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Old 11-14-2007, 09:14 PM   #41
chip mcdonald
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It's not as simple as just "nicer" gear.

It's the *right* gear for the right application.

You can struggle to get something acceptable with crappier gear, but what's always amazed me is that it's *easier* to work with the "classic" paths on the things they're known for.

There's also the issue of a crappier device "marking it's territory" over more tracks; I'd rather have one decent *clean* preamp than two decent "colored" preamps.

I say if one goes cheap try to go "uncolored".
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Old 11-14-2007, 11:33 PM   #42
brainwreck
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i think the question is: in who's hands, which room, which musicians, which song, etc.? i don't have any experience with world class preamps BUT you tossed guitar amps into the same pot so > i can say that the right amp, in the right room, in the right hands does make a huge difference. man, i'd sell my momma for the right amp.......ok, almost. i'd sure fantasize about it for a minute though. i think you have to take things (gear) for what they are. i think it's useless to try and use one piece of gear to emulate another. it is what it is and if you get to know it's strengths and weaknesses, you can make much better use of it in any given situation. to me, saying an amp doesn't matter is the same as saying the room doesn't matter. i call major bs!

my favorite points brought up in this thread:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Justin View Post
....very little that lots of hard work and creativity can't overcome.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lawrence View Post
Unless you have a quality monitoring chain you can't hear it anyway when tracking and mixing so it's irrelevant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Untamed Spirit View Post
what you put in is infinitely more important than what you use to capture it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lawrence View Post
Let it go and just make music.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brightbird View Post
Yes there is a difference, sometimes huge.

Is the difference important to what you are recording? Maybe, maybe not.
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Originally Posted by Till View Post
so let's discover a very important principle of electronic audio: the weakest link. the weakest link of your audio chain determines the quality (actual "science" quality) of your signal.

the world expensive mic preamps are meant for: really nice rooms, musicians who get the best sound out of their instruments, perfect instruments, beatiful voices, perfect mic placement, perfect mics, perfect cables[, perfect converters], perfect mixing, summing, editing, perfect mastering and perfect monitoring. in this world there is stuff going on like matching impedances of mics and mic pres for crying out loud!

now if any of the above does not apply to your recording situation, the difference between very expensive gear and affordable gear is in fact very small. try to make sure, you really understood that point. i can give you a few examples: your room sounds like crap - expensive gear is never gonna make good overheads, how the hell could it? if you got crap cables, expensive gear is never gonna reduce the noise the cable makes or bring out those sweet highs which are destroyed by the cable.

on the other hand if your audio chain is not perfect but you have expensive mic pres, you don't have to worry about the mic pre! you can now spend more time worrying about the rest of the audio chain!
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Everything has context.
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Originally Posted by manning1 View Post
going back to old hits like the stones...
(not pristine like the songs i heard today.)
i just often wonder if some songs can be "too pristine".
it seems like sometimes "character" is lost.
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Originally Posted by flight View Post
It's similar to the fundamental difference between layered recording and live performance. I've done way more stage performing than recording, and there's a certain dynamic energy that happens when several people are playing music together that can get lost when recording one track at a time.

That's part of the "art" of recording music. Getting the clean, precise, "mixable" tracks without losing the heart of the thing.
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Originally Posted by chip mcdonald View Post
It's not as simple as just "nicer" gear.

It's the *right* gear for the right application.
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Old 12-22-2007, 09:09 AM   #43
Gerry G
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I had to listen to these on the crappy inbuilt soundcard on tne net machine.

Playing it quietly on really cheap speakers it is very hard to hear the diff playing one after the other.

Oh just A/B d in cheap speakers and the second track sounds more intimate in the voices. That is to say that the voices sound more distinctly defined and you can pick out individual singers better. I am not sure how affected I am by knowing though.

I agree with a lot of the above comments though to the effect that a really good sound operator can wring a great sound out of cheap or abused gear. Great gear in bad hands will still sound like crud.

There are so many variables beside pre amps. I have heard some singers sounding good on relatively cheap mics but lots more less professional people sounding bad on cheap mics, particularly if the rest of the gear is bad.

Some styles of music seem to just have a better 'feel' on tape than digitally and I am thinking of the recent covers of SGT Peppers by the Kaiser Chiefs etc.

Most live sound I have heard is terrible. Some festivals, on the other hand, seem to have great sound all over.

I will put them in a couple of Reaper tracks tomorrow and A/B them.

It is too late/early in Melbourne to boot the portable with the MOTU and proper monitors.

Maybe tommorrow I will have forgotten which is the Zoom and which the Sennheiser/Korg system.

I am assuming the venue is the Melbourne Concert Hall but I do not know.

I have heard people mix the Concert Hall in Melb. really badly and you could not hear the guitar played in the Mighty Sparrow's band from the West Indies.

On the other hand Dweezil Zappa and the Mothers played there along with Steve Vai and Frank Z. (pre-recorded or via Ouija board or via Sprit-link) and it was great sound.

Art seems to have nailed the venue for good sound though. The reality is that these recordings seem to sound way better than lots of live sound that I have heard and that includes classical concerts which seem to be plagued by bad sound engineering (Evans excluded).
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Old 12-26-2007, 01:49 PM   #44
Fran Guidry
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I have some mic pre comparisons on my little Homebrewed Music Blog:

http://www.fxguidry.com/pblog/index....y070224-133138

An M-Audio DMP-3, an FMR RNP, and a John Hardy M1.

Which is which?
Which sounds best?

Fran
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Old 01-02-2008, 10:41 AM   #45
onqel
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Take a look at this one.. http://www.record-producer.com/learn.cfm?a=3062

You can compare three pre-amps, one at the cost of $1500, another one at $200, and the last one .. $5 (DIY)..

I took a blind-test and I was surprised when I realized that my guess for the most expensive was the cheapest one.. :P

I will try to build it and try it out.. just got an SM57 and my M-Audio Firewire Solo has too much self-noise at high gain..
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