51m0n

Larry G doing it like it should be done!

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' post='1041199' date='Nov 29 2010, 02:30 PM']Adding the second cab halves the load impedance, doubling the current flow and therefore power. Another 3dB of sensitivity comes from the mutual coupling of the two cabs, so with the same amp the total volume increase is 6dB, which is the equivalent of four times the power. Then figuring in the greatly increased intelligibility of the mids and highs from the top cab versus the bottom and there would have been a huge difference between both cabs and the bottom cab alone if everything was working correctly. Conclusion: something was AFU, perhaps a blown driver or two in the upper cab.[/quote] +1, or more simply a duff speaker cable/output/input somewhere was not douing what it should. No way can you get more power from a single amp running into a single cab than same amp running into two of the same cab, impedance just doesnt work like that chaps!

double double b*ll*x b*ll*x in fact....

[quote name='dave_bass5' post='1040791' date='Nov 29 2010, 09:11 AM']There is also the foam underneath the pad. Im sure that must do something that just using the 4 corners (casters) doesn't. Ive always thought the foam stops the underneath becoming a bass trap and keeps the boom down. Not sure it works like that but its obviously there for a reason.[/quote] Bass traps are generally at least 6" deep floor to ceiling devices filled entirely with medium high density rockwool. They are best situated in corners as that is where the bass is best dealt with (for a bunch of reasons I cant be bothered to go into here for once!). More often than not they are done these days as DIY Superchunks, whereby a triangle in the corner is entirely filled with material such that it is well over 6" deep at its deepest from floor to ceiling. This is all coverd with an acoustically nonabsorbant/nonreflective material (hessian, burlap, weed matting) to keep the fibres in place, but allow the audio energy into the device. The little tiny bit of foam under the Gramma Pad is insufficient to do anything bass trap wise. Its no where near thick enough, so it wont stop bass. These pads seem to me to work by efficiently decoupling the mechanical vibration through to the structure upon which the cab is sat. They have very little effect on the transfer of acoustic energy via the air, and thus the boundary effect.

[quote name='silddx' post='1040920' date='Nov 29 2010, 10:55 AM'][b]I was only winding you up, mate [/b] Thanks for the explanation though. I have to use my ears for compression, and if it sounds right to me, then it's right. It's in the studio where I tend to leave it alone. Mind you, the Krupa album is mostly my POD compressor, the engineer thought it sounded really good. And he had some really nice old studio compressors.[/quote] [size=5]B*ST**D!!! [/size] The compressor in the Pod Pro rack jobbie is fine mate (we have one oin the studio), and pretty decently tweakable too IIRC. Not surprised the engineer digs it - perfect recall is a blessing at all times (that I sadly cant say I'm equipt with!).

[quote name='waynepunkdude' post='1040772' date='Nov 29 2010, 08:52 AM']I don't even have a knob (hehe) I have a button that says 'compressor' on it.[/quote] Oh brother.....

[quote name='silddx' post='1040652' date='Nov 29 2010, 12:08 AM']I wish I'd have been at the compressor thing with 51m0n The POD X3 has compressor, two controls - Threshold and Gain. The gain is pretty pointless as far as I've found, but the Threshold is very useful. With Kit's band it's very low and with Krupa it's quite high. It depends on the music I'm playing, Kit requires a LOT of dynamics so I use very little compression. Threshhold is all I need. In the studio, it gets more complicated. Live you need only one knob, IMHO. I'm assuming 51m0n said something similar?[/quote] Errr no.... I said (and you may have noticed a reference to it once or twice already in this very thread) a compressor with only one knob, (and anything with no metering at all, is complete and utter b*ll*x I stand by that too, anything where you dont have the metering to see what it does, and the controls to tailor it to the envelope of the sound your bass, with your strings, you playing it, your fx, etc etc etc is only useful if you are lucky, and even then will only ever be a one trick pony. That trick having been designed more to make an easy sale of the amp for non-technical staff in guiatr shops than to actually enable you to get the best from the amp, whilst also beiung so completely generic as to be flawed nearly always. I may have reiterated this more than once in fact.... Without decent metering (ie input, output AND gain reduction) you cannot really tell when compresison is happening - its inherently hard to hear, unless it is set up to be so incredibly in your face that it is in fact crushing the life out of your dynamics (as much a result of stupidly fast attack times, and or stupidly long release times as the ratio and threshold). With decent metering you can quite easily set a 'best guess' ratio (say 3:1 for starters), longish attack, medium release, then bring the threshold down until you get significant (but not overpowering) levels of gain reduction (lets say an average of 3-6dB, with the occasional real peak at 9dB). Then take the gain up to unity with the makeup gain. The play with the attack to make it effect the attack of your bass sound in the way you wish (either loping it off of accentuating it) then you can tweak the release to fit the music you are playing. Then fine tune the ratio, threshold and makeup gain. Yes it takes about 5 minutes, yes it is iterative, yes it is a bit of a dark art (but no where near as bad as you might think after a couple of goes). You need to keep in mind that there are different ways to achieve the same amount of compression, either a low threshold (ie compression starts sooner) and a very low ratio, or a much higher ration and a higher threshold. Although these two strategies produce the same amount of gain reduction they can be very different in how they actually sound. You need to have the controls available and take the time to try both ways to see what workd best for you. Ask Silverfoxnik how having his DBX set up 'just so' worked out for him on the gig he had that evening, and it only took a few minutes to get it right. Thing is it really does have decent metering and all the controls you need. Sounded pretty fab to me when we were getting the settings together on it. I would highly recommend one to anyone looking for a compressor for bass. I also doubt that the gain in your POD is useless, I'm pretty sure it would be a makeup gain, and if you dont find you need it then the chances are that you arent really doing any compression at all. Having said that I haven't played with that particular device before so I may be wrong as to exactly what the relationship is between the two in that case. (Plus you cant underestimate the importance of more lights and meters on your rig, it helps you see where the one is, and we all know how important that is!) Sorry for the long explanation Nigel, just consider yourself lucky you didnt sit through the full works on Saturday, I think some people clearly wished they had made your choice too

[quote name='Clarky' post='1040645' date='Nov 28 2010, 11:57 PM']When we have all traded on our amps with one compressor knob [/quote] Looks like there may be one in your signature already??

Fantastic news about the money all going to charity. So when will we do the next one?

Back from the bash, just chilling. Thanks for an immense day everyone, didnt get to visit the loud room, jam, or indeed do much other than watch the seminars (kind of out of body experience in one case - weird!). Hope my interminable prattling was as informative as it was (apparently) entertaining - if not, then at least it was entertaining chaps; I've been on the receiving end of some unfathomably dry and tedious compressor lectures, so if you got nothing but a laugh out of it I'm one up on some of the guys who tried to teach me this nonsense Lovely to meet old friends, and make some new ones. Thanks Nick, Hamster and everyone else who helped put it all together, I'm sure Old Git would have loved it, RIP mate.

Now that's commitment!

[quote name='Clarky' post='1036569' date='Nov 25 2010, 04:39 PM']Its simple 51m0n (unintended pun), if you have compression on zero it does nothing and if you go to ten it squishes the sound. You can't buy that level of knowledge, mate [/quote] Right, excellent, I've printed that off, should be able make it last 45 minutes, with a bit of waffle eh, cheers!

[quote name='silverfoxnik' post='1035947' date='Nov 25 2010, 09:46 AM']Thanks guys! How about you do the 11am slot John and maybe another session later as people arrive through the day - we could set up a seperate space for you as the Foyer is so large.. And 51m0n, what about you doing the 1pm slot? So it'd look like this: Workshop 1: 11 am - johnnylager - setups Workshop 2: 12 pm - urb - music theory & music media Workshop 3: 1pm - 51m0n - compression & compressors Workshop 4: 2pm - alexclaber - bass tones/using your amp/e.q. advice Phil - we're booked until 6pm I think but because it'll be dark by then and the weather might be bad, it would be best to wrap up at 5pm I think.. Nik[/quote] Fine by me, anyone got a good book about comrpessors I can have read of then??

I'll do either an 11 or 1 depending on numbers at the time (ie if everyone is there at 11 I have no issue doing it then) I'm easy

I was hoping to get there before 10 to help out setting up, traffic willing - and assuming we have no issues folding all the stuff into the car this time

I think its a 10.00 O'clock start, what time will you get there Nick?

[quote name='obbm' post='1034836' date='Nov 24 2010, 10:39 AM']Yes. Will do.[/quote] Cool, interested to see/hear this in action!

Here's hoping the forecast snow isnt a problem

[quote name='EssentialTension' post='1033350' date='Nov 22 2010, 11:05 PM']I've only used Brighton Electric a couple of times and the Markbass equipment and cleanliness are very good. However, we suffered from the lack of sound proofing when we had a metal band in the next studio when we are a relatively quiet band. Monster in Hove has mostly Hartke bass rigs and is also clean and tidy. Another Brighton studio is slightly cheaper but is unclean, unpleasant, and the bass gear - which is a mix of Ashdown and Hartke - is in poor condition. It's often easier to get a room there at short notice.[/quote] I didnt think Electric was that clean when I was there last, had huge ugly sounding Peavey rig (was awful) and a Markbass combo (112 of some kind) which was really nice. Much prefer Monster, its the cleanest, best looked after rehearsal space I've been in, only downside is the supplied old Hartke rigs are very underpowered, you have to thrash the nuts off them to keep up, I generally take my rig (or at least my head) down and use that, to me its worth it.... There's another one off the Lewes road (sorry cant remember the name) with shockingly awful 810s in it with Peavey heads, my god they sound rubbish! The old Peavey gear was never exactly luxury sound, but the newer stuff I've had the misfortune to run into in reheasal studios has been dreadful IME.

[quote name='paul_5' post='1033358' date='Nov 22 2010, 11:11 PM']If you're not recording more than two tracks at once why not consider a small Protools setup. Reason being that if you nail [i]that[/i] take on a home demo and want to use that take in an eventual studio recording, then most good studios will be running some incarnation of Protools, and you can simply open your project on their machine. Also you'll be learning how to use industry standard software and getting to know what it can do , so that if you're ever recording in a bigger studio then you'll be able to make better informed choices about editing etc... instead of relying on the in house engineers. Just my 2p worth.[/quote] Its a complete nonsense to suggest that you can only use Protools recorded stuff in protools! Because Protools just like any other DAW will happily use a stem from any other DAW. If you arent happy relying on the inhouse engineers why on earth would you be in that studio? To my mind there are only three reasons to go to a studio and they are (in order of importance), the quality of the engineers, the quality of the live room, the quality of the kit. If the engineers aren't on their game I wouldnt consider going there. I would feel completely at ease asking an engineer/studio for examples/references before booking a session too.

[quote name='xgsjx' post='1032885' date='Nov 22 2010, 05:01 PM']I'm wondering if it's more to do with the actual bass in relation to this "muddy" or "wooly" sound as opposed to just the MB cabs?[/quote] I'd put money on it being incorrect use of the filters 9 times out of 10. They arent obvious, they arent very clearly marked, they are different from the rest of the controls in their operation. All bad UI design decisions... Shame 'cos the cabs aren't as bad as people make out IMO, and the amps are superb...

[quote name='Sibob' post='1032059' date='Nov 21 2010, 11:09 PM']Hey it was a semi-serious question lol! My gf wanted to come, I assured her that she'd be bored silly, but thought I'd ask anyway Si[/quote] She wont be bored, she wants to learn all about compression you see

I'm pretty sure he means the Concorde 2 in Brighton? You would need to follow the link though [url="http://www.concorde2.co.uk"]www.concorde2.co.uk[/url]