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[quote name='Beedster' post='1341081' date='Aug 15 2011, 08:04 PM']Alternatively, are there any online sources where you can buy better quality music files than iTunes? Chris[/quote] Chris, get over to hdtracks.com check out their catalogue, and listen to snippets in all sorts of lossless formats and quality levels, it will really help you decide if its worth your while taking this path - IMO hihg quality FLAC (anything from 88.2 upwards @ 24bit) is a big step up from CD...

If you want to record on a bottom of the range laptop you can. It will do it. And no worse than it was before. If you want to be able to record 16+ tracks you may struggle, for one thing the harddrives in bottom of the range laptops are slow, for another they dont have that much more spare resource after the OS has eaten what it needs, than the old laptop did. Thats how it has always been (esp on MS OS) If you step up to a pretty heavy duty modern laptop you will blow away any performance from any laptop even 5 years old. [i]As long as you run up to date software on it[/i]. Why? Because modern CPUs make much of multithreaded architectures, many cores hyperthreaded. And old software doesnt work like that at all, so it cannot take advantage of most of the power of the modern CPU. Put this in some context, my old lappie had a 1.7GHz Turion 64bit processor in it, my new lappie has a 1.7 GHz i7 CPU in it. Which means it has 4 hyperthreaded cores running at 1.7GHz, or 8 times the compute power of the old lappie, but if the software cannot run efficiently making use of those threads then it doesnt get to use the power.... Because it is a 64 bit modern machine I can use huge amounts of RAM too (8 GB in fact) whereas your old lappie cant get over a couple of GB (32bit architecture).

[quote name='Linus27' post='1342919' date='Aug 17 2011, 11:25 AM']Yes we must. I will take a slower car this time so you can keep up. Maybe a 1.2 Fiesta or Polo [/quote] Ouch!

Reaper has an open ended try before you buy license (and only costs ~ £25 for non-commercial use) Its superb....

[quote name='Linus27' post='1342896' date='Aug 17 2011, 11:11 AM']No worries, I think its been a great discussion and not only has it helped me, hopefully it will help others when searching. For me, learning about how the 2EQ preamp works was really helpful. As was how the low mids and VPF filters change the dynamics. All good. I can now get back to doing what I do best, going fast in Gran Turismo 5 [/quote] Need to find an evening for another race mate, this time I'll remember to put some soft tyres on my car (excuses excuses!)

Nice!

[quote name='endorka' post='1342856' date='Aug 17 2011, 10:45 AM']I like the FLAC format, but my Windows Media Player doesn't pick it up for indexing its library, which is annoying. Not sure if ITunes does, but I'm not too keen on that software. Any other decent media players with library functionality that will pick up FLAC files? Jennifer[/quote] Foobar2000 free, extremely poerful and built from the ground up with audio quality being the driving concern.

Oh and another point, the commonest listening environment these days is, at least from the perspective of the industry, the car. And in the car you have about 12dB of headroom above the noise. So if your track drops below that it cant be heard. So you have to compress the nuts off of it to make it work in that environment. If everyone would just go back to experiencing music at home then we could start mixing with that as the most important environment a bit more..... I have a lot of hope for the ear bud, it has a vastly higher signal to background noise ratio than a car, and better frequency response than anything before it in terms of lightweight headgear, and should mean we can start to mix for a better environment than the automobile more often.

As for the difference in sound between the 70's 80's and now, a huge amount of the issue is the way things are mixed and mastered now. Everything is a competition for loudness and punch, even in folk music! Its a breath of fresh air (sorry, no, its less common than rocking horse poo) when you get an artist whoi wants a mix that is all about the song and emotional content and not just being as loud as the next CD. Blame the marketing hype, the artist, the mix engineer, the mastering engineer, radio station, but ultimately blame the stupid consumer for buying stuff more when its louder. Oh hold on, its just a fact, the human ear perceives louder as better in the short term every time. Thats a sorry but completely true fact about psychoacoustics for you. And that is ultimately what drove the horrendous loudness wars that we are still coping with now. It is a damn shame though!

FLAC is excellent If you want to hear how good digital can sound then download a few albums in very high quality FLAC from [url="https://www.hdtracks.com/"]hdtracks[/url] I can notice the difference from cd quality on a pair of medium quality cans Going fully over to a media server is a perfectly good solution, and backing up large amounts of data to a seperate physical location/disk is possible (its a PIA but at least you can do it, and really quiet easily) - how many of your CDs are backed up?

[quote name='JTUK' post='1342719' date='Aug 17 2011, 08:49 AM']The thing is that with MM that is an awful lot of bass being put out. I no longer own a MM, but I had this the other week when a friend of mine was having problems with his Sterling and SVT3. He had the mids boosted and couldn't hear himself very well. This sounds odd on paper but you would have to know the amp and have heard his sound at the time, and also [b] I don't think Ampeg ever get this EQ part right as they use a 5 point dial AND a short banded graphic. It really DOESN't work well, IMO[/b][/quote] Totally agree with you there JTUK! I have played through several of those Ampegs and the eq on them is terrible IMO very unintuitive, and there seems to be little synergy between the various eq stages. I think the most important thing to do for your sound is eq with your ears not your eyes, and to listen to how the bass sits in the mix as a whole. If the result is a tone with no apparent mids according to the eq but it sits right, then you are good to go, the battle is against the common perception that because certain mid areas sound awful solo you should cut the hell out of them in a mix. Sometimes that may work, but it is very venue and band/genre/player/MIX specific and frankly unusual. Its always worth incvestigating less mid cut in the presence of the band, as often as not it will surprise the hell out of you. I'd like to thank Linus for trying all of these ideas and coming back to us with his findings. For him it turns out more mids than he thought were right for the mix, in that space, on that day, playing those songs. He now has a ballpark from which to tweak at different venues. It doesnt really matter whether you have huge PA support or are relying on your backline to provide the sound out front, the goal is the same, to be able to clearly hear your bass sound how you need to without treading on the rest of the band's toes. This is every bit as important with a huge PA, bass travels further (more energy) than anything else, and it spills to any other mics on stage more than anything else, the more focussed your sound the less volume you need on stage to hear yourself in the mix, the less spill, the easier the job is for the sound guys, the better than can make you sound. Simples....

[quote name='JTUK' post='1342258' date='Aug 16 2011, 06:47 PM']I am listening to the bass because I have to play it. It doesn't matter if I only have so many bars where it is pretty much a bass as this will define the tone in peoples mind. Burying it in a mix is one thing... to have it so out of shape is the way to get yourself not rebooked. You might not approach this that way if you don't do playing gigs and only mix them but to foster a bass sound because it is easy for you at the detriment of the bass is ridiculous and will not get you any favours from the band. I honestly have to say I doubt if I need any lessons from you, thanks.[/quote] ROFL, fine, okeedokee, have it your way squire, no problem, silly old me, no idea about live gigs, only ever mix, thats me. Right ho! The point I am trying to explain is that what you are doing is burying bass in the mix, or having to have it way louder than it should be in order to hear it, to the detriment of the mix burying other instrumetns in its place. Which is a great way not to get rebooked! Presenting a well strutured whole with everything audible is the goal, not getting a fantastic solo bass sound at the detriment of the band. You would do well to read up a bit on mixing in general though, particularly frequency mixing, I think it would help you and your band to sound better as a unit. Dont feel you have to, after all you clearly know what you like, go for it knock yourself out....

[quote name='JTUK' post='1341991' date='Aug 16 2011, 03:12 PM']Well, I certainly give a rats arse what it sounds like solo...so wouldn't advise anyone to have a sound they dislike. If you dislike the sound, you probably can't play with it well either... and that affects everything else. A very nasually sound can be a pig to play with and control.. and how are you going to know if that travels well? Set the bass up for a sound you play, not having drums doesn't help much as you could align your sound with the kick. If you want it to sit..mimic the kick sound...ish...it you want it to be more than that... add something that will seperate and differeniate. I stay away from getting a honking sound..and if I want that type of thing, I'll let the bridge pickup do it. That is not so easy on a MM.... A MM will sound good..if you add no more than a touch of bass, and a bit more treble. Go nowhere near half way on the dial for either...IMO. The Bass sounds there or there abouts now... now go to the amp. Start with the filters and I doubt you'll need to do much more with any onther controls.. Bass players think that mids are the be-all and end-all... but they are hardest to control and easy to make sound crap. Most people shouldn't be let near them..amps makers know this..which is why they use these timbre controls now...!! Mids come into things when you core sound is good..and you want to add a bit of cut... You do this rather than use volume..but you should be very sparing with it, IMO.[/quote] How much of your gig is solo bass? With all due respect, if you answer 'not much' then the sound of the bass solo doesnt matter, its not what you will hear playing, its not what the audience will hear, and its one of the single most common mistakes made by bassists and mix engineers when they are learning the craft of mixing. What matters is the interaction of the whole, all the instruments and how they meet, mingle and sit together. You can get the worlds most amazing bass tone, and in the mix it will completely disappear, because what you like about it solo is running headlong into other instruments that produce those same frequencies but louder. Either that or you will mask those intruments making a bass heavy mix that is unclear for punters. How many gigs have you been to and thought "I cant make out the bass, but the kick drum is SLAMMING" ?? I did not say mids are easy to control (I said the opposite), and too much is nasal, you're right. But, if you use something like a VPF (which has 16dB of cut ffs) you are going to wreck any chance you have of creating an audible consistent mix. Not the bass. The mix. The audience are listening to the mix, you are listening to the bass. If you cut all the mids you will not hear the bass as easily, if you dont cut enough (for you) you wont like the tone. The point is if you set the bass up at gigging volumes how I suggested and really use your ears and not your eyes you will almost certainly find that you are heard more clearly, fight less of the rest of the instruments, dont like the solo sound as much, and have more mids. Here endeth the lesson

[quote name='nottswarwick' post='1341925' date='Aug 16 2011, 02:12 PM']Hahahah ace bring it on[/quote] Gotta say it how I hear it

Email him, Mark is a top fella, and loves a chat!

[quote name='Prime_BASS' post='1341644' date='Aug 16 2011, 11:07 AM']The S12T isn't a largly different to a compact. It does go a smidge lower, and considerably louder! An obviously the tweeter opens up a whole lot of treble compared to the Compact. Its hard to describe te exact differences without being subjective, however you could say that the Super12 has a "tighter" more "punchy" mid range, not that the compacts mids arnt nice an articulate, it's hard to put my finger on but if you've been witness to the amazing Midget it's easyier to understand.[/quote] I disagree, to my ear it S12T is significantly different from a Compact, it punches way harder, and gets way louder, it has significantly more zing (tweeter innit) and sounds like a far more complete package, to me. It will take plenty of eq perfectly happily and produce immense low end, in that regard it is similar to the Compact. But its the punch that it pushes out that is the real ace up its sleeve.

[quote name='Linus27' post='1341892' date='Aug 16 2011, 01:52 PM']I will try all this tonight. My only concern is that with everything flat, it sounds hideous. Dull, flat, boxy and nasaly and in a really horrible way. The first thing I do to improve this is turn the low mid down to about 10 - 11 o'clock. This removes the nasal tone that I really can't stand. [b]I then find adding a little VPF adds some punch and clarity[/b]. Maybe I will try it at around 9 o'clock and then use the treble on the Ray to add the sparkle.[/quote] No it doesnt, it removes mid at 380Hz. It is a mid-scoop filter. Period. Thats a VERY different thing indeed from adding punch, especially in the mix! You need low mid in the mix its 2nd and 3rd harmonics of your main low bass notes, the human ear picks up on these far easier than it does deep bass (ie fundamentals). I dont give a rats backside how awful it may sound on its own, and neither should you, it only matters what it sounds like at gig volumes in a mix. Have a go at a reahearsal at proper volume, your perception of bass is radically different at those volumes than at bedroom volumes. The right way to do thios is to set your sound up as you like it and record it (oom H2 or similar) at a rehearsal, then dial out the VPF completely and try again. Then set it to a compromise 'sensible setting' (ie not more than 9 O'clock) if you have to have it. The dialled out version will sit in the mix with more presence and require less bass boost to be 'heard'. Put simply, to your audience it means they hear more bass the more mids you can live with.

That really is the best looking tube front end 'lightweight' amp I've seen. 750w is going to knock down walls.... Nice one!!!

The volume control is just that. There is no input gain which is supposed to be a good thing, but I know of at least one case of a player with an active bass who plays so gently that they need to plug into the passive input to give the head enough level to get a decent output from it. If it seems very quiet it may be that your bass output is pretty low. It also sings at 4 Ohms, and is less impressive at 8 Ohms (but only marginally IMO).

VPF at 2 O'clock!!! Holy cow thats insane!

[quote name='Linus27' post='1341031' date='Aug 15 2011, 07:23 PM']So, I plugged the Stingray into the MB combo and turned the bass and treble dials to off or flat. I then set all the EQ on the MB combo to flat and I must say, it sounded horrible. Dull, muddy, flt, lifeless and really middy or nasaly as I call it The first thing I did was dial the Mid Low down to about 10 O Clock and this really helped but it still sounded dull and flat. So I dialed about 1/5 of treble on the Stingray dial and it added a bit of sparkle. I continued to try different settings on the combo and I finally settled with the following, MB Combo Bass: 12 o' Clock (FLAT) Mid Low: 10 o' Clock Mid High: 12 o' Clock (FLAT) Treble: 12 o' Clock (FLAT) VLE Filter: OFF VPF Filter: 2 o' Clock Stingray Volume: Full Treble: 1/5th on Bass: Off (FLAT) This gave me a smooth warm sound with a bit of sparkle. Its still not perfect and lacks a bit of character and energy but its a start I guess. What I did notice is that when I plugged my Jazz in with these settings but turned the VPF Filter down to around 11 o'Clock then it sounded totally amazing. Lots of punch and growl. Very annoying as I am trying to force myself to use the Stingray rather than the Jazz but with the Jazz sounding this good, its making it very hard to play the Stingray [/quote] Was this in a mix at war volume, or just at home in tthe practice room at sane levels? All that annoying honk will translate to presence in a mix you see. Or rather a lot of it will! Stingrays can be tricky, I've always found a decent jazz with new strings a doddle to get to sound nice. You can do worse than listen to some Bernard and hear how he got Stingrays to be fat and punchy as hell, thats where they really sound the beans for me. Still cant play one though - too heavy and the pickup is the wrong place after all the years spent playing basses with a jazz pup config. Keep fiddling about, a little upper mid may be just the ticket in a mix to get some of that clarity back, careful though!

[quote name='Killerfridge' post='1336366' date='Aug 11 2011, 01:13 PM']B (guitarist mix) does sound horrible, and to make it worse, either our guitarist or vocalist has just uploaded it to our Facebook site yesterday along with a message stating that it was finished . I have since deleted both message and recording. I have a feeling I may have to take them off the admin list for the page We picked the studio purely from convenience, as well as price. No, we hadn't heard anything by him, although some big(ish) names had used him before. It was also a bit of an experiment to see whether a 'professionally' recorded and mixed track would sound significantly better than the stuff we recorded on our own. We were there for the mixing, but due to time constraints (we had to go before we'd finished a couple of the tracks) we didn't have time to hear the mastered tracks, nor retrieve the original recordings - we will be picking the originals up at a later date. The track that was mixed entirely by the engineer sounds atrocious; I may have to upload that for you to all hear! During the mixing I pointed out that cymbals sounded strange, but neither he or the guitarist could hear it - I asked him to take [b]the gating off the overheads[/b], but they both said it sounded fine, so I got overruled. I think this was down to the engineer being deaf, and the guitarist assuming that he knew what he was doing. I also wasn't too keen on the vocals sounding like they had been recorded underwater, but I assumed that was to do with the studio setup, and not the actual track, because when I asked to dial it back a bit, the reverb was taken down by one notch. And also, yes, studio engineer who thinks he's a producer, rather than an actual producer. Thankfully I have access to some willing producers who will have a crack at the original recordings in September . Also, what sort of EQ-ing might you recommend for C (home recording), as it is currently the only one I can play with? Cheers guys, you've all been a great help [/quote] Why the hell were they gating the overheads though??? That is just daft.....

Nice one! You guys are going to have to think about some kind of air con in summer though aren't you?

The SuperTwelve T is going to blow you away. Way better than a Compact IMO, one of the best cabs I've ever heard.

[quote name='Musicman20' post='1340444' date='Aug 15 2011, 11:07 AM']With the amp, the only problem with the LM2/3 is the low mid is set above the boomy area, but I think leaving the amp flat apart from a smidge of bass off is your best bet.[/quote] This is why I went for an sa450, sweepable mids are vital for me to be able to get the eq right, and I dont care if the amp was twice the size again (though not the weight!) I'd still go for it over the LMII/III as a result. From the MB site though:- EQUALIZATION LOW center frequency: 40 Hz; level: ±16 dB LOW MID center frequency: 360 Hz, level: ±16 dB HIGH MID center frequency: 800 Hz, level: ±16 dB HIGH center frequency: 10 kHz, level: ±16 dB VPF (Variable Pre-shape Filter) center frequency 380 Hz (cut) VLE (Vintage Loudspeaker Emulator) frequency range 250 Hz-20 kHz (cut) Now 360Hz may seem awfully high for boom, but it is mud city central, and if you cut the mud you can live with more bass (acoustics permitting)....