Official anti-gearsluttery thread

Horses for courses I suppose. I whittled down my setup years ago. During my heady DIY days, I built everything. I had piles of stuff. I also didn't know how to use any of it well. I expected the gear to do the work and make magic.

It didn't.

I didn't.

I was disappointed, and therefor thought I needed even MORE gear to get where I wanted to be!

I didn't.

What I needed was enlightenment.

I finally got that when I moved into my house and built my studio, but not in the way I expected. In order to finance some of the build, I decided to get rid of some gear. That was hard. It was like getting rid of best friends, but best friends that don't visit often. I didn't know if I'd need the gear, or if it was the magical gear that I was promised all along but didn't figure out how to make it work. I ached inside. I waffled. I worried.

I did it anyway. I sold probably half of the things I built and left a handful of preamps, a few compressors and some effects. I stopped screwing around with my console and just set it up to work. I sold a lot of expensive parts I had collected to use. I put that money into my room.

I researched. I planned. I made Google Sketchup drawings and plotted every detail, then I built it.

The room sent me to the moon if upgrades were like travelling. I immediately found my head and pulled it from my ass. I was on the path finally.

Next step: mic placement.

I had sold a few mics that I bought. Mostly they were mediocre mics that I had *read* were good mics, and worthy of purchase/upgrade.

They weren't. MXLs and Studio Projects and others went to ebay. I got down to around 10 mics and four of those were the same mic! I studied placement and use for each mic and realized that each mic could do maybe one thing really well, and possibly a few things decently enough. I decided to take a page from some of the pros out there and only buy mics when I had a specific purpose for them. No longer would I spend time guessing which mic might work, I'm going to know exactly which mic will be use to get what sounds. I'm going to make them specialists in what they do and I'm going to know them intimately. I have, but without the anal intercourse I had imagined. I also bit the bullet and bought some expensive and very good monitors. No more playing with toys. No more guessing and comparing and running out to the car to listen. Quality monitors. It was time to shit AND get off the pot. One of the best decisions ever.

So between the tuned and treated room and learning how to use the least amount of gear possible, I feel like I've won the battle. I can work on the MUSIC rather than just try to capture the SOUND.

I did this by getting rid of gear and focusing on what is more important. The basics are more important than what gear you have in the rack or what you've done to it.

Room.
Mic placement/Knowing what to use.
Monitors. If you can't hear what's going wrong, you can't fix it.

After those are perfected, then you can work on getting quality gear.

To those who claim that you can do anything on cheap gear, I still have to disagree. The weakest link is what produces the sound you hear.

I can't tell you how many people who tell me about how awesome they are with their cheap gear. It's a sense of pride for them. Then I listen and have to hold back the cringe. Their room tone is boxy and full of modes. Their mics sound misplaced or don't have the right sound for what they are recording and thus they've used way too much EQ/effects. Their vocals are nasal but they can't hear it because the crossovers in their cheap KRK monitors have a dip right at that frequency. But it's the best they can do and they are proud. Hell, I would be too if I could get all that to work together and make it somewhat listenable.

So I still have to disagree with cheap gear. I bought it and used it. I didn't know better. I thought that I'd be the one to make cheap gear sound like pro gear and everybody would envy me! It didn't happen. I upgraded the cheap gear because surely if I threw enough money and know-how at it, it would be like pro gear! It didn't happen. I felt bad selling it to the next guy who surely thought the same thing as me, but hey, that's life.

The problem is that if your room and monitors and mic placement aren't up to snuff, then cheap gear ISN'T the bottleneck and it makes folks believe that it's good enough. Once you'd TRULY fixed the other issues, then it's painfully clear how inadequate it is.

MXL and Studio Projects is exactly WHY I said "not any old gear". Fwiw.

Yeah , crap is crap no matter what . 

You said SM7 and SM81's , so basically your saying the difference between the Industry Standard stuff and the boutique expensive gear is subtle and I agree with that .

Jack Endino once said , "Use the basic industry standard stuff , (I forget what exact gear he mentioned but it was like ...SM57 , D112 , SM81's , 414.....) and if you can't make an awesome sounding record , its not the gears fault . "

And its true . 

KSM32 or AT4050 you can get for $350 for vocals .

SM81's for Overheads and Acoustic Guitar

SM57's for drums , guitar , whatever ,

Kick mic for $120

Basic Interface , Steinburg , Echo , Focusrite ,

Then use free plugins off the internet and the stock plugins with your DAW , 


That setup is really all you need . 

To demonstrate my commitment to the views I espoused on this thread earlier today, I just ordered a RND 5059....its an early xmas gift from my incredible wife. I have issues and I cant control myself lately...complete GAS.

I wish it were as easy as just recording good music with bad gear. Until I get rich enough to refuse studio work, i have to record ALL music with the gear I have, and attempt to make it sound great. I can't make bad music sound good unless it's recorded well, and in order to make money, that gear HAS to be better than the next guy.

I can't take a hissy preamp and put that on a fuzzy guitar and expect to get articulation from the pick attacks. Ain't gonna happen. There are theoretical ways around this through multitracking and such but I can barely get good single performances from artists, let alone identical takes.

Good sound is the name of the game in this business. With all the bedroom "studios" and Ipods these days, "good enough" has become the normal while folks like me trying to make something out of recording ONLY have the quality of the gear left to differentiate ourselves from the guy in the bedroom. You can argue about "skills" and all that but I have yet to meet a person who records themselves in their bedrooms truly believe that anyone could do it better than they could.

I can't control whether clients walk in with the best instruments or with the worst. I can only hope that they have at least learned to tune them properly, and even then it's a 50/50 shot. I now spend more time tuning drums and twisting knobs on amplifiers to try to make them sound the best they can, rather than positioning mics and setting up preamps. Now that I know I have the best mics and preamps, I don't have to worry about those at all. I set up and work on the client's gear. that's just one of the reasons I require the best gear.

You can talk about wanting to play with cheap gear but I don't have the patience or time to fidget with it to try to find a good sound. I gotta set it and go!

However, back to my original point. I cut down the gear and brought everything else up to professional standards. Now I can work without second guessing myself or my setup and focus on getting the most out of the client's gear.

I don't "want to play with cheap gear".




The shitty instrument someone brings will always sound shitty--no matter WHAT gear you have. But, also--I missed where someone suggest you use hissy preamps. You absolutely do NOT need uber boutique preamps to get "not hissy". Is your basic comparison there the preamps in some Maudio box and an API? 





You're telling me a maladjusted bad sounding amp, there's some kind of mana gear from the gods that makes that sound good by way of recording it through it's stellar circuitry? If that's true, I completely change my opinion. I need to save for THAT!! Does it work for singers? If so, which one will make me sound like Sarah McLachlan? I want that one. If I have to still sound like a guy....do they make a Don Henley or Richard Page model? I guess I'll take that if that price is right.

Added quotes to clarify. You posted in between...nothing I said was in response to Urban's album. I have thoughts on that, but I'll leave it at--I would not judge much about a recording fidelity OR mix from a DR5 master.

Lots of good thoughts and opinions about the topic already, cool thread.

There are critical points, where definitely a minimum, just a minimum, of gear-sluttiness is required.
Everything that has to do with listening of course. You simply cannot mix or record right, what you do not hear. (Well, maybe you can. But that is by pure chance, a matter of luck.)
But even there - how much of a gear slut do you have to be? For me, it must not be esoteric. I have heard very expensive speakers on ridiculously expensive esoteric amps. There are even expensive studio monitors on the market, that make everything sound better than it is. Yeah, impress the clients. And then find out that it doesn't translate as good as it should.
I prefer listening to relatively small active unspectacular and unfancy but flat nearfielders that prove to reveal weak spots fast, hands down. The stuff that is used in broadcast studios for a reason. Not cheap, some would say expensive, but not esoteric by any means either. Better one pair of these than 3 fancy alternative pairs with different weak spots...
Stuff like K+H or Geithain, e.g., even the smallest/smaller ones, must not even be the latest and greatest or new.
For sure, there is of course a minimum of gear sluttiness required when it comes to the recording chain, esp. the mics. But there is stuff that is by no way boutique and just does it right. You can do great recordings with a handful of SM57/SM58/M201's, some 421/441 and one or two LDCs 414 upward/(SM7 is cool for vox, too, of course). As a minimum, of course.
True: In times of 24bit converters, nobody has to use an analog compressor or limiter anyway. Its mostly GAS.
We like it to give colours. And that is OK. Yeah, multi-stage compression...loudness wars, the clients want to hear and read the magical names: 1176, LA2A, SSL bus comp (like the magical "Neumann" when it comes to mics). But must anyone have the 25th boutique stereo compressor of the same topology really? 10 different flavours 1176? Extremely overprized old stuff or many different esoteric boutique re-issues? Nope...not really.
Analog EQs - ok, i find it easier to operate them and make them sound right, than plugins. But it gets better and better the last decade...
And....
Oops. OK, enough rant for the moment....

Best regards,
Martin

^ i like that song and mix a lot, but i absolutely hate the snare sound!

Also...gotta second that...but, I can certainly get you that if it's a mystery...I DID work in studios in the late 80s...I KNOW how to make me a faux gated verb snare. Used to have a dedicated box for the snare/toms. Gate them tight...send the gated to the verb--then gate the verb return way longer but quick. Sometimes, we'd need to put a pitch shifter on the input of the reverb to pitch it up--so the initial hit had body but the "new digital shell+room" was pitched like a piccolo. I know a guy--still does that, only now he digitally edits the snare track to be just the first few MS of the hit--the rest is built with reverb. 

Why would you delete it? There's nothing wrong with holding the opinion it's a great recording. I'm just surprised. It tells me you and I will only coincidentally agree on gear and likely technique.