Premier Rock Forum

brownreasontolive wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 12:58 pm

cakes wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 11:20 am

brownreasontolive wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 10:31 am What's in front of the amp? (sorry if this is already clearly mentioned)

I'm using a reactive load box with an IR box. I'm using a IR fridge cab with 2 mics close up. Can't remember the specifics. No mics, all direct. IRs are amazing, especially for home recording. I could go into the software and try to adjust for his style, but I'm not sure it's going to make a huge impact.

Sorry, what I meant is, what is ahead of it in the signal path. Is the player using a bunch of pedals?

The input/output caps in the majority of od/distortion pedals are going to rob you of a lot of low frequency information natural to your bass.
While something like a big may sound thick and have plenty of bass content, it's square-waving the shit of the signal and killing your transient information.

I was trying to suss out whether "oomf" was about perceivable bass content, energy or transient information.

Another thought - is it possible there is latency/phase weirdness in applying the impulse response?
Do you have the same problem using "one mic" on the fridge sim? Can you simulate flipping the phase on one of the 2 "mics"?
Is there a "blend" of direct happening?
The potential for psychoacoustic/phase weirdness with IR seems huge.

There's a Black Glass Microtubes and a Memory Man, but in this case neither was on. In the future, I might just have him go direct into the amp, if he's not using the pedals. Sidenote, been rethinking pedal boards in relation to recording... while it's nice to have a board, I have a wall of pedals and those are great sound shaping tools on the frontend, no need to be limited by pedals velcroed on a board! I'm not playing out like I used to, the but the power supplies sure are nice. So, I think only plugging in the pedals necessary for the song is a good way to go.

I think we left this branch of the topic a page ago, but I meant to share and hopefully it's helpful.

My one regret in 20 years of gear addiction, studio creation is buying incrementally 'better' prosumer preamps. It was the biggest waste of money I ever made. I could have stuck to my Mackie, skipped the Focusrite and Presonus stuff, and waited for Sytek, API, Chandler, Great River stuff because that's where they actually started to make a difference, and as other have pointed out, the difference is subtle.

What I don't regret was buying affordable, useful outboard compressors.

A DBX 160 is handy for a ton of things, can be side chained, has the overeasy button to soften the knee.
The Symetrix 501 should be everyone's first compressor. It has the side chain thing, but unlike the DBX it has a separate limiter, and you can control the attack and release which is instructive. It also can do the destroyed drum room thing.

I haven't checked for a while but I think either of those boxes were somewhere in the vicinity of $200 used and I've been using them on most sessions for well over a decade.

losthighway wrote: The Symetrix 501 should be everyone's first compressor.

Oh god yes. I can't believe I didn't mention this one. I used this on literally everything, vocals, bass, drums, all of it and still would but now have grown into more one-purpose items for those things: Microlimiter for drums, LA-2A clone for vocals. Pretty much just using it on bass at this point, but my memory tells me I still like the DBX better on bass even though I haven't gotten around to owning my own.

losthighway wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 1:57 pm What I don't regret was buying affordable, useful outboard compressors.

I'm totally with you. I would like to have some outboard gear and not have everything in the DAW and I don't really need high-quality stuff, just something that is nice for the price. I really like the Art Pro preamps and bought two different ones to punch up vocals on the cheap. Best $150 I've ever spent. I've been eyeing an Art Pro VLA II for some time, and got a pretty sweet deal on a used one recently, so I pulled the trigger. Looking forward to using it with vocals and drums.

I had a DBX 160a years ago, it was pretty transparent. I don't remember it much. I also like the FMR Compressor and Limiter, from what I've seen. Would love to get something like a Warm Audio EQP-WA later on when I can justify it.

I found a Symetrix 501 for dirt cheap on Reverb. Thanks for the recommendation!

I had one of those Symetrix in a live rack for years but never used to record. Other good bang for the buck comps are the Klark Technik DN504. 4 channel comps. Very effective and can be had used for a couple of hundo. I have a DBX 166XL that I use sometimes too that I got for $20. It compresses like a compressor. I recently got 2 used ART Pro Channel II's on ebay for really cheap and am enjoying them far more than I thought I would. Same basic preamp circuit as the VLA II that cakes mentioned but also has a 4 band EQ and a somewhat decent compressor. These are proving to be pretty great for guitar and bass direct recording. As for new, not crazy expensive good sounding preamps, the Warm Audio Neve knockoff sounds great. I'm probably going to buy a pair or those. The "Tone Beast" (dumbest name award) looks fun too, its an API-ish preamp with different transformers you can switch around and get cool sounds from. Might get one used to play around with. I'm firmly in the "Preamps after a certain level of quality give you diminishing returns per dollar spent" Family. I've used Daking and Millennial and other crazy expensive stuff and they sound amazing going in. Once you get to mixing, my take is it doesn't matter which one you use for any particular thing and I've never really missed a preamp unless it was doing something unexpected. My Syteks are a great example of this. Really clean, fast and quiet... also pretty boring. If they went away, I would just use whatever else there was and wouldn't ever think about them again. Preamps get cool when they do weird shit.

Kniferide wrote: Fri Oct 01, 2021 12:47 pm I'm firmly in the "All audio gear/music equipment after a certain level of quality give you diminishing returns per dollar spent" Family.

Not to be like "all lives matter" but I edited your quote to reflect what I've been saying for years.

Garth wrote: Fri Oct 01, 2021 2:20 pm

Kniferide wrote: Fri Oct 01, 2021 12:47 pm I'm firmly in the "All audio gear/music equipment after a certain level of quality give you diminishing returns per dollar spent" Family.

Not to be like "all lives matter" but I edited your quote to reflect what I've been saying for years.

Hard agree! Heather vocal chain is and has always been an Audio Technica 3035 through a Shure M67 Preamp. Every time we introduce a more "Quality" option we hate it.

When it comes to preamps...

Think about all of the stuff recorded at EA that was probably just board preamps.

Not going to say that buying preamps is a coin toss, but there are other things(something like the Empirical Labs F.A.T.S.O.) that I honestly think will get folks a lot more of whatever they assume a preamp X/Y/Z will get them. Certainly a more stark difference than "Mid-Grade..." preamps versus the preamps in a given interface.

(All that being said, the thing also costs about what that difference might be worth!...)

I also would not discount software options(Preamp/Console Emulation...) when it comes to solving whatever you think a given problem is. I know that's not the most fun answer, but I honestly believe that.

Now if someone was pretty bound an determined on "Hardware..." there are 500 series "Tape Emulation..." units that would get you something like the F.A.T.S.O. at way less even including an enclosure/power supply unit.

Past all of that bit...

It also seems like I have head more than one person who has put some thought into this particular topic say that they felt like there was more of a difference in things like summing mixers after things had been recorded than preamps while things were being recorded.

That part of the big picture is probably worth taking a minute to consider.