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[quote name='jakesbass' timestamp='1322558034' post='1452432'] I have good ears which makes me happy and sad in equal measure, if there is a pick up in a recorded sound I can hear it, and HATE IT!!! I have a (3 actually) GT67 large diaphragm condenser, into a presonus firewire mic pre/interface into logic... (soon to be pro tools) I'll sort a soundcloud thingy later and give you some examples of my home recordings. I've done a couple of online sessions with it so I guess I'm doing something right. I'd be most interested to hear expert views on my setup and how to maximise it's usability I also have a couple of sm58s and a 57... and a gorgeous Alembic Pre for electric stuff. When I've played upright in studios, I encounter a variety of techniques, at AIR and strongroom the engineer uses a really lovely old Neumann, at Parr st in Liverpool the guy used a Neumann in front, a big ol ribbon mic in the distance and a thing that looked like a tapered pencil pointing at my fingerboard. At the Church in Crouch end it was one of these [url="http://www.korbyaudio.com/products.html"]http://www.korbyaudi...m/products.html[/url], at Angel in Islington a large Neumann condensor, and at Sleeper Studios he used a Neumann m149. I often think about selling my bass to get something louder... then I go into the studio and it just records so well... I've also done sessions in little jingle studios where I've been in a large vocal booth with a U87 and it sounded great despite the size of room restriction. [i]Bilbo, you know what your bass sounds like, and you know how you want it to sound coming back at you from monitors, as a novice engineer I would say experiment with positioning, if you can get someone else to play your bass and get on your hands and knees in front of it and with your ears find the place that it sounds most pleasing to you... mark the spot, and put the mic there, also mark the position of your bass. Keep trying mate.[/i] [/quote] I 100% agree that mic position is at least as important as everything else, a few inches, or a few degrees of rotation can really change the timbre of the sound you pick up. There are a million ways to skin this cat, as Jake points outy every studio he works in has a different plan to do exactly the same thing. Did that weird looking mic look like this Jake? If so its an Earthworks, and really rather spiffy! And Korby stuff makes me go "Ding, dong...."

That would be "Plux The Duck" also refferred to as Plux, or my son

[quote name='charic' timestamp='1322485048' post='1451277'] Tim! [/quote] Exactly!

You describe time alignment rather than phase alignment. Time alignment is bringing the two tracks in time, which means moving one in the tim domain, phase alignment is changing the phase but leaving the timing where it is. The difference is subtle but important. Phase aligning retains the sense of the space in which things are recorded far better. Using a delay to sort out phase is very ver tricky, not many delays work in sub-millisecond time gaps, phsing is down to sub ms levels of detail. You are better off using summed output to get the phase right (and your ears), moving the second source as little as an inch can fix phase. Phase is good when the summed output of two sources is at is maximum, although you need to use your ears to check as well. There are hardware devices for fixing phase at source in much the same way without moving, they are not cheap (and dotn rely on delays). In software the easiest, cheapest solution is a free vst called phasebug.

That needs the Benny Hill music so much Was a brilliant afternoon, thanks to Nik for sorting it out, and everyone who came along with so much great gear for us to all enjoy, I had a superb time as did the "Demo Biatch"! Cheers all!

Alex is a star, he will definitely see you right.

About a million quid if you are insisting on using it for jazz apparently.... Something to do with the crystalline structure of the head or something? Just use a decent lead - Neutrik XLRs, decent cable, properly soldered - and you are golden (maybe £25 for 5m)

Gain structure is vital for dealing with noise. Its not so difficult to get a decent level, but if the preamp that is bringing that level rise is noisy you are f****d. If you have various places where you can add that level (true in some signal chains) my usual starting point is to get the level up as close to the mic as you can, anything later in the chain is only going to bring up the noise of the earlier devices as well. I would include the mic lead here, a crap lead can add all sorts of weird noise, and its not until you swapped everything else out that you try swapping that bloody lead, and then the noise is gone, and the signal is twice the volume.... Nothing wrong with guerrilla recording, its brought many great pieces of music to us all - Joe Meek was probably the original mad scientist of guerrilla recording!

Yeah, do yourself a favour and at least give [url="http://www.reaper.fm/"]Reaper[/url] a try, I've done some seriously complex mixes on it and never had a problem, its rock solid, uses very little CPU given what it can do and includes everything you need in a DAW to record, mix and even master complex full fat tracks. Oh and it runs on Mac and PC (32 & 64 bit)

[quote name='aldude' timestamp='1322221156' post='1448080'] I'd suggest one of the larger cabs. You're thinking about the Compact so you should have that covered. Edit: I'm also struggling to see why some people think 340W into two Barefaced cabs won't be enough! Sounds like it will shake down buildings! Of course the OP could always get more than two cabs [/quote] I didnt say 340w into two BF cabs wouldnt be enough, I said it would be enough just about. Assuming that Hartke actually delivers 340s at *ohm (big assumption IMO).

Of course if your figure out a way to bridge those two amp outputs into an 8Ohm load you would be delivering 340w into a siongle Compact or Midget at 8Ohms and that would go a lot further.... Still not a patch on the LH500 though....

These cabs are using drivers designed to be able to cope with far more power than other drivers before they fart out. They have very large Xmax capability. In order to get as loud as they can you supply more power to the driver than for a 'normal' cab with similar drivers, so the drivers are slightly less sensitive (less loud for the same amount of power) but happily handle a great deal more power than a normal cab. The upshot is a very very loud cab that needs plenty of power to get there, but will absolutely out perform a 'normal' cab. The one cab that is mentioned here that belies that a bit more is the Super Twelve T, that is just staggering, it is more sensitive IME than the Compact or Midget alone, and can cope with massive amounts of clean power. The thing is that amp is going to make life difficult for you running 8Ohm cabs, you would be developing as you say a max of 170w a side into each 8ohm cab, and IME 340w is going to cut it, but only just. I've never really got on with Hartke gear from that era, IMO you would do better to trade it in and get an LH500, because with either a Compact/Midget stack or a SUperTwelveT it will knock down walls.

Being mucked about some more then

[quote name='Highfox' timestamp='1322078193' post='1446327'] (smart ass answer is) Get some flats and you'll never have to worry/bother with all that [/quote] You just have to worry about where your lovely tone went though

I can definitely here a nasty bit of top end buzz that seems to be coming from the bass (only there when you are playing), cant hear a whine on these headphones (they are getting very long in the tooth now though).

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1322212943' post='1447903'] Just googled it. £490. I've had cars that cost less than that!! [/quote] Ah yes but in the world of recording that is next to nothing, forgive Rimskidog, he is coming from a [b][i]seriously [/i][/b]pro studio mentallity, try googling "API 1608" for a taste of why £490 is pants all (and yes, even that is a cheap console by some standards). And the FMR stuff is really really good value for money (believe it or not).

Whats wrong with aux sends? Ah yes this is very much inline processing (what with eq and all that) Are you eqing the 'main' dry vocal part and the effected stuff with this device? Could be handy to use channel eq for dry vocal and the devices eq to manage eqing the wet signal, then you can use a single unit and an aux send (assuming they arent all being used for monitors). Otherwise if you have groups on your desk Monckyman has hit on a perfectly good inline solution for you.

At least as likely to be the analogue part of the ADA device than the actual conversion part of it. Until you are spending pretty serious money.

Subjective stuff sound. Different volume, different speakers/amp (rig vs nearfield ickle monitors), different placement in the room (assuming its not a completely different room) are enough to account for what you are describing. More than enough variation there to completely change the result, objectively and subjectively (different frequency response on the different speakers is easily enough on its own). The DAW has comparably nothing to do with it, the DA/AD converters could have something to do with it (marginal in all likelihood), the preamp in the interface could certainlyadd some colour that favours one instrumetn more than the other. But the main issue is almost certainly the different speakers/amp.

Thats superb, love the bv's and the stops, wnd the bass sound, and the lead vox (someone likes Tom Waits don't they!)

Hooray!

I like to think its best to ask Les for the answer to this question [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4OhIU-PmB8[/media] Although its hard to know for sure whether its Les or Tim who is actually leading the groove on this one IMO....

Killing room reflections is one thing, but you will struggle to do so evenly wrt frequency response. The easy ones to kill are the highest, the lower the frequency the better its ability to pentrate 'stuff'. Thus you hear bass from outside a club, and when putting absorption materials into a live room you tend to kill the top end making the room progressively darker sounding without solving reflection issues lower down the frequency spectrum. With a room that sizer there is no trivial way of dealing with low frequency room modes and reflected energy. It requires tuned dampening like a membrane absorber or hermholtz resonator, which is definitely entering the non trivial area of acoustics. Another technique used in live rooms and control rooms that allows the top end energy to be more successfully retained in the room but scatter it more effectively is to use diffusers. Again the room is on the small side for this. I think (though I cant prove a thing from here) that the early reflections in the room are probably loud and very direct. This mic is cardioid and that means it picks up reasoanbly large amounts of info from the sides, looking at the response/frequency curve its particularly good up around 4KHz all the way around to 270 degrees off axis - which doesn tmake it ideal if you dont want to capture room noise. In order to lessen this you can surround the mic's sides and back with some for of make do gobo - heavy suspended material like very heavy carpet over the top of heavy cushions can be a start. You will need to experiment a lot but you can get this tighter to the mic and therefore need less material to achieve a result. Gobos are bloody heavy as a rule, and are acoustically absorbant across a broad frequency range.