specialty gear. For anything. Yeah, yeah, I know... every tool for its purpose. I get that. But some tools have a purpose of having multiple purposes, I prefer those tools.
7) Last point...and this might seem contradictory, I myself don't want to be a multi-purpose tool. So yeah I want versatile things but those things are all driving towards a very specific vision. It's just the way I am. I have a specific way my home looks, a specific sense of clothing style, a specific way I think hockey/baseball/football players should play, a specific taste in food, a specific way I want my music to sound, and a specific way I want YOUR music to sound if you're recording with me. If you don't like it, that's fine... go eat/wear/listen to/look at something else.
So what does this mean for you? Who knows. Just don't buy shit you can't sell later, that's my main advice. Other than that, follow your gut.
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Post by OtisGreying on Nov 17, 2021 0:26:41 GMT -6
I've almost always found the compromise to be more expensive than the actual money. But I'm naturally kindove paranoid, and I particularly hate being told something is as good as the more expensive thing or the more expensive thing isn't worth the extra money only to find out different - which tends to happen to me when I go that route (thats just been my experience).
So I save up for the good stuff and don't look back and I've been happiest when I do that. The stress of worry is absolutely not worth savings 500-1000$ here and there (to me). I have bought some replica gear that I feel very confident in because people who know better than I have praised its performance, in those instances I take the leap - which is one reason I use a forum like this, for advice in those areas.
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Post by thecolourfulway on Nov 17, 2021 0:55:44 GMT -6
Absolutely consider resale, sometimes that means spending more or finding sleepers or sticking to name brands. I’ve built almost my entire studio by buying and reselling, not for huge gouge profits, often times giving stuff to friends for free, but the appreciation of classic gear is very real and it has paid for nearly every piece of kit I have at this point. Before you buy see who else is buying, and for how much…if you think something is cool and they’re rotting on eBay and reverb, maybe reconsider
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2021 2:35:08 GMT -6
I've almost always found the compromise to be more expensive than the actual money. But I'm naturally kindove paranoid, and I particularly hate being told something is as good as the more expensive thing or the more expensive thing isn't worth the extra money only to find out different - which tends to happen to me when I go that route (thats just been my experience). So I save up for the good stuff and don't look back and I've been happiest when I do that. The stress of worry is absolutely not worth savings 500-1000$ here and there (to me). I have bought some replica gear that I feel very confident in because people who know better than I have praised its performance, in those instances I take the leap - which is one reason I use a forum like this, for advice in those areas. Agreed but if I've learned nothing else over the past few decades quality or subjective view of said quality isn't always indicative of the price tag. I've encountered sub par expensive and cheap stuff alike.. That being said the last recording I did is nearly a decade and a half old, my last demo surfaced nearly two decades ago (made on a cheap shoe string budget) and things have changed a fair bit. Unfortunately as soon as audio became a profession I neither had the time nor inclination to record myself. So, as a "startup" self recording "artist" (gotta lol there) in a mostly collapsed industry there's nothing tangible to gain. Plus there's also the law of diminishing returns to consider.. Over the years I haven't clung on to my original Mbox Mk 1, SM58 and a bunch of rather dismal VST's so the differences are less distinguishable. But yes, as said I agree there is a certain sense of paranoia about the whole thing.
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Post by phdamage on Nov 17, 2021 8:56:15 GMT -6
Am I seeing correctly - $3k+ for a fancy electronic kit and you still need to buy a brain for it?!!!
I recognize this is not my lane, but I am genuinely curious about what benefits this route provides over an acoustic kit with or without triggers and BFD for a whole lot less $$?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2021 9:33:15 GMT -6
Am I seeing correctly - $3k+ for a fancy electronic kit and you still need to buy a brain for it?!!! I recognize this is not my lane, but I am genuinely curious about what benefits this route provides over an acoustic kit with or without triggers and BFD for a whole lot less $$? Over an acoustic kit mic'd? Nothing but you can hear one right down the street, perfect way to annoy all the neighbours and they get fussy even during the day.. It's gotten so bad that even venue's have been noise restricted in area's (so they closed down of course). A triggered acoustic? Well they're not all that good, slap a couple of Piezo's on them and they have a habit of miss-triggering or suffering from hotspot issues etc. Then there's the cheapo one's tend to fall apart, usually caused by vibration through the racks and being generally poorly built.. I've had a drummit 5 and an Alesis (whatever) which didn't last a year. I'd definitely consider a VST with a Roland VAD506 or something, digital snare / ride's on the latest e-drum kits are rather nice and responsive.. However I'm not a Toontrack fan and I really like the drum tec / mimic Pearl bigg kit, so I'd have to find a VST that I like.. Plus there's a practical issue, my audio interface is rack mounted 13 foot away from the kit (or will be). As it's a TB interface the laptop can't be that far away which is a bit of pain in terms of control.. However I might be able to get a small table, take my spare interface (MOTU) out of the rack and dump my laptop on it.
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Post by Guitar on Nov 17, 2021 17:10:22 GMT -6
I think it's a personal question, so not sure what anyone else can add, unless they can describe their own personal view on what's "necessary." Like for example, my need for 'shoes' is pretty utilitarian, and low budget, not even needing a philosophy.
Objectively, from an outside view, many of us have gone WAY TOO FAR already, to some arbitrary viewer. Do you really need all that stuff? No, not really. Could you do more with less? Almost definitely.
It nearly becomes a question of ethics or responsibility. Are you properly spending the money that's allotted to you? Are you neglecting other necessary things?
Many of us are "professional hobbyists," with some exceptions, so in that context, what do YOU want or need? Are you having fun yet? You should be!
I am at the same time satisfied and unsatisfied with my Yamaha DTX502 Frankenstein kit. It will never equal my medium-high end acoustic drum set in the other room. But it allows me to work silently, which is why I use it. Half of what I play on there is unusable. And half of it comes out "OK" for what I would be "OK" with releasing to the public. I guess that's not bad. I use Superior Drummer 3 and sometimes other software. I end up playing more than if I didn't own E-Drums so it's a net positive. My e-drum rig is about $1,000 worth of hardware, and $400 worth of software.
Vocal microphones. Largely unnecessary to have more than one, once you have one that's ideal. UNLESS you are working for the public. Then yes, you need some options. Again "need" in some sort of quotation marks. This is not the kind of thing where you need different sounds like guitar gear. The voice just needs to sound good. Be the audience darling singer that carries their preferred mic around with them to studios. Just pick one!! Carefully, yes, but just one.
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Post by svart on Nov 17, 2021 17:24:16 GMT -6
Personally I'd look at seeing if drum triggers will work with the "silent" heads and cymbals you can get for regular drums. Might be a better and cheaper way to get an electronic kit.. use a cheap brain to map to midi and use a good drum plugin to get better tones?
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Post by OtisGreying on Nov 17, 2021 17:37:24 GMT -6
That said the Serrano 87 is the best sounding mic I have and it’s literally one of the cheapest ones I have so... go figure
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Post by gwlee7 on Nov 17, 2021 18:10:40 GMT -6
Gear wise I know that it is cheaper in the long run to not “settle”. If I want “x”, I need to be patient and wait until I can get “x”. “Y” will just cause me to sell it at a loss and buy “x” anyway so I have stopped doing that so much.
I am also at the point where I need to decide what’s important, what I have the time and energy for, and do that. Mostly for me that’s meaning spend the $$ and time on tracking my ideas well and then letting someone else mix .
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Post by gravesnumber9 on Nov 17, 2021 19:22:18 GMT -6
I think it's a personal question, so not sure what anyone else can add, unless they can describe their own personal view on what's "necessary." Like for example, my need for 'shoes' is pretty utilitarian, and low budget, not even needing a philosophy. [break] It nearly becomes a question of ethics or responsibility. Are you properly spending the money that's allotted to you? Are you neglecting other necessary things? That's why I love the shoes analogy. I don't really like buying shoes but I like having nice shoes. I have three pairs that are probably way more than most people would ever spend but I went through a few years where I needed to dress up for work and didn't feel like buying new shoes ever again! But your ethics question is one of my favorites. There are definitely things that are just silly to spend money on and that's really more of a personal thing. Hard to answer for someone else. I think about that a lot though. It helps my conscious to hire real people to do things and to try to buy from local artisans and such. You know... see if a handyman can repair that table. Buy that piece of gear from people you know are contributing to the economy positively (like so many of our forum friends here!). It's not the only answer but keeping money in local circulation I think is a real thing that makes a difference.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2021 19:35:47 GMT -6
I think it's a personal question, so not sure what anyone else can add, unless they can describe their own personal view on what's "necessary." Like for example, my need for 'shoes' is pretty utilitarian, and low budget, not even needing a philosophy. Objectively, from an outside view, many of us have gone WAY TOO FAR already, to some arbitrary viewer. Do you really need all that stuff? No, not really. Could you do more with less? Almost definitely. It nearly becomes a question of ethics or responsibility. Are you properly spending the money that's allotted to you? Are you neglecting other necessary things? Ethics to whom? Someone's fiscal status and / or spending habits has nothing to do with anyone but a monetary professional, anywho let's not jump down that rabbit hole.. In short I don't entertain debt, if I can't easily afford something in full (irrelevant of the payment method) I don't buy it. Whether I want to pay X for something is a completely different matter, I'll compromise on cost for sure but not quality at this stage.. Time is the real enemy and I've travelled the cheap route a long time ago only to end up wasting more time and money circumventing issues. I'd say cars are a better analogy than shoes, simply because they're both expensive.. Why buy a 400HP car when you can only use half the power due to regulations? Well because they usually come with bigger brakes, safety features and they've saved my posterior on more than one occasion. Most discussions on this board are personal, I can't transmogrify your brain to adore a certain mic or compressor. You test them out, either like or dislike them.. It's just like trying out a new food recipe. Completely subjective, personal etc.
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Post by gravesnumber9 on Nov 17, 2021 19:50:35 GMT -6
I think it's a personal question, so not sure what anyone else can add, unless they can describe their own personal view on what's "necessary." Like for example, my need for 'shoes' is pretty utilitarian, and low budget, not even needing a philosophy. Objectively, from an outside view, many of us have gone WAY TOO FAR already, to some arbitrary viewer. Do you really need all that stuff? No, not really. Could you do more with less? Almost definitely. It nearly becomes a question of ethics or responsibility. Are you properly spending the money that's allotted to you? Are you neglecting other necessary things? Ethics to whom? Someone's fiscal status and / or spending habits has nothing to do with anyone but a monetary professional, anywho let's not jump down that rabbit hole.. In short I don't entertain debt, if I can't easily afford something in full (irrelevant of the payment method) I don't buy it. Whether I want to pay X for something is a completely different matter, I'll compromise on cost for sure but not quality at this stage.. Time is the real enemy and I've travelled the cheap route a long time ago only to end up wasting more time and money circumventing issues. I'd say cars are a better analogy than shoes, simply because they're both expensive.. Why buy a 400HP car when you can only use half the power due to regulations? Well because they usually come with bigger brakes, safety features and they've saved my posterior on more than one occasion. Most discussions on this board are personal, I can't transmogrify your brain to adore a certain mic or compressor. You test them out, either like or dislike them.. It's just like trying out a new food recipe. Completely subjective, personal etc. I like the car one too as you saw in my original reply. There are also people (like my wife) to whom cars just don't matter. She only cares about one thing... is it safe? (Yeah I know, what a cliche.) So for her buying a car because it's fun to drive and makes her happy would be utterly stupid no matter how much it costs and she'd be the first to tell you that. In other words people need different things, people are themselves different, and people have different ways of doing things. Back to music! I can't believe how much e-drums seem to cost these days. Or maybe they always were that expensive? I clicked around a little bit and holy crap. So I have a suggestion... this seems like the sort of thing where someone with more money than sense (or talent) might have a super-awesome electronic kit and is looking to unload because it's taking up space. Kind of thing where you can get a $4k kit for $2.5k if you'll pick it up today. I got a very playable Gretsch kit that way. "$400 if you'll get it today." Catalina Birch in mint condition with snare... yeah, not a custom DW or anything but I've had more than one drummer decline to load their kit in and just play mine instead. Dude who sold it lived in a place that looked like the White House and just didn't want them anymore. Drums and pianos, they take up space if you don't love 'em.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2021 20:09:38 GMT -6
Personally I'd look at seeing if drum triggers will work with the "silent" heads and cymbals you can get for regular drums. Might be a better and cheaper way to get an electronic kit.. use a cheap brain to map to midi and use a good drum plugin to get better tones? You can buy a ddrums kit for less than 1K, it's essentially a converted acoustic but let's say they're not all that good. You'd be surprised at the amount of R&D that goes into e-drums and none of them irrelevant of cost are perfect (yet).. Even the Roland centre mount trigger system had hotspot issues meaning that if you tapped too far to the left for example on a snare drum it wouldn't trigger. Apparently the new VAD series has fixed that.. The only acoustic drum conversion that's worth it is a bass drum, you won't be playing ghost notes on that.. I did a lot of metal / rock and a lot of drummers used e-drums / conversion kits etc. so I've come across my fair share of them. ATV make very good hardware (wide dynamic range, no hotspots) however their module's are sub par, you can't adjust a lot of the trigger functionality like you can on a mimic and they don't support "multi-zone's" in random ways. Meaning there's no rim shots or crash cup accents.. Then there's the flagship Roland TD-50, again great hardware but the module sounds like a drum synthesiser from the 90's.. Not great for what's essentially a $7K (ish) kit. VST's with decent hardware would save me a fortune, however outside of toontrack midi triggering can be spotty at best. Just read on the NI / Kontakt stuff with e-drums, it's a mess even with Roland. I don't know if it's because I've spent too many years with Superior Drummer or what but I just don't like the sound of them, hence I'd rather find a workable module. I did consider getting the ATV Adrums kit with module (as it's still a lot cheaper than getting a mimic), it has midi out but only two audio outs.. I've done entire drum processing via stems before and I used EZdrummer so I can work with it but I do prefer to have individual tracks to work with. What do you think to the module sounds of the AD5, useable in a recording? Skip to 2:20 Mimic for reference
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2021 20:35:42 GMT -6
This seems like the sort of thing where someone with more money than sense (or talent) might have a super-awesome electronic kit.. Lol... Sorry I know I've taken this out of context but that's funny and probably the primary issue. I wouldn't bat an eyelid at a U67 if it was perfect for my voice and I kept it for the next 30 years or so. The prices of them are a bit silly and they are ever changing.. The Pearl mimic is essentially SSD5 in a module, somehow it sounds better than SSD for whatever reason (probably because the kit samples were made by drumtec) and it works with most e-drum hardware, you can swap mic's out, EQ, add compression etc. and save it all to a preset. Use it live, for practice against new songs, use it as a recordable acoustic drum replacement and once you've got your e-drum set up you just hit record.. It's simple, straight forward, there's no messing around with VST's or potential midi issues. Plus, y'know what custom sample packs for the modules sound different at least. One thing I've gained from experience is get the source right and the mixing part is steady away, so I recon the mimic is the ultimate module for me.. On its own fine, added to an e-drum kit hmmm.. That's where we start talking big $$$'s, however whenever I start looking at cheaper kits I get flashbacks of screw joints constantly coming loose, bass drums travelling across the floor etc.
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Post by notneeson on Nov 17, 2021 20:42:07 GMT -6
I think it's a personal question, so not sure what anyone else can add, unless they can describe their own personal view on what's "necessary." Like for example, my need for 'shoes' is pretty utilitarian, and low budget, not even needing a philosophy. Objectively, from an outside view, many of us have gone WAY TOO FAR already, to some arbitrary viewer. Do you really need all that stuff? No, not really. Could you do more with less? Almost definitely. It nearly becomes a question of ethics or responsibility. Are you properly spending the money that's allotted to you? Are you neglecting other necessary things? Ethics to whom? Someone's fiscal status and / or spending habits has nothing to do with anyone but a monetary professional, anywho let's not jump down that rabbit hole.. In short I don't entertain debt, if I can't easily afford something in full (irrelevant of the payment method) I don't buy it. Whether I want to pay X for something is a completely different matter, I'll compromise on cost for sure but not quality at this stage.. Time is the real enemy and I've travelled the cheap route a long time ago only to end up wasting more time and money circumventing issues. I'd say cars are a better analogy than shoes, simply because they're both expensive.. Why buy a 400HP car when you can only use half the power due to regulations? Well because they usually come with bigger brakes, safety features and they've saved my posterior on more than one occasion. Most discussions on this board are personal, I can't transmogrify your brain to adore a certain mic or compressor. You test them out, either like or dislike them.. It's just like trying out a new food recipe. Completely subjective, personal etc. I read that purely as personal ethics, what are you comfortable with etc. I don't think Monkey was challenging anyone else's beliefs.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2021 20:51:38 GMT -6
I read that purely as personal ethics, what are you comfortable with etc. I don't think Monkey was challenging anyone else's beliefs. It's good either way for me, I've no issues with challenging assertions and heated debates. Not that this is one, it's all rather tame.. Cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich anyone?
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Post by gravesnumber9 on Nov 17, 2021 21:01:55 GMT -6
I read that purely as personal ethics, what are you comfortable with etc. I don't think Monkey was challenging anyone else's beliefs. It's good either way for me, I've no issues with challenging assertions and heated debates. Not that this is one, it's all rather tame.. Cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich anyone? I love threads like this. This is the fun stuff. Hopefully all of us are smart enough to not be poisoning ourselves on the various anti-social media channels, so we get our virtual debates here on electronic drum kits and hand welted shoes. What's that noise outside? People yelling at each other about whose team is the most evil? Sorry... couldn't hear you. I was playing my e-drums with the headphones on.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2021 21:42:38 GMT -6
It's good either way for me, I've no issues with challenging assertions and heated debates. Not that this is one, it's all rather tame.. Cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich anyone? I love threads like this. This is the fun stuff. Sorry... couldn't hear you. I was playing my e-drums with the headphones on. Yeah it's not meant to be anything serious.. I'm a bit too logical for my own good sometimes but the fact is there's no venue's left to play, I'll be lucky if even my friends / family listen to my demo and music is just a financial pit. That's when I sort of shrug my shoulders and say what's the point? However ultimately I suppose one concedes to the fact they're a music nut and will do anything they can to be happy with what they create. Plus drumming / recording is good exercise, it's a challenge and it allows for a reprieve from the stresses of the world.. I've tried to quit audio completely on more than one occasion and it never works.. I suppose it's one of those hobbies where logic and reason has to take a sideline for a bit.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 18, 2021 3:11:33 GMT -6
After a certain price point, there is gear with no compromise. Open up the gear. Measure it. The only reason this stuff is so expensive is because most of the pro-am audio world is still stuck in the 70s and 70s electrical parts often aren’t made anymore and the industry is dead. The people buying this shit aren’t usually the ones making money with it.
There is a massive refusal to adopt or develop new gear. Most of that 70s gear was made with off the shelf parts then. I don’t even think many of these clone manufacturers could develop modern gear with modern parts given that their filters always seem off and less functional than the real things. There are a fair amount of manufacturers who provide batshit insane value for the dollar but people still are buying new AMS hardware with dirt cheap parts in it (cheaper than the 70s parts they took out because even if they can still get The transistors the people buying it won’t care and it’s already so distorted it’s not going to even matter that much) for thousands of dollars and Focusrite pres and “high end converters” with developed by industrial espionage unreliable Chinese electrical parts. Meanwhile a ton of stuff is absolutely killer from 200-2000 or so dollars a channel and has no equal really for what it is doing.
That being said to build something like a reliable, easily recallable hardware mastering eq is very expensive. But there’s always digital.
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Post by sean on Nov 18, 2021 7:29:14 GMT -6
Personally, having been doing this professionally my entire adult life (which isn't that long, I'm 34) I've acquired more than enough equipment to "do the job". But, I run a studio and the clients I work with are often familiar with gear and will ask "do you have a U67" or "do you have a U47" or whatever piece of gear. And when I don't, I can tell that they feel like that may be making a compromise with their recording. Now, sometimes you put up your alternative and it sounds great and they are happy, but when they've heard the best (or whatever they've been told or believe is the best) it obvious it in the back of their mind.
The best comparison I can make is with guitars...if you are a say an acoustic guitar player and you make your living doing that, sure you can own a Collings or Bourgeois or whatever D28 inspired guitar and it'll sound great, but you're still going to want a pre-war Martin. And when you pull out a guitar like that, even if it doesn't sound as good as that other guitar, there's some psychological thing that happens as a player and to those around you.
All that to say, if this purchase is something you are buying to make a living and you feel like in the back of your mind you are making a compromise and there's a chance you're going to end up selling whatever you buy now to get what you really want, just buy what you really want now. The exception is, as other have mentioned, if the alternative is at a good price that you know you'll be able to get your money back or make money on when you sell it.
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Post by svart on Nov 18, 2021 9:37:22 GMT -6
Personally, having been doing this professionally my entire adult life (which isn't that long, I'm 34) I've acquired more than enough equipment to "do the job". But, I run a studio and the clients I work with are often familiar with gear and will ask "do you have a U67" or "do you have a U47" or whatever piece of gear. And when I don't, I can tell that they feel like that may be making a compromise with their recording. Now, sometimes you put up your alternative and it sounds great and they are happy, but when they've heard the best (or whatever they've been told or believe is the best) it obvious it in the back of their mind. The best comparison I can make is with guitars...if you are a say an acoustic guitar player and you make your living doing that, sure you can own a Collings or Bourgeois or whatever D28 inspired guitar and it'll sound great, but you're still going to want a pre-war Martin. And when you pull out a guitar like that, even if it doesn't sound as good as that other guitar, there's some psychological thing that happens as a player and to those around you. All that to say, if this purchase is something you are buying to make a living and you feel like in the back of your mind you are making a compromise and there's a chance you're going to end up selling whatever you buy now to get what you really want, just buy what you really want now. The exception is, as other have mentioned, if the alternative is at a good price that you know you'll be able to get your money back or make money on when you sell it. One of the things I've done recently is use a lot of guitar sims during tracking. The last band I had in really wanted to use live amps, but we just couldn't get everything set up and tweaked to sound good in the room with the gear they brought and the time they wanted to do it in. I loaded some guitar sims and said that we'd run everything DI but I'd send the sim outputs back to the headphones so they could hear them. I got a lot of eye rolls and "uh, well.. I'm not sure we want to do that.. Sims just don't sound good.. Maybe we should, uh, reconsider this.." And I really had to make my case to even try it and show them.. Once I actually got it set up and they were able to listen and play, then all of a sudden they were fine with it. Later they told me that they tried using plugin sims and they got terrible tones and latency issues and they didn't know why mine sounded so much better and had no latency issues. The moral of the story is that I totally agree that there's a very fine line between the customer trusting you and not trusting you simply based on their biases of the gear and methods you use.
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Post by svart on Nov 18, 2021 9:40:10 GMT -6
Personally I'd look at seeing if drum triggers will work with the "silent" heads and cymbals you can get for regular drums. Might be a better and cheaper way to get an electronic kit.. use a cheap brain to map to midi and use a good drum plugin to get better tones? You can buy a ddrums kit for less than 1K, it's essentially a converted acoustic but let's say they're not all that good. You'd be surprised at the amount of R&D that goes into e-drums and none of them irrelevant of cost are perfect (yet).. Even the Roland centre mount trigger system had hotspot issues meaning that if you tapped too far to the left for example on a snare drum it wouldn't trigger. Apparently the new VAD series has fixed that.. The only acoustic drum conversion that's worth it is a bass drum, you won't be playing ghost notes on that.. I did a lot of metal / rock and a lot of drummers used e-drums / conversion kits etc. so I've come across my fair share of them. ATV make very good hardware (wide dynamic range, no hotspots) however their module's are sub par, you can't adjust a lot of the trigger functionality like you can on a mimic and they don't support "multi-zone's" in random ways. Meaning there's no rim shots or crash cup accents.. Then there's the flagship Roland TD-50, again great hardware but the module sounds like a drum synthesiser from the 90's.. Not great for what's essentially a $7K (ish) kit. VST's with decent hardware would save me a fortune, however outside of toontrack midi triggering can be spotty at best. Just read on the NI / Kontakt stuff with e-drums, it's a mess even with Roland. I don't know if it's because I've spent too many years with Superior Drummer or what but I just don't like the sound of them, hence I'd rather find a workable module. I did consider getting the ATV Adrums kit with module (as it's still a lot cheaper than getting a mimic), it has midi out but only two audio outs.. I've done entire drum processing via stems before and I used EZdrummer so I can work with it but I do prefer to have individual tracks to work with. What do you think to the module sounds of the AD5, useable in a recording? Skip to 2:20 Mimic for reference Those sound OK. I always find electronic kit samples too staccato sounding. I think the plugin stuff like SSD sound better. But that's coming from me, a 30 year drummer, who would never personally buy (or use) an electronic kit because I hate the way they feel when I play them. I'm only just now coming around to using samples in mixing too.
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Post by Guitar on Nov 18, 2021 10:03:50 GMT -6
I read that purely as personal ethics, what are you comfortable with etc. I don't think Monkey was challenging anyone else's beliefs. It's good either way for me, I've no issues with challenging assertions and heated debates. Not that this is one, it's all rather tame.. Cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich anyone? Yes I meant purely from a personal perspective! I think personal ethics are extremely important. And I will be the first to admit that I am terrible with money, so I would be a hypocrite telling anyone else how to spend or not spend their money. I'm trying to get better. The topic of this thread is very relevant to me. I buy a lot of stuff "just because," not with any real burning need. Something I need to meditate on, I guess. For example, I'll probably let a lot of black friday plugin deals come and go this year. I think I've come far enough to at least do that much (little.)
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