My Situation.

  • Thread starter Thread starter sacredrealm
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I was referring to low-end content with hot signals.
Narrow format machines don't handle low-end as well, and things like drums and bass guitar CAN get down pretty low...so if you go for a hot signal, it's easy to overload the electronics due to the smaller heads/narrow tracks.

I recorded a lot of drums with my G-16....I just always watched the levels, and unlike a big format machine, odds are that narrow format machines getting very hot signals will not give you as much tape compression before electronic distortion sets in...and those are two different sounds.
I have clearly seen/heard when my G16 was going into distortion due to me trying to push it too hard, and it was the low-end that always caused the most problems.
 
Yeah, I see.

So would you say that tape compression you get more or more easily with the bigger machines is a different effect to what you could get with certain analog compressors?
 
It's a different sound...just like there are a bunch of different compressor flavors.
 
sacredrealm said:
Yeah, thanks for your opinion.

I can just about manage with the 16 track count. However when I started layering vocals I was sometimes having to share 1 or 2 tracks for different things at different points in the songs if that makes sense?, which I guess makes it a little more complicated for mixing, but still do-able.

it makes a lot of sense to use electronic drums instead. However I definitely want to only use those along-side real drums, or as an effect in itself rather than replacing drums all together.

I have this stubborn attitude I guess because at this stage I see what I want to do as getting something down the way I want it rather than practicing. Although I understand everything is practice and I have loads to learn.

In that area I just need to decide weather to spend a lot of money creating a place in the garden I can do it, or renting a rehearsal room long term.

I only ask about the recorder too I guess, because I like the idea of recording what I want to record for now, once, as good as it can be, then moving on rather than realising later it would sound better a lot with a certain other machine. So I just like to research as much as I can about options. But maybe it is good enough as some say.
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I'm in a similar situation now. I've been in a practice space for years, which I've been really lucky with for years, as it was just a few minutes from my apartment. I'm lucky nothing was ever stolen, and I was fortunate in that I didn't need to share the space. The complication with being in a building full of practice spaces is the potential for theft, and the challenges that arise in treating the room and dealing with another band's noise.

I won't go so far as to say room treatment is more important than the quality of the mic, but you may want to double check your mic placement. May try a 57 one day for a few minutes while your neighbors are away to see if it makes a world of difference.

When you say sound proofing your garden, do you mean that it's outside? For your neighbors, sound proofing is the highest priority, but sound proofing isn't the same as room treatment and you'll run into other problems.

If where you reside is your permanent residence, you may want to go the treatment route. You won't be losing the 100 quid* monthly, you'll be more secure in your home, and you can do later upgrades down the road. Your Fostex likely won't be your last machine, but a 2" machine in a harsh sounding room with a fake SM57 isn't going to change anything either.

I know exactly where you're coming from: I've just bought a house and for monetary and geographical reasons can't maintain my studio space for much longer than another month or two. I'm going to have to move everything into my basement, but am going to have to reduce the amount of sound coming out of the house and then treat the space.

Good luck, and I hope my perspective helps,
-MD
 
Yeah it does help as its interesting to hear your similar situation.

Yeah I get you.
The person who runs the shared practice rooms I'm talking about insisted that the gear would be fine and that no one steals anything. But I suppose he would.
They are building non shared rooms. I'm guessing they might be more expensive when ready but I'm not sure.

I did try my real 57 for one or two things, and I concluded there was a positive difference. The difference might not have jumped out at me right away, but I'm guessing it would be more of an overall difference in the end.

I had thought about just mixing what Ive done as it is, but I have kind of partially re done a couple of songs with the real mic and so kind of felt I may as well redo them all like that.

What I mean is that, previously I recorded in the basement at my dads (where there are always neighbor problems with one side, in the end). That room is as "soundproofed" as we can do although I guess it fails in that way because its still a room attached to the house rather than a room within a room.

So when I say the garden, I mean the garden at my mums house. I found these people who make these garden pods, who could do one as "soundproofed" as possible.
A less expensive option would be to buy a regular garden shed and soundproof it myself. However I thought I may run into complications trying to do it.

Maybe it wouldn't be the best idea to put something like that in a house (garden) I'm not going to stay in forever. However I guess the thinking was that it could possibly be moved with me.

My sister and her boyfriend who are also musicians advised me not to do that, and to rent to rehearsal space instead to save money. But I'm just thinking about it as like you said, with you're own room at your own place you can customize it a bit more.

I cant soundproof the cellar at my mums like you will try with yours, as her husband uses it for tools and stuff.

Maybe I could rent my own house. But I'd have the same problem and need more money hah.

That's true. I definitely make sure whichever room I was in next sounded better, and I'd be using the real SM57.

Good luck with doing that too!
 
fgonza2 said:
it depends if it is a one off project. If it is not i prefer to own my own stuff :) but that is just me. You can move up to a 1" machine if you need 16 tracks. (Tascam MS16) or an 8 track machine 1/2" tape.
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I have actually been looking into the Tascam MS 16 off and on, and have been in the past couple of days while Ive got all this time to think about it haha.

I would have recently thought that if I was going to move up machine wise I may as well wait til I can afford to move to a 2" and use what I have now til then.
But I was thinking if I could get a 1" 16 track Tascam, for a bit less, would it be worth it?

I remember thinking at the time I got the Fostex, that maybe I should have waited for an MS16 due to the little extra width.
I'm intrigued as to how much better it would be anyway, without noise reduction engaged that is.
 
I use to dream of owning a TASCAM 1" 16-track back in the day....it was called the "Sweet 16" machine, but then ended up with the 1/2" Fostex G-16 which was more "in-the-box" ready for combining with a MIDI rig and any other sync requirements if you got it with the optional sync card, which I did....and it was so much more compact than the TASCAM 1" machine, which at the time was better for me since I didn't have a huge space back then.
Of course FW to the present, and I have the room now, and also wanted the bigger track count for sometimes not dumping tracks into my DAW, so the 2" 24-track was my obvious upgrade choice from the G-16.

That's really what you need to decide especially since you are looking to stay all analog, all tape. You can eat up 16 tracks REAL fast....which is why I recommended earlier that you don't ignore the option of a hybrid analog/digital rig, so that you can use even a 1/2" 8-track deck, save on the tape and space, and still be able to record dozens and dozens of tracks and just keep dumping to the DAW, (with sync, of course)....but for keeping it all analog/tape, I would say look toward a 2" 24-track.
You can make it work with 16 tracks, but it takes good pre-production planning, and a lot of takes and/or punch-ins, since you don't have tracks to spare for 3 takes of vocals or what have you.
 
Oh, that's interesting. I guess you won't see many calling it such nice names of forums today haha. Well maybe you would this on this one at least.

But I'd assessed it would probably be good to me if there was one available.

Yeah, that's a good point. I can see the logic in doing that!
However I'm going to remain stubborn about it, for now, and try to doing something without the computer until the end.

But true that 16 can cut you a bit short if you're layering vocals and having little percussive additions and stuff.

I will keep looking out for anything of interest.
Hopefully sometime soon there might be a good deal on ebay for less than 5,000 or something silly. There is a 24 track on there for that price right now, (and it needs fixing too) just sitting there. I doubt anyone will bid unless the price is lowered a lot.

In the meantime I'm looking to get a job so that for once I can actually eventually afford gear, and whatever I decide to use as a recording room.

Ive been doing a music BA course in the background for 2 years, simply because its a way to play with different people, rather than because I want the qualification.
Even though I'd miss the playing aspect (I'm not very good at the other work involved) Ive been considering leaving out the last year for now, and working (a job that leaves me some spare time) instead to really go for it recording wise and not rely on money Ive technically borrowed haha.

But thats another issue and I'll see what happens.
 
miroslav said:
You can make it work with 16 tracks, but it takes good pre-production planning, and a lot of takes and/or punch-ins, since you don't have tracks to spare for 3 takes of vocals or what have you.
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One reason I pulled away from recording my tracks in the digital format was to concentrate more on the performance, timing, etc. Digital is too easy to mess with when you don't feel like going back and re-doing it. It's more of a discipline thing. And I'm only using 8 tracks, probably will never bother with syncing it to DAW, and am starting to enjoy the pre-planning of what is getting recorded. Plus it's easier to get more of a raw sound that way. But, I embrace digital for exactly what Miroslav said about getting hotter levels and punchier sound, amateur mastering, etc. If your converters are good and you record in at the highest bit-depth, it's still going to sound like tape after being captured.
 
I used to sit there doing 65 takes of a guitar track or whatever, looking for the perfect single take....and I was often pissed in the end, 'cuz take 64 was almost perfect, but since I had no more free tracks, and wanted to "improve" on one small section, where punching in/out was too awkward for, I would decide to record take 65 over take 64, and of course, it ended up being worse.....etc...etc. :rolleyes:....so then I had to do take 66.....etc....etc... :D
Now I find all that to be a rather tedious, boring process that doesn't in ANY WAY guarantee better tracks, though some folks are convinced that doing "65 takes" is the way to go...and to each his own.
Not to mention....you end up running a lot more passes with the tape, which doesn't help those tracks you already recorded. :(

See....it's really ALL in those first 5 takes...after that you're just milkin' a cow hoping she'll give. ;)
By grabbing the first 5 takes, I know I have the most spontaneous and "raw" tracks....and then I just transfer to DAW where I can comp the best sections of those over to a single track.
I'll usually transfer whatever I have as soon as I'm done with a tracking session....that way those tracks still have some life. When I do other tracks, I'm not worried about shaving off the quality of the previous tracks from endless tape passes.

Mainly I do 3-5 takes for vocals and leads....but on occasion I'll do it with rhythm tracks too.....but where the extra tracks of the 24-deck really come into play is having the ability to at least keep 3-4 takes while going for a 5th or 6th ...and not having to erase the previous takes until I know I have something better.
So for like vocals, I may do 1, then 2, then 3, the 4....and THEN I'll go back and maybe erase take 1 or 2, or which ever one is the worst of the 1st four...and record take 5 over that track.
The extra track count allows me to chose between a few, rather than be limited to one empty track and have to do many takes on the same one.
Also, for mixing down off the tape deck instead of DAW...if I have say, 3 vocal tracks...I can comp on the fly while I mix off the tape deck...by simply muting/unmuting the 3 vocal tracks as needed.

Anyway...I use to work off of a 4-track back int the day, and managed to recored a dozen or so tracks to it with careful planning and bouncing. It was fun, but it was pretty tedious and often left me short of what I really wanted to do.
 
Ah yeah. So you prefer the idea of say a complete vocal take in one rather than different "punch ins" if that's the right term?

Ive also been thinking how, I don't mind my music having somewhat of a what could be called "low-fi" quality. I don't really want it to sound too "slick", polished or expensive.
However I do like the idea of enough depth and bass, fat drums and for it to still sound "like" tape.

Would you say that a 2" 24 track doesn't automatically make it too "slick", clean or however you might call it, and that it still depends on other factors too like processing gear?

For example, I read that (I think) the album before the last foo fighters one was recorded all analog. However to me I can't tell this much apart from there other recent albums.

I bought a Seck 1882 mixer recently so I could move it easily when I move my recording stuff althoughI was still planning on using the 16 track Fostex at that point. However I'd still quite like to try this desk on whatever new machine I might possible get as I heard it has nice "colour" and good low end.

However for end mixing I would need more channels if say I happened to get 24 track. I wondered, can 2 mixers like this be used together in some way to make up more tracks? As there is also a 12 channel Seck desk.
 
Punching in is not much different than comping, except you're replacing existing stuff in a track with a new on-the-fly punch-in.
I find punching in a total mood-killer....unless you have one little spot and you're done, but if you want to fix a bunch of stuff in a given track, it's SO much easier to just do 3-5 takes in succession... REC/RW/REC/RW/REC/RW....which doesn't kill the mood, and then you sit down a the DAW and comp a single track from those 3-5.
The matching, the vibe, the tone, everything is almost identical, since the takes were done in succession and there was no break in the flow of the session.

No the 2"-24 doesn't "slick" things up any more than you want it to, but it certainly sounds better than a lo-fi cassette porta-potty. ;)
Look....you can use "lo-fi" equipment to get some additional lo-fi vibe....but IMHO, "lo-fi" is more about recording techniques and the production process, and not just about using a $34.99 mic and $59.99 preamp. :D

On the mixer....you really can't use two 12-channel mixer to mix down a 24-track song, unless there is some what to "cascade" the outputs of the mixers, because at some point, it has to be summed to a stereo-bus, and each 12-channel mixer is going to have it's own stereo bus...but how do you combine them???
You can for instance take the 12 channels of mixer 1, and then instead of mixing down to the stereo bus, mix those 12 tracks to groups/subs (like, channels 1-8 of all the drums go to group 1/2)...then you take those groups and feed them to the other mixers (assuming it has inserts on it's group bus)...then you can finally feed it all to mixer 2 stereo bus...
...but it all depends on what bus options your mixers have.
 
Yeah I get you there, and in the next point too.

I guess most "lo-fi" recordings done on say cassette, that Ive liked the most haven't had real drums in them. It seems (at least to me) that having a drum machine makes getting a "good" sound easier in that that part is already done.

Well, the mixer I have currently is an 18 channel. However there is a 12 channel version I would consider getting to add on if it worked.
Yeah I see you point about the stereo outs.

The Seck it seems, relies quite a lot on grouping even for tracking tracks and not just mixing. So I wonder if it would work in that way you say.
 
Look at the manual and study your routing/grouping options....you may be able to cascade them in some form.
 
Yeah will do.

But I suppose if it was too complicated that way I could look out for an affordable 24 channel mixer. Would just be nice to get some use out of the 18 channel.
 
Oh yeah, That would be an idea!

Or if I needed more I could even track with the 18 track and mix with something else another time although you might see it as a bit pointless hah.

Not that I'm definitely getting a 24 track yet or anything hah. I'll see what happens.
 
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