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  #16  
Old 05-13-2019, 05:54 AM
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Bob Womack Bob Womack is offline
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Originally Posted by Mbroady View Post
Some classic looking Tape machines you had/have. Do you think we are know able to simulate the warmth or analog recording.
I think so. It is even possible to do it without plug-ins, if you know what it involved. It was a combination of third-harmonic distortion, compression, noise, and high-end loss rounding off the high-end transients.


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  #17  
Old 05-13-2019, 06:14 AM
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Originally Posted by TBman View Post
If I have to use a plug-in with more than 3 knobs I get nervous.....
There were over 5000 knobs and indicators on that SSL 4048. I got booked to a boring session once and counted them. Of course, each channel had 100 and the first forty channels were identical. The last eight were identical to each other as well. The rest of the knobs and indicators were made up by the center section. Then there were the computer and the automation...

SSL was the greatest company when it came to documentation. Their manuals were loaded with jokes featuring British humor. The earlier editions of the computer software featured an "Insult Mode" you could optionally turn on. If you made a mistake it issued an insult, such as, "Make up your so-called mind, Bob." Yes, it addressed you by name. And the insults could get quite, ahem, "spicy." It was just the thing to keep you awake through third shift sessions.

We tried out this machine at the 1983 Audio Engineering Society conference at the Hilton Convention Center in Manhattan. SSL took over a large demonstration room and set it up as a control room. In a real coupe, they got Dave Grusin to send over a multi-track copy of his yet-unreleased album, Night Lines, and we were able to spend time mixing the cuts from the album. Two of the cuts featured vocals by Phoebe Snow. When the CD came out I bought a copy, even though I didn't own a CD player yet.

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  #18  
Old 05-13-2019, 07:15 AM
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Originally Posted by TBman View Post
If I have to use a plug-in with more than 3 knobs I get nervous.....
Arguably it takes a while and VI synths still are bit mind boggling for me.
But after a while at least for the more basic and often used plugins (eq, comps, reverbs, delays, etc) the basic overall concepts and features will start gel and to make sence, and become less intimidating.
Same is true with hardware, in the first 4 or 5 years or so I was recording the hardware below would have appeared like hieroglyphics, now it seems fairly simple and straightforward.



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Last edited by KevWind; 05-13-2019 at 07:23 AM.
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  #19  
Old 05-13-2019, 08:34 AM
MikeBmusic MikeBmusic is offline
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1) Boom box with built-in stereo mics. Of course the plastic casing picked up all sorts of noise, too.
2) Record first 'track' on boom box, then put the cassette into a home stereo system cassette deck, play first track back over the speakers, use boom box to 'overdub' more tracks - internal mics picking up first track over the speakers plus new 'live' parts.
This would result in pretty noisy bad-sounding tracks by the third 'overdub'. The worst part was that the tape speeds didn't match between the boombox and stereo deck, so I would have to retune each time. Overall, the recordings were useful in demoing songs for my band at the time (early 80s).

3) Cakewalk - a friend gave me a set of floppy discs with this program on it. Never could figure out much, and with no interface, just plugging into the computer's (WIN 97?) mic input, the latency was so bad that I gave up after just a few tries.

4) Boss BR600 stand-alone digital recorder. Just 8 tracks (2 of them actual stereo tracks, so really 6), but 8 'virtual' tracks for each one, so recording/bouncing was possible, and the built-in Boss drum machine didn't need to be bounced in until the final mixdown.

5) Reaper DAW, first with a Mackie ProFX12USB as interface, then with a Tascam US800 - still what I use!
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  #20  
Old 06-07-2019, 02:02 PM
drumstrummer drumstrummer is offline
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My evolution is unusual. I started recording in the 90s when I discovered looping. So my rigs were mostly about capturing live sound-on-sound looping. I tried but never got into DAWs, so with standalone equipment progressed slowly until recently, and have now regressed significantly. When you get tired of reading, skip to the end.
1. Piezo p/u into original Boomerang phrase sampler, into RCA plug adapter, into Pioneer component system's tape deck.
2. Shure 545 (basically a hi-z version of the 57) into Boomerang, to 4-track Tascam Portastudio, overdub as desired, EQ thru Pioneer stereo component, and mixdown to standalone Sony CD recorder.
3. Piezo p/u and Shure 545 into Boss line mixer, to Boss RC-2 loopstation, to cheap digital recorder. Load file to computer and master in CoolEdit. Burn CD.
4. Piezo and 545 into EHX 2880 multitrack looper, into Tascam Portastudio (digital), edit and master in Audacity. Burn to CD.
5. Blue large diaphram condenser and Behringer small diaphram condenser into Behringer mixer, to EHX 2880 looper, to Portastudio, finish in Audacity. Burn to CD.
6. Oktava MK-012 and K&K/RedEye preamp into Soundcraft mixer, EHX 2880 looper and Lexicon reverb in effects loop, record to Portastudio and finish Audacity. Load files to Bandcamp.
7. Guitar straight into looper, to acoustic amp. Record a video on iPhone and post to Facebook.
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  #21  
Old 06-07-2019, 03:15 PM
rockabilly69 rockabilly69 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KevWind View Post
Arguably it takes a while and VI synths still are bit mind boggling for me.
But after a while at least for the more basic and often used plugins (eq, comps, reverbs, delays, etc) the basic overall concepts and features will start gel and to make sence, and become less intimidating.
Same is true with hardware, in the first 4 or 5 years or so I was recording the hardware below would have appeared like hieroglyphics, now it seems fairly simple and straightforward.



Kev your equipment setup here looks very clean, and you have some great equipment in your setup, but for the life of me, I can figure out how that room could sound good with the open framing and the shape of the room. Did you record anything here other than guitars and vocals (other than soft synths). Or did you do a little tuning of the room I can't see, and did the batting/insulation between the room framing, along with what appears to be thick pile rug deaden the room? I ask this because I've thought about converting an unused attic to a recording space, although mine would need some serious re-engineering to make work.
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  #22  
Old 06-07-2019, 06:24 PM
Trevor B. Trevor B. is offline
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1980 to mid 1990s, a Shure sm57 to



Mid 1990s to 2004, a pair of AKG C451EBs. to


with outboard Alesis microverb 3.


2016 to present, matched pair Gefell M300s, pair of Sennheiser MKH 800 P48s, and a Miktek CV4 to:


to:



to MacBook Pro mid-2015 to Logic Pro X 10.4.4. and a bunch of 3rd party plugins to go with the stock fare!
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  #23  
Old 06-09-2019, 08:07 AM
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Originally Posted by rockabilly69 View Post
Kev your equipment setup here looks very clean, and you have some great equipment in your setup, but for the life of me, I can figure out how that room could sound good with the open framing and the shape of the room. Did you record anything here other than guitars and vocals (other than soft synths). Or did you do a little tuning of the room I can't see, and did the batting/insulation between the room framing, along with what appears to be thick pile rug deaden the room? I ask this because I've thought about converting an unused attic to a recording space, although mine would need some serious re-engineering to make work.
As counterintuitive as it might seem at first glance and thought , that room was pretty good sound wize for recording . But in answer to your questions no I only recorded guitars and vocals live in the room and midi VI's . I did have some GIK Bass traps in the corners at the back wall behind the speakers (Two on each side , 2 ft. by 4 ft. by 4 inches thick each) and one on each side wall , at what would be the first reflection points on either side of the speakers in a normal room (see, photo below ) and all in all yes it was actually a fairly dead room.

So the sketch-up mockup below, is what I sent the owner of Amphion when discussing which model monitor to purchase. The room itself is 21' 6" wide (at the floor) and 53' long

But consider first acoustic the criteria for a great control or live room or let's start with the opposite the worst, is a highly reflective perfectly square room, with parallel perpendicular walls, floor and ceiling.

So right off the bat, the vaulted aspect of the rafters(effectively the sidewalls in this configuration) eliminates a lot of the kind of direct straight line reflections that plum parallel sidewalls and flat ceiling present in most normal spaces.

And the open framing (no sheetrock) is actually somewhat simply a continuous angled diffuser of sorts, with the 12 in fiberglass batting between the rafters offering a bit of dampening on that diffusion. (granted not as good as alternating depth diffusers but still better than having sheetrock me thinks.



Here you can see the bass traps better

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Last edited by KevWind; 06-09-2019 at 11:36 AM.
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  #24  
Old 06-09-2019, 10:41 AM
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My modest recordings were first down with a direct line in Line-6 contraption, then I got a Tascam US-122 which enabled me to record with two mics. For a short while I had a Zoom H2 which I fried, then I went back to the Tascam. Last year I picked up a Zoom H5 and a couple of AT2035. My DAWs went from Mixcraft to Audacity and Audition 1.5 to just recently the now current Audition. I have some neat tools, namely Rx7 Elements and Ozone 8 which are fun to tinker with as well as some Wave reverb files.

I have fun recording, I try to get the best recording possible, then clean it up if necessary and then play with all my toys to get it to sound better. Sometimes I get it better, other times I'm better off just practicing my guitar,
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  #25  
Old 06-09-2019, 11:24 AM
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Sometime in the mid 70s, I built a plywood box that was around 18 inches long. I built it "onto" two speakers so they made up the ends of the box. I drilled a hole in the top at the middle through which I stuffed a mic. No idea what brand of mic but it was probably one that would plug into my cassette recorder.

I played an LP, hit record on my cassette and after "recording" the first song, I stopped the LP and listened to my recording. I'm pretty sure this is what someone hears when they stuff their ears with cotton and then put on ear muffs and turn on the bass to 11. Yeah, not so good.

I think I burned the box the next day...

Until about a year and a half ago that was my only attempt. Now I have a Focusrite 2i2 connected to my MacBook Air and with Garageband have made a couple passes at an instrumental song I'm writing.

I truly do not know what I'm doing but it's so much better than my plywood box that I kind of feel like I'm doing something that might sound ok.

Sometime in the next 3 decades I'll finish the song and move on to the second track.

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  #26  
Old 06-11-2019, 01:37 PM
Gordon Currie Gordon Currie is offline
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1971: Got my first portable cassette recorder with built-in microphone. First in a long series of cassette recorders of increasing quality.

1977: After a handful of student recording projects, I was entranced by overdubbing, and purchased a Teac 3340.

1988: I joined a music software company (Midisoft) and began playing with MIDI. It was difficult and expensive then to sync analog recording with MIDI, so I kept these two approaches separate.

1990: Purchased a Tascam 8 track cassette (used standard Philips cassette cartridges at double speed) that could sync to my MIDI interface. The sound quality was significantly better (due to dbx noise reduction) than my open reel 3340!

1994: At this point many MIDI sequencers were adding digital audio capabilities, and the DAW concept was taking hold. I was working at Microsoft and part of my job was to evaluate all audio hardware and software developments throughout the industry. I went 100% in the box at this point.

2013: ITB recording (particularly on Windows) presents the issue of OS and driver updates, which can truly mess with your system if you don't stay on top of things. I finally forked over the money to purchase a first class audio interface (RME Fireface) and I have been pop, click and issue free ever since (RME has possibly the finest drivers ever created for an audio product).
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  #27  
Old 07-02-2019, 02:14 PM
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Mid-60's



Mid-70s



Early 80s



Late 80s



Early 90s-2018



2019- Garageband DAW



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  #28  
Old 07-02-2019, 02:57 PM
reeve21 reeve21 is offline
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Started recording myself with an iPhone a few years ago. Bought a cheap Tascam mic for it which was an improvement.

Then I picked up a cheap zoom recorder, and transferred the files to audacity for processing.

Recently I acquired my first iPad, and I find it very simple to plug the zoom into it (with a camera cable) and use its mics. I record to music memos which is dirt simple, it will even start recording automatically when you start playing. Then I send it off to garage band, where I can upload it or send on to friends and family.

Nothing wrong with audacity, but this is simpler--my desktop is old, buggy and noisy. I don't do much processing, and there are no moving parts on the iPad.
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  #29  
Old 07-02-2019, 04:42 PM
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Bob Womack Bob Womack is offline
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Originally Posted by catdaddy View Post
Mid-60's
Oh, yeah. I remember those Wollensaks from public school. There was a metal trigger behind the keys on the right-hand side (right behind the "Stereo badge" you had to squeeze before hitting "play" to put it in record.


Bob
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Last edited by Bob Womack; 07-03-2019 at 05:03 AM. Reason: speeeloing
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  #30  
Old 07-02-2019, 09:13 PM
FrankHudson FrankHudson is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Womack View Post
Oh, yeah. I remember those Wollensaks from public school. There was a metal trigger behind the keys on the right-hand side (right behind the "Stereo bade" you had to squeeze before hitting "play" to put it in record.


Bob
I remember them being used by kids in the early 60s at my school to make "flying saucer" records (well, tapes, but...) where you talk about fellow students and school staff and then drop in cuts from 45 rpm records. Also the recording instrument on which I first heard "my voice" which was not a happy experience. Funny, years of recording now, and I still blanche at my voice.
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