clauster Posted November 18, 2010 Share Posted November 18, 2010 [quote name='51m0n' post='1028017' date='Nov 18 2010, 03:16 PM']Its their mic list that makes me moist though.... (sorry)[/quote] It's the proper vintage SVT and 8X10 that does it for me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted November 18, 2010 Share Posted November 18, 2010 (edited) [quote name='MythSte' post='1028022' date='Nov 18 2010, 03:18 PM']T-racks is a great quick-fix mastering plug in that might be a good place to start Chris, There is a lot of automation on it that will, generally speaking get you 60% of they way there. I found it useful for working out if I was heading in the right direction with my mastering techniques [/quote] Really? I hated it!! Did you have any guidance or did you just play? Edited November 18, 2010 by cheddatom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beedster Posted February 9, 2011 Author Share Posted February 9, 2011 Hi all Long time! Studio coming along nicely (might get around to taking som epics soon). I'm looking for a rack reverb unit, any suggestions? I'd rather not spend more than £250 used Cheers C Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MythSte Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 [quote name='cheddatom' post='1028036' date='Nov 18 2010, 03:22 PM']Really? I hated it!! Did you have any guidance or did you just play?[/quote] Just seen this! The engineer at Sandhills Studios in Liverpool uses it and he took me through some of the features. Although there wasnt a huge amount I couldnt work out on my own. Can't wait to see the pics Beedster, When do you think you'll be able to start using the damn thing?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 beedster - are you not happy with reverb plug-ins? There are some fantastic plug-ins available. mythste - I like the multi-band limiter, but the rest was just way too over the top for me. That and it takes up a huge amount of cpu power. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 (edited) Beedster, what exactly are you planning on using the verb for? Is it going down to 'tape' or is it for the vocalist's monitoring? Makes a diff about the quality you can get away with. Personally I'd get the best second hand Lexicon unit I could find and be done with it. Even an LXP-1 can sound fine, although an MX200 is a better device. What is your workflow though? How much of youyr mixing is ITB (in the box - done on a 'puter using a DAW) and how much is going to be off a desk to a 2 track recording device (OTB - out of the box - not using a computer DAW to mix - ie old skool)? If you are working ITB, and going to use a hardware reverb just for a bit of 'feel' during trackoing (but arent actually recording the reverb) then I would recommend several great plug ins, Epicverb and SIR (a convolusion engine), both are free and sound fantastic. TAL II and TAL III are great plate verb plugs too... Edited February 10, 2011 by 51m0n Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MythSte Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 [quote name='cheddatom' post='1122371' date='Feb 10 2011, 09:50 AM']beedster - are you not happy with reverb plug-ins? There are some fantastic plug-ins available. mythste - I like the multi-band limiter, but the rest was just way too over the top for me. That and it takes up a huge amount of cpu power.[/quote] I think I can understand what you mean. The guy at Sandhills told me (and I thoroughly agree) that to get the best sound out of it you need only use 5% of movement on everything - that is to say its a very sensitive piece of software. I found that once I'd got the mix right I could use it to just tighten up the lows and make the highs shimmer a little more, though please don't take my word for gospel as I'm a right chancer with these things when it comes to it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lowdown Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 [quote name='51m0n' post='1122379' date='Feb 10 2011, 10:02 AM']Epicverb and SIR (a convolusion engine), both are free and sound fantastic.[/quote] Another vote for SIR here. Just great. Zero latency as well. Although SIR2 is not free - well worth the dosh. Also Ozone 4 [again not free] Great mastering tool. [In the right hands of course - but then again so is anything] Garry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 I'm not really into mastering in a big way. I know that I don't know what i'm doing so I try not to mess up my mixes too much. I thought T-Racks would be an easy way to a "polished" master, but, yeh, it just destroyed my mixes. It sounds like I should give it another go trying to be much more subtle. At the moment, i'm using the Stillwell Audio Major Tom compressor. If you set it to forward feedback, and set the ratio to limit you can get a lot of "transparent" compression before it starts to mush up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lowdown Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 [quote name='cheddatom' post='1122483' date='Feb 10 2011, 12:06 PM']I'm not really into mastering in a big way. I know that I don't know what i'm doing so I try not to mess up my mixes too much. I thought T-Racks would be an easy way to a "polished" master, but, yeh, it just destroyed my mixes. It sounds like I should give it another go trying to be much more subtle. At the moment, i'm using the Stillwell Audio Major Tom compressor. If you set it to forward feedback, and set the ratio to limit you can get a lot of "transparent" compression before it starts to mush up.[/quote] If you are crap at it [as most of us are] Ozone 4 a great tool. Plenty of presets [or a starting point] to make anything presentable. There is some great tutorials here for at least understanding the process. [url="http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/guides.html"]http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/guides.html[/url] Garry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 cheers! I'll check that out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 I've played with all sorts of stuff for mastering, and keep going back to ReaXcomp, BootsyEQ, Density II, Ferric TDS, Rescue AE and GMix. Sounds complex, but does exactly what I need (ok sometimes use ReEQ if I want to get a bit surgical, and have even stooped to a smidge of de-essing with spitfish on a particularly nasty sibilant vocal track). Its 90% monitoring quality, you simply have to know your room/monitors or all is lost! I reiterate that the above wont touch a real mastering studio, but it gets me 'close enough' to get an idea of what the real thing would sound like.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beedster Posted February 10, 2011 Author Share Posted February 10, 2011 [quote name='51m0n' post='1122379' date='Feb 10 2011, 10:02 AM']Beedster, what exactly are you planning on using the verb for? Is it going down to 'tape' or is it for the vocalist's monitoring? Makes a diff about the quality you can get away with. Personally I'd get the best second hand Lexicon unit I could find and be done with it. Even an LXP-1 can sound fine, although an MX200 is a better device. What is your workflow though? How much of youyr mixing is ITB (in the box - done on a 'puter using a DAW) and how much is going to be off a desk to a 2 track recording device (OTB - out of the box - not using a computer DAW to mix - ie old skool)? If you are working ITB, and going to use a hardware reverb just for a bit of 'feel' during trackoing (but arent actually recording the reverb) then I would recommend several great plug ins, Epicverb and SIR (a convolusion engine), both are free and sound fantastic. TAL II and TAL III are great plate verb plugs too...[/quote] Hello mate Thanks for your reply. It's for monitoring and live, I'm putting together a rack I can use for both. Lexicon stuff does seem to have a decent rep so I'll take a look at those you've mentioned Cheers Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted February 11, 2011 Share Posted February 11, 2011 [quote name='Beedster' post='1123400' date='Feb 10 2011, 11:29 PM']Hello mate Thanks for your reply. It's for monitoring and live, I'm putting together a rack I can use for both. Lexicon stuff does seem to have a decent rep so I'll take a look at those you've mentioned Cheers Chris[/quote] For those purposes then IMO literally any lexicon unit I've ever used will be fine, they are simply great reverbs IME. You can pick them up for silly cash for the quality these days (especially taking into account the difference in quality between them and the ubiquitous alesis effects of the 90's for instance). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted February 11, 2011 Share Posted February 11, 2011 The other thing I love about the Lexicon FX units is the chorus/flanger stuff, the chorus is just, well, lussssssshhhhh works wonderfully on bass, and if you push it it really does enter flanger territory, whilst backing the flanger right down it sarts to sound like a fat chorus, which is really how these things should work, but often dont. You may well find a use for it when tracking fretless which will make it double the value! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ironside1966 Posted February 11, 2011 Share Posted February 11, 2011 (edited) You could learn how to master in a couple of hours but spend a life time perfecting the art’ There are a couple of reasons for mastering, 1. To add polish 2. The main problem with home mastering is most home studios have far from ideal acoustics and monitoring but so long as they are not too bad professional mastering engineers can make adjustments for any frequencies anomalies, If you don’t know there is a problem how can you fix it, to put it simply if your studio is bass light you will compensate or at best just guess the right amount of bass so when you master nothing has changed how you know you have the correct amount of bass. You can help yourself by compering a similar commercial track side by side when mastering but most home studios do not have the transparency or depth of a professional suit. 3.To make all the tracks on an album work cohesive. You can get great results in the home studio but it can go so far my advice would be if you are putting the projects for commercial release have it mastered properly. [b]Beedster[/b] do you want a hardware Reverb because you can pick up a Powercore card that has decent reverbs on ebay for next to nothing or try the IK Multimedia classic verb Edited February 11, 2011 by ironside1966 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BottomEndian Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 [quote name='BigRedX' post='923633' date='Aug 13 2010, 11:23 AM']An external Hard Drive that connects via FireWire (don't use USB for multi-track audio) for your audio files ONLY is an excellent idea - you'll get much better performance. However TimeMachine will not back up data on external hard drives so you'll need to look at alternative backup strategies and TBH I'd be vary about letting TM run while you're actually recording from a performance PoV.[/quote] Just had a read through this whole thread. Brilliant stuff! But I just thought I'd pick up on the one thing here I actually know anything about (albeit 7 months late, so everyone may have figured this out for themselves by now)... Time Machine [b]will[/b] back up your external drives. You just have to make sure you take them off the "do not back this up" list. It's a slightly counter-intuitive way to present things; I'd prefer it if drives were automatically included to back up rather than automatically opted-out. But it definitely works. My Time Machine drive backs up my internal drive and my external audio-projects FireWire drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beedster Posted March 31, 2011 Author Share Posted March 31, 2011 [quote name='BottomEndian' post='1183344' date='Mar 31 2011, 02:11 PM']Just had a read through this whole thread. Brilliant stuff! But I just thought I'd pick up on the one thing here I actually know anything about (albeit 7 months late, so everyone may have figured this out for themselves by now)... Time Machine [b]will[/b] back up your external drives. You just have to make sure you take them off the "do not back this up" list. It's a slightly counter-intuitive way to present things; I'd prefer it if drives were automatically included to back up rather than automatically opted-out. But it definitely works. My Time Machine drive backs up my internal drive and my external audio-projects FireWire drive.[/quote] LOL, cheers mate, and yes, Time Machine does back up your external drive. The above thread is a great resource, and much of the advice I've received here was considerably more useful than some of the advice in the several books I've read on the subject. C Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JakeBrownBass Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 I still can't believe we have no pictures Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charic Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 [quote name='J.R.Bass' post='1183367' date='Mar 31 2011, 02:32 PM']I still can't believe we have no pictures [/quote] +A lot! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beedster Posted March 31, 2011 Author Share Posted March 31, 2011 [quote name='J.R.Bass' post='1183367' date='Mar 31 2011, 02:32 PM']I still can't believe we have no pictures [/quote] [quote name='charic' post='1183379' date='Mar 31 2011, 02:48 PM']+A lot![/quote] That is a fair point and one I will address this weekend guys C Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 A quick question... Why would you not use a USB drive to record multitracks to? I recently ran out of HD space and desperately needed more for a project. I couldn't fit in any more IDE drives and I have no SATA on the board, so I bought the cheapest 1TB USB drive I could find. It seems to work fine recording 15 channels 24bit 48Khz with almost 0 latency. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bankai Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 I'd recommend using Firewire drives personally Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BottomEndian Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 [quote name='cheddatom' post='1183405' date='Mar 31 2011, 03:03 PM']A quick question... Why would you not use a USB drive to record multitracks to? I recently ran out of HD space and desperately needed more for a project. I couldn't fit in any more IDE drives and I have no SATA on the board, so I bought the cheapest 1TB USB drive I could find. It seems to work fine recording 15 channels 24bit 48Khz with almost 0 latency.[/quote] I think USB's fine for many, many applications (especially USB 2.0), but IIRC the USB bus is controlled by the CPU, so if the CPU's busy with other stuff (plugins, automation, stuff like that), it can end up dropping the USB ball. USB also tends to transmit in bursts of data; again, it's usually fine, but if the CPU's having a tough time, a data burst can be held back and you get pops and clicks and all sorts. Can you get all 15 channels to play back through the DAW with heavy processing on every channel? FireWire, as I understand it, is largely independent of whatever else is going on (CPU-wise), and can handle high rates of [i]constant[/i] data throughput. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 Thanks for the explaination. There's not [i]heavy[/i] processing on this particular project yet, but it's at least "medium" and plays back fine. I'll hopefully be building a new system some time this year so i'll go for something with SATA and firewire. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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