WinterMute

Here's my ACG Krell 34/5 fretless and my SR5 Frankenstein with their fretted brethren.

Never really thought of this as a sunburst finished bass, but it really is...

Loaner safety returned to it's owner, this turned up today...

He'd do the lot for the vinyl master, as that's a different set of skills than CD mastering and this was before streaming, I used Abbey Road for CD mastering, different approach.

I've still got a few pressing plates from promos in the loft with the same inscription, George was a proper character.

I remember watching Porky at Porky's Prime Cuts mastering and cutting plates on that beautiful old Neumann valve lathe he had, he managed to get so much bass in his cuts it was miracle the damn discs didn't just fall into huge black spirals. There's an art to mastering for vinyl.

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this amazing little box, I have to send this one back to it's owner on Sunday, so it's probably put up or shut up time. The Pros: Sounds as good or better than the HX Stomp/Pod XT level kit I've known. Excellent "playability" of the models and patches, they respond really well to dynamic playing, it is just like playing the amp/cab. Sooo easy to work with, the touch screen and rotary switches make the lack of a desktop editor almost redundant. Excellent use of IR integration. Neural capture works very well for some things (really like to see where they go with this). The Cons: The price (same as a Helix rack etc but none second hand). Limited "community" although quite active. Overall I'm talking myself into this aren't I?

QSC K12.2 and subs make a fine noise, if you want something a bit more exotic the FBT small systems are excellent. https://www.fbtaudio.co.uk/fbt-audio/portable-sound/full-systems/

The OLP I had was natural, lovely bit of maple on the top, I'm not generally for an odd colour (wood or black is about my limit) but I think I'd make an exception for a Barbie Flesh TLMM.

I've listened to a lot of 5.1/7.1/atmos mixes, I design rooms with these formats for Universities in the UK, Steven Wilson's stuff is amongst the best, but I always find it a distracting presentation on material I previously know. I find it distracts me from listening to the song and that annoys me. However, new material is a much easier listen once I get over the "look how clever I'm mixing ma" aspect of surround. I think music composed specifically for the format works much better, film soundtracks are spectacularly good in Atmos (check out the apocalyptic "holy sh*t-b*lls" chorus in the end fight of Deadpool 2 for maximum chuckles). I may simply be too old to learn this specific new trick.

I had an OLP Tony Levin and a fine, cheap instrument it was, I'd be very interested in a full blood TL SR5, I think a lot of people would.

Alan's work is first class, thats going to be a corker.

This is a can of worms... I'm not a Mastering Engineer, I'm a tracking and mixing engineer and these are fundamentally different things. I do "master" my mixes, but only to ensure that the loudness profile is consistent with the delivery format, which avoids the algorithms smashing the dynamics flat on Apple Music or Spotify. All of the streaming services have different standards when it comes to loudness, and thats a bit of a pain, but I've found the mastering to -14LUFS seems to work reasonably well for most things, with a peak of around -2db. For CD mastering I go with -12LUFS ad 0bd peak. I use the Nugen Visualiser package that includes the very useful True Peak limier and the Mastercheck pro plug-ins. In order to hit those loudness targets, I will use a limiter in the output stage, which is paralleled to a feed from my summing mixer that passes through an AMEK 9098 comp/lim. I use the UAD2 Oxford limiter for the digital path. I'm of the opinion that if you're doing a lot of work in the mastering stage on dynamic control and EQ, then you haven't finished mixing yet.

He's not as smooth as Mick Karn, but he's got some moves.

Did some captures of my RND Shelford preamp last night, one with the blue silk circuit engaged, one with the red, I really like them at the start of a patch, gives some nice harmonic complexity to the signal before it hits all the models. QC Cloud name is the same as here WinterMute.

Wouldn't that be something? Although you actually have to capture specific settings I'd imagine, a new capture for every different setting you wanted to use. Not a problem if your saving it as part of the patch obviously, but time consuming. I picked up the loaner yesterday, I've got it for a week. Had a couple of hours with it last night, and initial impression are very favourable, its so much easier to programme complex patches than almost anything else thanks to the touch screen, the loading of IRs and captures is very easy and effective. On the downside, the cab models aren't great, and there aren't a lot of bass amp captures, but the ones that are there are great. I DL'd some captures and I have a bunch of IRs for my Stomp, so I threw those into the QC and they sounded just as good as in the stomp. The main thing I noticed was just how much more responsive the models are, they play much better than the Stomp models, it does sound better than the Stomp in some ways but not so as you'd be startled by the difference, it's just a lot more like plugging into a VST and a fridge... Will I buy one? Maybe to probably currently, needs more investigation.

I won't use a compressor with a fixed attack or release time, or any form of auto functionality on the units I do use. Every time I employ compression or limiting, it will need to be tailored to the specific dynamics of the instrument involved, the playing style and the requirement of the instrument in the production, it's a variable control for a reason. Also see different types of compression/limiting circuit for different approaches, optical vs solid state vs valve for instance... Plug-ins that pretend to model optical envelopes are a particular bugbear, as many don't.

I'm borrowing a friends while he's on holiday, I switched my old Pod XT Pro out for a GED2112 and then an HX Stomp, which is fine but quite difficult to get on with complex programming due to the heavy parameter access. My guitarist mate is a big Helix user and I've had a good play with his Helix board, which I like a lot, but I'm looking into the modeller market too. The bottom line is that I can't afford a Fractal Axe 3 and I'm not a big fan of the Kemper approach, so the QC is really the main alternative to the Helix. I'm hoping the sound will live up to the clearly superior editing functions, if it does I'll be buying one, if not I'll track down a Helix Rack. I don't think they'll ever get to the point that you can capture Chorus or any modulation effect, I might be wrong, but I think that'll be beyond the tech. However it'l be very cool to see where they go with it over the years.

While we're at it, a tip of the hat to Jansen, what drummer he is.

I'm always impressed by this kind of playing, and this crew are as tight as a gnats chuff, but I can't listen to more than a minute at a time, which is better than Jazz, which gets around 15 seconds... Excellent work. Also, as posting 2 now has a precedent, Mr. Karn, one of the most innovative bass players around, still holds up 35 years later, no-one sounds like Japan.