51m0n

Ive used ER20s for over 4 years now. It took a long time to get completely used to them, and to be honest I think I need to replace mine now, they dont seem quite as effective as they once were (especially when I am gurning like a Neanderthal). Love them though, they are superb. Loud music always sounds better with them in. Rehearsals are a breeze and I walk out feeling as fresh as a daisy.

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1366625454' post='2054908'] Ok, stupid question ahoy...! The stems for this track include stereo pairs of some instruments - each of the guitars, for example, has a left and right channel stem. I've never encountered this before (I've led a sheltered life...). Looking at the waveforms, each L/R pair seems almost identical. So... if I sum them I'm assuming I might encounter nasty phasing issues (cancellation, weird tonal changes, etc). So what's the advantage of using stereo signals for these instruments? Or rather - is there any significant disadvantage to using just one of the channels as a mono signal? I've always assumed that mono is best and stereo should only be used in rare instances when the instrument really requires it (a wide pad sound, for example), but of course I could be very wrong. [/quote] They may have recorded them with a stereo pair of SDCs (or whatever). There is a good argument fo rkeeping things as point sources rather than stereo spread. I have never experienced a single guitar as a stereo experience really, other than being over there (points to an specific part of the stage), same with piano, yet we often get stereo outputs from digital pianos, because 'thats how the player hears it', which is totally irrelevant in a mix, because the audience hears a piano over there (points to other side of stage) not spread across the whole stage. However counter to this is the entire argument of double tracking guitars, and spreading them as wide as possible, - but this works because the guitarist has relatively poor time and the fluctuations in his playing add to the sense of big wide guitars, and lots and lots of them. So really its a judgement call - how you want to make this sound. You could pick the channel that sounds best , you could mix both to a very slightly spread point (phase issues be damned), you could just spread them as wide as you can, wider than LR even. You choose...

BBC white papers are your friend. They ahve done exhaustive research into the most effective bang for the buck sound attenuation with different partition wall designs. You must decouple walls from floors everywhere, and ceiling too. You absolutely do need to caulk everything, and to take into accoun that you need air from somewhere. The number of layers and even more inportantly the number of spaced layers (never three, two is significantly better) is hugely important. As is using different density/thickness material (plasterboard and soundboard layers together v. effective) for each layer (each layer has different resonances then). Always always fill any voids with insulation, definitely RW30 or RW45 (again investigate those white papers) as otherwise you get lots of resonant pockets in the walls which carry sound. Surface mount all the sockets, because anything that involves a hole in your wall lets air through. Do make a proper sound deadened channel for air into and out of the room or you will struggle with over heating. Doors are the biggest loss poitn, and good sound proof doors are mega expensive. A solid soor with a couple of layers of plasterboard/sounboard on each side over a layer of sound matting will get you a long way if they seal correctly when closed. Two of these a few feet apart and you are as good as you can get without spending silly sill money. You could consider a floated floor (on tennis balls) it works....

Any time you are boosting more than a few dB with an eq its going to start sounding a bit 'obvious' that something ahs been done to it that istn altogether natural. Especially with the kinds of eq in most basses. I run active basses, I tend to keep them very flat on the bass, and use the amp for eq-ing live. Sometimes a song requires a very different pup selection (like lots of bridge) and then I may use the onboard pre to bring in a little more low end to compensate, but generally I dotn want to fiddle to much with all of that live, I just want a sound thats great and then alter it with how I play the thing more than anything else.

Still ahead of me, note the deadline is 15 of [b]May[/b] this time (so you still have time, but do get on with it)... Largely cos I'm busy and cant enter this if I'm also doing all the uploading and admin side and I only have a month to do it all. It just uses up all my 'spare' time.

[quote name='skychaserhigh' timestamp='1366116556' post='2048475'] Given your location , wouldn't it be easier to just spend a day at Bass Direct ? You can try out a vast array of cabs , apart from Barefaced , and if you make a decision you could buy it and take it home with you. [/quote] +10 Give Mark a call ask him whats in, whats coming in, let him tell you when would be a good time. Although that wouldnt be with BF at least you might be able to rule some out and then go back?

Normalizing them ccompletely destroys the point of getting the average apparent level of all the mixes the same.

[quote name='Twigman' timestamp='1365771194' post='2044241'] Am i right in thinking that the Voxengo SPAN only meters the peak with the lights, if so what is the horizontal red bar? Is that a measure of headroom? The RMS figure displayed to the lower left of the UI always seems lower than the metered lights so i assume the meter shows peak rather than RMS. Just trying to be sure I am not going to render to too high a level. [/quote] Not sure what the horizintal red bar is off the top of my head. However I can confirm (because I just tested in series with a K-meter) that you need to base you level on the solid green bars, and get them up to 0dB. Start off set at K14, then once you think you are there you can try setting it to K14C, which magnifies the level over 0dB. If you loop the hottest section of your track you can then check you never quite go over 0dB if you want to be super accurate. The RMS figure is not relevant in this case, just head straight for that 0dB mark (which is about -14dBFs) using the green bar in the meters and you are set...

[quote name='Mog' timestamp='1365759663' post='2043945'] I really hate the mid-boost/inverted smiley tone. Its a nightmare to work with from a desk and sounds more like a baritone telecaster than a bass. I'm generally fine with most bass tones as long as theres some sort of low end definition. [/quote] Pre Eq is your friend

K meters do average first and foremost, the peak is actually not really relevant to k metering, the system ininherently should have enough headroom.

I do know people who are so specialised in one or theother field though that they cant credibly cross between them at all, and I think this is very much the norm. I cant do jazz at all, never ever got on with any aspect of it

Anyone to my mind suggesting Flea can't groove is in no place to make comment on the subject really, they clearly havent listened to enough of his output to make a decent appraisal. For me this is pure groove, and one of the most exceptionally well composed bass lines I can cite, it exudes groove, and musical beauty:- [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XcN12uVHeQ[/media]

To suggest that heavier stuff doesnt have this same sense of a skip to it (when its done really well) is absurd. This is damn heavy, yet grooves as hard as you like:- [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKPicUnsPPg[/media]

Groove is technique agnostic, its utterly irrelevant what you use to make the notes, fingers, pick, thumb, drum sticks taped to your fingers, that is a part of the tone/timbre, not the feel. Slapping is over used as a cheap gimmick to attempt to bring something 'funky', but has nothing to do with funk in and of itself. In order for it to be funky it has to be done with a funk groove:- [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2B0FBdzGis[/media]

I think its very rare to find a name bassist who has made their name playing in multipl egenres. By name bassist I'm happy to only mean name in the sense that they are successful as bassists and a name amongst bassists, rather than the world as a whole. One name player that instantly springs to mind as a guy who can play funk or rock or jazz is Stu Hamm. Another guy who can play across genres with what appears to my ears to be absolute conviction is Ed Friedland, his take on reggae is utterly awesome, completely 'convincing'. IMO groove is a perfectly adequate term. It is the pulse in the music, the type of groove may be funk or rock or jazz, or folk or whatever. Personally I immersed myself in funk for years to get a deeper understanding of it inherently. Result is I make a very decent stab at funk - or so I have been told on enough occasions by enough musicians and punters to believe there must be some truth in it anyway. Reggae came for me out of funk strangely, playing long slow funky jams everyo so often they would morph into a very definite reggae feel, its a feel its how you place the pairings of notes that make the pulse the 'skip' or swing to a feel. I started out as a rubbish musician, like everyone does, and then learnt to appreciate and then understand what seperates different types of groove, and which ones are more normally associated with which genres. This is part of becoming a better musician. Can I play 'heavy' with a pumping straight 8ths feel? Of course I can, can I subvert that feel everso slightly by pushing the 'and' instead of the down beat? Well yes, I'm a bass player, I manipulate the pulse, its my job. Do that hard enough and you have a classic disco feel.

[quote name='spacey' timestamp='1365680913' post='2042736'] I like to hear the tone of a bass guitar on recordings, any tone, I have heard no end of warm compressed organ pedal type bass sounds on recent recordings, giving little reason to use a bass guitar at all, why not just use the keyboard ? The bass guitar is an instrument of wide tone, it can clank, buzz, clink, scoop or smooth. The art of recording the bass is a long forgotton art. Lazy studios use DI and software emulaters and leave the bass sounding like a set of organ pedals. High End Studios once upon a time would have a Bass booth where Tin sheets were on the walls and a Mic in the booth, this would be mixed with a DI signal for low end harmonics, the results were those famous bass tones of yesteryear that set players apart. Tones were as important as technic is setting carears, each player had a unique way of getting the tone to recording. Those skills are lost, one bass player sounds just like the last and the one before that, warm muddy dull compressed strangeled tones of what are rich and diverse instruments. To hear a new recording where you can jump and and say that is a bass guitar, it is a breath of fresh air in todays lazy recording sounds. My ten pence ! [/quote] Never heard of a bass booth with tin on the walls. What studio was this, who designed it, what recordings is it on? Plenty of places still have booths, they get used for whatever you need, many fantastic records were made with the band in one live space, even quite recently, spill doesnt matter if it sounds great and the sounds you are capturing work perfectly together. I can think of a tonne of recordings I've heard, and mixed, recently without a bass sound like you have described. Many of them were DI'ed - there is nothing at all wrong with DI'ing a bass, you need to be a decent engineer to track a good sound, a decent engineer to mix a good sound and a decent bassist, with perfectly functioning kit and great playing to lay down a decent track. Without all of the above the bass will end up buried in the mix always. Then you need a producer with a mind for a bass tone that isnt purely there to support the bottom of the track, and in todays world there is so little space on chart music for the bass that it doesnt happen often. One Pink track off her last album had 150 tracks on it including something like 4 or 5 kick drum sounds used in different bits of the song - personally I cant tell that that is all going on, go figure. The last real pop smash hit for me with a really great stand out bass tone moment was Cee Lo Greene's Forget You, and from what I heard the only bits that were actual bass guitar were the little stand out fills Just for a moment bear in mind that it is far harder to mix a 150 track song all recorded as overdubs and sequenced and make a coherent record from it than it is to track a band together and mix that IME and IMO. However, it is far cheaper to have a facility that cannot cope with the band at once thing than one that can. [quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1365682514' post='2042776'] You would hate the way I get my sounds and how I record. But I would like to think the music speaks for itself. I wonder what you think of this as a bass tone? I'm intereted to know [url="http://kitrichardson.bandcamp.com/track/you-always-did"]http://kitrichardson.../you-always-did[/url] [/quote] Rather tasty that - if I do say so

I listened to all of them. I'd be more than happy with any of them from a mix perspecctive. I've had to work with a hell of a lot worse thats for sure Which one is 'best' is entirely dependant on the rest of the mix/instrumetnation/song. One is best for one bassist on a specific bass on a certain day for a certain piece of music, but one persons warm Avalon is another persons rather lacking in top end definition and bite Avalon for this track, I would rather have the Tube-tech sound for this (for instance). The Avalon has more low mid in this, but lacks a rather tasty groinky mid range that some of the others show, and to my ears is smoothing the transients in a way that may not be what I'd want. Also of note is the Avalon has pretty limited EQ, I dont know if he has set these all flat: the Avalon tone is set on 5 which is 'something' not sure what, but from having played with Alex's Avalon into his uber rigs I'm not at all convinced that that is particualrly flat. So any of the rest of them that have even a two band eq could add that bit of warmth in if you needed it.. In contrast the TubeTech has a 3 band eq (mid sweep) and a very very very nice optical compressor - dont know if or how those have been used in this case either. Making it significantly more versatile. Its all good kit though...

[quote name='Rimskidog' timestamp='1365631715' post='2042248'] and fwiw its entirely true about the wall covering. Though if anyone asks he always says it's mongolian monkey hair... another interesting fact is that the 1176 on the bottom left of your pic (which fwiw was used on bass in Master of Puppets) now resides in my rack... ;-) [/quote] OK seriously sad kit envy now, just listened to M of P yesterday after seeing the piccie of you and MW, damn thats a great sounding album, so much better than the rest of their stuff (Black album sounds pretty good to be fair, but the songs weren't the same genre anymore by then). And the kick drum, on M of P actually has balls (shock horror!)....

[quote name='Rimskidog' timestamp='1365631667' post='2042244'] That's Wireworld 2 in your pic. The pic from mine is wireworld 3! [/quote] Yeah I think he laid off the weed matting in WW3 a bit didnt he? Loved the lateral thinking behind using that particular version of the matting though, and the final look, inspired!

Squeal like a pig boy wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

[quote name='Chrismanbass' timestamp='1365607120' post='2041738'] it helps with my playing as well i've found i have a better sense of the whole band now and not just playing bass [/quote] Yes. Result, well chuffed you've found this to be the case!

New record for fastest mix has been set, I've already had one finished candidate, consider my gast truly flabbered - clearly I should have chosen Country a while ago!

Favourite thing about Wireworld (Wagener's gaff) is he used weed matting to cover his absorption, and it looks ace - who would have thought? That and the mountain of fantastic kit obviously!

I couldnt be 100% sure listening at work (my cans here are ancient and really show signs of the wear and tear they've had being perched on my bonce 8 hrs a day 5 days a week for 9 years! I'll try and get a chance to listen on something better as soon as I can...

Do yourselves a favour (all of you in need of good cheap cans) and check out the Studiospares M1000 closed back cans:- http://www.studiospares.com/headphones-studio/studiospares-m1000-headphones/invt/448760 They are currently £65 but quite often they have offers on. They are really excellent if you dont want to hear whats going on outside the cans (or people outside them to hear what you're listening to - so are excellent tools for recording - and they sound excellent, they certainly cope with my 5 string without any problems at all..... Highly recommended....