Can anyone guess what it took to make this recording??????

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 2:45 am

Im a newbie just trying to get involved in the forum that i lurk on a daily basis.

Heres a song that i recently recorded with my current band.

www.purevolume.com/thejuniorvarsity

the new track is called HOUSE FIRE at the top.

Is it possible for any pros out there to guess what components were used to make this recording? ie..what console, what mic, compressor, preamp, etc. Id love to see if some of these things are actually distinguishable from simply hearing the song. Your input would be very much appreciated...Ive recently purchased a digi 002, some mics, an ibook, some pres, compressor and some software and have tracked a couple bands with the gear. Needless to say, im building any interest in the production side of recording. Ive tracked guitar plenty of times with producers, but have never produced much myself. Thanks for listening.

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 6:00 am

that just ridiculous....
No ones going to be able to tell you that (if we had the time to waste on such an activity), and why do you care to know what compressor we think you used? It's a form a "go-fish" only not as fun as the card game

Did you need help with something?

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 9:52 am

OK...I'll give it a whirl.

You used 4 microphones that you ripped off of 4 old style radio shack cassette recorders. You know, the black plastic ones with the faux metal top. You had to rip or cut them off of the machines because they were permanently attached.
Then you soldered 1/4" ends to them so you could plug them into your 4 input line mixer. The mixer had a knob for HI and one for LOW, which worked great as your equalizer.

You took the output of that line mixer and sent the signal to a reel to reel tape machine so you could get that "tape warmth" sound.

For reverb you took an old Peavey keyboard amp and disconnected the spring reverb unit from it. then you sent each channel through it giving every channel it's own "space".

To properly edit everything, you recorded all the takes to multiple cassettes. Then you set up the cassetts so that their outputs were going back to your reel to reel machine. you hit record on the reel to reel then, in proper sequence, you hit play on the cassette machines so that each part came in at the right time. This probably took you 2 or three run throughs before you got it right, but eventually, it was perfect.

Next, with the right mix on the reel to reel, you recorded that into your computers sound card onto your computer so you could convert it to an MP3 to give it just the right amount of compression. Then using various sound enhancing plugins for Winamp and the amazing 10 band eq, you played back the track through Winamp and recorded it back into the computer with some handy dandy audio routing. At this point you were basically done so you created the final MP3 for distribution on the web.

Then you proceeded to post data to a forum and asked the absurd and practically unanswerable question of (paraphrased) "Guess what equipment I used to record this track with?"

Have a nice day. Rolling Eyes

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 10:36 am

Hey pr0gr4m how funny jajajaja I just can't stop Laughing ohh man! this is good, not to offend any one but what a joke.

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 11:21 am

pr0gr4m wrote:

Then you soldered 1/4" ends to them so you could plug them into your 4 input line mixer. The mixer had a knob for HI and one for LOW, which worked great as your equalizer.

This one had me rolling!!!
Confused

I love you guys

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 6:57 pm

well my question was answered...

You cant distinguish that kind of stuff. Thats all i wanted to know. The song was tracked through a Neve board. Same one that did nirvanas nevermind with butch vig as well as the song hotel california.

I'll remember to call on people i actually know in the business than waste my time on this forum.

My message said i was new to recording...and wanted to know if pros could distinguish what components were used to make a recording. Seems like a pretty honest question to me. Helps me determine where to invest my money. Rude ass people.

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 7:00 pm

AndyTJV wrote:

Rude ass people.

name-dropper

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 8:30 pm

AndyTJV wrote:

My message said i was new to recording...and wanted to know if pros could distinguish what components were used to make a recording. Seems like a pretty honest question to me. Helps me determine where to invest my money. Rude ass people.

well, you could have the best gear in the world and it could still sound like shit.

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 8:48 pm

If you don't have a thick hide and a sense of humor, it probably is a good idea for you to hit the road. Thumbs Up

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 10:56 pm

Well I got quite a kick out of this thread! I thought your question was quite challenging actually as I tried to figure out what I was listening to since I'm pretty good with that stuff. I instantly knew it wasn't recorded by any wannabes from Recording.org.

I really enjoyed your recordings! Before I completed reading the entire thread, I listened to all of your posted songs and knew immediately this was not your mother's Mackie Board recording! I own 2 Neves and yes they sort of sound like your stuff! At first I thought it was API? But then I realized it was a little smoother without that edgy quality that APIs are known for.

I thought all of your songs sounded particularly good except for the Counting Crows tribute of "Raining in Baltimore", which appeared to be substandard in comparison to your other songs. What's with that? I happen to like the Counting Crows since I mixed a live broadcast of them in my remote truck, at the Meriwether Post Pavilion in 1997 for a live broadcast on WHFS, a now-defunct locally famous rock and roll station. Adam Durwitz is from Baltimore as I am also but not born there myself. He is a pretty cool dude and was in my truck for an extensive interview with the disk jockey. One thing that was requested of me for that job was "no reverb" and a request to mix through a stereo limiter (which I do like doing) since the real-time MP3 Telos Zepher liked to overload at the inputs, easily.

So can you give us a little additional background about those recordings?

Curious people want to know?
Ms. Remy Ann David

Don't mind everybody else's comments, they're just jealous.

Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 11:19 pm

Dearest AndyTJV,

Guess which fingers I'm using to type this message? Guess which of side of my desk my monitor is set up on? The answers to those questions can be given but for what purpose? To what end?

If you wanted to find out if a trained ear can hear the difference between a Neve and a Mackie, record the two and then ask the question outright.

Don't come here with an unanswerable question with no motive or reason. There are litterally millions of microphone, preamp, compressor and console combinations out there and you want us to guess at which ones you used. Where are we even supposed to begin?

Maybe a better approach would have been to post the song, say it was recorded completely through a Neve console (if it was) and ask us to get what model or ask us if we thought it was a professional, or consumer console. At least those are things I could see someone posting a possible answer to.

I didn't even listen to the track because the task you gave us was impossible.

If you want to have a real dialog about recording/sound/production etc, present something that can actually be approached with a bit of knowledge. Track comparisons are good. You post a couple tracks and everyone discusses the differences between the two. Or you could post something like a vocal track and express your feelings about it and we could reply with some educated advice or opinions.

Just for the record, I've heard great recordings on a Neve and I've heard really crappy recordings on them. Neither had a "Neve" quality to them. One just sounded great and the other one didn't.

I look forward to your next post and I hope that you take my advice. I think you'll find that this forum is a good place for information and knowledge. You just need to alter your approach a bit.

Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 11:36 am

I don’t understand why in this music, dynamics take a backseat to loudness. The song had lots of spots where proper dynamics could have made the song more dramatic….. I will never understand this new trend in mastering and production. It just makes the whole song/cd boring and fatiguing.

Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 12:11 pm

nihility0000 wrote:

I don’t understand why in this music, dynamics take a backseat to loudness. The song had lots of spots where proper dynamics could have made the song more dramatic….. I will never understand this new trend in mastering and production. It just makes the whole song/cd boring and fatiguing.

aha, something interesting to discuss. havent listened to this track, but I am now very curious to see (hear) what you are talking about.
What particular time spots are you referring to? Can you define more clearly what you mean by "proper dynamics"? What is it he did "wrong", and do you have a theory on why he did it that way?

I guess there are still alot of things I think I know when people talk about them, but only one way to be sure.

*tapping foot*...........
that's the sound of me waiting Cool

Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 1:12 pm

saemskin:

Well first off he didn’t do anything “wrong”, it’s just all a matter of taste.
There are spots in the song that could be brought down, especially in the “riffs” around 1:39 and 2:00. The beginning, IMO, could be gradually brought up in volume so that when the hits come in it’s maxed out. The only instrument that does this is the drums (hi-hats as they gradually go from closed hits to open smashes signifying a change in dynamics from probably pianissimo to fortissimo).

The song is also, so compressed that even when the guitars should take precedence over the song they actually lay lower than the drums. Because of this, it makes the verses indistinguishable from the choruses or “hooks”.
You would never ever compress classical style music because it would destroy all dynamics, which actually makes this genre of music so dramatic. I think this thought process should be placed, at least a little bit, into newer music.

This is why the opinion that recording engineers and mastering engineers should be musicians themselves is so valid.

Then again this is only my opinion.

Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 8:52 pm

nihility0000 wrote:

saemskin:
Well first off he didn’t do anything “wrong”, it’s just all a matter of taste.
.

That's what I meant by "wrong", not wrong in the objective sense of the word, but in your opinon it was wrong. That make any sense? Words, bah....

nihility0000 wrote:

There are spots in the song that could be brought down, especially in the “riffs” around 1:39 and 2:00. The beginning, IMO, could be gradually brought up in volume so that when the hits come in it’s maxed out. The only instrument that does this is the drums (hi-hats as they gradually go from closed hits to open smashes signifying a change in dynamics from probably pianissimo to fortissimo).

The song is also, so compressed that even when the guitars should take precedence over the song they actually lay lower than the drums. Because of this, it makes the verses indistinguishable from the choruses or “hooks”.
You would never ever compress classical style music because it would destroy all dynamics, which actually makes this genre of music so dramatic. I think this thought process should be placed, at least a little bit, into newer music.

This is why the opinion that recording engineers and mastering engineers should be musicians themselves is so valid.

Then again this is only my opinion.

ok. I listened to this on my headphones and at times the lead was hard right and the rhythm was hard left. Is that (pardon the word again) right? I almost always find it rather confusing when direct parts of the songs are hard panned, and not as an effect.

I'm having a hard time seeing the dynamic problems as you say, but that my ears' problem. I do think this song has some balance problems, and the 2nd time through my ears are feeling tender from that blaring guitar. Seems to be lacking the "punch" a rock song should have, but then again my soundcard has a broken output so outside my DAW I have to listen to stuff on headphones, so that may be why.

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