51m0n

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1361970151' post='1993760'] Well my current interface was only £45, and you'd be hard pushed to find something cheaper than that. If i was to get a Behringer Xenyx with 4 faders (which would be 8 channels, wouldn't it?) that would be the best part of £100. I'm going to start investing in stuff. Might start off with the DI and mics. Then get the interface and everything else i need after. [/quote] 4 faders = 4 channels For the money the mic pres will be dog poo, the drivers will be no better, it will be utter utter rubbish. It will not help you reach your goal, it will hinder you. You really get what you pay for with this kit. All the prosumer stuff will do an okay job, none of it, regardless of it being called a goldendoohickey[b][i]PRO[/i][/b] is in any way a professionals tool. A serious interface will cost way North of £500. For 8 channels. The best 2 channel interfaces on the market are the Apogee Duet (Mac only) and the RME Babyface. Best you sit down before you take a look at the prices I'm afraid.... I've spent years battling cheaper interfaces at home (rather than decent kit when working in studios), and can honestly say I shouldnt have ever bothered. Time to get the paper round money together, if you are looking to be able to easily produce a good quality product you need a decent interface with low (or no) latency. It must have great drivers, it must have great mic pres (or at least very very good and very clean), it must have great AD and DA conversion. If you have pants driveers you will spend more time foghting the interface than recording, if you have pants mic pres it wont matter what mic you record with, or how you place it, it will never sound great, ok yes, not great, if your ADA is to cock you wont translate what you record to the harddrive properly, and you wont hear what you put down before properly -either of which will ruin your work. On top of this you will need some reasonable monitors, good tracking headphones, and the afore mentioned mics, well set up and maintained instruments with new strings, a [i]huge[/i] amount of time, andthe burning desire to get this done, because it will take you at least ten times longer to do a great job than you currently think. On a positive note, when you do get that result you will be so chuffed that you will listen to it for a month non-stop, and play it to everyone, and they will actually want to hear it....

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1361969083' post='1993733'] Ok, what do you recommend? My teacher uses an EBS DI/preamp. It's rockin'! [/quote] [b] [size=3]BSS Ar133 Di Box[/size][/b] [url="http://www.studiospares.com/di-boxes/bss-ar133-di-box/invt/431310/?VBMST=DI%20box"]http://www.studiospa...?VBMST=DI%20box[/url] His EBS DI/preamp is a preamp first and a DI second, hence the DI isnt as good (clean, uncoloured) by its very nature.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1361964491' post='1993625'] Em, i had kind of already thrown out the room mic and second head ideas. My cab is posted at the back though, so to get any ported sound at all, would i not need to either have a mic at the back, or very far in front? [/quote] Okay - but for close micing a cone an LDC is not required, or often desirable (it can be used - but a really good LDC is mnassively out of your budget) So SDC or Dynamic? Dynamic is the norm, an SDC will do it though. Again not all SDCs are equal, a good one (the CM3 for instance is the cheapest really really good cardioid SDC available that I know of) is going to set you back over £100 A good enough dynamic will be less. Forget the port, it is flawed as hell compared to the DI low end, the interesting colour is almost always in the midrange anyway - right where the cone is putting out frquencies and your dynamic cardioid mic is good at capturing them - so dont bother trying to mic a port, DI instead for that bottom end. A good DI is over £100 too. Yes there are cheaper ones, but you already said you dont want this to sound cheap. Get a good workhorse DI, not some crappy Behringer rubbish that does all sorts of unnecessary stuff (ooh look its got eq and drive - crap unneccessary waste of money - ignore it at the price range you can entertain, yes I include all the bass preamp floor boxes with a DI thrown in to this comment, they are gash for what you are doing, do not let the bells and whistles seduce you). [quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1361964491' post='1993625'] I was thinking of more going down the route of micing the cone and also taking a DI from the head (saves me needing to get a DI box) and then blending them in the mix. I need to learn how to match the phasing though. I know that's important, but i don't know how to. I'll read up on that. [/quote] Good, mic the cab. Bad dont DI from the head, it is not adding anything useful where you need that DI signal to be helping your bass sound that you cant do far better at mix down with decent VSTs - you do have a computer capable of running some decent softweare and reasonable VSTs at this point dont you? [quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1361964491' post='1993625'] Another thing i need to record is my acoustic guitar. I would need a condenser mic for that, won't i? (as well as a decent room to record it in). [/quote] OK, CM3 is king for that at the price, a Little Blondie is more natural close miced (no proximity effect being omni) but your room wil put the kybosh on the recording of an acoustic guitar with an omni (why? source is low level, omni picks up the room as much as the source, by definition, crap room = crap result). CM3 is about £140 on its own, so maybe the t.bone stereo set will help at a much lower budget. Condensors do acoustic guitars far better than dynamics as a rule. Although a dymanic on the body and a condensor further up toward the neck can sound ace on acoustic guitar. Position is ultra critical for acoustic guitar, be ready to spend an afternoon just getting the mics in the right place. Seriously...

Also your first recordings will be almost certainly be pants, dont think for a minute you are going to light the world up on your first attempt to capture bass really well, its not that easy Work at it and you will get better at it, it isnt going to happen over night, there are so many variables here, for one thing you seem determined to add more than you need. This will only make it sound worse....

All the more reason to get it right. If you mic the cabinet within a few inches of the cone then the room wont make much difference. It will still make some difference though. However we were talking about an LDC a few feet back off the cab. At that point you are introducing a huge amount of room into the sound that that mic picks up. There is such a thing as critical distance in recording. This is the distance from the source in a room that a mic on that source picks up the reverberation from the walls of the room as loudly as the original signal, any further away from the source and the mic is picking up more room than source. It sounds like crap on almost everything to do this unless you want to do it as an effect. On a bass it woudl be an absolute disaster. So, you want to mic closer than the critical distance, with an omni mic or fig 8 mic you need to be a maximum of half the distance from the critical distance to the source. With a cardioid mic you can get away with 2/3rds of the critical distance. However in a little untreated room with parallel walls (hmmmk abedroom perhaps) you will find the workable distance is as little as 2 or 3 feet, quite often far less. You find the critical distance by setting up your source to be playing sound and moving the mic away from it whilst watching the meters. When the meters stop getting lower as you move away (and even get higher) you have hit the critical distance. If you close mic a cab you will not get the sound of the cab you will get the sound of the cone, or port, or tweeter, whatever you are closest too (volume follows the inverse square law remember, for every 2 timesfurther away from a source you get the volume drops to a quarter of what it was). You can even get phase issues between the different components of the cab since you are so close to them, they dont necessarily behave the same at 1 inch as they do at two feet. So you close mic a cone, which means you aren't getting the bottom octave of your cab, since that comes from the port. So you need to fill that in. A second mic is one way, a DI is a better way (it isnt suffering from the inherent issues of port tuning favouring certain frequencies for a start). A blend of mic'ed cone and DI is without doubt one of the most often used, tried and tested ways of capturing the grind and colour of an amp with tight full bass. Hundreds of engineers have come to this conclusion over years nad years of educated trial and error. You still have to get the phase bang on between the DI and the mic, but that isnt too hard to do. Now introduce your LDC room mic in anything but a stella room and it will not add good things to the sound. It will add complication to the setup, it will add nothing but bad. For a start to get away from phase issues it needs to be at the very least 3 times further away than the close mic, which to get in phase with the DI could easily be as far as 6 inches off the cone, so now you are backing up the 'room' mic to around 18 inches to 2 feet, or perilously close to your maximum range before critical distance comes into play, and you will be getting a very roomy sound from that mic. Roomy sounds utterly arse on bass. Trust me. I've done a tonne of this stuff for years and years (Jeez nearly a quarter of a century now), I've had great results because I've been shown how to do this by excellent mentors with the engineering (sound, acoustic and electrical) know how to absolutely back up their reasoning, and I've can generally capture a bassists tone with one cardiod dynamic mic and a good DI. You want to do it properly? One amp, one cab, one mic (dynamic cardioid - a 57 or 58 or Senn e835 will be fine), one DI (a decent cheap DI box for a recording would be a BSS Ar133, at about £110), in phase (so important!). That is as properly as you can do it with your current setup.

Fat fingers and a phone that thinks it's cleverer than it actually is - sorry!

Large diaphragm condenser mics are by their nature coloured. Cheap ones in a less good way. Small diaphragm condensers are less coloured. Stick to a cheap SDC for most sources. Use the LDC for the couple of headline instruments , ie lead vocal and one other - the final result will benefit from this approach. If you colour everything the same you may as well be in monochrome....

If you want to sound good keep it simple. You don't have the room treqtment for clever mixing nor tje monitoring solution nor the seperation. I've tracked hundreds of songs. If you wqmt a gteat sounding guerrilla recording then you have to keep the tracking very sttaight forward.

[quote name='Zenitram' timestamp='1361897874' post='1992702'] God I'm so full of stupid sometimes. I proof read for a living as well, you know. [/quote] Bwahahahahahahhhaaaaa!! Sorry

[quote name='Zenitram' timestamp='1361895889' post='1992641'] I just emailed the Karma people, as the mics on their own have $26.95 shipping, which is fair enough. If you then add two mic holders designed to go with the bullets (at $2 each), the shipping price jumps to $69.95! Which is mental and presumably a glitch. [/quote] The two mic set includes the clips as well:- [i]Includes 2 Mics, 2 Mic Clips Extra Mic Clips Can Be Purchased As Well[/i] From:- [url="http://www.karmamics.com/shop/K-Micro-Matched-Pair.html"]http://www.karmamics...tched-Pair.html[/url]

[quote name='Zenitram' timestamp='1361895889' post='1992641'] I just emailed the Karma people, as the mics on their own have $26.95 shipping, which is fair enough. If you then add two mic holders designed to go with the bullets (at $2 each), the shipping price jumps to $69.95! Which is mental and presumably a glitch. [/quote] Weird, that'd be that Amerrrkin Math I think...

Milty you are overcomplicating this I think. You dont need a room mic, its going to add a world of hurt for you regarding phase issues. If you dont already know about how to go abou tsolving this sort of thing, or even know how to recognise it, then you need not to be worrying about a third source. You need a decent two channel USB audio interface. Get a decent DI, ignore the amp, DI the bass. I've recorded albums without a mic on the bass cab, its not a necessity unless you are using an overdriven sound (nothing deliberately overdriven in the samples you have put up), and at your stage I would recommend simple first and foremost. Mic the cab with one mic, get it in phase with the DI. If you are going for some amp derived growl though mic the 115, a 57 would be fine, use the DI for everything below about 200Hz, and the mic above that. Sort that out at mixdown though, not when tracking, you havent got the set up to allow you to make that kind of critical decision during tracking. However if you arent using an overdriven bass sound then dont even bother with the mic.

Well they will do it for you, not as well as more expensive solutions, but I wouldnt expect them to.

If you want to learn to mic things up get some mics and play (you will get further quicker if you know someone who can show you where to start and what to listen for), if you want to record your bass you can DI, mic a cab or use some form of emulation, all can sound fine and neednt scare the neighbours.

Nah I hear you, they are just cool doodads to ahve around. Note they are omnis, so they work like a very sensitive barometer, they 'hear' evenly in all directions, so you cant get awway with pointing them away from a source of noise, they will find you out if you fart in the studio On the plus side that means they dont suffer from proximity effect (getting bassier the closer you get to something) and can handle meaty SPLs apparently. Great for acoustic guitar, spaced stereo pairs (no good at all as a coincident pair, since they are omnis, or ORTF or any stereo produced using cardiod characteristics of the mics used) Obviously for that money they are not the be all and end all in mics, but for interesting tiny little mics they are excellent fun and not crap apparently.

Yep, they are good, as are audiospares.co.uk for cabling and looms and the like (phone them up if you are doing a lot of stuff, good deals can be had)

Oh and the cheapest way to record something, just about anything, just capture it, is probably these:- http://www.karmamics.com/shop/K-Micro-Matched-Pair.html

[quote name='Zenitram' timestamp='1361881737' post='1992302'] That Red5 kick mic looks great 51m0n, but the website says it's only available as part of a larger kit. Do you have one? How did you get it? I've also been thinking about getting one of these: [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/the_tbone_sc300.htm"]http://www.thomann.d...tbone_sc300.htm[/url] next time I order something from Thomann. I've read some decent reviews of the thing -- for 24 quid. [/quote] When I got mine they were available on there own, in fact mine was on a special offer too. The kits are excellent though, highly recommended, but possibly more than you need. I wouldnt go near that T.bone mic personally (£24 for an LDC, really!), although this stereo set is considered a reasonably good design (similar physically to the design of a Neumann KM84, which is to be considered a very good thing, the electronics arent in the same league naturally):- http://www.thomann.de/gb/the_tbone_sc_140_stereoset_bundle.htm The CM3 blows these away though, or Little Blondies, although they are omni pattern and so not really suitable for your intended usage. Nothing wrong with a condensor on a cabinet, Flea used one live for years, I've seen toms mic'ed with Neumann U87s, kick drums with U47s, you name it. Ribbon mics on the other hand tend to be far more delicate! Sennheise 421 is a great mic (brilliant on toms) but very very dear by todays standards (ie with all the decent CHinese stuff now available), and I would personally not buy a second hand mic, especially if its usual role in a studio was as a tom mic, the abuse they can get is scary! Likewise the AKG D112 and beta52 are fine mics (pretty heavily eq'ed IMO) but you get pretty much the same thing for a fraction of the cost from the Red5 kit or failing that the Studiospares line of cheap mics is totally brilliant (for the money). Any of these will do as a starter for bass:- http://www.studiospares.com/mics-instrument/studiospares-s930-instrument-mic/invt/448620/ http://www.studiospares.com/mics-instrument/studiospares-sd102-bass-drum-mic/invt/449050/ http://www.studiospares.com/mics-instrument/studiospares-sd101-drumpercussion-mic/invt/448660/ The s930 is a mic I'm very interested in for horns and snare, but it will do for bass as well no problem - and guitar cabs - versatile little thing. Its what I'd get if I were you. A pair would do as overheads (neodymium magnets and a nice presence peak), but these would be even better:- http://www.studiospares.com/mics-instrument/studiospares-s980-overhead-percussion-condenser/invt/449040/ Then get this for vocals:- http://www.studiospares.com/mics-condenser/studiospares-s1000-studio-condenser-mic-pack/invt/448500/ Still under budget and your recordings will be far better for getting mics more targetted to different roles.

SM57 has some rolloff too high up for really capturing low end. You will do well to get a better low end mic than the Red5 Audio kick mic:- http://www.red5audio.com/acatalog/Dynamic_Microphones.html At about £35 + VAT its a no brainer, works great for me! Hopwever if you want to spend your £150 you might find a superb SDC (small diaphragm condensor) is the best all round option, like a Line Audio CM3. Incredible mic for the money, but they are made by a Swedish chap as and when he can (think Barefaced Bass when Alex just started, but for mics and mic pres) so the demand completely outweighs the supply unfortunately...

True there is definitely a place for it, I dotn think I manage to remain anywhere near as light fingered as he does, doesnt always work with the funk thing I tend to do. However I've been playing with 3 fingers rh technique soince before I'd heard of GW, as it just sort of made sense to me to be able to sue that third digit to get across strings more fluidly. Again I'm no slave to his concept, I certainly dont think my technique is remotely as well defined for a staret, and like you Bilbo I've borrowed idea from all over the place to get to wherever it is I am now exactly

I've been more than slightly interested in GW's approach for a very long time, Michael Manring is similarly clued up re technique, particularly his left hand, I recommend trying to find his old VHS tape (nope cant remember the name, not the Starlicks one), he is utterly completist in his approach to warming up and applying his concept totally evenly across all the fingers and strings. It aint exactly the most exciting watch but apply his ideas for a few weeks and it completely changes your approach.

I think you should vote for the best one there in your opinion, if thats yours to your ears then thats the way it goes, although you really need to listen honestly and look for weaknesses in your mix, and whether or not it conveys the emotional impact of the song for you better than the rest of them. It helps if you can argue that case to yourself. Last time I thought Skols mix was superb, though a step too far away from the original song for my liking, but such a good effort other than that. The rest didnt feel quite as sorted, but I am aware that I tend to listen from a very technical place first and foremost when trying to judge mixes, which isnt always the best place to be honest. However as this goes on I am starting to think maybe it should be a blind vote too, which would need more thinking about in terms of maybe someone not entering the competition, but rather being PM'ed the links by each person entering and then putting them all up with no way of telling from the URLs which was which (other than recognising your own). It could certainly be done using something like dropbox and downloading the original files and reuploading them. Maybe next month I'll do that rather than enter? Maybe if its blind then the person putting it together can enter too. This time I added the poll in the order the final mixes hit the thread (only reason I'm first in the list, honest!), on a blind poll then it would all be very random. That way everyone gets a far more unbiased stab.......

[quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1361809081' post='1991213'] i Grados are excellent... [/quote] I like Grados, but the iGrado reviews seem to suggest they are rather flimsy to be out jogging with. Or am I worrying about nothing in your opinion????

Great video, he spent some time matchin the levels didnt he Would like to know his choice of strings too, I personally think that (for recording especially) the choice of strings can have as big an affect on the final sound as the bass. Also I am not entirely convinced that all of these have had no post processing (or EQ) put on them (or thats the lightest sounding P-Bass I've ever heard I think). Still very interesting vid.

The DPA 4099 is a great mic, as is the Heil PR40 (although its a big ole beastie) - both can be great on db , but as ever with mics its placement thats the key, and with an instrument as big as a db getting a natural sound from a mic placed closer than the dimensions of the instrument is really tricky!