BigRedX

Thanks for all the info. I suspect that as DSP gets even cheaper, more powerful and more efficient, at some point it will be practical to put enough of them into a multi-effects unit so that we won't have to rely on tricks to get around the problem of patch-switching latency.

Great looking rig even if only a tenth of it is for anything more than show. It's a pity then that the music the band makes is so depressingly ordinary.

[quote name='bigjimmyc' timestamp='1502991310' post='3354939'] Great input so far, cheers. In my head the noise comes from the floor. Is that correct? Either way, noise in the room can be absorbed (not reflected) at the walls and ceiling, or is that a fallacy? [/quote] You have got two different things here. One is isolating the the room so that outside noise doesn't get in (and also so noise generated inside doesn't get out). That is soundproofing. The other is treating the inside of the room for directional noise generated within the room itself. This is acoustic treatment. Outside noise comes from everywhere, and will get into your building through the least insulated part. Generally low frequency rumble is transmitted through materials so will appear to be coming through the floor. However simply uncoupling the floor inside will not be enough if you don't also uncouple the walls and ceiling. Hence the room within a room. Bass traps are designed to absorb standing waves generated by the speakers inside the room so that they don't reflect off the internal surfaces of the room. Generally you find them situated on the wall the speakers point at plus corners of the wall and even the ceiling. If you don't absorb these waves they reflect back off the walls and will create peaks and troughs at different frequencies at different point in the room as the reflected sound waves add and subtract from the direct waves. This means that you get a different frequency balance at different points in the room.

Bass traps have zero impact on noise coming in from outside. They are designed to solve acoustic problems with standing waves within the room itself. To prevent noise from outside, especially low frequency, you need to acoustically decouple the inside of the structure from its surroundings. That normally means a floating floor and a room within a room.

What is the gig you are going to see? And how much would you be getting paid for the gig you are supposed to be playing? Also from my reading of the OP it sound's like this is an originals band. IME getting Deps for an originals band is a lot harder than getting one for a covers band. For a start absolutely none of the songs are likely to be familiar to the Dep. Secondly there is also the question of image. I've been involved with using dips twice in The Terrortones and neither occasion was brilliant in terms of presenting the band properly. On the first occasion it was myself that needed to replaced. We had landed a very good support at the last minute, but I was already booked for a gig with my other (covers) band and they absolutely refused to allow me to use a Dep for them. Luckily we were able to find someone in time, and while he did a perfectly adequate job musically, from the videos I have seen of the gig, visually (and the Terrortones were a VERY visual band) he wasn't very good. He wasn't really dressed appropriately - we didn't expect him to go the full leather/PVC Psychobilly haircut look but he couldn't even do: "wear black, no trainers and obvious band or brand logos". On the second occasion we needed a drummer for a long distance gig. This time we had someone from another Rockabilly band so at least he had the look right. And musically he managed to get nearly all the tricky bits nailed. Unfortunately he managed to mess up the single twice (we played it again as an encore because we'd not done a particularly good job of it in the set) in two different and very noticeable ways. Neither gig went well enough for us to be asked back and one potentially lost us a lot of good support slots at decent venues. Also on both occasions we had seriously modify the set and drop all the newer songs in favour of ones we already had recordings of so that our Deps would be able to learn them. We were lucky in that we had a lot of songs recorded, but not every originals band unless they are well established is going to have that luxury.

Do you really need 2Ω capability? AFAICS it's main use is to run more than 2 cabs without needing special series/parallel leads making up and with high sensitivity cabs like Barefaced is this really necessary? OTOH an adjustable (or fixed at around 35Hz like the Microthumpinator) HPF is an absolute must.

What's all this 30GBP nonsense? Is there something wrong with the good old "£" sign?

[quote name='EBS_freak' timestamp='1502797969' post='3353586'] It's been done. Flopped. [/quote] Really? Do you have details? Aren't most lightweight powered PA cabs made form composite materials these days?

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1502782448' post='3353411'] I thought it was 7/8? [/quote] I think that's lost on the post-decimals

I hadn't considered latency when switching between patches, since my BassPod XT sounds instantaneous, so thought that was a thing of the past. I used to own a Peavey BassFex in the 90s which was a fantastic unit for features but the pause between switching from one patch to another made it completely unusable for mid-song switching as the whole unit went silent for about half a second when you elected the new patch. Good news that there's way around it. What I meant was latency when using external effects loops as the signal obviously need to be converted back to analog for the send and re-digitised on the return. The effect I'm intending to use it with is one that need to be in series rather than in parallel with the signal path going through the Helix, so any delay added by using the loop could well be noticeable.

I too, am on the verge of getting a Helix of some description. AFAICS the LT only has less input options, only one external effects loop and no "scribble strip". Is that it? What do the "scribble strips" display? Do they have the names of the associated patches when in the appropriate mode? Do they help at all when editing directly from the unit? Is the position of the effects loops programmable for each user patch? How noticeable is the latency? I plan to use mine in association with a Linn AdrenaLinn (unless the Helix already does sequencable, MIDI synchronised filter effects).

[quote name='paul_5' timestamp='1502717788' post='3353052'] SSD for both drives. Uber big improvements. I run a 2011 MacBook with protools that was choking up using impulse reverbs then I put a solid state drive in. Bingo! [/quote] How many instances of the Impulse reverbs were you using? Unless you are using it as special effect all you tracks should exist in the same acoustic space so you just need the one instance signed to a bus and all the tracks that want reverb on them sent to that bus using a bus send control.

Join a band. As soon you have the very basics down - i.e. you can get a decent note when you pluck the sting and you can move quickly and competently from one note to another - then you are ready to play in a band that will be accommodating for your skill level. You will learn far more and far quicker than any amount of practice at home looking at YouTube videos or tabs.

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1502530698' post='3352018'] Typo fixed. [/quote] Thanks! I could really do with a proof reader before I post! Just in case anyone is vaguely interested, the results of the decade I spend ploughing stupid amounts of money into my home studio can be heard on [url=https://open.spotify.com/user/bigredx/playlist/5lsuJH8hAQSy0arZQMZ3vA]Spotify[/url] or bought from [url=https://www.amazon.co.uk/Skin-Tight-SugarBox/dp/B005M067XW]Amazon[/url]. It's not a proper album because the band split before we had everything tracked, but I was able to cobble something together using the earlier EP (recorded with much more primitive equipment) and 3 remixes done by a couple of Japanese DJ/Producers (which shows what someone with some proper production skills, and probably a lot less gear, can achieve)!

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1502455087' post='3351583'] Would you have listened to that excellent advice, back in the day..? [/quote] At the beginning in 1990 when I had a load of money to burn, lots of ambition and belief in my recording prowess, and was doing music that was mostly electronic based, I'd have told future me to take a hike. I'd had a couple of experiences with good local studios and hadn't been that impressed other than they had a lot more "toys" than I did Also until I had upgraded to Logic Audio and was recording on the computer rather than on a tape-based system, there were still definite and obvious limits of what I could achieve which were being imposed by the equipment I had available to me. The EP that we released recorded in the first version of my home studio, didn't sound bad at all, but in retrospect the most impressive thing about it was what we had managed to do with relatively modest equipment and a lot of ingenuity. By the time I had spent most of the money and was recording the album, and realising that the overall sound wasn't a massive improvement over the 8-track cassette, I might have been more ready to listen, but then of course it was too late. These days setting up an excellent recording system at home is stupidly cheap, so you'd be stupid not at least give it a go. However I would suggest that you keep the spending in check. Once you've got a suitable computer, DAW, something to get your audio (and MIDI) into the computer and some decent speakers to listen to it all on. Stop there. Really get to know the tools that you have at your disposal. If you can't make an excellent sounding recording with this, then TBH it doesn't matter how much more money you throw at the studio, it is extremely unlikely that you will significantly improve what you can achieve. Remember that even the most basic computer based recording system, in technical terms, far outstrips the equipment that some of the most iconic recordings of the last 70 years were made on. Realise that the things that made these recordings so great were the musicians, the recording space and the engineer(s) and producer(s) capturing the sound, not the equipment they were recorded on. IME home studios are a great tool for organising your musical ideas and sorting out pre-production, but you can't beat a good studio with a great engineer when it comes to making a great recording.

[quote name='roman_sub' timestamp='1502374673' post='3351053'] Studio gear GAS is even more dangerous than bass/guitar GAS, in my experience... you've been warned! [/quote] I suggest that anyone who is contemplating spending money on a serious home studio has a good read of [url=http://basschat.co.uk/topic/308700-advice-what-next/page__view__findpost__p__3338557]my cautionary tale[/url] before getting out their wallet and credit card.

If you are going to normalise it, do it before you split it into individual songs or you will loose the relative volumes of quiet songs vs loud ones.

[quote name='mrtcat' timestamp='1502220273' post='3350097'] 99% of the time I blame the sound guy but it often depends where you are in the room. What sounds tight and punchy where the engineer is standing may be boomy mush 40 yds away from him / her. 60-65hz is where the punch is so why they seem keen to boost 30/40/50hz to stoopid levels is beyond me. [/quote] Which is because EQ can only go so far in fixing room problems.

Rather than moan about the crap sound on here where in general we are all in agreement, why not post something on the band's Facebook page. Be vaguely positive by saying how much you enjoyed the performance, and it was only the terrible sound that let it down. Maybe find out who the PA hire company is as well and post something similar on their social media. If enough of us start doing it then maybe we'll start to get a more balanced sound at gigs. As for Rebellion... how many years have they been holding it now? Surely the PA hire company will have sorted out by now how to deal with a room they keep coming back to year after year? Or are the organisers using different companies every year?

Does anyone know if there is any difference between the BF Big Baby II and the FR800 other than the fact the FR800 has an amp built in, and if that's all it is, can you get a Big Baby II upgraded to an FR800? I ask because I'm about to change my rig and get a Helix. I was wondering whether or not to keep my amp (Tech Soundsystems Black Cat) and get a Big Baby II or sell the amp as well and go for an FR800. It's all about equipment sharing gigs where I might be expected to bring my own amp but not cab(s) and portability...

Doesn't appear to have a locking nut, which renders the locking vibrato mechanism useless.

[quote name='pete.young' timestamp='1501963465' post='3348543'] I'm pretty sure that the FC1010 is a programme change controller and doesn't play notes. I have a Roland FC300, which doesn't either. [/quote] IIRC it will produce notes if you delve deep into the editing facilities. Have a good look at the manual. What it definitely won't do is to produce a stream of CCs with values on pressing a single foot switch which is one of things I needed mine to do and why I don't have it any more.

Of course you could just mark the appropriate input gain settings on you amp with some masking tape and pen and then adjust as required, or are you swapping between finger style and pick mid-song?

I've found that the harder picks sound great when you play on your own, but as soon as you get in the mix with clean sounding guitars all that lovely attack just disappears.

Here's a couple of photos of the one I used to own, the space under the black plastic on the back is FULL of electronics. The combination of the optical pickup and piezo works very well, although there is is still a good deal of handling noise from piezo which isn't helped by the amount of chambering in the body, and TBH the space hollowed out for the electronics is actually a lot bigger than the actual upper bout chamber, so even the "solid body" model is still fairly hollow body! Also the optical pickup takes some setting up - firstly you have to align the LED and sensor vertically with the string and then you have electronically balance the signal from each string by adjusting a series of preset pots that can only be accessed by taking that huge back cover off. All in all it's a bit of a faff, and you really ought to do it every time you change the strings, so while the system potentially lends itself to lots of string type experimentation, the reality is that once you've found a set that work for you, those tend to stay on it. I was lucky in that I really like the first replacement set I tried - TI Jazz Flats - and so I never go around to checking out anything else. Having said all that I'd definitely have another one if I could find a tasty looking fretless 5-string.