blah blah blah

[FALKEN]

well thanks a lot for all of the replies.

I think the weakest link is the preamps. I think I am going to track the instruments separately in order to take advantage of what I have, and to get greater separation. I think we are going to go out to my drummer's farm. There's a 3 bedroom house out there and the house is all wood, the main room has a vaulted ceiling. So I think we're going to bring out the reels and the board and monitors and the gigantic rack and the gobos etc etc and have a good time. There's also a barn to make use of. it should be a blast.
I am also going to experiment with different tape formulations.

Hi flyer makes an interesting point about eq's. I wish there was an affordable solution to this dilemma (other than dumping to digital). like a board with 3 band full parametrics on every channel. it wouldn't even have to have great preamps, just sound great as a line mixer.

still, if anyone has any more tips on how to make the most of this setup, I am all ears.

 

[cjacek]

Hi flyer makes an interesting point about eq's. I wish there was an affordable solution to this dilemma (other than dumping to digital). like a board with 3 band full parametrics on every channel. it wouldn't even have to have great preamps, just sound great as a line mixer.

Your Jamaha board has a 3-band Mid-sweep Channel EQ on all channels and you also have a shit load of good mics so why not use that and also try mic positioning (natural eq) to get the sound you want first without needing to seriously eq later. That's an affordable solution, imho.

~Daniel

 

[Beck]

Falken, I’ve been listening to the tunes.

It’s tough to analyze some aspects listening to MP3. It’s a little like looking at a picture of a picture, as you can’t be sure which process is contributing to what.

I’m wondering about the Fostex spring reverb though. You said you didn’t use the Quadraverb, so I assume you are relying on the Fostex. Spring reverbs are one thing I wasn’t sorry to see go as digital processors arrived. They can be useful on individual instruments (one at a time and printed), but can also do a lot to muddy up the mix as a whole, especially when everything is going through them at once.

The Quadraverb is far superior to the Fostex unit. I’ve owned one since they came out, and though I have the Q2 and Midiverb 4 (and a couple Lexicon units) they don’t quite replace some things about the original Quad, so I hang onto it. With a short pre delay you can make the vocal sound intimate while still having it sound like it’s there with the musicians.

A lot of it is personal taste, but I like to give the lead vocal some space in the middle by doubling and panning rhythm guitar nearer to the outside of the stereo image, effectively taking it out of the middle, so the kick, bass and lead vocal can live there.

One dramatic difference apparent in highly produced material is a quality that defies the physical placement of the speakers. That is, the music seems to float in the air in front of the speakers and also well outside the right/left boundaries. It literally jumps out to meet you. I’m hearing some of that in what you have, but it could use more. When you have it just right the switch from a mono mix to stereo should have that “holy sh..! Who turned on the lights?” effect.

Space and detail is just a matter of giving each instrument its own place in the frequency spectrum and stereo field, as well as front-to-back placement (depth) using delay and reverberation. Anything, whether it’s a processor that’s touching everything or an inaccurate monitoring system can lead to a collapse of the above scheme.

It’s probably not the E-16 or tape. But the analog to digital conversion, and again the digital-to-digital conversion to MP3 makes it hard to be sure.

-Tim