quality of digital recorders

K

KenekeBarnes

New member
New here, hey guys.

I currently have a Tascam digital recorder, and have recorded an album. Nice enough quality for local stuff. The thing is, when I listen to my band's mp3's, they are muddy as compared to the brightness and clarity of a professional recording. I thought once I got a digital recorder, things would be so much better, but I guess there's a bottleneck of quality somewhere before it gets recorded on the hard drive. Is the Tascam the culprit?

I use:

Tascam DP-01FX, which then uploads wav's to my computer to mix with Cakewalk

Shure SM-57 mics
 
start browsing the boards
preamps, mic placement, mic selection, acoustics of the room.. so many factors can muddy up a recording
 
treymonfauntre said:
start browsing the boards
preamps, mic placement, mic selection, acoustics of the room.. so many factors can muddy up a recording
Click to expand...

Ditto. You should also look at the possibility of having your material mastered.
 
Welcome aboard, KenekeBarnes!

That's an good question. The answer is yes and no.

Yes- your Tascam machine is likely not up to the same standards as the machines your favorite albums were recorded on.

No- your macine is almost certainly not your most limiting factor at the moment.

All kinds of things go into making a great sounding recording. And its not just expensive equipment- its expensive rooms, expensive instruments, and expensive musicians!!

All that said- welcome to HOME recording.bbs- where we all do our best to get the our stuff to sound as good as we can.

The digital recorder more or less accurately captures whatever you feed it. If you're hearing mud in your mix its because it got into your recording somewhere BEFORE it hit the hard disk. Your choices are to either rerecord with better mic choice, placement, and room acoustics and/or learn how to mix OUT the mud frequencies on the right tracks.

9 times out of ten, mud in home recordings comes from soloing individual instruments and tweaking them to sound fantaistic...ALONE. Then when you mix all those fantastic sounding tracks together you get MUD... too many things covering too much of the spectrum and competing with each other. One common way to avoid this is the us your EQ's only to CUT frequencies and not boost. Also, cut out everything below 70 or 80hz on every track except the bass and kick drum. Cut a little 250-500 out of the guitars. Cut a little 500-700 out of the lead vocals if the singer was right up close to the mic, and boost a little 5k- and cut out everything below 100.

Snare not bright enough? DON'T boost around 2K, CUT around 250-500. That kind of thing. Bass too loud? Don't turn it down first, try cutting 250-500.

Are you panning things off center, too? Stereo really helps sort out mud when used properly. It adds MORE mud if used improperly, though.

Anway, that a place to start with fixing mud in the mix. The more you play with this kind of stuff the more your ear develops and you get good at setting up things before recording so that you have less work to do in the mix.

Take care,
Chris
 
Chris Shaeffer said:
Welcome aboard, KenekeBarnes!
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Thanks for the warmest hello yet!

Yes, mud is bad, but in general, I am worried about a lower level of volume on my recordings. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. I've compressed, normalized, and tried to get everything I could out of a track. Its wave is almost a black rectangle across the screen. But I always have to turn up my speakers to hear my stuff when compared to pro recordings. I think that's my issue, and why I am so baffled.

edit:
example track: Clash of the Storm
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=268428

(ignore the rest of that stuff on that page, that was earlier works)
 
Most likely not your digital recorder. As Chris said, check all the other things.

Digital recorders are rarely the weak link in the chain. Cables, mics, placement, amps, room noise, mixer settings, EQ, etc are much higher on the food chain of problem areas.

Ed
 
I am not familiar with the unit, but based on the clip, and your comments, I made a couple assumptions. These were confirmed here

16 bit. The problem is, the ability to reproduce highs is tied to bit depth (among other things). The other problem is, any signal over 0dB results in disgustiong digital distortion, and a wasted track. So, you just record at a low enough inout level that no peaks exceed 0dB, like at -12dB, the bounce with compression to bring the volume up, right?

What you have done is divided the effective bit depth by the amount you turn up. Realistically, other than distorted guitars, which are a very compressed signal naturally, you are lucky to get 12 bit recording on a 16 bit converter. Drums and bass can be worse.

The solution, other than upgrading your recorder, is to use outboard compression, which in your case will also require an outboard preamp. If you own a mixer, the preamp problem is solved, unless the mixer's pre's are unacceptable to you. Decent compressors for cheap are frequently discussed, as are cheap pre's. The combination of a decent pre, decent compressor, and healthier input volume will make for much clearer-sounding tracks.

You will not get commercial CD volume from a consumer-level all-in-one console. That requires pretty sophisticated mastering equipment, and probably a better tracked signal than you will be able to manage. If you do get two channels of good compression, you can compress your whole mix at the end of mixing, and bring the levels up a little, but this is not the same as mastering.

Your track doesn't sound bad by any stretch, especially considering what you had to work with. I expected much worse.
 
I don't think you need any compression hardware or external preamps. The MP3 I heard just sounds like ineffective EQ more than anything else. It also sounded bass heavy, which creates more mud for other tracks included.

Most 16 Bit digital recorders do a good job, and the earlier reference on the Tascam showed no problems. Most recording problems occur well before the digital recorder sees the input. One can easily get very high quality sounding results from most digital recorders, if the original source inputs are good. Given that you do PC mixing, you can also later adjust volume levels as well quite easily.

For example, the opening guitar sounded muted (and also a little out of tune). How was it recorded? Same for opening vocals. What mics were used? What was signal path from guitar/vocalist to recorder?

Ed
 
ermghoti said:
16 bit. The problem is, the ability to reproduce highs is tied to bit depth (among other things). .
Click to expand...
This is entirely untrue. Bit depth has to do with resolution and noise floor, CDs are 16 bit, There has never been a problem getting too much high end on them.

My guess is, you would get the same result on the best equipment in the world. It might be you monitoring though.
 
Ed Dixon said:
For example, the opening guitar sounded muted (and also a little out of tune). How was it recorded? Same for opening vocals. What mics were used? What was signal path from guitar/vocalist to recorder?
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SM-57 mic pointed at the middle of the cone, 2 inches from mesh. Average Lo-Z mic cable (I think it was $20-30 for 15 feet), into the recorder. Vocals had the same stuff. Like the other guy said, I recorded low enough not to clip, then compressed and normalized in post.
 
Farview said:
This is entirely untrue. Bit depth has to do with resolution and noise floor, CDs are 16 bit, There has never been a problem getting too much high end on them.
Click to expand...

You will certainly have more experience than I, since I am a hobby level 'engineer' with a VS 880 EX. Of course 16 bit CD's sound fine, 16 bit is fine for playback. Would you agree that recording a signal at -12dB on a 16 bit machine, and bringing it up to near-commercial CD level internally, will ruin the signal? Whether it is specifically 'resolution' or high end,' it results in a dull sound, similar to what I heard, most notably on the cymbols.

Farview said:
My guess is, you would get the same result on the best equipment in the world. It might be you monitoring though.
Click to expand...

I believe this is your larger point, and is probably more accurate than my comment. My advice was in no way intended to contradict anything anyone else posted, BTW. To the contrary, all the advice posted here is solid.
 
KenekeBarnes said:
SM-57 mic pointed at the middle of the cone, 2 inches from mesh. Average Lo-Z mic cable (I think it was $20-30 for 15 feet), into the recorder. Vocals had the same stuff. Like the other guy said, I recorded low enough not to clip, then compressed and normalized in post.
Click to expand...

That sounds OK. Does the recorder have any EQ that was involved? I would generally expect better sound from an SM-57.

As a general rule, I tend to use no compression at the PC mixdown part. Just don't like what it does. I know that FM radio really compresses to get the average volume up, but that's not the sound I'm generally going for.

Also recorders different on headroom. Mine works just fine when recording at 0 db, but others may not. Even then, I tend to get more volume range with normalization on the PC end, without any noticeable noise.

Ed
 
ermghoti said:
Would you agree that recording a signal at -12dB on a 16 bit machine, and bringing it up to near-commercial CD level internally, will ruin the signal? Whether it is specifically 'resolution' or high end,' it results in a dull sound, similar to what I heard, most notably on the cymbols.
Click to expand...

O Holy Crap. That's my main form of normalizing! You're saying I'd do better compressing before digitization?

One more thing too: I'd record on the Tascam as loud as it could go before the overload light came on, but when the .wav file was transferred, the levels in Soundforge topped out at about 1/2 volume. I wonder what causes that...
 
Ed Dixon said:
Also, when you listened at the recorder, did it sound so muted then?
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Hard to tell. On my PC, I can compare my mp3's to pro ones. However, listening back on my Tascam, I listen to them hooked up to my vocal performance PA (Kustom KPA) which acts a little like monitors. It sounds pretty good on the PA, but it's better speakers, and I really don't have anything pro to compare it to.
 
I may be wrong, and someone correct me if I am, but when I record peaky sources, particularly bass, drums, voice, and acoustic guitars, I find that a little mild compression can get the signal about 3-6dB louder going in, I generally don't need to do the bounce-for-volume game, and my recordings have become far clearer. The EX has a nice mastering patch that includes a multiband compressor and expander, parametric eq, and exciter, and a couple other goodies. It is basically the only internal compression effect I use now. While it is great for my halfassed attempts at mastering, it still yields the dull sound after bouncing to increase volume.

If I record with an external compressor, as little as 2:1 at -15 dB gets me much more leeway going in, and I tend to play clipping roulette, setting my clip light to -3dB, and adjusting until the signal just barely stops tripping it. Occasional flashes will generally not result in audible clipping, and the tracks are much more uasable. If I have eight tracks recorded, I actually have to turn them down a little, to avoid overloading the output buss.

I record 6-8 tracks at once, and usually end up wanting more, so it will probably be more cost-effective for me to buy a 24 bit machine. Since you are limited to two at once, you could try an ART VLA or FMR RNC, or both. The latter is the nicer unit, but doesn't work very well on drums and bass.
 
I much prefer to record all tracks raw with no effects or compression. I always save that for the final mixdown. Others may take a different approach, but for me that works very well.

Ed
 
Ed Dixon said:
I much prefer to record all tracks raw with no effects or compression. I always save that for the final mixdown. Others may take a different approach, but for me that works very well.
Click to expand...

But this conflicts with the previous statement made by ermghoti that bringing up a recording level in post makes the track lose quality. Who is right?
 
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