Home Recording Thread- Gear/Tips/Troubleshooting

[Robbue]

Another trick I have done at times for acoustic gtr is to put a mic right where your right ear is... doesnt the acoustic always sound so good in your right ear? Put a mic there! : )

[trurl]

^^^^
But for this to work, you at least generally need a pretty high quality mic... though not always, depending on what you're looking for... and the environment is going to be a factor. One of the biggest problems I have doing more distant micing on acoustic players are musicians that breath like freight trains *lol*

[Mikhael]

^^^^
But for this to work, you at least generally need a pretty high quality mic... though not always, depending on what you're looking for... and the environment is going to be a factor. One of the biggest problems I have doing more distant micing on acoustic players are musicians that breath like freight trains *lol*

Ha! I have that problem sometimes with acoustic guitarists, and have had to put some sort of shield between their face and the mics! Usually it's clear plexiglass, so they can still see what they're doing. I had one guy fuss about it until I played it back for him; he then put a kerchief over his face like an old Wild West bandit, and by golly, it worked!

[Sean]

Stick 'em up!

[Yodelgoat]

The best acoustic recording I ever got was, believe it or not, using stereo onboard mics from a little digital 8 track recorder I'm using. I simply set the recorder up on a desk, sat in a chair and played with the main body of the guitar fairly close - say, 8 inches away. I put the sound hole slightly towards the right mic (the mics are about 8 inches apart. I also turned the recording unit slightly so the left mic was an inch or so closer to the guitar. It really sounded natural and quite clear. Better than I could get using separate mics. I've used it on several songs and veryone comments on how clean and nautural the acoustic is.

Since recording those acoustic parts, I have bought a T5 and I have to say that it gets a great acoustic sound on the front position. The only issue is that it is mono, which I havent found to be too much of a problem with what I've been doing. Just double up on the part and put them slightly off each other in the stereo mix and it works for my purposes.

[Yodelgoat]

Update on SONAR8.5!!! I solved the issue of the missing MIDI controllers. They created a tiny window in the left corner at the top of the piano in the piano scroll window. You have to know its there because its really cryptic. Its also greyed out so you think its not an active part of the window, but it is! Now why couldnt the folks at Cakewalk simply tell me its there instead of telling me I had to upgrade to get that feature to work? - Lemme guess - cha-ching, right? - Over a year of asking, and no one seemed to know what I was talking about. Either they control MIDI externally, or they just dont care. I plastered this issue all over the Cakewalk forums - not a peep.

Anyway, now I can get a much better leslie sound on my B3 patch. Cool! I can also stop whining about SONAR8.5 being a piece of trash, and focus all that venom on the people who make and dont support the product! I will never upgrade to SONAR X2. Period.

[WHORG]

Now on Ableton Live Studio running on an IBM PC laptop - i5 - 2.8gHz - 8GB RAM to an M-Audio Fast-Track C600 interface.

I came from Cakewalk products since 1989 - through Sonar, then made the switch to Reaper 2 years ago.

I used a friend's copy of Ableton and absolutely fell in love with their "Session View" and warping engine technologies.

Still use an older Roland JV-880 rack, plus the Kurzweil SP-76 stage piano - - - plus an older Lexicon delay (that I love). The C600 has replaced my analog mixer at this point - - -

Everything else (VST's) are on the PC . . .

The systems runs perfectly - I can run and then record about 18 tracks at once (VST + MIDI) with about 6 of them pushing effects - without a stutter. Once everything's audio - it's cake.

Ableton is truly a fantastic piece of software . . .

[B D]

Can we talk about compression? I am in the midst of mixing some demos and I am tempted to use a bit on everything (specific to each instrument). Is this common practice or do some of you skip it completely if you can?

Only use it if you try it and sit back and listen and say "Yes this definitely sounds better!"

Is this common practice or do some of you skip it completely if you can?

It is very common practice to overly-process every track on a multitrack mix, especially needless habitual EQ and habitual compression, and nowadays "tape simulator" type plugins, the result in my opinion is often everything sounding smaller and less defined, with a nasty sizzly-ness.

I think this over-processing of tracks is partially a habit developed when the engineer/artist tends to listen to each track individually and try to make each track sound AMAZING on its own, as if it was meant to be listened to on its own.

Presuming you are using a relatively powerful recording software: If it's a matter of a few notes on a guitar track sticking out too far or getting lost, simply turn those notes up or down as needed on the track.

[Sean]

Thanks for the tips, Bob! I use Nuendo. Does anyone else? I have used it for the past 6 or 7 years now. Did the Speechless album on it and now the one for Story Of A Life. Hasn't crashed or froze yet! Amazingly solid. I am curious what others think of the software though!

[WHORG]

Side chain compression is something that I've been using for a while now . . . it applies the compression effect (to track A) via the input characteristics from another signal path (let's say track B). This does not slam the entire track (A) with compression, but rather applies it when needed - ducking the signal a bit when another track needs to have some room - tastefully.

~JK

[Alistair]

Reaper with a Blue Yeti Pro. It's simple but it great for demos.

[digestif]

Not a fan of Mackies. Way too muddy in the low mids. I'll never give up my Dynaudio BM5's

I also use Dynaudio BM5s. They have a rather light touch on the bass though, which I have to take into account for transferability of mixes.

[digestif]

Yeah, I'm still working with Sonar 7 and haven't exhausted it's capabilities yet. I haven't found anything lacking in 7 that X1 can take care of.

I stayed on Cakewalk HS XL 2004 until this year, when I upgraded to Sonar X2 Studio - and I find a significant increase in speed and usability e.g. on parametric EQ, having a spectrum analyser etc.

[Dean Watson]

Protools. And re: the editing ability of computer based systems vs standalone, quite often I'll play a quick guitar part - with the intent of going back and redoing it later, and I end up liking the scratch solo best. As long as it's clean enough, I'll use it.