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Post by mcirish on Aug 12, 2022 12:38:28 GMT -6
Today I discovered that I still can’t get iZotope RX to actually improve a problematic recording. It just sounds shitty in a different way. At least the original shitty recording sounded natural. I’m probably going to switch to Acon. It’s more natural with less weird ringing and artifacts. Izotope hasn’t really improved in a while and is now being gutted by private equity. I have all the Acon stuff. I use Acoustica for all the spectral editing I do now. For me, it just works better than RX. I do own both but Acon has a more straight forward approach that works with my brain.
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Post by Bat Lanyard on Aug 12, 2022 22:32:01 GMT -6
That vinyl, and other things like "what resolution do you record at" and many other nuances are toxic thread suckers.
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Post by nick8801 on Aug 13, 2022 6:47:09 GMT -6
I was recording a rehearsal one day years ago with some friends so I threw up an Omni capsule on an old modded oktava. Unbeknownst to us, the mic stand got loose and the mic was down near the floor by the kick drum. Sounded massive. I should do that again. Oh wait, I don’t record drums anymore! I dig omni mics on all kinds of things. Especially guitar cabs when someone says "I wish it sounded just like my amp" well... ok! Nifty problem solvers & great creative tools. Stuck it on the kick drum because I'm always trying to challenge myself & not do the same shit over & over. Stand slippage... long time ago in a galaxy far away I remember having a 58 on a bass cab. Not many options at that point... but somehow it either slipped or got bumped and was at like a 45 angle, pointed towards the floor. Moved it back on axis... didn't like it as much and pointed it back towards the ground. A friend just lent me one of those old EV Omni dynamics. Sounds so cool on acoustic guitar! Can’t wait to try it on some vocals.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Aug 13, 2022 18:48:50 GMT -6
Last night’s lesson as I was invited to accompany a bass playing friend to a fairly new studio that he has had RF and grounding issues in. I am not a musician, I am a competent AE / Producer, but where I my greatest strength in audio is problem solving! 3 guys with some decent rap credits, a bassist with a degree in composition couldn’t have not been able to get this SVT rig to behave in this room. A ground lift replacing a bunch of cables with my favorite Canare and reseating some tubes after putting some contact cleaner on the pins. The rig is silent. All of these guys are under 30, I don’t think anyone ever taught them how to use process of elimination to hunt down noise issues, kind of sad because they were all amazed at my methods and said this should be class at the Schools they went to. It also means I’m now on speed dial of more AE’s.
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Post by EmRR on Aug 13, 2022 22:41:04 GMT -6
There’s plenty of things that will partially work enough for you to waste a lot of time troubleshooting. Expect it.
Sometimes a different mic close to the source sounds better than the plan.
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Post by drumsound on Aug 16, 2022 9:34:41 GMT -6
Yesterday I rediscovered that if one side of the overheads is reading a little louder on one side, it's very simple to tweak the mic alignment (on a coincident pair) and bring the image back even and centered.
I most likely bumped into the stand to make it uneven.
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Post by phdamage on Aug 16, 2022 17:51:51 GMT -6
I’ve always had difficultly getting side chains working within cubase, esp with 3rd party plugs. I bought the waves multiband comp a couple years ago and never noticed until yesterday that you have to click on “external” on each band to get it to get the side chain signal! Oops. Glad I finally figured it out but feel like a dunce for never noticing before
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2022 23:20:21 GMT -6
The Fuse VQA-154 low mid band is a magical drum mud and box cutter.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2022 1:37:05 GMT -6
I'm re-learning how expensive it is to incorporate a studio worth a damn into a house, especially in today's climate.
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Post by jaba on Aug 22, 2022 7:17:39 GMT -6
The Fuse VQA-154 low mid band is a magical drum mud and box cutter. I like that band in particular on the 154. Yes to mud cutting, and I boost there much more now since I got that EQ.
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Post by damoongo on Aug 22, 2022 9:28:54 GMT -6
Last night’s lesson as I was invited to accompany a bass playing friend to a fairly new studio that he has had RF and grounding issues in. I am not a musician, I am a competent AE / Producer, but where I my greatest strength in audio is problem solving! 3 guys with some decent rap credits, a bassist with a degree in composition couldn’t have not been able to get this SVT rig to behave in this room. A ground lift replacing a bunch of cables with my favorite Canare and reseating some tubes after putting some contact cleaner on the pins. The rig is silent. All of these guys are under 30, I don’t think anyone ever taught them how to use process of elimination to hunt down noise issues, kind of sad because they were all amazed at my methods and said this should be class at the Schools they went to. It also means I’m now on speed dial of more AE’s. I hope that wasn't an AC ground lift on the SVT!
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Aug 23, 2022 14:23:06 GMT -6
Last night’s lesson as I was invited to accompany a bass playing friend to a fairly new studio that he has had RF and grounding issues in. I am not a musician, I am a competent AE / Producer, but where I my greatest strength in audio is problem solving! 3 guys with some decent rap credits, a bassist with a degree in composition couldn’t have not been able to get this SVT rig to behave in this room. A ground lift replacing a bunch of cables with my favorite Canare and reseating some tubes after putting some contact cleaner on the pins. The rig is silent. All of these guys are under 30, I don’t think anyone ever taught them how to use process of elimination to hunt down noise issues, kind of sad because they were all amazed at my methods and said this should be class at the Schools they went to. It also means I’m now on speed dial of more AE’s. I hope that wasn't an AC ground lift on the SVT! It wasn’t the SVT I can’t remember where we end up lifting because it was one of those we are going to lift every ground individually till we find it and the SVT had the ground pin removed from the plug. First move was replace the plug. Kind of sucks because I left the guys with one of my NOS Bakelite non polarized ground lifts, those things are getting hard to find and are perfect for switching AC polarity of an amp ala Dave rat, and yes you use the little cable to attach the ground in this situation.
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Post by notneeson on Aug 23, 2022 19:47:35 GMT -6
This was more reiterating than learning anew: but always check and recheck your 2 buss. Gain creep across the mix can so easily drive you into over compression, sucking the life out of a mix.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Aug 23, 2022 21:05:17 GMT -6
I already new this but I was un pleasantly reminded, don’t clock via ADAT optical!!!
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Aug 23, 2022 21:05:51 GMT -6
I already new this but I was un pleasantly reminded, don’t clock via ADAT optical!!! It deserves repeating
Even if I screwed up
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Post by Bat Lanyard on Aug 23, 2022 23:11:34 GMT -6
Check every goddamn cable when you get ground hum. Thought it was one unit, wasn't that unit at all. I have a touchy Dsub cable that I might just throw off of a bridge soon.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2022 23:52:20 GMT -6
This was more reiterating than learning anew: but always check and recheck your 2 buss. Gain creep across the mix can so easily drive you into over compression, sucking the life out of a mix. I find I'm using more tape plugs than compressors now. I'm able to shrink stuff without over modulation or crazy fader surfing because a lot of 2 buss comps at certain settings only sound magical when you really dig in and you have to fight the pumping
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Post by EmRR on Aug 24, 2022 7:55:38 GMT -6
Check every goddamn cable when you get ground hum. Thought it was one unit, wasn't that unit at all. I have a touchy Dsub cable that I might just throw off of a bridge soon. I have a visual monitor on the live broadcast so i can see who’s onstage. 100’ SDI run, and I get a loopback audio confidence check off the headphone out back into the console where I can solo it. Took audio transformer iso and power ground lift plug to kill hum in the outgoing broadcast. Tried lifting every audio shield one at a time with no luck. Brute force!
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Post by copperx on Aug 24, 2022 9:49:52 GMT -6
I'm re-learning how expensive it is to incorporate a studio worth a damn into a house, especially in today's climate. Yup. Getting silent and effective HVAC in your studio space is perhaps the costliest item (except for the console).
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Post by drbill on Aug 24, 2022 19:52:54 GMT -6
I suppose I knew this before, but I learned it UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL today.....
Electricity is voodoo. HUGE amounts of voltages and electricity are MEGA BIZZARE VOODOO.
Today I looked death in the face, yelled a couple profanities, and ran like a little girl for cover.
I was outside the studio, planting a couple Manzanita's cause it's that time of year - killer beautiful monsoon's every day. Raining a bit almost everyday for 6 weeks now - looking almost like HI here. And guess what? Along with those monsoon's comes....
L I G H T N I N G!!!! and Thunderstorms....
I had just stood up from kneeling on the ground and looked over the structure of the Studio just as lightning cracked and shot out sideways about 50-100 yards over the top of the structure. It didn't look like it hit the studio directly but it was INSANELY spidering out all around. The sound of ripping followed by an instant explosion.... I honestly was scared to my core. My wife who was inside said the whole house shrieked and rumbled. Her words. By the time I got in she looked terrified and said the hair on her arms was still standing up.
I've been very close to strikes that have hit the ground before, but never anything this close. The building protection was intact, my studio SurgeX was intact, the surge protectors were all intact, but I think I need to get a UPS for the PT computer.
So...the studio.....and what I learned.
I had a mix up in Pro Tools and was part way done. Even though our power didn't go off, it was still "disrupted" in some fashion. Now I'm spending the rest of the day chasing down network, and video card and pRam issues on the Mac. Glad the studio and ME didn't take a direct hit, but man....talk about scary.....
I learned.
1. Don't get hit by lightning 2. Have full building protection as a first line defense. This worked for me today, 3. If possible have a full protection for the studio itself. I've got the SurgeX on each circuit that feeds the studio. Hedbacks recommendation. This worked for me today. 4. Go one step further and get a UPS on the computer. This I didn't have, and I'm spending the day replacing video cards, and various things. 5. Most importantly - don't be a dumbass and be outside during a thunderstorm. This is a lesson I will not soon forget.....
Stay safe out there guys. Electricity is gnarly!!!!!
YIKES! Looks like maybe we did take a direct hit. Took out the mini-split HVAC system..... Can't believe the studio is still mostly working...
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Post by copperx on Aug 24, 2022 22:16:03 GMT -6
Goodness.
> Now I'm spending the rest of the day chasing down network, and video card and pRam issues on the Mac. Glad the studio and ME didn't take a direct hit, but man....talk about scary.....
HAHA, what a weird way of spending the rest of your day after a close encounter with death! But I guess we all here are a bit insane.
I'm glad you're ok!
I don't know much about your setup. Are you far from the city?
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Post by copperx on Aug 24, 2022 22:41:12 GMT -6
I don't want to take the thunder out of drbill's post (go up two posts to read how he almost becomes human bacon), but I just want to document something I learned before I forget.
**Two interfaces or converters that are not synced will drift apart, and it can happen quickly.**
I was recording, with interface #1, the output of interface #2. They are not clocked together (they are consumer-level, so there's no way to sync them).
Well, I was going mad, because the units started to drift apart! In one minute, the units became dozens of samples apart. They were both running at 96kHz.
In my mind, I thought that clocks were highly precise and syncing was just for anal-retentive types. I never thought that to one interface, 1 minute could mean .9995 minutes! How can that be? Aren't crystal oscillators really precise? A quartz watch loses what, 1-2 seconds per year? But then again, they're not ticking 96000 times per second.
After lots of reading, I found out that in the movie world, it is well known that if you record audio with two digital devices simultaneously, even if you record a clap to mark the beginning, lining things up perfectly is NOT possible unless you have very short recordings. The units will drift. That's why things SoundRadix Auto-Align Post exist. I always thought aligning things in such scenarios was as simple as lining up the beginnings. OH MY! So digital recording devices drift like tape did (albeit in a more predictable way).
WHICH MAKES ME WONDER
How are services such as Mix:Analog and Access Analog possible, if they will pass audio through a different, unsynced AD/DA device, then back to you? Things will start to drift apart. Maybe they have really good clocks? Has anyone used these services confirm that the drift is minimal?
I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT SYNCRONIZATION NOW
I can picture a few insane scenarios in the tape days. Imagine you're recording a song in a 4 track tape machine, you run out of tracks, and a friend lends you another 4 track machine, but you have no way of syncing them. Imagine you overdub a track by listening the recording made in tape machine #1 and you record your track into machine #2. If you wanted to synchronize them later, would that even be possible? Sure, you could line up the starts easily, but what about the wow and flutter? Things would get out of sync the further the tape plays, no?
HOLY COW
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Post by drumsound on Aug 25, 2022 7:52:42 GMT -6
Yesterday I learned that to get a previously recorded tape loop to play correctly you really have get the tension just right by moving the mic stands until the tape bulls correctly and consistently.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Aug 25, 2022 12:30:36 GMT -6
Yesterday I learned that to get a previously recorded tape loop to play correctly you really have get the tension just right by moving the mic stands until the tape bulls correctly and consistently. The moral of this story, print the tape loop to hard disk in case you need to go back and do it quickly.
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Post by drumsound on Aug 25, 2022 13:33:57 GMT -6
Yesterday I learned that to get a previously recorded tape loop to play correctly you really have get the tension just right by moving the mic stands until the tape bulls correctly and consistently. The moral of this story, print the tape loop to hard disk in case you need to go back and do it quickly. I was actually prepping the session for today. I made the loop a while back as an experiment for the song we're working on today. I not only printed about 10 minutes of the loop, but also a count off so I can still playlist the basics easily.
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