well....here's le gear.
I posted rough demos in the mp3 clinic - back when my ears were fried from mixing too long...but I'm finding it's better to post and say "what do you think" then to post and say "Does this sound bad?" Easier to get input the other way.
The board is
a Mackie D8B digital board and the recorder is the Mackie HDR24 - 24 tracks of digital recording with only occasional bugs that require rebooting
- I got much improved quality when I added a GenX6 clock to the mix as the master
for all vocals I used the Mackie Preamps into a Rode NTK EXCEPT for "I'm too Tired to Care about U" where I was experimenting with a Joe Meek VC1QCS - In my opinion, that vocal isn't quite as good as the others....but I may have "excited" it a bit too much. All other mics were preamped using Mackie preamps. Truth is, it's the mic that's
the stellar piece of the puzzle...just a very good and forgiving mic.
Now, as I explained, I did have a problem with room seperation, so virtually everything was tracked live, but a lot of it was direct. Guitars were redubbed - esp. distorted ones on most tracks.
Lets see...Drums...AKG D112 on bass, SM57 on snare, SM81 on Hihat,
Audix D2's on toms, and two balanced Oktava MC012's for overheads. - nothing unusual there...8 mics.
Bass - Bass POD - with extra compression.
Guitars...a POD and Flextone plugged directly in for clean tones...overdubs used that and live mics when I wanted a more feedback saturated sound. That slide tone on track 4, the solos on 1/2 - virtually everything on track 6....all direct...it just depended whereas the distortion on track 5 was a mic'd thing...I wasn't happy with my two or three guitar amps at my disposal and the Line 6 stuff kept holding up better then my Crate tube amp.
All effects are internal to the D8B - the D8B has propritary plugins for their effects cards you can buy...the Massenburg EQ - (which I used on the drums) - the TC reverb (the room reverb for all tracks except the snare) - and Antares Autotune - (used a bit, but usually on bad guitar notes or bgv's ...never for main vocals..) -
Let's see...interesting notes.
Everykid - Drum Intro was redubbed...while relining up the drum tracks, I had one drum slightly out of time with the overheads...but the drummer asked me to leave it...sounds like kinda double hits. It's true...your best stuff is by accident.
St. Brigid... played 6 slide guitar takes (I really can't play slide...I just stuck the Gretsch on my lap, took the Line 6 Insane tone and turned the drive all the way down and just winged it) - then I cut and pasted what was good in those takes to one final take - the last overdub I did cause I felt the song needed a bit of something special
Fall Into Memphis...the reverse tones are the Line 6 Delay pedal...also had two more guitar tracks of similar effects, but it got to be too much of a wash.
the equipment and fans registered at about -30db on the recorder...and occasionally, there were next door bands interferring with vocals...during quiet parts, I gated or digitally cut out what was in between vocals.
A couple of the other tracks had vocal pops, and I was able to use the file editing format of the HDR to zoom in, cut it out, and it's virtually seamless...can't tell cause they're like 1/100th of a sec. cuts....
and while this isn't actually relevant, per se....the drum kit and my Gretsch guitar are the same instruments that appear on the Vigilantes of Love's "Audible Sigh" - (they have since parted ways)
http://www.cdnow.com/cgi-bin/mserve...ml/ArtistID=VIGILANTES+OF+LOVE/ITEMID=1211783
I bought the guitar player's guitar, and my roommate bought the drum kit...which my other drummer friend used.
So that's it for now...kinda cool to talk about cause no one else in the band has a clue what the gear does...Later and rock on
