Official anti-gearsluttery thread

I understand Tony.  A gated snare like that would stick out like a sore thumb in todays productions.  But listen to that mix again and in your mind try and replace the snare hits with a ringing shell sound.  To me it just wouldn't be the same song at all.  It's a time piece tune for sure but that "5 gallon bucket" snare is part of the charm for me.  And it makes a lot of room for everything else in the mix to be featured.  

^ that's because it's saturated 

If anyone needs advice on a how to make a perfectly good drum kit sounds like a cheap drum machine, buddy, I'm your guy!

Back to the OP, I have resolved to simply have a great but simple stereo pair of gear (mostly Daking) and for anything beyond that, use interface pres (drums). I too see a lot of obsession over that last 2% but in the end, who will hear it? The consumer - the audience - the purpose for recording will likely not. ITB/OTB, 20 different pres, 2 similar pres, 44.1/16, 96/24... i think we get carried away and lose sight of the the core needs for professionally delivering the product. Most of what we buy is for us to feel good.

so, cheers to the OP, I agree to the principle of letting go a bit

Cop Car is a great song.
my favourite on that album

Writing or production?

This is my favorite post I guess.  I started with Studio Projects and SM58, but gradually got to this "mid level pro" rig for the longest time.  I think I have outgrown a lot of the stuff though and am moving firmly into the (mostly DIY) high end.  I don't think I have any cheap crap any more, or many budget condenser mics or compressors, but a lot of my low priced yet standard issue slut gear I'm still of course using.  Getting some good ribbon mics and high end condensers was a huge "level-up."  Microphones are so so important.  But what you can do with a few good mics and pres, and the good plugins, is amazing.  I still listen back happily to my older stuff.  There is a level yet-beyond that I am just starting to flail and gasp toward that I think has much more to do with Producer-y intelligence and skill, and actually using these fine tools that are available to me.  Becoming a multi-genre multi instrumentalist was probably a huge factor in my ongoing quest.  I don't think the gear is holding me back at this point.  By this I mean that the pure "sound quality" I hear on records is within my reach, and the scope of my equipment--within reason, I'm not Abbey Road--but they'd probably use a lot of my stuff.  The differences come down to the human contributions, which sounds so understated when phrased like that.  Stuff like arrangements, distance miking, drum tuning, creative overdubs, close attention to energy.  And of course mixing is a skill that takes quite some time to hone, and what do they always say, a well tracked song on good equipment is much easier to mix.  Funny how it's all so closely related.

Agreed about the, in my case, KSM137 vs C12 clone on acoustic through custom API channel. Holy wow! What a sound. Just discovered this recently and it's my go-to, now. No preamp or plugin in the world can simulate that difference, you have to have the mic. I think the Shure mic sounds really good on amps and drums.

You've got to be joking, right??

This is why I kind of want to make it where guests have to log in to read the forum. We get like 500 guests a day. I'd like to know who and how many are real people Nd who are googlebots.

This thread has been a bit rambling. Here's how I think regarding all this. First, and obviously, you can put Buddy Holly in front of a reel to reel with a cheap mic in his apartment, singing his song demos, and it sounds like Buddy Holly, the performance is what you hear, the artist is what you feel.
So, first and foremost, the performance drives the recording.

As music becomes more complicated to record, there are so many factors that can deflate a project, so many aspects to understand, things like gain staging for one. I see recording on three levels today. Like marketing and branding a product line, there's BASIC, BETTER, BEST. We all aspire to the highest quality, even a LO FI production, and most of us probably fall into the middle category, "better", which represents a wide variety of situations.

I've thought quite a bit regarding the gear chase we are all on. I've been there and done that, to disappointing results, so this time, I'm trying to balance my choices, and I'm not sure if I am in fact capable of doing that. In the 80's, I wrote and produced radio and TV commercials. I was an AFTRA Signatore, giving me access to the finest performers in NYC, as long as they were paid scale. I did bigger budget commercials in major studios, relying on good, experienced engineers, and did smaller projects in my apartment.

At that time, the first "pro-sumer" products were coming to market, so I put together a bare basics, but good quality work studio. I bought a couple of good mics, Neumann U-87, RE-20, couple of Shure's. Got a Tascam 8 Tk., and and 2Tk, an Allen & Heath board, a DBX 166, lexicon PCM-60, Yamaha digital verb, and a Lexicon delay, ( forget the model #), a few other pieces, an EMU Emulator,Kurzweil keyboard, DX-7, and drum machine. It's important to remember, just one digital reverb cost $2,000 in 1980's money, and that was the cheap one, so in today's money, it cost me as much as it would cost to put together a nice studio studio now, ($45,000 ?), to have some very basic gear at home you could produce music projects for broadcasting with.

I did demos for commercials at home, voice over overdubs on commercials done in big studios that needed new copy, and lower budget commercials. Sometimes the clients loved the demo enough, I just used that. I wrote and produced 4 national spots, 20-25 regional, maybe 100 local spots, won radio commercial of the year and a CLIO doing that, all with only the most basic understanding of engineering. The point is, I was always hungering for the next upgrade. A better board, Otari tape machines, the newest reverb, and it left me rarely feeling satisfied. I caught myself on a date with a really hot woman, talking about reverb parameters for 45 minutes, and honestly realized I'd lost my way. I decided to sell everything, and only record in studios, if I ever did any recording again.

Fast forward to today, I kept my promise until last year, when I decided to record something for my wedding in June, 2012. I figured I could use Garage Band in the computer and get an interface and it would be good enough for me to create a song and run CD's to give away as party favors. I bought an Apogee Duet II, plugged it in, and didn't like the sound at all. I'd noticed UAD's plug ins displaying virtual gear at B&H photo in NYC, and one thing led to another, and I stretched my already tight budget, ( we paid for our wedding ourselves), and bought the Apollo, and I've been on the gearslut merry go round since then.

I rationalize the time I've spent by telling myself, I'm really just learning how to operate in the new digital environment, and that it'll become a quick and easy thing soon, getting good demos done quickly. Well, that remains to be seen. Now, I'm lusting for gear again, like a Burl, or a vintage mic, fully aware that what I have now can do a wonderful job, it's just not what I want it to sound like.

So, this thread has me thinking I need to define my goals. So, here goes, my final goal is owning a house with a studio, it can be a garage, or a big room. I would like to have a high end, but minimalist recording environment, much like the recordings done in Live at Darryl's House. I don't mean I want the equivalent of a multi-million dollar studio, just a comfortable room that sounds good, where I can track maybe.. six performers at a time occasionally. I would like to use it to create my New Mantra music CD's, producing my Naam Music Project and other NY New Age artists. I would like to use it for songwriting demo production, and if it goes nicely, perhaps create another solo album.

Between now and then, I want to get the best sound I can on a budget, and I feel close. I honestly hope I can get to a point where I'm reasonably satisfied with what I have, while simultaneously working towards my goal. Mostly, I'll work on being able to record myself, one track at a time efficiently, the band in a studio thing is quite a way off. I would like high end converters, like Burls, a couple of great mics, and more computer/UAD DSP power. I will settle for the closest I can get to a Burl quality, and slowly put together a mic collection. As it is, I think a good pre-amp, an interface like the Apollo, a great mic, decent monitors, and perhaps a good converter like the UAD 2196 or Russ Martin's, is quite enough to make good recordings.

My hope is that the gear search becomes fun, and I reach a point where I don't feel so desperate to get to the next plateau. Who knows if that will happen. Meanwhile, I think Popmann's idea of downsizing makes a few good points, a DAW, a mic pre, some plugs and some engineering know how, can get you a long way down the road. I think Iamjohngault makes a good point too, the best gear can and does make a difference in the right hands. I want to be in the middle of that, some well chosen, mid-high end gear, but not chasing my own tail. The good part about being old school, is I like simple, straightforward approaches to recording. I've only used one preset on my ReLab 480XL, much like hardware, I tend toward one sound I like, and keep the focus on the performance, not the sounds as much.

That all makes good sense svart. You're right about TIME being a huge factor. I've managed a decent sounding recording by taking a lot of time to work around my gears' shortcomings, and my engineering shortcomings too. My formula for good sound might be different from yours though, since I'm a one man band. I began with a really good mic, a good preamp, a good interface, and decent monitors. I consider some plug ins to be high quality, different from hardware, but not inferior, so I have no hesitation using UAD's reverbs and Ampex tape sims, ReLab;s 480XL, and Slate's VBC. The reverbs really do sound great, and the ability to use presets in the Ampex is amazing, dialing in a different calibration in seconds. I respect guys like yourself, and will certainly step out of my little box at home and avail myself of studios again. When I can afford it, and when the studio offers things I can't get at home. Good luck.