seby wrote: Tue Sep 13, 2022 5:19 pm

losthighway wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 1:45 pm I did an experiment this summer where I recorded the same multi track (short) song repeatedly through 5 different preamps to test the discernible difference and the "build up" theory of a particular pre's sonic fingerprint.

The results were staggering. There was maybe 3-5% difference between the most unlike sounding modules. My Alan and Heath board pres hung right in there with API and Sytek. The Great River sounded ever so subtly nicer, and the Chandler had just a hint more harmonic saturation. It totally killed all of my preamp gear lust. I could have recorded my last dozen projects on only my board pres and no one would have lost anything in the process.

Fun test! Pure speculation, but what do you think that the differences might have been had you run the same program material through a bunch of strongly coloured Coil, Fearn, Gyraf, Tubetech or Thermionic Culture pres for example?

Actually what was the program material? I find pres are most noticeable with either transient-tail heavy music with lots of space around it (acoustic/classical), or heavier material where the pres are being driven hard.

It was kind of a middle of the road, country rockish thing. I had a random ditty that occurred to me while driving that I had a voice memo of that was 30 seconds long. I used drum set, electric bass, a couple semi dirty guitars, an acoustic, sax, and vocals. It was time consuming. The only preamps/instruments I gently overdrove(?) (in all my years I've never had to conjugate that verb) were the Great River and the Chandler Germanium on guitar duty because that's kind of something they were designed to do. Everything else I tried to leave some head room.

I would imagine the saturation heavy preamps/approach would possibly show a greater range. It's like how digging into a Vox sounds different than digging into a Marshall. Even the Great River and Chandler kind of take going into the red in different ways. The Chandler turns into a slew of mid goo, the Great River has a gently opposite 'smile curve' kind of thing going with a sparkly top and gentle mids.

losthighway wrote: Tue Sep 13, 2022 10:14 pm

seby wrote: Tue Sep 13, 2022 5:19 pm

losthighway wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 1:45 pm I did an experiment this summer where I recorded the same multi track (short) song repeatedly through 5 different preamps to test the discernible difference and the "build up" theory of a particular pre's sonic fingerprint.

The results were staggering. There was maybe 3-5% difference between the most unlike sounding modules. My Alan and Heath board pres hung right in there with API and Sytek. The Great River sounded ever so subtly nicer, and the Chandler had just a hint more harmonic saturation. It totally killed all of my preamp gear lust. I could have recorded my last dozen projects on only my board pres and no one would have lost anything in the process.

Fun test! Pure speculation, but what do you think that the differences might have been had you run the same program material through a bunch of strongly coloured Coil, Fearn, Gyraf, Tubetech or Thermionic Culture pres for example?

Actually what was the program material? I find pres are most noticeable with either transient-tail heavy music with lots of space around it (acoustic/classical), or heavier material where the pres are being driven hard.

It was kind of a middle of the road, country rockish thing. I had a random ditty that occurred to me while driving that I had a voice memo of that was 30 seconds long. I used drum set, electric bass, a couple semi dirty guitars, an acoustic, sax, and vocals. It was time consuming. The only preamps/instruments I gently overdrove(?) (in all my years I've never had to conjugate that verb) were the Great River and the Chandler Germanium on guitar duty because that's kind of something they were designed to do. Everything else I tried to leave some head room.

I would imagine the saturation heavy preamps/approach would possibly show a greater range. It's like how digging into a Vox sounds different than digging into a Marshall. Even the Great River and Chandler kind of take going into the red in different ways. The Chandler turns into a slew of mid goo, the Great River has a gently opposite 'smile curve' kind of thing going with a sparkly top and gentle mids.

I think that the guitar amp analogy is spot on. Some amps are very neutral - "pedal platforms" is current nomenclature. Other amps are so coloured that you are basically just using any old guitar to trigger the amp. Okay that is a slight exaggeration of course, but as it is with guitar amps, so it is with mic pres.

I want a vipre rather badly....

Kniferide wrote: Tue Sep 13, 2022 7:42 pm The one thing I do notice between the console and Sytek especially is a bandwidth of dynamic range. I feel like they are a lot "deeper" than the console preamps.

I bet! Outside of tube-land, Forsell pres are famous for having a deep 3D sound image. Fred has retired, alas, and the prices on reverb are nutso. It is something that I chase personally because I make and record mostly sparse music with a lot of space around it. John Hardy is kinda sorta still in business, at least his website is still up, but he appears to have dropped off the grid a little over the last couple of years.

fatchance wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 9:48 am Can anyone recommend a good resource for treating/modifying a room?

I recently moved into a new house that has a detatched garage with a spare room that is becoming the music room. It's kind of a blank canvas at this point. It has minimal insulation, and decent electrical. The goal would be giving it some sound treatment so that it A) sounds good in there and B) blocks a decent amount of noise out from bothering the neighbors.

I went down this rabbit hole for a room in my garage. Isolation and acoustic treatment are two different things.

Isolation: For the walls you want lots of mass on either side, as much space in between filled with insulation, and if possible, you decouple the two surfaces on either side of the wall. This is pretty invasive if you're not planning to gut the room. You could slap another layer of drywall over what's there and it will make a difference. You also want the room sealed up well. any gaps are going to be the weakest link and let sound out.

Acoustic treatment: Absorbent material (insulation), as thick as you can go, over as much area as you can, and in trouble spots (which I'm not really sure about how to figure out other than experimentation). Basically you build a frame, fill it with insulation and hang it on the wall. If it's less than like 6 inches thick, it's not gonna do much in the bass frequencies, which are what's problematic in small spaces.

I've found this somewhat informative, but dude's running a business so when you try to start getting into specifics the free info dries up, but the concepts are explained well in some vids.
https://www.youtube.com/c/AcousticsInsider

If you really wanna deep dive the forum here (which may be dead now but archived?) is way more involved.
https://www.johnlsayersarchive.com/

Pretty well setup.

S***t*ater guy recommends a RME digiface interface+ ferrofish convertor for additional i/o. Thoughts???

I plan to use hardware for most everything - compression, pre, EQ, delay, etc.

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Thu Oct 06, 2022 9:52 pm Pretty well setup.

S***t*ater guy recommends a RME digiface interface+ ferrofish convertor for additional i/o. Thoughts???

I plan to use hardware for most everything - compression, pre, EQ, delay, etc.

The RME stuff will work forever. They support drivers for every device that they have ever made. It is absolutely indestructible.

I'm helping a friend price out a new recording space in the back of a candy store and came up with this. She runs a music therapy practice and the goal is to make slightly-nicer-than-GarageBand demos with a five piece band for some of her clients. This is all first-thought-best-thought in terms of brands and without really trying to hunt around for prices. Tear it to pieces please!

The biggest thing for me with home recording is ease-of-use.

Creating an environment that just requires very minimal setup/breakdown is more important than expensive gear, imo. Although the best gear decision I've made was spending money on sE voodoo mics for drum overheads. I upgraded from some cheaper ribbons and the difference was my recordings sounded much more balanced and smooth/easy on the ears.

In terms of preamps...
I've used two pres ever for home recording projects (Focusrite ISA and Grace Design M101). The Focusrite was probably better because it gave more interesting results, more "colored." The Grace just made everything sound super clear, which while interesting, wasn't worth the money really. The Grace Design required more tweaking in post (i.e. more rack gear to tweak EQ/compression etc. or in-the-box stuff, whatever) to really shape the results. The Focusrite was more straightforward. Plug and play.

I can see why someone might say preamps are overrated in the grand scheme, or rated 5th in importance. The thing is... there was a time (about 15-20 years ago) when the choices for consumer gear for digital "home recording" were much, much less broad. In those times, preamps were more important, because, as one example the stock pres on Presonus Firebox (or Firepod, which was at a time (2005-06) one of the only 8-input Fire-wire interfaces on the market that didn't require a Pro Tools subscription) gave every recording that wasn't literally perfectly engineered a sheen of "shit tone" on top of the signal, which was obviously frustrating. But an external pre could help you bypass that. These days, there are a crazy amount of options and most don't add any "sh*t tone" to your mic input signals. From there it's all about what microphones you use and what room you're in.

Performance, vibe and mixing all can drastically change results too. I've been recording in the same room for 2+ years with the same gear, setup in the same way... and I listen to mixes and go, "Why does this (i.e. the hi hat sound so crisp, or the guitar sound different) sound so much different (clearer, more "punchy") than some of my other recordings, if it was recorded in the same exact room, same exact gear?" It's gotta just be the performance and mixing. Changes the sound quite a bit.

As usual, having a tough time figuring out where this belongs, but it's a home studio question, so here makes sense.

I'm recording guitar and drums, both playing live. I'm running two microphones (SM57 and AKG C1000) into a Focusrite USB interface, then running that into Reaper.

Which mic should I use for which instrument? I currently have the SM57 on the guitar cabinet, and the C1000 as an overhead on the entire drum kit.

Where should I place the drum overhead for best balance/sound?

I realize that the simplest answer is 'try it multiple ways and see what sounds best', but I want to know if there's a generally accepted practice for this kind of recording setup.

Thanks!

bigc wrote: Thu Nov 10, 2022 11:55 am As usual, having a tough time figuring out where this belongs, but it's a home studio question, so here makes sense.

I'm recording guitar and drums, both playing live. I'm running two microphones (SM57 and AKG C1000) into a Focusrite USB interface, then running that into Reaper.

Which mic should I use for which instrument? I currently have the SM57 on the guitar cabinet, and the C1000 as an overhead on the entire drum kit.

Where should I place the drum overhead for best balance/sound?

I realize that the simplest answer is 'try it multiple ways and see what sounds best', but I want to know if there's a generally accepted practice for this kind of recording setup.

Thanks!

I'd probably be putting it in front of the kit about chest-high and keep move it downwards until you have a half-way decent balance between the kick and the rest of the kit.

The mix itself will depend greatly on how much control your drummer has, most importantly will probably be to play lighter on the cymbals, heavier on the drums than they are used to. If you can put barriers (I think tech term for this is gobos) up of some kind to mask some of the direct cymbal into the mic that might help some. I do this w/ room mics most of the time after seeing Scott Evans photos.