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Absolutely. DAT was shockingly bad back in the 90's for erroring even when brand new, it suffered from a painfully over complex transport based upon a minitiarised VHS system. Which was crap. All tape deteriorates significantly though, not just DAT, some old analogue tapes are literally baked in an oven before being played to try and get them to work a bit better. My advice, get everything you treasure put on to a good digital copy as a data file and make several backups. if its analogue then make a very high resolution digital copy at that (96LKHz 24bit at least).

I should add that in the above 57/DI test you would want to put the 80Hz cut on the 57, and also slope the eq off above about 4KHz gently The DI can be cut fairly hard in the 200Hz to 1KHz area if you have a desk with a wide Q. Blend the two sources to taste - clearly the above is a rough guide.... Whatever you do the D112 is going to not have the mid information to compete with guitars in a mix IME. And it always loses to the kick in FOH.

[quote name='Monckyman' post='1288792' date='Jul 1 2011, 11:11 AM']I must remember to tell all the Soundguys in Europe not to use a Kick drum mic on a bass, because they all do... Every last one of them. From scuzzy clubs in Dresden to massive Festivals like Glastonbury. And so do I. At least for the past 20 years. But now I know better hey? I[/quote] Just because you see it a lot doesn't make it the best solution by a long way. How many gigs have you been to where you've thought, hmmmm the bass is an indistinct fuzzy noise, and the kick is totally detstroying my chest cavity? If you had to have rules for mixing (which you dont, they are guidelines) then rule one is dont fight for the same frequqncies with multiple sources, something always loses out. If you mic the kick and the bass amp with the same mics, with the same built in eq you are on the way to doing that. It does NOT help. Try it sometime, I dare you, get a 57 and a DI vs a D112 (horrendously over eq'ed mic that it is) and a DI, alongside the kick drum with the ubiquitous D112 in it. The 57/DI rig will win out in the final mix, everytime. The D112 can take immense SPLs, is built like a truck and will take touring opunishment. It is targetted at kick drums and eq'ed for a perceived type of kick drum sound. None of which makes it the best mic for bass. In fact it doesnt make it the best mic for a kick drum either. Current favourite in the studio is a Heil PR40, precisely because it has a wider and far flatter frequency response than a D112, which means you get the sound of the kick drum, not the sound of the kick drum as filtered by a specific mic. Yes you have to eq it more, but you get a result far more representative of the actual drum in the room in our experience. Again I point out that the sm57 is there for the mid growl information, which is precisely where the D112 loses out. Dont believe me? Download [url="http://www.akg.com/mediendatenbank2/psfile/datei/38/D1124055c25c068d6.pdf"]the D112 datasheet[/url] [b]it shows it to be scooped by 20dB at 500 Hz[/b] That is shocking for a bassist! Compare that with the [url="http://www.heilsound.com/pro/products/pr40/productsheet.pdf"]PR-40 datasheet[/url] Its virtually flat in the mids with a presence boost between 2KHz and 10KHz. For completion here is the [url="http://www.shure.com/idc/groups/public/documents/webcontent/us_pro_sm57_specsheet.pdf"]SM57 dataheet[/url]. Note again how flat it is in the mids, with a presence boost. I guarantee you the Heil is a better mic for bass live, in the studio, anywhere you like.

The youngest is 7, his favourite song is I am the Slime by Zappa, the eldest is 17, at his 9th birthday party his friends got to liste to Stockhausen's helicopter quartet while they scoffed their food My work is nearly done I think

Dont whatever you do use a kick drum mic on a bass cab. They are heavily scooped with large presence peaks, because that sounds good for a kick drum. It happens to sound completely rubbish for bass, and is effectively putting a smiley face eq on your sound before it gets to the desk. Remember, whatever you take away cant be added back again. So what mic should you use? In the ideal world you would get either a Heil PR40 or an RE20. The Heil is particularly superb, goes deeper and higher than the RE20, and sounds incredible. But these are expensive mis (worth every penny mind you, they are both incredible vocal mics too). What to do then? Well if you are trying to get the mid-grindy goodness of your amp, or the sound of your effects I would suggest a DI off the bass (clean) for the low end, and a decent mic for the mids, even an sm57 is perfectly capable of doing this fine, it can take the SPL without a problem, and will certainly handle the mids. A step up would be a Heil PR30, or even PR20. The trick is in the blend through the PA, and you have no say in that at all. If you dont use amp grind, or loads of grindy fx then the mic is superflous, if you only use fx other than overdrives then DI after your fx, but let the soundguy know so that he can gain stage your signal on the desk with the hottest signal from your fx possible.

Mixed on [url="http://www.reaper.fm/"]Reaper[/url]:- [url="http://soundcloud.com/kit-richardson/you-always-did-from"]You Always Did - Kit Richardson[/url] [url="http://soundcloud.com/kit-richardson/you-look-so-good-tonight-from"]You Look So Good Tonight - Kit Richardson[/url] [url="http://soundcloud.com/lines-horizontal/the-individuils"]The Individuils - Lines Horizontal[/url] [url="http://soundcloud.com/lines-horizontal/your-mouths-are-killing-you"]Your Mouths Are Killing You - Lines Horizontal[/url] Using nothing but free vsts and the effects packaged with [url="http://www.reaper.fm/"]Reaper[/url]

Hmmmm, try this. Set up your amp as normal at stage levels. Switch the amp eq in and out. Does the hiss disappear, or is it just less obvious. You see it could be the eq circuit, it could be hiss from earlier in the signal chain and the eq is just making it louder. It could be the preamp gain stage, have you ever recorded your bass DI'ed directly and if so did you get a lot of hiss. If its the eq you could use an external cleaner eq and not use the amp eq I would suggest in any case you compress before the eq. The eq'ed signal will drive the compressor very differently from the un-eq'ed signal, not necessarily worse, but IME a lot of mid suckage on an eq before a compressor tends to makes the compressor react less well.

Clapping and Counting the 'right' way. So for 16th notes (semi quavers) count:- 1-e-an-a 2-e-an-a 3-e-an-a 4-e-an-a | 1-e-an-a 2-e-an-a 3-e-an-a 4-e-an-a | Really really slowly (metronome on about 40bpm). Now clap the 1(2,3,4) and the an, whilst counting. Now try just the an Now the 1(2,3,4) and the a Now just the a Now the 1(2,3,4) and the e Now just the e Now the e and the an Now the an and a Now clap the e and the a (that is the killer-diller right there) OK, do each of these for a couple of minutes, you do not want your bass in your hands for this at all, you need to be trying to get the sound of the qroove (such as it is) into your head. Now try joining two of the subdivisions together, so 1-e you would clap once for. It can help to vocalise these rather than clap them because you are starting to give the notes a duration, rather than just subdividing the beat. So 1-e becomes 'da-ah' as you join them together, whilst the an-a is 'diddy' That gives you:- da-ah diddy, say it intime to the beat, and clap on the d's A bar is:- da-ah diddy, da-ah diddy, da-ah diddy, da-ah diddy | Swap them around:- diddy da-ah, diddy da-ah, diddy da-ah, diddy da-ah | Now join the middle to semiquavers together:- da diddy da, da diddy da, da diddy da, da diddy da | Right out the above rhythms in standard notation (it is not difficult!), this will really help make that link between reading and playing rhythms. Take the tempo up over a few days to a medium-fast tempo, as you do this it will all click into place. Right, now comes the really fun bit. Every single time you sit down and listen to music whatever style it is, break up the beats into the subdivisions, clapping or singing them through the whooe song, intentionally swap between them. Finally write out on a single page every single variation changing from one to another. Now clap, sing, fart your way through that regularly. Now pick up your bass. And do it all on that

MMMMMMM Crunchy bass!

Where do you generate the hiss though.... If you compress after the hiss you will just make things even worse.

The more you can mute with your right hand the less you [i]have [/i]to do with your left hand. Floating thumb on a 5, moveable anchor on a 4; tho I havent picked up the 4 for ages and would probably find myself floating on that too now as its so much easier to play that way now....

Audacity is OK, my biggest moan would be the inability to use vsts in real time, you have to select a vst or effect listen to a tiny snippet and then commit or not. IMO you'd be far better off spending the princely sum of about £25 or £30 on a Reaper license, its a very very good DAW indeed, dead easy to use, with a great manual.....

Expect the truth Expect it to hurt in some places and heal in others Expect to feel very positive afterwards, and slightly daunted The bass you take is utterly irrelevant....

The focusrite compounder is an excellent compressor - I got mine for about 250 on ebay. The markbass compressore has the same set of controls for compression as the compounder, it lacks an expander/gate (good if you ahve a lot of background noise, and it is trivial to set up), and the knob that lets you feed some bass around the compressor, and a limiter section (which you need if you are going to set up any serious compression so that you can tame the transient at the leading edge of the sound). If you want to learn how to set up a compressor get a fully featured one, it should have at least the following controls:- threshold ratio attack release makeup gain Preferrable knee as well, and a limiter (IMO). If you arent sure what you are doing then you absolutely must have decent metering, you need to be able to tell how much gain reduction is going on, the input and the output levels. Otherwise you are relying on ears you havent trained to hear something particularly difficult to analyse. No pedal I have seen has decent metering, I would not recommend one to anyone who is inexperienced in setting up a compressor fo rthat reason alone.

Squire Vintage series second hand springs to mind, either a Precision or Jazz

[quote name='ziggydolphinboy' post='1279800' date='Jun 23 2011, 04:47 PM']good comments guys anyone know about the alesis 3630?[/quote] [url="http://www.ovnilab.com/reviews/3630.shtml"]ovnilabs is your friend[/url]

Rack:- dbx160a Focusrite Compounder (VCA compressor - will give you the most options) TL Audio Ivory Series (tube jobbie this, not that that is particularly relevant) Expensive Rack:- Summit TLA 100a TubeTech C1 La2a (silly money) 1176 (silly money) Pedal:- Markbass Compressore Joe Meek FloorQ TC Electronics NovaDynamics (digital, but it features a multiband comp you may dig)

Any chance we can figure out how to embed soundcloud in attachments like we can youtube clips??? Or have I missed something really obvious (no change there then if I have!)

[quote name='sweavo' post='1276083' date='Jun 20 2011, 05:07 PM']I'm keen to try a separated, [b]possibly even click tracked,[/b] recording, as much to get everyone in the band more experience at working that way as to hear the results of working with strongly separated tracks. But so many outfits seem set up to deal with kick, snare, hats, guitars, vox that it's nerve-wracking to hand someone cash. And listening to previous work is difficult when you're the only band making this style of music within 80 miles! Thanks for all the contributions so far![/quote] My advice, use a handclap, not a click, or a sidestick or what ever. A handclap 'sits' in the acoustic space of a live band better, its more natural as an addition to the overall sound, and it can impart a bit of swing. Get a cheap drum machine, program in the correct clave for the track in question, set the tempo, whack it through the PA and let it go. Get the entire band practicing with this tool and they will tighten up in no time, like you wouldnt believe. Variations of this have worked for me in loads of bands, usually in the funk bands I play in getting the clap to accent the 2 and 4 really heavily forces uss to bring the ONE, which imparts more swing and tightness. I woudl imagine that using the right clave would be the ting for latin. After an hour or two practicing with the clap, turn it off and play the set, better yet record it once before you use the clap, and once after. The result can be very eye opening!

Analogue vs digital is yet another huge can of worms. Either can sound like rancid vomit tastes. The simple truth is the guy in control and the band making the music determines in entirety the quality of the final product, more than the tech used.

Given a good enough acoustic space there is nothing wrong with an ensemble recording in a single space without headphones. The trouble with less seperation (which always follows from the above) is that the ability to polish the sound at mix down can be compromised significantly by the spill. Also the recording will tend to have a very strong imprint of that particular acoustic space put on on it by the spill, which may or may not be desirable.

I think people look at recording music as the entire process. Rightly or wrongly. The process of tracking is the bit where you guys make music and someone commits it to a machine, so the actual recording of the session part. As seperate from the mix, where the tracks are all put together into a stereo file for playback on hifis and stuff. And mastering, which is a whole other can of worms.

SOunds like you've got a lot of the routing stuff pretty much sorted. However have you noticed that you can add audio channels to a track? So you can have track 1 as an aux send for a reverb say. Then if you have a drum kit in a group that is track 2 and your bvs in a group that is track 10 you can add channels of ausio to each group (one for each contained track that needs to send to the reverb), then route the send through the channels on the group and from the channels on the group to the reverb aux. This is useful since it means that the level of signal sent to the aux track is dependant on the level of the group fader as well as the level of the send fader on each track within the group. That way when you change the level of the group, you change the level of the reverb generated by the group. This means you can get some fx outside of the groups they work in, which can save a lot of CPU as you dont have to repeat the effect. Its great for reverbs, delays, parallel compression (not so much, but I have bothered with it before). The routing does become more complex to set up, but the behaviour of group fades becomes far more as you would expect.

[quote name='lanark' post='1275476' date='Jun 20 2011, 01:20 AM']Okay - that makes sense. Could 1) (perc, keys and vocal guide) be done earlier and then the horns, real vocals, extra bits and bobs added at a later session? I'm thinking that the horns etc could then take a few weeks to practice to the rhythm tracks and make sure that they can nail everything as quickly as possible when they eventually get into the studio. Part of me is also thinking that the more people there are in the studio at any one time, the longer everything will take to get done. I know that we want that "live" sound that you only really get when playing as a unit, but if it takes an extra few days in the studio because of all the faffing about, it might be worth sacrificing.[/quote] Absolutely. The studio should be perfectly happy to run you off what is essentially going to be the headphone mix as a 2 track for the horns to work to. I would be encouraged by any band making that kind of suggestion, I dont think I've ever heard of an engineer who enjoys tracking a load of fluffs and retakes. If the rhythm section do wok to a click track then get a version with click and a version without. Another big big hint is get the band used to being recorded, any means you can, a dictophone, an iphone, literally any recording device at all, put it in the corner of the room and do takes in rehearsal. Nothing worse than getting to the studio to discover that one or more memebers of the band suffers ternminal 'red light fever' whereby as soon as the record button is pressed they forget how to play their instrument to some degree. Splitting the recording into sections in no way guarantees a lack of the 'live' sound.What is that anyway? Assuming you play without a click, and the percussion, keys and vocals practice giving the songs there all as that section (as if the horns broke down on the way to the gig and you had to do the first set without them) there should be no loss in energy whatsoever. Equally the horns section will have to practice to the recording of the rhythm section and guide vocal so they can get takes quickly. Nothing kills a live sound like too many takes, whether the band is playiong as a whole or not. You need to aim to be able to get a great take in 3 attempts, or the band will naturally start to reign it in to guarantee a good take, and that loss of exuberence comes across as a more mechanical sounding take. Once you have the rhythm horn sections down look to spend as much time again on lead and backing vocals. They [b][i]are[/i][/b] the song for the punters, they will only notice the rest of the track if its amazing, but if the vocals are even a little bit pants then the average punter can pick up on it straight away. A blinding vocal will get you noticed more than anything else. Work the backing vocals and harmonies out beforehand too. Yes even if you dont have any live you need to put them down on the recording, they make the vocal stand out, and they are the accepted sound of vocals in songs - especially with larger bands. Get your vocalists practicing, hard. Michael Jackson used to spend 3 hours a day on the phone with his vocal coach, and would then take a couple or three takes to get his vocal down in the first instance. Not that that ever stopped him spending more time on vocals when he needed to (often overdubbing all the little vocal ticks that were his trademark style), but he was considered by Bruce Swedian and Quincy Jones to be a stellar vocalist to record in the studio. If it was good enough for him its good enough for your vocalists too. The pet monkey is optional however. The more rehearsed you are for this the quicker and easier it will be on the day, get the band really tuned up for the recording and the process will be slick, the results slicker, and the cost lower.

Which sounds and feels best for you? Personally I like transparent compression, I dont like to feel it or hear it solo, my bass is more even in the mix. I use very low ratios and very low thresholds as a result. For a more overt rock punch I would start with about 4:1 ratio, attack set about 100ms ( to really let that pick through), release as short as the songs require, down around 50ms is usually ok. Set the threshold to get a steady 3dB up to 6dB of GR, such that with the makeup gain set right you can hear it fattening up. Of course you can also (if you get the threhold exactly just so, and the songs are similar in tempo and dont have too many fast passages) extend the release (up to 350ms area) and set the threshold a bit higher. This works as follows, the threshold is crossed, and 100ms later, after the pick transient is on its way down, the compressor engages and stays engaged, even though the level is below the threshold, just because the release is long. This pulls up the level of the body of the sound, adding punch and girth. You may need a limiter after these longer attack settings though....