Beedster

Case is an issue for sure. Last time we rehearsed, literally the night before Lockdown V1, we used a new studio and I had to park about 400m from the front door, as opposed to the 4m from the front door I'm used to at our usual place. My SVT-II is likewise in a head case and I suspect weighs about 50kg all in. I looked at the walk ahead of me and just wanted to just get back in the car and go home

Lovely rig, and lighter by some distance, but is it going to sound like a 400+ with an 18" A lot of it depends on what sound Phil is going for, because the 400+ is a pretty versatile beast?

The respondents to this thread to date might not be your target audience mate IMO certainly not TC. 400+ and an 18 cab is not an easy thing to replicate. The Mesa solid state gear gets a lot of praise and some of the older units, for example the M-Pulse 600, BB-750 and if you're very lucky the Titan V-12 can be picked up relatively cheap these days. Personally I'd keep your cabs, they are not going to be easily replaced. Then again, personally I'd keep your 400+ also

PS I have both BabyFace Pro and FireFace 400 units, I guess I'm asking whether using the preamps on this will add anything to the signal already run through the preamps on the desk, and if so whether setting to zero gain on the RME would resolve this, and if the answers are YES and NO respectively, whether I can bypass the preamps on either RME unit?

Folks, still getting to grips with this whole digital thing! I've been using mic into RME interface into my Mac, I now want to use my mixer (SSL) that does not have an interface but has very high quality preamps, likely higher quality than those in the RME. Strikes me that I'm running high quality preamps into high quality preamps before A/D conversion and that the pres in the RME are to all intents redundant. That's not the end of the world as I'd like to know I have backup in case I ever had a problem with the mixer, but are there any problems with doing this, for example greater potential noise or other undesirable. Should I/can I bypass the pres in the RME and run straight into the converter? Thanks in advance Chris

That’s nice, there’s still folks out there with intact lumbar spines for whom lightweight is simply not a variable of importance

Many thanks again, I agree with all of the above, the mobile panels especially. Re vocal booth, the main reason I have mine is not for the internal ambience but to exclude noise, my studio is in a suburban garden and suffers form all of the issues - power tools, dogs, kids, aircraft - you'd expect. I need to know that when I plan a day of recording that I'm not at the mercy of my neighbours! If the room was soundproof I would do all the voiceover work at my desk. And yes, I'm going to start listening to voiceover using my sub also. I was really suprised to learn just how low the fundamental of the human voice is

Many thanks, yes from what I've read diffusers are either going to make things slightly better or a whole lot worse (especially in the small room as you suggest). Luckily the mounting system for the absorbers and diffusers is the same so I'm able to experiment with little hassle. I love your point about the human ear and differences, as I keep trying to explain to my colleagues, many of the differences in question are not overt/conscious, the recording just doesn't feel as good. I want everything I record to feel good

Yes, people must (be) really stupid

Almost breaking the cardinal rule, cab must be bigger than amp

Ah, that old classic, that usually means someone didn't pay their equipment storage fees and the owner of the rehearsal room has sold the gear at a price that covers what he's owed. Not the first or lats time that's going to happen

At £300 that's stolen, not working and in very bad condition

Go on punk, click that link and make my day, I dare you......

As if there weren't enough cajons in the World already

And the stores that will survive are those that recognise the changing needs of musicians

I don't think it's anywhere collapse, there's just an ongoing shift towards digital, and as is the case with so many other sectors such as business and education, COVID has simply accelerated that shift. There will always be a market for new music, I think what we're seeing at present is an increased blurring of the old and traditional line between live music and recorded music, it's a blurring enabled by digital, and as the result the gear that musicians need to do their jobs is having to change. But the core tools - the musical instruments and the expertise required to play them - are still there, so I see the present as far less worrying than I did the mid-80s when we genuinely thought that synths were going to not only replace all instruments but eventually all performers

Yep, it's really dd but I was thinking about that very post yesterday - because it seemed to resonate with so much that I'm seeing on YouTube at present - and was wondering in which thread I'd find it, and then, as if by magic, someone posted a reply in the very thread

The trend for small prices for big boxes started well before COVID

Hey TwoTimesBass Many thanks, that's really helpful. Firstly the booth is very dead and I like that for voiceover but as you suggest, it presents problems trying to mimic that ambience outside of the room. I use an SE reflection screen around the mic at my desk, and because I'm facing into the room I have absorber panels directly behind me, so I'm less affected by screen than might otherwise be the case. It's a wooden cabin so I've just installed some cloud absorbers above my desk also, and I'm going to test this today (I have some bass traps coming from EQ Acoustics which I suspect are going to also help a lot, I think I've been a little bit naive in assuming that in recording the human voice dealing with bass frequencies in the room isn't really an issue). I think you've answered my main question, which is that the balance of absorbers and diffusers is probably important, and I'm therefore going to do some trial and error. Whilst it sounds odd, and also flies in the face of most of the thinking on this, I'm going to try a diffuser in the booth also (it's 1.8 x 1.8 m so actually quite big, whilst I had it built for voiceover work, I was also keeping a keen eye on recording double bass, acoustic guitar and fiddle in there, and it's amazing how much space you actually need to play those properly). I'll post my findings when I have some findings