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Everybody,

What are some of your favorite recording tricks/peices of gear. You know! those indespensible units or techniques that let you get sounds otherwise unobtainable.
Here's some of mine:

1. Royer R-121 w/ pre-Amps modid to get lower impedence (a LOT cheaper to mod my existing pre's than to buy new ones with this feature).
2. Little Labs IBP phase alignment tool...I'm ALERGIC to phase. os this is just what the docter ordered.
3. SPL Transient Designer...been hip to these for about three years (sadly the secret is out).
4. Dolby Strech (for vocals)...STILL nothing like it.

What secrets have YOU found

Comments

anonymous Tue, 07/16/2002 - 13:45

Hi recorder man,
I use your 2 & 3
Bear,SPL transient designer is a dynamic processor that has 2 controls only to shape the attack and the realease of a sound but it does things you cannot achieve with anything else.
I have a K&H UE 400 (mastering Eq from the 70's) that I love .You can put (almost) as much bass as you want without "rumble"(each band has access to all the freqs with a variable Q) So you could go +48 if you wanted to which is not very common amongst analog eq's..

anonymous Wed, 07/17/2002 - 04:22

i get fantastic guitar sounds by running my guitar signal thru a joe meek vc6q (opti compresser cranked pretty high)....before it hits my guitar amp.

you just get a warmer sound with all the sustain you could ever hope for

a clean guitar sound that has power, sustain, and warmth can be hard to nail...the meek works wonders for guitar

RecorderMan Wed, 07/17/2002 - 06:45

Originally posted by Bear's Gone Fission:

SPL Transient Designer...been hip to these for about three years (sadly the secret is out).

The secret but not the full story. I've heard these mentioned occaisionally, but not enough to give me a real idea on how cool they are. Care to let some cats out?

Bear

Hey Bear!
I don't own one yet...but have been using them off and on for a few years...and I'm going to get one this year.
If you get drum tracks where all the life has been compressed out of it you can add new life with the Transient Designer. It allows you to expand the attack, and leave the tail alone. You can make toms sustain longer...and again get the attack to bite.

OH...I forgot.
5. ReAmp
6. Polarity Clicker
7. Cable tester (don't use it as much as I should....used to be whenever I would pull a bunch of cables for a large tracking session, I'd spend just a minute and run all the cables by this...eliminating a cable or two and saving invuable time later.
8. SMPTE calclator/stopwatch ( w/ the advent and use of Pro Tools, I really rarely use this...but a couple of times a year it pays for itself in time savings...before digital it was invaluable in sorting through the maze of offsets on huge projects-mostly, but not all, film).
9. How could I forget! My Yamaha Sub-woofer (for NS10's where-ever I go. Takes the most ubiquitous monitor sytem known [ns10's], and makes them a full range system that everybody in the room can relate too - read: no learning curve, because everybody knows (or should) gow ns10's sound-all for the cost of one ns10.
10. PACKING BLANKETS. You can get a dozen for a little over a hundred dollars. Hang them on mic stands, whatever...a dozen poor man's goboe's whever you are.
-whew :w:

anonymous Wed, 07/17/2002 - 12:47

is there anything like the spl transient designer in software land?

It exist as a plug in on the scope system.On logic audio there's a plug in called enveloper I think that does about the same kind of treatment only not as good .I don't know if it exist as VST Plug in ,I know the SPL deesser (a great hardware deesser) exist as VST.

mig27 Thu, 07/18/2002 - 00:26

SPL transient designer as vst-plugin?
yes - and it's free on top of that.

the plugin is called DOMINION and can be found [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.digitalf…"]here[/]="http://www.digitalf…"]here[/].

also check out their compressor ENDORPHIN...
really nice stuff, taking into account it's freeware.

other topic:

the very best EQ I ever came across is a piece of vintage german broadcast equipment: siemens W295b.
pretty easy layout - solid state class A.

the great thing about this unit is that you can for example dial in +12 dB trebles on vocals without getting any harshness at all - just silky smooth top end.

sometimes, these babies can be found at eBay. they usually go for 250.00 $ - which is nothing compared to their in-use value.

best of luck.

michael

RecorderMan Mon, 07/22/2002 - 07:53

[QUOTE]Originally posted by sdevino:
[QB]Sold all my outboard gear and go straight in now.
(love that 192 i/o )

I'm going back the other way. Spent most oif the last three years doing mostly (if not all) "in the box" productions. When I can it as right as I can analog style. The less I use digital processing the better it sounds.
I'n anotherb year, I'll probably be swingin' back toeards more all digital. It's not really there yet. It's really, really good...but I'd mix on an 8068 in a heartbeat. And that's the problem for me rightnow. The Mix. I actually Like digital as a recording medium for lots of things right now. But I do not enjoy mixing in a daw...it's like going to the dentist...not going to disneyland.

BUT. That attitude (at least as far as advice) can be taken as a little ellitist (spellcheck!!!).
I realize that probably more than a few of you only have daw's. So do not be disheartened by my remarks...take steve's advice more to heart in that case. I can and will only speak from personal experiance (no parrot here). And my experiance sends me to an analog mix situation when the budget allows. It's just easier...who likes to work hard?

sdevino Mon, 07/22/2002 - 18:03

I am all for mixing anyway that floats your boat. Do it which ever way is fun and productive for you. For me with the better converters coming out lately I find I can get the analog sound I want really close in rough mix with few if any plugins during tracking. The great quality of the 48 bit TDM mixer lets me hear what I am tracking.

As for mixing in digital a Pro Control or other large format control surface sure makes it a lot more fun.

I really like to get the sound I want from the source by working guitar and drum setups til I am happy. I always find it more fun and natural to drive the input gain of a mesa boogie head than to try to use a distortion box ... I mean tube comp to get the punch. But then again I am a guitar player and the amp head is where my greatest comfort zone is. To each his/her own.

audiowkstation Sun, 07/28/2002 - 09:16

The strangest thing I ever did...(now you mention micing...or is mic-ing, Mikeing or Mike-ing) How about Microphonic capturing....Talking to myself again Oh well..

This braodband I just got is too friggin' cool folks. 770KBS downloads. WOW.

Ok Ok..The strange....

A fellow had a cassette master that quite franky sounded like ass. I took one of my best microphones (Bruel&Kjaer 4006) and miced the tweeter of my monitor right, then the mid, then the woofer, then the left channel the same way..dropped it to six tracks, eqed them, mixed them to 2 track, and mastered it.

It wazzzz the only way to get some dynamics out of it..Micing at 1/4 inch does increase the dynamics 4 fold...and I had a fine tune filtering on each track. To eleiminate bleed, I used a piece of 2" high density foam.

You think you have done some wild things...bring them on..I got hundreds of stories!!!

Lets start a thread on it..shall we?? If you start, I will repaste it..or we can just start now!!!

This job is fun my Man!

RecorderMan Tue, 07/30/2002 - 08:21

Originally posted by ok computer:
hey R-man?
"Little Labs IBP phase alignment tool". is there a plugin out there somewhere like that thing. or can somebody at least point me in the direction of a VST plugin that lets u dial phase?- not just invert it 180'!
whats that all about, how often is stuff exactly 180' out anyways?

As far as plugins...you can slide tracks. My uses are more for something when you actually track, and are combining mic's. I like comps...I prefer to use around 10-14 tracks for drums including rooms even if I'm using 20 mic's...i.e., if there's top and bottom mic's for the toms and there's three toms that would be 6 mic's...rather than use six tracks (like I see some times....make a decision please!) I comp to a stereo tom pair...everytime I give the mixer more optiona than that they @$#&^ it up in the mix..... so I give them MYopinion on the balance....for good!

....Oh...and as far as tracks being 180 degrees out of phase...I wish all the badly recorded drums tracks out there had snares/ect that were 180 degrees out...then I could just flip polarity. The problem is that it's usually somewhere less than 180 degrees....so it's a choice of lesser evils...the IBP finally gives you an option.
But I myself am not going to buy a half dozen of these to "fix" some other hack job...I'm getting one or two to use on the front end to creatively record even better/newer tones.
:w:

vinniesrs Mon, 07/07/2003 - 22:03

Take an sm 57 put it on the snare bottom, output into a BEHRINGER compressor(attack at about 75ms),(relax, this is the only good use I get out of the thing, but the harshness is perfect for this)Go from the comp into a jcm2000 marshall stack with everything cranked, take 1 ch from the line out, and mic the cab at about 3 ft with a 414. Blend to taste, mix with snare top.

anonymous Mon, 07/07/2003 - 22:26

Speaking of the IBP, how the hell does that thing work? I can think of any mathematical algorithm that isn't a simple delay or phase invert that actually works. I've been brainstorming on it for a couple days and can't come up with anything. Also, you can't simply assign each amplitude value a new value without creating a DC offset. I know you could just high pass the offset off but that doesnt change the fact that algorithm isn't really working! There's several other problems I ran into. I have a friend that could code it in VST if I give him the algorithm so somebody help!

For a simple phase shift, the analog-x sample slide is a sample accurate shifter made for latency compensation. Very useful for say mic'ing a guitar cab with 2 mics.

vinniesrs Tue, 07/08/2003 - 07:18

How about using a pitch shifter With the toms!

I was goofing aroung with a buddy who wanted a huge solo guitar sound. We did a pretty standard setup with his stack, and we just couldn't get that right earth shaking, "hey lookout it's godzilla" kind of sound.
So! I had this pickup from a takamine acoustic lying around, and I wired it up, battery and all, and taped it to the side of his cab. WOW!

All I got from that pickup was pure subsonic rumble! I recorded on two tracks, and then mixed 'em afterwars. I added a little verb to the rumble track.

sheet Tue, 07/08/2003 - 08:08

My fav new thing in mic world is the Audix D6 kick mic.
My fav drum clip is now the D-Vice. No more stage hands bending hoops!

The next fav thing is something that I don't own, but lust over in every session; this 100 year old Steinway grand sitting at Steve Ripley's in Tulsa.

My new fav DAW will be a PC based SAWStudio system with MADI cards to interface with great converters (TBD). There will come a day when Digidesign craps all over the Mac, and has to push the low-end systems and PC based PTHD, because of the Apple/Emagic machine. I saw a live demo, and it does things that my Mac/PTHD system won't do without stopping playback, etc., plus the screen options are great.

ckevperry Tue, 07/08/2003 - 21:30

Okay here is sorta a trick. If you are recording drums to a DAW then take some time and play with the phase of each spot mic in relation to the overheads. If you start nudging mics backwards and forwards by as little as +/- 1 sample... you will likely find a spot for each mic that that fills out and sounds fuller than the original.

RecorderMan Wed, 07/09/2003 - 01:09

IBP....is........An ALL PASS FILTER....

Basically an EQ band pass that has it' HI & Lo above and below audible freq. So your boosting and cutting but is the whole 20-20K and it phases against the source (or that's a bad paraphrase of what Jonathan told me).

1. It works. 2. Jonathan is one of the true geniuses at work in our biz....not long after college he was techin' at the Village Recorder in the '80's...then he became chief tech @ A&M in the late '80's into the 90's (When A&M WAS the best studio on the planet). He's built more than one gizmo that no one else had...lots of custom stuff for people like Bob Clearmountain.
A real inovator.....I love his DI and his IBP (among other things).
If I ever owned a monster room and he'd do it He'd be my cheif engineer.