Most disappointing purchase for your studio?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bulls Hit
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Bulls Hit

Well-known member
What piece(s) of gear have you been most disappointed with in terms of its

1. Overall usefulness
2. Contribution to achieving 'your' sound
3. Value for money

??

For me it would have to be the Focusrite Liquid Mix, followed by the Novation Remote SL controller.

The LM got good reviews in SOS & Craig Anderton raved about it in EQ. When I got one, the drivers were flaky and the emulations sounded just so....ordinary & unexciting. I sold it and bought another uad-1 and couldn't be happier.

As for the Remote, I've always had a hankering for a hw controller. But when I installed the automap universal drivers, it destroyed my previously rock solid daw with repeated bsods. All those knobs & buttons and all I can use them on is the Basstation plugin. The pitch/mod joystick is cool, but considering what I paid for it, I should have just stuck with my old casio keyboard and spent the cash more effectively.

If you were rebuilding your studio, what would you NOT buy again?
 
A Behringer Ultramizer (Digital Multiband Loudness Maximizer), it really sucked but when I sold it, I got more than I payed for it when I bought it, so it was worth it after all...!!!
 
Aphex Quad Gates. I picked up a a pair of them when I was tape based. And on the "high" setting, they were slow, and made an audible "pop" when opening, and on the low setting, didn't really do enough to warrant the time it took to get them dialed in for opening and closing.
 
blue ball, had it for like 1.5 years before i sold it and only used it like twice.
not good for much.

just got a kickball because they were 50$, and i guess for the price it'll be fine no matter what it sounds like but i hope it's better then the ball.
 
I went through a phase of picking up random rack gear, wherever I happened to see something that I thought I "needed". Next thing I knew, I ended up with a dozen or so spots on my rack filled with stuff I had no use for.

Not so much that they were "duds", just no use. Kinda OT but kinda not. That's the thing I'd change if I could go back. I'd have concentrated more on mixing in the box and using plugins from the get-go. That $ would have been better spent on an interface, mics, and preamps.

Now, for specific piece.....I fell into the BBE Sonic Maximizer trap a few years back.
 
I'd have to say Autotune.I bought it years ago because it was on sale thinking I should have it because everyone else has it and once I got it I realised I would rather do a retake than monkey with Autotune.I've never used it other than initially screwing around with it.:mad:
 
Good idea for a thread.

I have two that I regret getting. Behringer Ultragain mic pre. I still use it, but I think the EQ function is horrible and I bypass it. At the time I bought it, I didn't know Behringer had a less-than-stellar reputation.

The other is the BBE maximizer plug-in. $100 that I never use. I thought it would help to really open up my mixes, but all it does is EQ over a broad spectrum, at least that's what it sounds like to me. I was a victim of market hype. And not only does it not add anything to my mix, it's got a bug that creates super loud white noise whenever I open a project that contains the plug on a track. Scared the hell out of me the first time I used it.

Cheers,
 
I have to say I was a bit disappointed in the Manely Vari-Mu I bought a while back. Even after the T-bar mod it just didn't do anything for me. A *great* piece of equipment that is first class in every way, but left me a bit cold.

Other disappointments include several Behringer units that I bought new and which didn't work properly, and/or were so cheap in sound and function that I couldn't stand them.

Most other disappointments center around gear I bought on eBay that wasn't in nearly as good condition as described. Several went straight to the trash can. I don't buy much on eBay any more for that reason.
 
my lava lamp

i thought it would make me a "real" engineer with a "real" studio

alas, people just thought i was a hippie
 
acidrock said:
I'd have to say Autotune.I bought it years ago because it was on sale thinking I should have it because everyone else has it and once I got it I realised I would rather do a retake than monkey with Autotune.I've never used it other than initially screwing around with it.:mad:
Click to expand...

Yup. I picked one up thinking that it would be handy, but it is easier to do it over again (at least in my circumstance). Now, if you want to use it as an "effect", that's a different matter. :D
 
I've only very sparingly used AutoTune. I've always been of hte mind set if you can't play it/sing it... ya better figure out how. I'm alittle old school, not into all the production that goes on nowadays... and still expect people to be able to play their stuff...

However....

It can be real handy.

Say... after spending a day setting up, moving, eq'ing and getting some good starting point tones for the bass player... he then spends a number of days tracking everything.

Then you tear the stuff down and move on to the guitar player... do the same thing... tile 2/3rd of the way through it... you realize the guitar player and the bass player are holding out two entirely different notes at ONE point in a song that is very noticeable.

Options...

live withe the ugliness chalking it up the "artistic license"

reset the entire bass rig, mics, eq's... and spend another day getting as close as you can to the original tones and punch ONE note.

same as above but track the whole song to alleviate any potential change in tone.

spend 10-20 minutes with autotune and manually fix the note?

I found it relatively useless as well until it suddenly was VERY handy. :D
 
eyeteeth said:
I've only very sparingly used AutoTune. I've always been of hte mind set if you can't play it/sing it... ya better figure out how. I'm alittle old school, not into all the production that goes on nowadays... and still expect people to be able to play their stuff...

However....

It can be real handy.

Say... after spending a day setting up, moving, eq'ing and getting some good starting point tones for the bass player... he then spends a number of days tracking everything.

Then you tear the stuff down and move on to the guitar player... do the same thing... tile 2/3rd of the way through it... you realize the guitar player and the bass player are holding out two entirely different notes at ONE point in a song that is very noticeable.

Options...

live withe the ugliness chalking it up the "artistic license"

reset the entire bass rig, mics, eq's... and spend another day getting as close as you can to the original tones and punch ONE note.

same as above but track the whole song to alleviate any potential change in tone.

spend 10-20 minutes with autotune and manually fix the note?

I found it relatively useless as well until it suddenly was VERY handy. :D
Click to expand...
I'm a hobbyist and I only record myself,so for my situation Autotune was a bust.
I have Roland V-vocal and don't use that either but after posting in this thread maybe I'll dust them off.
 
Antares AVOX Vocal Toolkit

"THROAT is a radical new vocal tool that, for the first time, lets you process a vocal through a meticulously crafted physical model of the human vocal tract. THROAT begins by neutralizing the effect of the original singer's vocal tract and then gives you the ability to specify the characteristics of the modeled vocal tract."

Maybe i'm special, but this thing never did anything positive to a take.
 
I'm glad to hear these comments about Autotune. I have recently been considering purchasing it.
 
Oh man....

I am the king of bad purchases.


Roland VS-2000...... clunky and awkward DAW, which Roland discontinued selling and support for a few months after I bought for $2000.

Roland TD-6 V-Drums..... okay for Live, horrible for recording with.

Behringer Virtualizer Pro........... wow, worst rack gear ever.

I could go on and on.


My new rule of thumb..... (as I heard someone else in this bbs say)

"If you buy cheap, you buy twice""


From now on - I save up to buy the pro level gear.

No more $300 mics, pre-amps, or compressors for me.
 
I think my worst purcahse may have been a DBX 376 channel strip. The compressor was so so but the EQ and preamp was pretty terrible.

Chili - as for the BBE Sonic Maximizer plugin, I would never use it on a mix buss, but give it a try sometime on kick drum, occasional snare drums, ocassional toms, or bass guitar. It can have a positive impact in many of those situations.

Sonic, as for Auto tune. I use my auto tune here and there and I like it. I never plan on using it, but there are definately times when retracking is not a real option. I have found autotune to pretty useful in many circumstances. Typically I always apply it to a short segment which needs it, and not just let it run on a track.
 
Some will think I'm out of my head, but my Yammy NS-10M Studio's did not float my boat. They were a mint pair, but after collecting dust for two years, I sold them. I understand the rationale so many float for using them, but it didn't work for me. I just found them irritating and fatiguing. They certainly let you hear guitars and vox and certain effect details, but I just didn't like working with them. I'll stick to my Dynaudio BM6A's.
 
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