WinterMute

dbx160x if you can find one, still one of the best compressors for bass on the market, or if you're very flush an Empirical Labs Distressor... The secret with any in-rig compressor is where you put it in the signal chain and how you use it, too much compression is never a good idea. The beauty of the 160x is it's soft knee and the auto attack release, which works very well in this unit, not so well in others, it's a very easy unit to get a good result out of. If I had a choice I'd put a Distressor in the rack.

I don't know if this will help or hinder your needs, but the Rupert Neve headphone amps just about the best thing I've plugged headphones into barring some £10K japanese tube amp... https://rupertneve.com/products/rnhp

Over time these are the constants: Geddy Lee Tony Levin Mick Karn Jaco Pastorious John Stockman Alan Thompson Tim Commerford John Paul Jones

That's a cracking bass, Alan's work is top drawer all round and he's a great fellow to deal with, congrats. My Krell fretless 5:

I got a QSC K12.2 for rehearsals and potentially gigs, works brilliantly with the Quad Cortex, they do a 10" version too, it's plenty loud enough to hear over a hard hitting rock drummer, has plenty of interface options and sounds great. Not the cheapest, and other units from RCF and the like are available.

David Byrne's How Music Works is excellent.

Sounds funky, bit like that SR5 with the carbon neck that was on the Marketplace for a while... Post a pic.

This year I've made it all the way through to Christmas Day without hearing Mariah Carey, Slade, Wizzard or George Bloody Micheal.... Long may it continue. I'm off the sing along with Fairytale for the 15th time...

I try these things as they arrive and, whilst they are getting better, they really can't match the work of even the most basically competent mix/mastering engineer. Even the Nugen mastering suite templates are rubbish. If you have no-one available you can turn to or you just can't afford to pay a professional/decent amateur, then maybe, but a little persistence and a little guidance can produce results that are objectively better than AI mix templates IMO. This may not always be the case, I think there's probably going to be a point where running your tracks through an AI mix device will produce serviceable work, but it's not there yet.

We had David Baddiel hosting at the Barbican last night, which made for some fascinating conversation about Geddy's Jewish heritage and his parents experiences in the camps. Alex turned up for the second half Q&A which was hilarious and moving by turns, I hadn't expected Geddy to be so candid about Neil Peart's passing. What a fine night all round .

Same architect did my live room...

Geddy Lee Tony Levin Mick Karn Loads of great players on that list, but it's not a bassist's list without Levin and Karn.

If it worked for Freddie... etc. Can't do it with a U47 however...😆

Always used Schaller, have them on my Bongo 5, they hold the strap off the body well and the new design has a grub screw in the collar that solves the old "working loose" issue that the original design suffered from.

Apart from the app itself, it's always useful having an iLok associated with a Protools install for plug-in authorisations, you tell yourself you won't be using them, but you will...

As BigRedX notes, there is a big "depends" on al studio technology, and what it depends on largely is the style of music, if one was tracking a Jazz album, the entire band could be in the studio, which would have been selected for the job, there would be very little in the way of dynamic range control and the edit and mix stage would be almost entirely free of time-based correction. If it was a Math-core metal band, the drums may well be programmed, the dynamics smashed flat and everyone playing their parts separately with multiple OD and punch ins, all to click. The edit/mix could be a sea of elastic audio and quantised edits. It's definitely horses for courses. I'm not a fan of one size fits all, you have to approach each and every project from the perspective of discovering the best techniques to capture and enhance what the band /artist (and producer) are trying to achieve. Certainly playing to click and applying quantise will make the engineers job easier in the long run, but does it make the outcome sound better? The answer is "it depends".

I loved the Quad, there's a real sense of history about it, but I love the flagstone corridor outside the coach house for a bit of violent drum room action.

That's certainly one way, although drum booths were a good result if you were intending to replace ambience later in the mix. I learned to mic bands in open rooms to minimise bleed, or to utilise it if there was no intention to fix the performances in post. I've run many sessions where the entire bands rhythm section is taken in one pass, and the take that was used was the one that felt best provided there were no terminal mistakes. That really did test the ability of 3 or 4 musicians to play a track without mistakes and whilst creating the groove dynamic and performance required. There is a good reason that professional musicians are professional.

Completely agree with both you and Robbie, the downside is that you need a recording space that is capable of housing a full group and sounds good enough to act as recording space, that's why the legendary rooms found their fame, Abbey Road studio 2, The Mill, Rockfield studio 1 (although the coach house is better for drums IMO), Knopflers GB studios, Konk, Rock City etc. The trend for total isolation and overdubbing came as studios got cheaper and smaller, you can record and mix to excellent results on a laptop IF you have a decent acoustic space to record and mix in. I always track at least drums and bass together with guide guitars and vocals if possible, I'll only OD bass if really necessary, but the groove has already been established between the players, it fells better generally. If I can get the whole band together then the majority of the backing track goes down in one go and the overdubs are done to fix errors or add parts. Generally vocals are the only exception. This does mean musicians have to be good enough tp play a whole song all the way through without errors however, this is not a given.

There’s a difference between an engineer led session and a producer led session. producers should set the style and tone of the project in consultation with the musicians, engineers interpreted that vision.

Isn't that what I said? It's what I meant... Studio engineers respond to the needs of the musicians, musicians shouldn't be compromised by engineers working practices. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

The click can incorporate the groove, but you have to plan for it and spend some time in preproduction to get it right. I'm perfectly happy to allow a band to run without a click, provided they can keep decent time, I'll then use the Extract Groove function in protools to create a tempo map of the track so I can do all the time alignment and loop stuff that inevitably turns up later... Conforming a track to the DAW timeline is the most powerful editing tool an engineer has, regardless of whether it came from a click or a tempo map. In my own work, I've come to view the tracking sessions as raw material for the edit, I can re-arrange whole song structures knowing I can preserve feel and intensity, I can quantise audio parts knowing the groove is going to inform everything that's edited. The technology can work for the music, but you have to put the hours in. I completely recognise that many bands simply can't afford the time or money needed to do this kind of detailed work, but the results are undeniably better. Always speak with your engineer ahead of the session and make sure they're going to do what you need them to do, they certainly shouldn't be imposing techniques on you as musicians, they should be responding to the way you want to work.

Ah, the days of sessions with a Studer 827, a Mitsi 32 track and an Atari running some version of Notator with that SMPTE box on the side... I still occasionally run sessions involving a 24 track, but it's usually with the CLASP system as an input to protools. I have expectations of behaviour in studios, I expect the sessions to be pre-produced so that everyone knows what is to be achieved, how it's to be achieved and that everyone involved is capable of achieving it. Unless the session is a songwriting or experimental session, it'll run to an agreed plan. I also expect decent timekeeping and communication, and not to be surprised at 02:00 with "Can we just add..." type requests when the session is supposed to finish at 23:00. I don't do overnights anymore, tired musicians don't play well, tired engineers make mistakes. I also expect consideration and manners, regardless of how badly things might be going, and they do go badly wrong occasionally, I have thrown clients out of studios for being rude/violent/drunk/high, and shall continue to do so. It's baseline good behaviour. The best sessions are well planned, well prepared and well managed, that way whatever magic may happen can do so without technical constraints. That isn't to say there won't be a bassist standing on an 8x10 or a singer running in circles screaming, because those things happen, but I want the process nailed down before the chaos can start.

I have 3 or 4 in my baseline rigs, a pre-amp, an amp and and amp/cab combo, the pre-amp and amp are my captures. It'll be really interesting if they get to the point of being able to capture time-domain effects like chorus etc.

Not really, obviously there's a technical processing limit, but I've run multiple capture on 4 independent channels and not seen it slow down or glitch. I think you'd run out of need before it ran out of grunt.