advice.

stakeoutstudios wrote on 6/4/2003, 3:44 AM
I'm not usually one to ask for this, but I really need some input from you guys on this:

I respect and trust many of your opinions and thoughts!

I'm essentially a smalltime producer, recording demos etc. However, I've now jumped league a bit and I'm doing a professional album, with a reasonable budget, for a major label.

You may want to look at what I've done up to now, and the gear I own - www.stakeoutstudios.com

This is my own studio, although I have worked in others.

I have a £20,000 to spend on studio gear to do this album. I'm in the UK, but looking at ordering most stuff from the states.

I'm recording a rock act so the gear's targetted towards that.

here's what I've come up with so far - sensible choices for the cash?

1. 3x Universal Audio UAD1 Plugin Processing Cards
http://www.mackie.com/uad1

I have one of these in my system already. You can run up to four of these cards in your system, the more cards you have, the more plugins you can run. This means we’re not limited by the machine and can do whatever we want with the sound.

2. 1x M-Audio Delta 1010
http://www.m-audio.com/products/m-audio/delt1010.php

I have one of these already. Adding a second card doubles my inputs into the computer and leaves more options open for recording additional microphone sources etc. (I had two at one point, but one got involved in an accident recently!)

3. Manley VoxBox Valve Mic Preamp/Compressor/EQ
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/files/D466F4007E5AFC8A86256634006FB1FD

Absolute top of the range, best possible quality microphone preamp. We could use this on almost everything it’s so versatile. The sound quality from this box will be pretty much unbeatable by any mixer. The only issue is that it is only one channel.

4. Manley 16:2 16 Channel Mic Preamp/Mixer
http://www.manleylabs.com/reviews/AM_Manley_16x2_Mixer_review.html

16 channels of amazing noiseless mic pre-amps without valves. Neutral and completely crystal clear sound. Shortest possible signal path means best audio quality.

This will be useful when tracking drums, strings, etc.

5. Universal Audio 2-610 Valve Mic Preamps
http://industryclick.com/magazinearticle.asp?magazineid=141&releaseid=9652&magazinearticleid=135207&siteid=15

http://www.uaudio.com/pdf/1656-PAR-Universal-Audio.pdf

Another mic preamp. This time with two channels and a more obvious valve sound. This would be especially fat sounding on Drum overhead microphones guitars, snare drums. Anything you want to sound big.

6. Mackie HR 824 Powered Speakers
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/files/1F51E9BEC181E26F86256AE100131216

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/1997_articles/nov97/mackiehr824.html

My speakers are cool, and they work (most the time) but having a second pair, especially a professional set of monitors such as these will help me to get the mix sounding perfect on any stereo system.

7. 3x Sennheiser MD421 Microphones

Great microphone for toms, also brilliant for snare drums and all sorts.

8. Korby Convertible (four capsules - C12, C251, U47, U67 + two bases)
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/files/B930EC06096B4FC186256C190079B5B6

These microphones take some explaining. Essentially it’s one base with four microphone capsules. Each capsule has a totally different, completely usable sound. Each is hand made, ear tuned, and amazing quality. The best microphones you can buy. If you have one base you can use one microphone at a time. With two bases, you can use two at a time. Each capsule is essentially an emulation of vintage Neumann and AKG microphones, which can no longer be bought, except at auction for thousands each.

9. Rode NTK
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/files/60D13B8C0E0AFA5986256A1D005425AB

I have one of these microphones. They may be fairly cheap, but are a fantastic all rounder, and a pair would be outstanding for drum overheads and more. They sound huge, and this microphone is a main component of my setup at the moment.

10. AMD Athlon XP 3200+ CPU

The UAD1 cards upgrade one side of my processing and plugins, a new CPU upgrades the other. This means the whole machine will respond faster, we’ll have more options for effects and have more creative options.

11. Eizo L565 17" Flat Panel TFT Screen

Having a flat screen is more of a working luxury – it can go behind the mixer and gives me a much more centralized working area. It’ll make longs days at the studio much easier.

12. Acoustic Treatments

This means buying acoustic foam and sticking it to panels that can be suspended and removed in the live room. Changing the acoustics will give us the ability to dramatically change the drum and string sounds from track to track.

13. Beyer M81 1950's microphone

This microphone has a big warm sound, but is much more lo-fi than the other microphones I own. It would be great for specific vocal tracks, backing vocals, strings and a whole variety of things. It’s simply another sonic texture.

14. Shure Beta 52 kick drum mic

I already own a 1952 AKG D12 microphone which is great for the most part, big fat and warm. However, this mic would be immensely useful for the heavier parts of the album. The sound is much more modern, present and in your face. I’ve used them before.

15. Telefunken TD25 old vintage mic

A real old lo-fi mic for little parts of the album – thinner guitar parts, backing vocals… quite retro sounding. Another texture that could be used.

16. Microphone Mounts

Clip on holders, to hold mics near drums and some low stands to get to places I couldn’t get mics to otherwise.

17. Cables

Pretty essential – to hook up all the new gear!

18. Rackmounts

A customized cabinet will be built to hold all of this gear in sensible workable positions.

19. Shipping Costs

total: Total £ 19,546.00 (some second hand, mostly ordered from the states.)

---------------------------------
Now I haven't had experience with a lot of this gear, so I'd like advice from people who have especially!

I also have another issue - my present studio lacks decent mic pres. Crikey - I'm still using a Behringer MX8000.

While I appreciate it's not the best sound, monitoring etc is easy. I'm concerned about how I will be able to work without Auto-Input, and use mic-pres to their best ability.

The key point is - this stuff all has to be integrated into a workable environment, using Vegas 4.

I'm also curious as to the best ideas for monitoring using what I've chosen.

For example - The Manley Voxbox has a pre-EQ and a post-EQ out. Should I send the preEQ to the MX8000 for monitoring, and the post EQ straight to the soundcard?

I don't even know if that's a stupid thing to say.

What about using a patchbay to split outputs - one to soundcard, one to the desk? I've seen this done before, I just don't know if it's the best option.

Or should I attempt to use some kind of digital monitoring - I.E. set the M-Audio delta 1010's to mirror it's inputs to outputs, and monitor the outputs throught the MX8000.

basically the MX8000 would be a big headphone mixer, and I want to avoid running any signals through it's circuitry for anything other than that.

I'm in over my head here... and I could really do with some advice.

thanks guys,
Jason

Comments

Rednroll wrote on 6/4/2003, 5:03 PM
Jason,
Obviously you've missed the flame war which I just had. For your monitoring needs, you may need to use my solution I posted in there.......please excuse the flaming, read it and make your own decision. A patch bay with a few parallel connections will be eccential with these mic-pre's.

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=186625&Replies=54&Page=1

One thing that I've noticed is that you don't have a good small diameter condenser mic for micing the highhats. I would recommend a Neuman KM-85. It's a small cardiode condenser with a switchable pad. Another similar more affordable solution I've used is a Crown CM-700.

Another eccential mic for rock is a couple SHURE SM-57's. Most pro's will agree that the SM-57 is the best mic for recording electric guitars. I've used an MD-421 and trust me, the SM-57 is much better on guitars, where the MD-421's sounds a bit muddy to me. The SM-57 has a good midrange response, and a nice warm sounding low end. Use the MD-421 on a bass amp, if you're micing an amp, it's good for low-end bass notes. The best solution is to use a direct box and record the direct signal and the miced signal on seperate tracks for bass. Then pick the one that sounds best, or mix them together as I do during the mix.

Another thing I've noticed on any Sennheiser microphone is that their outputs are 180 degrees out of phase with the rest of the mic world. So if you're using the MD-421's on drums with other microphones, you might want to consider that and switch the phase switch on those signals and see if things sound a bit clearer.

I would also suggest a few sets of monitors. Small, Medium, and Large. You have the Medium near fields covered with the Mackie's and they will do for most of your mixing time. You should have a large monitor with some 15inch subs on them to check the low-end. But the most important additional monitor to me is to have a cheap set of small speakers. Aurotones where an industry standard, but anything small like this is good. Basically these are used as a sanity check. If your mix sounds good on these cheap speakers, you can feel pretty comfortable it will sound good on any speaker.

One other thing I would recommend if you don't already have one, is a DVD burner for archive purposes. It would be a shame to be almost completely done recording an album and have a hard drive die on you. BACK-UP, BACK-UP, and BACK-UP after every session.

Hope this helps,
Red
tmrpro wrote on 6/4/2003, 5:59 PM
Hey Jason,

Congratulations on the opportunity!

You are doing precisely what I did the first time I started buying in to studio gear and hopefully you'll do a great job and have many more opportunities from a continuing success!

I like most of your choices on gear. I especially like your choice of sound cards. I believe that the conversion from & to the Delta series sound cards from M-Audio is superior to everything out there. They offer the most stable, jitter free input and output that can be had. At a much better price than getting into a pair of Lucid or Apogie convertors with as good (if not better) a result!

The Manley stuff is very good (high priced, but good). I like Universal stuff, too! Good choice for stereo OH application.

Here's where I would disagree with you. Mackie has some great analog consoles (for their price). But I do not like any of their other gear. I especially do NOT like their HR824.

Although these speakers look like Genelecs, they DO NOT perform anything like them other than giving you a good image and a clear phase picture. They are EXTREMELY fatigue inducing monitors and if your going to be mixing a rock project, your ears will be shot after a couple hours of mid to high level crunchy guitars. Furthermore, they do not give a true frequecy result or an accurate dynamic gain reproduction in relationship to their amplifier's slew rates and dampening factors.

I would spend a little more money and get the Genelec 1031A (the real deal). There simply is no compromise for monitors. It is how you will determine all of your final outcomes. You will be very happy that I told you to do this when it is all said and done and you will thank me, I promise!

If you can't spend the money on a pair of 1031As then get a pair of Event 20/20bas monitors. They will offer a very comparable sonic quality to the 1031A that will allow for high volume fatigue free monitoring . The big difference is in imaging. They will not provide an image perfect result and a minor phase issue could potentially pass you by. But, you should always pay careful attention to the potential phase issues, anyway (stereo mics and devices -- mono them out before cutting to make sure their is no cancellation). Even with a great pair of speakers, if your not careful, phase cancellation can get by you.

I like everything up to the AMD. I just use Pentium processors. P4 Rambus and Xeon. No argument, I have two AMD machines as well. I just like the locomotive processing motion of my pentiums and ever since the VIA chipset issues, I'm a little dissapointed in AMD.

Yeah, flat screen monitor.

Definately get the acoustic treatment. Gain staging starts in your environment.

Good on the mics. I especially like the 421s.

Do you have a good ribbon mic? I believe every studio owner needs to own at least one RCA 44, 77 or get an AEA ribbon mic ( a matched pair is better). They are expensive, but you'll never use another mic for an acoustic instrument again. They're also very good in most vocal applications.

As far as the Auto Input thing is concerned Jason, I am so serious ... I could not make a record without an Auto Input function. It is so important to monitor this way and that is precisely why I do not track sessions with Vegas.

I would suggest to rent an MX2424 at least for your basic tracking sessions so you can punchin on the fly and you can Auto Input. Get the rhythm sections all cut, then you can dump the audio over to your computer and work in Vegas.

When the musicians are hearing the recording correctly, they are performing at their highest level of performance. If you have difficulty providing them with a headphone mix that remains consistant from repro to input, they will get frustrated and have difficulty performing.

If you want to call me sometime, concerning the appropriate way to monitor, I'll be more than happy to talk to you about setting up a working monitor situation for your players.

You can email me directly here to get my phone number or send me yours:

http://tmrpro.com/contact.html
bgc wrote on 6/4/2003, 6:15 PM
I won't jump in on the entire list, but as an Event speaker user and admirer I will agree with tmrpro and say that monitors are key and that the Events are extremely affordable and fantastic speakers. They do not cause fatigue and are very accurate. They translate amazingly well to the "real-world" and I'm never surprised by mixes.
One additional point of information on the Events if your interested in them. The 20/20bas powered speakers are 200 watts each. That may be more power than you need and if so the Event PS8 speakers are EXACTLY the same as the 20/20s put output 100 watts instead of 200 watts and are a great value.

Other ideas, inputs: The Audio Technica 4033 has become a classic microphone and has been re-released. It is amazing and affordable. My feeling is that it should be in everyone's mic closet.
The JoeMeek preamp, the big 2U rack with EQ and compression is a cool, optical compression preamp that has some great character that may be perfect for your rock record. A little squirrelly to work with but very nice. Also affordable.
bgc
bgc wrote on 6/4/2003, 6:17 PM
Sorry, one more thing. Waves plugins. The Ren. EQs and Compressors are gorgeous and fantastic for mixing. You might be able to lose on of those UAD cards for these with the horse power you have on your computer.
stakeoutstudios wrote on 6/5/2003, 4:02 AM
hey guys, sorry for the confusion. I should have included the list of gear I had already first, many of the extras you mention, I own already!

Thanks for all your input! I'll go over it all thoroughly!

Here's my list of current gear:

Drums:

TAMA Starclassic Maple Drums
Toms:
1x 10"wide by 8" deep
1x 12"wide by 10" deep
1x 14"wide by 14" deep
All fully suspended in TAMA 'Star Cast' mounts.

Snare:
14" wide by 6.5" deep, suspended with TAMA 'air ride' mounts.

Kick:
1x 20" high by 16" long.

Cymbals:
1x Pair Hihats, Zildjian K Series
1x 12" Splash, Sabien AAX
1x 18" Crash, Paiste Alpha Series
1x 18" Crash, Zildjian A-Custom
1x 20" Ride, Zildjian A-Custom

Hardware:
Yamaha Cymbal Stands, TAMA mounts
1x Iron Cobra Double Kick Pedal
1x Pearl Hi-hat Stand

Skins:
Toms: Evans Genera G2 clears, top and bottom.
Kick: Remo Powerstroke 3.
Snare: Evans Coated G2 with power center underside. Bottom Skin, Evans Genera G1 clear.

Stool:
Slingerland from old 1970's kit.

Guitar / Bass Amps (rental only for studio use):

Peavey 5150 all valve, including 4x12" speaker cab.

Marshall JCM 2000 all valve, including 4x12" speaker cab.

Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier, All valve including 4x12" speaker cab.

Trace Elliot 7215 SMC 300W Bass Combo with 1x15" Speaker.

Guitars / Basses:

Left handed:
PRS McCarty
ESP Horizon 7-String

Right Handed:
Gibson SG with SEYMOUR Duncan JB Series Pickups
Fender Mexican Jazz 4-String Sunburst with Schaller Machine Heads

Strings: Replace if you break poilcy.

Gear - Studio Stuff (all included in standard studio rate):

Microphones:
RODE NTK x 2
RODE NT1
AKG C3000
AKG C1000
AKG D12E (1952 model)
Shure Beta 57
Shure Beta 58
Shure SM57 x 4
Shure SM58 x 4

Mixers/Outboard/A/D:

Behringer MX8000, customized mic pre-amps. 48channel, 8buss. fully balanced.
2x M-Audio Delta 1010
Universal Audio UAD1 Powered Plugins Mix Card
Various Headphones
TLA compressor
Wallboxes and cable interconnects all round.

Hardware:

Custom Built PC
AMD Athlon XP 2400+
512MB DDR 400
1x IBM 60GXP 40GB HDD
1x IBM 180GXP 180GB HDD
44x Yamaha F1E CD burner with ‘audio master quality’

Software:

Windows XP
Sonic Foundry Vegas V4.0
Sonic Foundry ACID V4.0
Sonic Foundry Sound Forge V6.0
VocAlign 1.7
Universal Audio UAD1 Hardware Powered Plugins
Waves Platinum Plugins V4.0
Timeworks Tracking Bundle + Mastering Compressor Plugins
TC Native Bundle Plugins V3.0
Tascam GigaStudio with excellent samples V2.52

Cheers again guys!

Jason
stakeoutstudios wrote on 6/5/2003, 4:27 AM
Cool guys! There's some valuable stuff in here... seems like I might finally need a patch bay!

Just a thought on the monitors - I do all my mixing and monitoring on some rather large 1970's RAMs speakers. They're great for tracking as you can drive them loud... and oddly, though not pro monitors, I get excellent mixes from them.

I guess I'm just used to them. So getting a second set of monitors means I'll have the big and small thing sorted entirely.

I'll certainly give the genelecs a listen... but they're a lot more expensive for sure! Still, I should get discount ordering such an amount of gear!

Something I am really looking for is a good ribbon microphone. I was thinking of that one by Octava (pretty cheap) but I've been looking for an old Cadenza or such on e-bay. I don't have any experience with ribbon mics, but it would be great to have on ein the arsenal!

here's an idea of my room layout etc:
excuse all the marketing crap / joe bloggs simplified rubbish: it's off my website
Facilities

Live room:

Big enough to hold a full band. Designed from the ground up acoustically. Slightly reverberant with no parallel walls and consequently no standing waves. Means absolute clarity, and the punchiest drum sound you’ll ever hear.

This room is used for the pre-production sessions.

Control Room:

A conveniently designed mixing environment. Lots of speakers to check your mixes won’t suck on the dinner lady’s stereo!

Uniquely linked rooms and cabling means you can play instruments in the control room, and have the guitar amps blasting out in any other room in the studio. Really useful so that you can actually play along with the mixes and get a good idea of the mic’d up amp sounds. Get exactly what you want.

The system used (Sonic Foundry’s Vegas with numerous plug-in additions) [link: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/Products/showproduct.asp?PID=808&FeatureID=6873 ]is more flexible than many other systems out there. We tried ProTools, but this is better for what we do. Mixing is fast and intuitive, we can shape kinds very quickly and do pretty much anything you could ever ask for in terms of FX and sound manipulation.

Machine Room:

We use a computer. Computers are noisy. We built a room around it to shut it up. In fact, we put all the noisy gear in there… that means the live room and control room are completely noise-free.

That leaves us to concentrate on the music.

Kitchen:

Fridge, Freezer, Toaster, Deep Fat Fryer, George Foreman Grill, Oven, Microwave.

Bring your food and eat it! Chippy and corner shop are two mins drive if you prefer. For those who don't drive, just ask, it's not aproblem to get a lift there and back.

Vocal Booth / Amp Room:

A semi-anechoic chamber. No parallel walls, no standing waves, and a hell of a lot of acoustic foam means this room has no reverb whatsoever. It also has a hell of a lot of connectors linking to the control room.

Guitars and vocals sound incredibly close and clear, and cut through the mix like you wouldn’t believe.

Chill out Caravan:

You don’t always want to be in the studio, so when you’ve done your takes, you can hang out in this caravan we’ve set up next door. It’s got TV and DVD and lots of board games if you feel like it!

---------------------------------------------

and here's a short list of clips of mixes I've done on the gear I have now:

Reuben
http://www.stakeoutstudios.com/mp3/reuben/hifi/parties_break_hearts.mp3

Stout
http://www.stakeoutstudios.com/mp3/stout/hifi/ipsofacto.mp3

Melaleuca
http://www.stakeoutstudios.com/mp3/melaleuca/hifi/end_communication.mp3


tmrpro wrote on 6/5/2003, 8:08 AM
******Something I am really looking for is a good ribbon microphone. I was thinking of that one by Octava (pretty cheap) but I've been looking for an old Cadenza or such on e-bay. I don't have any experience with ribbon mics, but it would be great to have on ein the arsenal!******

Don't get a "cheap" ribbon mic. Here are the choices:

RCA 44 - The best ribbon microphone ever built and is heard on just about every hit record.

AEA microphones, built by Wes Dooley are excellent microphones, too. They are built just like RCA 44s. He just created a great ribbon mic for under $1k US and I have two of them and they are wonderful!

http://wesdooley.com/R84zone.html

Or you can get one of his replica mics ... AEA R44C – $3,550.00

http://wesdooley.com/AEA_Replica_Microphones_and_Parts.html

Either way, don't get the wrong ribbon mic, otherwise you won't like them and they won't give you the results that everyone talks about when referring to ribbon mics.
fishtank wrote on 6/5/2003, 12:24 PM
You may want to consider a Royer R-121 or R-122 ribbon. They are absolutely incredible on electric guitar and useful on many other sources. You can put them in front of Marshall all the way up - something most other ribbons can NOT do.

The Manley SLAM! is a fantastic unit as well. It does not have an EQ or de-esser as the VoxBox does, but I believe the mic pre is a bit better and you get very cool FET limiters as well as optical ones. The price is quite high, but this is a stereo box. I have been quite impressed with this amazing unit. I do have a Massive Passive as well so I do not miss not having EQ on the SLAM!

I am sure the Delta 1010 is a great piece for the money, but I have a hard time believing the converters are top notch contrary to what some may claim. If you are going to spend the money on high-end Manley gear, I would look into better A/D's. I picked up the Crane Song Spider that has 8 great mic pre's and converters that sound incredible. This unit has analog peak-limiting, DSP tape emulation (that REALLY works), and selectable dithering etc. etc. Worth checking out.
stakeoutstudios wrote on 6/7/2003, 5:27 AM
Thanks guys.

I've updated my spec to include a USB2 extrnal hard drive for backup.

I'm also looking around for ribbon mics - although I can't really risk $3500 on one mic which is only an option I might like.... I have a friend in Slovakia who restores vintage microphones - AKG C12, Neumann U47 etc, and I'll ask if he has any RCA 44's or decent ribbon mics that he can do me a deal on.

Red... gotta say I disagree with the 57 on guitar amps. while the sound can be OK, I've never really been happy with it.

Try out the RODE NT1 on guitar cabs - it's a cheap mic, but it knocks the socks off pretty much all my other mics for guitar sound (it's better than the NTK at this)

As far as A/D converters - I'm sticking with M-Audio Delta 1010 for now - as they work, and sound good to my ears.

Longer term, I'd like to try out the Apogee AD/16 - but really I'm waiting for a true MLAN solution.

It's taken so long for me to find a card/driverset that works - I need something I can depend on, that won't muck me about. MLAN will be a revolution hopefully.

I've looked at the Manley Slam - it seems like a great box. However, for what I'm looking to do I feel like the VoxBox EQ / Comp will be more useful. That + the Manley 16:2 and I'm looking for some non-manley pre to use! I figure the Universal Audio pre's will be very coloured and I like the concept of being able to drive the pre into distortion if I wanted.

Eventually I'd probably like the Slam - I can imagine just how great it could be on drum overheads!
drbam wrote on 6/7/2003, 9:18 AM
>>If you can't spend the money on a pair of 1031As then get a pair of Event 20/20bas monitors. They will offer a very comparable sonic quality to the 1031A that will allow for high volume fatigue free monitoring <<

Well I have to disagree completely with tmrpro on the 824/Event comparison. I realize that the monitor issue gets pretty subjective, but I had exactly the opposite experience with the Events > 824's. I used Event 20/20bas monitors for about 2 years and found them to be very fatiguing! I also had a very difficult time getting the low end right. My experience was confirmed by a couple of monitor "shootout" articles I read and some other reviews. After listening to some of my mixes on 824's in 3 different studios, I decided to get the 824s. Virtually EVERYTHING is better with the 824s! Obviously the low end is much more accurate. The imaging is stunning compared to the Events. And I can listen to these things all day and at higher levels then I ever could with the Events. A colleague said he thought the Events sounded like someone covered them with a wet towel when compared to the 824s. Although I would not go that far, its been a radical improvement for me. One other comment: the increased accuracy of the 824's also revealed more clearly some problem areas in my listening/mixing evironment. This helped me to focus in on this and fix them with changes in acoustic treatment. Bottom line is my mixes now translate better on other systems which is what matters most. My $.02 ;-)

drbam
tmrpro wrote on 6/7/2003, 10:25 AM
DrBam, in my opinion always has a valuable $.02... ;-)

I would pay close attention to what he is saying, too. Imaging and phase accuracy obviously played a very important role in his comparison. If your control room environment is a little awkward acoustically, then you would probably gain an advantage to getting the 824s.

WebPuppy, you've indicated that you are going to do some acoustic treatments ... Make sure that your listening environment is the best tuned room in your studio. Gain Staging starts in your environment. This is a fantastic rule of thumb to remember before making a mic choice or turning a knob on your EQ or selecting a monitor that works for you. It applies to every point of the recording process. Listen and believe your ears.

As far as the wet towel thing goes, that's just wrong. Something was definately broken in that listening world, could've been the speakers, ...could've been the ears...LOL! ;-)

But, I would like to suggest:

DrBam, Now that your you've cleaned up the acoustic issues (standing waves do cause LF issues) in your listening environment, knock the dust off those old 20/20s and put them side by side with the 824s, I think you'll be surprised how good they actually do sound when you're listening to the speaker and not the room issues.

And if you still don't like them, the bottom line is: It's ALL about what works for you. I checked out some of WebPuppy's mixes. They sounded very good, even and accurate. His acclamation to the environment he's been working in has proven to be successful for his mixes, IMHO.

As far as the shootout thing goes ... "man, don't believe EVERYTHING you read" ... USE YOUR EARS. :)
drbam wrote on 6/7/2003, 10:47 AM
>>As far as the shootout thing goes ... "man, don't believe EVERYTHING you read" ... USE YOUR EARS. :) <<

Absolutely agree! The reviews just helped me to realize that I wasn't alone in experiencing the problems I was having with the Events that were clearly related to the Events themselves. I've sold the Events to help pay for the 824's. However, before I did, a friend brought over a pair of 824's and we compared them side by side on a variety of material. On some types of music; classical, ambient, easy listening kinds of things, I slightly preferred the Event's high end character. I'm not implying that it was more accurate, just more to my taste in terms of how I like to hear that kind of thing. However, the 824's were much better in all other areas. For rock and pop or anything percussive, they were much better than the Events. But you're right in that a comparison now with the room being more accurate, would be an interesting experiment (although a moot one at this point). ;-)

drbam
tmrpro wrote on 6/7/2003, 11:40 AM
Off subject, sorry .... DrBam, I listened to your stuff and it is very good, also.

T :)
drbam wrote on 6/7/2003, 12:55 PM
Thanks T. Its radically different then the kind of thing I did when I worked in Nashville '72-'80 ;-)

drbam
stakeoutstudios wrote on 6/8/2003, 5:24 PM
heh, no standing waves in my control room thankfully - no opposing walls. Seems to sound OK to me! Not a totally 'millions spent pro-acoustic', just a little common sense design.

I'm not even using anything close to an accurate speaker - 1970's RAMs through a 1970's NAD amp.

Sounds awful.... but I really like them - they're not fatiguing, and I can listen to them all day, loud.

I've also done my best mixes on them.

I guess to an extent, you can technically mix on anything - as long as you know how to do it so that it sounds good on other systems.

In any event - there's strong debate about these. I've had words with my local dealer and they've offered me a side by side comparison in my studio so I can decide. That includes the Genelecs too. I'm buying a lot off them after all...

Can't wait. I'll probably end up still liking my Rams best.... until they blow up and I can't get parts!

I'm glad there are talented engineers and producers using Vegas, it seems like a ridiculously overlooked program when it comes to pro audio!

Jason
LarryP wrote on 6/8/2003, 9:49 PM
I always like to do a final listen to a mix I've been working on the next morning as a check. With the 824's I usually don't change much, if anything, from the night before. Just a thought.

Larry
drbam wrote on 6/8/2003, 11:32 PM
>>I always like to do a final listen to a mix I've been working on the next morning as a check.<<

Ah yes, me too. The morning listens tend to reveal a lot. . . both positive and negative. ;-) For me its when my ears are the most accurate and honest.

drbam
PipelineAudio wrote on 6/8/2003, 11:42 PM
thats because no matter how loud I screamed, serious necessary pro features like auto input were ignored. Im just glad TMR is here now and that for some reason they may be listening to him. I just wish they wouldve listened a few years ago. Oh well, heres looking to a brighter future!

Imagine the day when we can patch in external hardware, latency free and control the RETURNS with vegas' mixer in realtime!Maybe they can make a " pulse " button that spikes thru the out then back in the input and adjusts between them to make no latency?
stakeoutstudios wrote on 6/9/2003, 6:00 AM
personally, I never trust my ears in the morning. It takes me a certain amount of caffine and speaker blasting before I feel I can get it right!

Kinda like a warmup I guess!

Each to their own and whatever works for you is the key I guess!

I can't wait for auto input, it will be awesome :o)
Geoff_Wood wrote on 6/9/2003, 4:25 PM
I don't have a problem with lack of 'auto-input'. I work through a 'serious professional' mixer which handles monitoring of input signals (and queue mixes for musicians) very nicely, without latency or cpu load. Hell, it doesn't do much else these days except sit there looking good.

Or have I missed the point ?

geoff