Recent content by CharlesThomas

Here's the short version of this question: Guitarist is in the control room. Obviously, deck, monitors, and console are in the control room. Speaker cabinet is in a room 100 feet away. What's the best way to manage things so that this will work out? 1) Put the amp in the control room and...

I'm wondering if someone could give me a ballpark estimate for the used price on this mixing console. http://www.hotterthankarl.com/images/SoundtracksMixer.jpg It's a Soundtracs (British-made) studio mixer, 16x4x2. It has four aux sends, 3 band EQ with sweepable mids, phantom power, etc...

Finally got around to putting up three songs that will end up on my second solo CD later this Fall. http://www.mp3.com/CharlesThomas All three were mastered by Sonusman. I play all instruments except drums and sing all vocals. The songs were recorded in my home studio on a Fostex D-160...

I have an SR-16 drum machine. I'd like to find some way I could trigger the kick drum of the drum machine with a kick-drum-like pedal of some kind (i.e. not with a keyboard, but with my foot). Does anyone have any suggestions how I could go about this? What hardware would be required...

New CD as mastered by Sonusman! Hi everyone, The new CD "Questionable Behavior" from my band "Hotter Than Karl" just came out, as mastered by this BBS' own Sonusman. This CD was completely recorded and mixed in my home studio. You can take a listen to some of the songs here...

Have tried to get in touch by email and phone several times without success. Please give me a call this weekend at home! Charles Thomas

Software-based Mixing a Reality? I have a Fostex D-160, 16-track, hard-disk recorder. I've done mixing for years with a traditional analog console. After mixing our latest CD 5 times, it kind of occurred to me that resetting a board and remixing from scratch each time is a really inefficient...

I finished mixing my band's new CD about a week ago and had a lot of problems. This has, by far, been the most difficult project of my home recording career. Last night, we went to the mastering facility and had the CD mastered. In some cases, I was happy with how things turned out, but in...

I have some Event 20/20 monitors coming for my studio. Ideally, how far away should they be for proper listening? I have noticed that perception of bass varys greatly depending on ones distance from the speaker. I'd like to mount them the proper distance from the mixing console to give me the...

So I finally got to use my new NT1 in the studio last night, and I came across a very important user tip. The side of the microphone with that tiny silver dot... that's the front. The mic sounds like dog shit if you have the back to the vocalist, and you can spend over an hour EQ'ing and...

They have these mastering units like the dbx Quantum Digital Mastering Processor and the TC Finalizer Plus which do multiband compression and EQ, and basically claim to be able to deliver a "professional-sounding" master with just a few button clicks. I'm curious if anyone's used such a unit...

Something I wrote up for my web site. Check it out if you're so inclined. http://www.hotterthankarl.com/CharlesThomas/tube-pac.htm Thanks! CT

This weekend I had to make a snake that went from the balanced XLR outs of a board I was borrowing to the unbalanced RCA inputs of my recording deck. I was unsure what to do with pin 3 (cold or -) from the XLR side. Some said to just leave it, some said you had to tie it to the shield...

So, for the first time I recorded a demo with my new D-160 deck by slaving my drum machine to the built-in MIDI clock of the deck. WOW! What a very cool thing that is. The drum machine synchs its tempo and performance to the D-160 and starts playing automatically at the same beat and measure...

I was curious if the people here who record live drums a lot recommend gating during the recording process, or capturing the "full ring" during recording and gating during mixdown for maximum flexibility. I can see advantages and disadvantages to each approach. Which method do you find gives...