Is your OS up to date(I don't know Apple.)?

Are all your device drivers up to date?

Is your recording software up to date?

Are your computer/device/software settings correct(As recommended by the manufacturers) or by experiment(As suggested by the manufacturers) - buffers, etc?

How much RAM do you have?

How many tracks are you trying to mix at once?

You mention "warming". What don't you like about your tracks now? What have you tried to warm them?

What is your recording space like? How does the space, itself, sound..? Could you use some room treatment?

And I think you mean DI, or, "direct input", as in your bass guitar cable goes directly into a preamp or mixer "line input", as opposed to putting a mic in front of the bass amp speaker.

The "jargon" and the knowledge will come. This should be one of the great forums to help get a handle on things...

Teddy G.

My computer software and drivers are up to date:

Mac OS 10.4
512 MB SDRAM
1 GHz
Deck 3.5

I have no problems recording the material, I am able to record 4 tracks into deck at once without any skipping. My guitar, vocal and bass amps have direct lines out that plug into the m-audio quattro. I've reallly stumbled into a nice playing/recording space that is perhaps 70 sq ft. I found that my deck app has problems mixing down more than 7 tracks without getting a garbling effect. This is probably human error but I have no idea how to solve it. More RAM?

"The warm sound"
It's the difference between cds and vinyl. I don't consider myself a critical ear for music, but analog just sounds like the music is born from one giant velvet animal. I want all the instruments to sound like they are orange - when right now the guitar is neon red, the bass is dark blue and the drums are black and white. I've read of folks mixing down digital recordings to tape and back to digital just to get that sound. Perhaps I need to run the 4 tracks through some kind of compression device....

Walters has reincarnated more times than should be allowed. :?

Have you tried using Garage band from Apple. It's not the best but its also not the worst. There may be some plugins that can warm up your recording.

Just a general / personal observation here - Perhaps we need to look into mics that don't have the boosted high end thats needed to get sufficient high end back on playback of analog systems.

Call me crazy, but I have often thought that perhaps digital tend to have that quality because we haven't stopped using the gear that was designed with the shortfalls of the analog medium in mind. We complain about this yet every mic that comes out seems to have a hyped up top end.

TheArchitect wrote: Just a general / personal observation here - Perhaps we need to look into mics that don't have the boosted high end thats needed to get sufficient high end back on playback of analog systems.

Call me crazy, but I have often thought that perhaps digital tend to have that quality because we haven't stopped using the gear that was designed with the shortfalls of the analog medium in mind. We complain about this yet every mic that comes out seems to have a hyped up top end.

I certainly won't call you crazy, and I'm absolutely positive that you aren't alone in your line of thought in this matter. However, 57's and 58's, while they have a bit of presence boost don't necessarily fit this thought pattern (which I happen to share with you...he's not exactly using C12VR's and cheap asian super-sibilant-spit-enhancers).

Terrytoledo,
I think perhaps we might be better able to make a diagnosis and recommend a course of action if we could hear a snippet of a recording that you feel could use some "warmth". The best solution may be as simple as reworking your bass recording chain...but we really won't know until we hear something.

Cheers,
Chris

Here is my web site with streaming mp3s.

http://www.terrytoledo.com/music/index.php?p=Sid%20%28Demos%29&PHPSESSID=a9e46d82e759d8775060014ef027189e
"Sid (Demos)" - This will be the CD I'm working on. The song Colorado is my first draft....

I'm not happy with the acoustic sound yet. My Martin sounds so much better than it does on this recording. Perhaps I need more experience using equalizers. The app that I am using (Bias Deck) has a nice eq. I've used it for two years but still feel like I'm not using it correctly.

You might notice the garble on the acoustic guitar at the end of the song. The track is fine by itself, but after mixing it down, it gets distorted. This is more of a problem than the digital sound I guess...

I have an unorthadox solution for your warming. Look around for and audio related thing that is old or has tubes. For example maybe an old hifi system or a crappy cassette deck. Run your audio out of you computer to tape on one of these oldschool devices and the (kepping the levels as flat and 0db as possible) record back onto computer. Run a noisgate plugin over the track (for tape hiss) and you lauhging (so to speak). Some producers just have tubes all over the place even if it is modern gear.
be creative thats what i do.
tim.

I downloaded and listened to Colorado today. Have you re-worked it since your posting in July?

Is that a bass guitar that is so low in frequency it is almost subsonic? Although it doesn't sound distrorted on its own, whenever it is playing it seems to be introducing distortion elsewhere, perhaps by clipping or intermodulation.

Also, with frequencies that low in the recording distortion may well be being introduced by whatever you are listening on.

The PSP Vintage Warmer VST plug-in can come in handy in these situations.