Lol.....
How would you think those questions could ever be answered to the least bit of correctness?
Must be a little joke of yours..
;-)

I suggest to ask the producer.. and I bet even he would probably not know this, anymore.
Instead of speculating wildly, I rather say that I am not fond of the sound, mix and mastering.

Is this a test? Do you know the answers or are you asking so you can somehow try and duplicate this sound? You're right. Its not a fair question.

One thing does stand out. Theres a LOT of Lexicon on this recording.

hints..

yes it is a test of sorts. like i said take a stab. I figured that with all the high powered recording gurus and ears of deduction there would be some guesses.

first off we are in the vintage section and the year we did this was 1986. "we" is the guy on drums and myself. we were a band of EE (elec engrs) punks playing the indie scene in Toronto.

So yes it is "lexiconned" to death that was our only effect ....but lexicon was way too much $$

damn, I'm on dialup at my winter cabin for NEW YEARS PARTY! which I hope to someday have a CANADIAN RO party!!
Ice fishing and good old scotch!

Being said, I love the excitement brewing on this thread and can't wait to add my two cents once I return to high speed on Monday.

Cheers!

SharkFM, post: 360236 wrote: yes it is a test of sorts. like i said take a stab. I figured that with all the high powered recording gurus and ears of deduction there would be some guesses.

first off we are in the vintage section and the year we did this was 1986. "we" is the guy on drums and myself. we were a band of EE (elec engrs) punks playing the indie scene in Toronto.

So yes it is "lexiconned" to death that was our only effect ....but lexicon was way too much $$

Ah, I'm in. You are Canadian so I'm even happier! I was deep into the business at that time so please don't give it all up until I'm back on Monday night, okay!

Sounds like 1985 ( maybe 83), Yamaha Rev 7 or possibly Alesis ,
Live recording. Soundcraft console. In a club. 2 tracks or 4 tracks sent to 244 porta studio or Fostex :)
Sounds Canadian with a British taste. I can almost hear the Martin Bins. :cool:

I'll try the mics and shoot high... guessing now.

Sennheiser lead. Shure 58 as usual, what else was there for the road. The 441..31??? That spike around 7k that bothered me. I hear it in the lead but it could be part of that processor.

Not 441, the one with the large band around it with holes??? brain freeze They felt cheap to me but suited that voice. Can't nail it...

looked like this:

Its not 'live'.( Love the Martin bins BTW!! Chris)

Were you saying that the effects were NOT Lexicon? Or that was the only effect unit you had?

I love the Rev7's. I have 2 of them still. Verbs for the ages.

Got to be live. Its how most A bands sounded up here back then. Its live.

Edit: Missing 100hz and below in the mix to be studio quality I think. Live Martin bass bins did that in the mix :). Over exaggerated 100 hz with those Martin bins always kills the mix.

Hey Dog, I have an old Yamaha Rev7 RC-7 Remote Control
and manual I just found yesterday. Need that?

What makes you think its not live and man, I hope SharkFM returns. I can't take the suspense in all this!

I got to get better glasses, lol. I just saw he recorded this in 86 rotf! You all must think I'm half baked most of the time. I keep missing text all the time and am refusing to get better glasses. I think its time.

Okay, I took a blind shot at 85 and he said 86 so I'm close. I win !

If I'm off on the portastudio my next quess is a Fostex G16. only because I used to have one and it sounded somewhat similar and that was the time it came out (86) . But I still think its recorded live but in a controlled environment. Maybe a club you were playing in and coming off a Soundcraft live console. It doesn't sound like this was done using very many tracks.

Not bad at all..

Well done, pretty much got it...
This was all ping ponged one track at a time (not live however) on a
4 track Fostex250 cassette portable - still got the thing ($750 or so used)
SM58, AKG 310 and I have an old AKG Dxx? (in the house can't find it) used that on the kick.
Reverb is actually a SRV2000 Roland paid something $800 for it,
Board is a Tangent 1202ax - have that too.
" mastered" onto a Metal cassette and had a buddy (Jerry Wong works sound for Lover boy) put it onto a CD for me a couple of years ago.
Fender Contemporary strat and a red bass git.

OK I used the same gear as above except this time I have Adobe Audition, trial version and played a Korg Triton 88 extreme. I started this track on a whim at 10 pm New year's eve got it done at 4 am. Used a couple of adapters to pump the old Tangent's board headphone feed straight into my PC (no audio interface) so it'a all played essentially live & analog no digital to digital. SM58 for vocals. Check it out.

fmrecords.ca/Newyearsday2011FMX.wma

BTW Happy new year everyone!

PS I ordered a bunch of MXL condensor mics and a Tascam USB interface but UPS has that at the moment.

Chris, I'd love to have that remote and I already downloaded the manual but send it anyway. PM me I'll send you shipping. They simply work better with the remote as far as changing the parameters of the verbs.

Roland effects was my next guess. Too much depth for Alesis for the time. I used to own an SRV2000 and an SDE3000. Still have two SDE1000's.

Shark....are you just messing with us about the MXL mics? If not, why?

Thanks for the fun SharkFM, that made my weekend! Well done for the gear.

Dave, I'll send you both for sure then. It will be a few months wait. The manual is here and remote at my cottage and I won't be back there until spring most likely. I'll PM you when I get them.

Cheers!

thanks for listening.

Back then it kinda drove me nuts that we could not get a "studio" sound. Everything was straight at you even if the tracks were split or doubled to create some sort of stereo effect. The reverb had a stereo output so we lathered it on.

Now I don't think this was really because of the how low end the gear was... we were missing something fundamental on the processing side. I mean at the end of the day you are not creating an authentic "recording" but a simulation or representation that is playing someone's stereo speaker system to con the listener into thinking it's the real thing (a band playing)....and in of course most areas sound better than the real thing (which causes issues for the major studios ->leads to lip synch live performances).

Adobe has the stereo imagery processing and other stereo effects - that is what I suspect it was. Of course there must be 5.1 processors out there to, that take sort of linear tracks and split them up to create audio space (delays, rebounds, reflections etc.) for the listener.

OK - I got a recording pkg from Musician's Friend on sale included the MXL's and I also bought another 2 mics to back that up. These MXL's are rated 5 stars - could be BS. But my sons are recording their band on IPODS and video cameras so this has to be better than that. Just doing some recordings good enough for demos, writing and online sharing. Hope they are going to work out. I have never used a cond mic before.

I think in that case this is what you'll find having never used a condenser before..... At first you're going to think that these are really nice because the upper end is so hyped that everything is going to sound bright and up front. This will wear off soon as you start finding that these tracks dont sit well with each other or play well with tracks recorded with something like an SM57/58. The Shure will seem like it doesnt have the highend at first until your ear becomes trained to hear the BALANCE in the frequencies.....not to say the 57/58 is all that balanced!!!

The work you did on those other recordings sounded fine for your purpose and I'm sure that the new mics will fit the job you ask of them as long as you are not expecting results like you might find in a $3 million dollar room. Unfortunately some of the hype surrounding these lower priced pieces of gear would have you believe this to be what you should expect.

Musicians XXXXiNX as well as most other large scale discount houses simply rate their products by the number of units sold rather than an objective real-time analysis or comparison of quality of sound. So it doesnt surprise me that they are 5stars.....Probably a lot of units sold....everyones on a budget so it only makes sense for people to buy into something they can afford simply on needs vs. quality. I have no quarrel with that philosophy.

Personally,I need about 20K to flesh out a few things here at the ranch.

None of which involve MXL mics. But thats just me.

I've never used MXL mics. Everyone... Are they worth buying? I surfed for pricing, extremely inexpensive and very nice looking worries me. A mic with its own power supply, Mogami cable and a tube for 650.00 kind of tells me you are buying a lot of metal,finish coatings and hype.

Stick with sm58 until you can afford one good one at a time. Am I wrong on MXL guys? I may be negative for no reason?

SharkFM, post: 360362 wrote: Well done, pretty much got it...
This was all ping ponged one track at a time (not live however) on a
4 track Fostex250 cassette portable - still got the thing ($750 or so used)
SM58, AKG 310 and I have an old AKG Dxx? (in the house can't find it) used that on the kick.
Reverb is actually a SRV2000 Roland paid something $800 for it,
Board is a Tangent 1202ax - have that too.
" mastered" onto a Metal cassette and had a buddy (Jerry Wong works sound for Lover boy) put it onto a CD for me a couple of years ago.
Fender Contemporary strat and a red bass git.

OK I used the same gear as above except this time I have Adobe Audition, trial version and played a Korg Triton 88 extreme. I started this track on a whim at 10 pm New year's eve got it done at 4 am. Used a couple of adapters to pump the old Tangent's board headphone feed straight into my PC (no audio interface) so it'a all played essentially live & analog no digital to digital. SM58 for vocals. Check it out.

http://fmrecords.ca/Newyearsday2011FMX.wma

BTW Happy new year everyone!

PS I ordered a bunch of MXL condensor mics and a Tascam USB interface but UPS has that at the moment.

And no cigar from the contenders lol! That was fun.

MXL's are scary cheap. And Chinese of course. But... they seem to be getting happy reviews. comes down to specs s/n is a big one as is the dynamics i suppose how the mic responds to changes, you guys would know more about that than i. the freq response i mean you can eq that and save the map.

MXL mic sound.
members.cox.net/plane/MXL990.mp3

The MXL microphones are very brittle and you have to be very careful NOT to push them at all. The 2001 was decent enough for what it was but the V69 was disappointing. The Genesis tube is their "flagship" microphone but without hearing it I would not give it any stamp of approval. Most happy reviewers of the MXL mic's have not used any top level microphones at all.

I used an MXL 3000 w/ some success as my first "vocal mic".
It did its job - really well on one source, but I've since learned that was the SOURCE that made it sound good.
I never use it at all anymore.

I also have a pair of MXL 603s (SDC) that do pretty well for their cost.
They only come out for spot SDCs, or when I MUST track two acoustic guitars in stereo simultaneously (almost never).

For the price, I can't say they do a bad job. I can't say they do a great job either.
That's all I can say, to be fair.

Hi - just got a box from UPS with the bunch of MXL mics. lol the MXL is screened in that font you see used all over Chinese made stuff. but nowhere is Made in China displayed. They do a good job of hiding that.. Just plugged them in hit the phantom power switch they work & seem to sound OK. For what were are doing I think they'll be fine.

The biggest surprise is the Mogami cable I got for guitar. Sounds so good. Such low level signals I guess low capacitance and good shielding is a big deal. Now I have to get a couple of decent mic cables too.

First recording

Basically plopped one pencil mike on a chair in front of the drums and one on a stand at the Traynor YCS50 git amp. Hooked up to the TASCAM 144 hit phantom power and the kids started to roll.

Also took a line in from the board but that came in added to the L or R channel blasted out by the guitar track i think. SPL's are up there. To me the mics sounded great, very much alive and did the job perfectly for what we need.

Just a quick practice tonite, they are playing a Pep Rally tomorrow so wrote a song for that. We hastily recorded a couple of vocal tracks to try out the MXL 990. Sounded awesome !! No pitch correction. Here's a quick grind core sample - Attack Attack's stick stickly....

http://www.fmrecords.ca/DWSDdemomxl.wma

Hi, ..
The mic, well, it survived..lol...but I can't tell exactly what is the MXL mic and what is lines or second mic.
If it is not the .wma file format that is degradíng the sound, that what I think is comming from the MXL seems rather liveless and dull.
But this cannot be judged with a .wma that pumps up and down.
Would you like to provide a chunk of the recording as .wav, w/o any FX and MXL mic solo?
Maybe you want to try an ever so much praised U87 or similar for direct comparison.

exclusively MXL

Wildly ad-hoc and connect this to that and recorded like 4 songs all one take, before my kids badn headed to the school for a gig. Anyway had to learn REAPER which is an amazingly good program blows the doors off Adobe that is for sure.

MXL Mics sick drum sound. Need to roll off the bass/subsonic? for the vocals and guitar creating distortion, levels were a bit of a disaster. Have new mixer coming in today should be more controlled next time.

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://dwsd.bandcam…"]Athletic Events For The Visually Impaired | Dare We Say Die[/]="http://dwsd.bandcam…"]Athletic Events For The Visually Impaired | Dare We Say Die[/]

I like Reaper quite a bit, but it is definitely not as complete of a DAW as Audition 2 or 3. However, the tools Reaper doesn't have you might not be ready for anyway. I often use Reaper to track and then import into Audition for mixing and production, but I highly recommend Reaper none the less.

Audition is very bloated off-shore written code just like the video stuff I use. The Prem Elements crashes every 5 minutes it's nuts. Audition just crashed a few times.

Reaper rips really impressed everything is there it's more hidden (initially) and compartmentalized. Better tone than Audition.

Well I'll have to disagree. Reaper definitely has no wav editor nor does it have spectral editing nor does it have mastering tools. So your "bloat" are tools that I utilize every day. And tone? I have to chuckle at that one. Never the less, Reaper is very streamlined and if what you require is primarily a digital mixer gui then it is perfect for you. Now if you find Adobe products crashing then that is on your computer and you for not doing any audio streamlining. Audition is very very stable and I haven't had a crash since 1.5 which was essentially CoolEdit Pro.

And serious video is even more computer intensive so that also requires tweaking the machine and having good enough specs to begin with.

I was a programmer and have a high performance industrial software company automationX.ca. Actually industrial controls is kinda similar to recording - tracks are like instrument loops, we operate in real time and record the plant for historization/diagnostics - except with like 2000 "tracks"!

Anyway Adobe just has a clunkiness to it, my son who is 16 gave it the bloated tag, I have to agree. Reaper looks a lot more like our code in it's structure and execution, so to me feels better. Runs like a hot damn too. With plugged in Antares autotune worked great.

This track came out pretty cool basically a live recording

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://dwsd.bandcam…"]Stick Stickly (cover) | Dare We Say Die[/]="http://dwsd.bandcam…"]Stick Stickly (cover) | Dare We Say Die[/]

Again, Reaper is quite nice. I use it often to record sessions. It's after the mixdown when I want to edit, finalize etc where it becomes inadequate.

audiokid, post: 360422, member: 1 wrote:
Stick with sm58 until you can afford one good one at a time. Am I wrong on MXL guys? I may be negative for no reason?

You can't beat simplicity. SM58 will always be the king of basic diverse use, methinks!
I've always strayed from most anything self-powered in Microphones. That concept maybe tends to come from ego-centric production...?