Starter Rack?

ElegyOfficial

ElegyOfficial

New member
Hello guys!!<br>
I have a quick question, but let me start off by saying I have a screamo band, www.myspace.com/atrademarksgoodbye . Everything you hear on that page is based on EZdrummer, SM57, Fast Track Pro, And a DMp3 preamp :). And i think a rack will enhance it a bit further. <p>

I was just wondering what i should get to start my first rack, I would think i would want something i couldn't do in my DAW, but there could be something better than that :) So please leave me some links of what i should get and what it does. This will help greatly, and i will thank you on our myspace :)<p>
Cheers!!<br>
-Nate
 
It never is a bad thing to start your signal path with the best mic/preamp you can get, so I would start there. Audition several of each and see if you like the results.
 
clivus said:
It never is a bad thing to start your signal path with the best mic/preamp you can get, so I would start there. Audition several of each and see if you like the results.
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Okay, thank you :)
I already have a good sound from my preamp and mic, but i kinda want to start a rack but i dont know where to start from so... I'm just blank
 
ElegyOfficial said:
Okay, thank you :)
I already have a good sound from my preamp and mic, but i kinda want to start a rack but i dont know where to start from so... I'm just blank
Click to expand...


Not really sure what you mean by 'a rack'... are you talking about effects send processors/compressors/multiband EQ type stuff?
 
I am not much help here--I retired my rack (other than preamps) when I started using a DAW! What I had in the rack was a dbx channel strip, a couple of of Yamaha SPX 90's, a couple of stereo compressor/gates, and a stereo 15 band EQ.
 
I was just wondering what i should get to start my first rack, I would think i would want something i couldn't do in my DAW, but there could be something better than that So please leave me some links of what i should get and what it does
Click to expand...

Firstly there is not much you can't do in a DAW with plugins. Personally I like to have some analog pieces too but.....
I think it's kind of strange to just buy random rack pieces without knowing what you want to achieve or even what the pieces do,
Personally I'd try and identify what is lacking in the current setup and then research what can be done to fix it. Assuming the problems are not in the actual arrangement and recording of the tracks then it might be worth getting some plugs or rack gear

But it's your money and, as they say, YMMV
 
Meh, decent analog outboard is nice for those who can afford it, but by decent you're talking the kind of vintage/boutique gear found in top studios that sets you back thousands per unit.

Apart from some reasonable standalone preamps at the cheaper end of the spectrum, the kind of rack units in the price-range that most of us home-recordists will be looking it will be nothing to shout about, i.e. budget gates, compressors, EQs, etc that are more suited for live work and which will in no way be worth using instead of plugins within your DAW. All the Behringer composers, Alesis 3630, cheap DBX offerings, etc... not worth the money one bit, and only ever really seen in home-studios where stubborn people refuse to use computers to record with!

Same with reverbs - you'll pay over the odds to get an outboard digital reverb unit that is as versatile and high-quality as a decent plugin. Even the top top studios are now turning to good reverb plugins (e.g. Altiverb, SIR2) instead of the units they used to rely on before computers took over. Affordable plugin versions of some sought-after digital reverbs (e.g. the top Lexicon offerings) have been made anyway. Probably the only thing better than a good convolution reverb is a proper echo chamber or real plate reverb (though you have to question whether the 'benefits' are worth the much more restricted versatility and huge cost).


So what is the point I'm trying to get to?

Save your money, buy a UAD card and invest in a few extra plugs for it. That will give you far more mileage than some cheap rack units. Why spend $200 on a cheap compressor when you can spend that on something much nicer from uaudio.com like the Fairchild emulation and be able to say 'zomg, I can has 10 of teh $40000 compressors running in my computerz + they sound r8 good' :p



Though that aside, you could still greatly improve your mixes with no more investment at all. To a certain extent its more about how you use your tools effectively and less about what those tools are. For example, a nice analog EQ is good if you can use it well and maybe know how to exploit some of its 'character', but its probably not going to 'add' as much to the overall sound as many people would have you think and you're not going to get anyone listening to your music on their iPod headphones and thinking "cool, that snare is going through a Neve 1073".

A crap engineer in a room full of amazing gear is still going to chuck out a crap result, whereas a decent engineer has the skills to make the most out of everything. The #1 song 'The Fear' from Lilly Allen's recent triple-platinum selling album was recorded and mixed almost entirely within Logic using all the stock logic plugins (including its bundled amp sim)... yet some people get Logic, don't produce very good mixes and think that is something to do with Logic or their gear that is hindering them. Just a thought :)
 
hey man, just a little advice about the myspace page, don't rush to put your music out there. I see alot of unfinished demos and stuff on there and its just not needed. Wait till you've got the songs how you want them and recorded how you want them, then put them up. Putting unfinished music out for promotional purposes will only make you look worse compared to waiting and putting a professional sounding track out there. Just a suggestion.
xxxx
 
mattr said:
So what is the point I'm trying to get to?

Save your money, buy a UAD card and invest in a few extra plugs for it. That will give you far more mileage than some cheap rack units. Why spend $200 on a cheap compressor when you can spend that on something much nicer from uaudio.com like the Fairchild emulation and be able to say 'zomg, I can has 10 of teh $40000 compressors running in my computerz + they sound r8 good' :p
:)
Click to expand...

+1 for Matt

Why are rack units a bad idea at the home user price point?? To use them, you have two options: 1) Bring the signal through them on the way in to your computer; or 2) Record your signal dry, then re-amp through your rack.

The first is a problem because once you record a track it's permanent and and any processing you do is "printed to tape". You would have to retrack if you find you used too much compression or eq'd it wrong or something like that. The second is a problem because it involves going through two more conversion steps which always adds a little more noise. Plus, as Matt said, the advantage just isn't going to be there with prosumer level gear. The pro studios will do it because they spend the money on pristine converters and their rack gear is high-end stuff.

I second the notion of getting the UAD stuff. I love the plugs, they make a notable difference.

imho... cheers,
 
At the bare minimum, I liked to have a reverb (alesis quad), a compressor/ gate, which did good things for drums or vocals, and a dual channel EQ for overall trapping of problem room frequencies that would build up as I multitracked. I would run the final mix through that stuff just for last minute tweaks before committing it to a CD style master mixdown permanently. This was long ago. Nowadays, there's 200 dollar recorders that have all those algorhythems built in, so why all the gear... just get one of those Boss thingys or Zoom thingys that are designed to be able to 'master' a final mix, with all the compressors and EQ and such built in. I would love some old school 'boutique' preamps and compressors too but it's just not economically viable when you can get the 'sounds like' proxy digital version in most digital recorders nowadays.
 
You've got an sm57 - good
A dmp3 - good
An OK 4 channel interface.

I'd suggest expanding your mic collection before thinking about a rack.
 
XLR said:
You've got an sm57 - good
A dmp3 - good
An OK 4 channel interface.

I'd suggest expanding your mic collection before thinking about a rack.
Click to expand...

^^^^^^^^^^exactly^^^^^^^^^
A few matching SDC and a LDC will round out your recording needs on the manner of microphones> For what your capturing will dictate what you'll need at the front of your recording chain.



:cool:
 
Chili said:
The second is a problem because it involves going through two more conversion steps which always adds a little more noise. Plus, as Matt said, the advantage just isn't going to be there with prosumer level gear.
Click to expand...

I'm going to call you out on that one as I see this touted a lot on various forums and seems possibly bogus to me.
I don't know how hard and fast a rule this is anymore. I'd suggest advising a simple loopback test of the questioners AI rather than making a blanket statement that conversion is so poor on AIs that the signal cannot stand up to a round trip.
We trust our converters to record on the way in, we trust our converters to feed our monitors to mix. Why do we not trust them for one more trip in.

I calibrated my hybrid set up last week and out of curiosity ran a six generation loopback test of 15 seconds of a track. thats re recording a re recording of a re recording of a re recording of a re recording of a re recording of a track that had already been made and mixed previously. That equates to 12 additional trips through the prosumer converters on my AI over and above the original trips through conversion when I originally made the recording.
I did a quick and dirty line up and phase reversal of the final loopback lined up with the original recording and they nulled down to -40.2 dBFS. So after 12 additional trips through conversion the noise and variance in transients was certainly there, but not so bad for prosumer gear .Had I taken the time to really line them up and level match properly the result would likely have been better still. And this was a complex fnal mix. If I were roundtripping a properly gain staged mono vocal I'd most likely be somwhere around the digital noise floor if I were to null one round trip.
That being the case I'd say 2 additional conversions (1 round trip) out to a rack and back may not be as much of problem as is often claimed even with prosumer AIs if they are less than a couple of years old. If conversion were really so poor as to fall apart in 1 round trip then errors would surely be distinctly noticeable in the first recording and monitoring of a track. Of course this only applies to my gear which is why I suggest anyone considering using outboard gear to mix try a simple loopback test (all you need is two TRS cables and a stereo .WAV) so you'll know if it is a viable option on your particular Audio interface. Doing so put to rest any concerns I had that taking the signal out of the box was any kind of problem but who knows, perhaps I hit the jackpot and got the worlds only prosumer AI that has good converters installed by accident, and all the rest of them ever manufactured really are that poor :)

Whether or not the outboard gear is worth it or not is a whole other subject that is totally subjective and down to taste and preference so I'm not going to argue the benefit of in the box vs out of the box but I will say there are some low priced gems out there, if you are prepared to spend some time trawling through ebay, craigslist, pawnshops, estate sales etc.

I was just wondering what i should get to start my first rack, I would think i would want something i couldn't do in my DAW, but there could be something better than that So please leave me some links of what i should get and what it does
Click to expand...

And I'll also restate my original position from post #7 that if you have no idea what you are trying to achieve and what any of the gear actually does then you are probably wasting time and money buying plug ins or rack gear. Use the free stuff on the DAW (which really can do pretty much anything) to learn with first and then decide what you are lacking based on that trial and error, rather than buying random, expensive plug ins or out board gear in the hope it might be what you need if you only knew what it was or what it did.

of course YMMV
 
Last edited:
Bristol Posse said:
I'm going to call you out on that one...
Click to expand...

Cool BP.

Yeah, I'll concede that this might be an old argument nowadays. I own samples of the two extremes in converters, cheapest of the cheap and the ultra high-end. I have a Phonic mixer which is the cheapest or nearly so, and Lavry Black series, which is probably one of the best converters on the market. I should try the same thing and compare the results, that would be interesting.

I will say that, if you're running 24 tracks of audio and want to route each track through outboard gear, you're looking at 48 additional conversions. I wonder at waht point does error stacking start to become noticeable.

And I'll stand by my opinion that a decent set of plugs is a much better investment than prosumer level outboard gear for the home recordist.
 
Chili said:
And I'll stand by my opinion that a decent set of plugs is a much better investment than prosumer level outboard gear for the home recordist.
Click to expand...

fair enough, and I'll offer that once you get started lusting after the magic bullet plug it's very easy to drop $4-5000 on virtual gear. UAD, Waves, Softube, PSP, Voxengo etc,etc,etc can rack up a lot of expense very quickly.

given the 80/20 rule that its 80% source material, performance of that material, capture of the sound and then good mixing technique and only 20% what plugs/gear you use that make a good recorded song, I would say if you like physically fiddling with gear, have the opportunity to find some reasonable stuff and know that your converters can be trusted for the rountrip of the signal. Then Either way is doable and can achive nice results and either way you will very likely end up spending a LOT more than you should or that you ever thought you would on either gear or emulated plugin gear :eek:

Choose what you enjoy and go for it, both ways can be the right way if it works for you.
 
Bristol Posse said:
Firstly there is not much you can't do in a DAW with plugins. Personally I like to have some analog pieces too but.....
I think it's kind of strange to just buy random rack pieces without knowing what you want to achieve or even what the pieces do,
Personally I'd try and identify what is lacking in the current setup and then research what can be done to fix it. Assuming the problems are not in the actual arrangement and recording of the tracks then it might be worth getting some plugs or rack gear

But it's your money and, as they say, YMMV
Click to expand...

Well its kinda just for the experience of using it ya know?
I'm recording because I have a band, and i want to go to college trying to be a sound engineer :)....
Quick question - Can Pro Tools work on Windows 7?
 
mattr said:
Meh, decent analog outboard is nice for those who can afford it, but by decent you're talking the kind of vintage/boutique gear found in top studios that sets you back thousands per unit.

Apart from some reasonable standalone preamps at the cheaper end of the spectrum, the kind of rack units in the price-range that most of us home-recordists will be looking it will be nothing to shout about, i.e. budget gates, compressors, EQs, etc that are more suited for live work and which will in no way be worth using instead of plugins within your DAW. All the Behringer composers, Alesis 3630, cheap DBX offerings, etc... not worth the money one bit, and only ever really seen in home-studios where stubborn people refuse to use computers to record with!

Same with reverbs - you'll pay over the odds to get an outboard digital reverb unit that is as versatile and high-quality as a decent plugin. Even the top top studios are now turning to good reverb plugins (e.g. Altiverb, SIR2) instead of the units they used to rely on before computers took over. Affordable plugin versions of some sought-after digital reverbs (e.g. the top Lexicon offerings) have been made anyway. Probably the only thing better than a good convolution reverb is a proper echo chamber or real plate reverb (though you have to question whether the 'benefits' are worth the much more restricted versatility and huge cost).


So what is the point I'm trying to get to?

Save your money, buy a UAD card and invest in a few extra plugs for it. That will give you far more mileage than some cheap rack units. Why spend $200 on a cheap compressor when you can spend that on something much nicer from uaudio.com like the Fairchild emulation and be able to say 'zomg, I can has 10 of teh $40000 compressors running in my computerz + they sound r8 good' :p



Though that aside, you could still greatly improve your mixes with no more investment at all. To a certain extent its more about how you use your tools effectively and less about what those tools are. For example, a nice analog EQ is good if you can use it well and maybe know how to exploit some of its 'character', but its probably not going to 'add' as much to the overall sound as many people would have you think and you're not going to get anyone listening to your music on their iPod headphones and thinking "cool, that snare is going through a Neve 1073".

A crap engineer in a room full of amazing gear is still going to chuck out a crap result, whereas a decent engineer has the skills to make the most out of everything. The #1 song 'The Fear' from Lilly Allen's recent triple-platinum selling album was recorded and mixed almost entirely within Logic using all the stock logic plugins (including its bundled amp sim)... yet some people get Logic, don't produce very good mixes and think that is something to do with Logic or their gear that is hindering them. Just a thought :)
Click to expand...

Wow dude, Thank you so much for you advice! :)
Well as i told the dude above you, i'm just kinda trying to get some experience before college, but how your saying it, they probably wont have to use those anymore by the time i get into college! haha. Well, here's the reason why i really wanted it.... I have Mixcraft - a ghetto recording software and pretty much all the plug ins are crap... but now that i think about it.. i'm probably better off going with pro tools or something high end like that. Which goes into my next question - Can pro tools work with windows 7?
Thanks again for you advice, it really helped me with my decision to get one of those racks....probably not gonna happen :) haha.
 
billabob said:
hey man, just a little advice about the myspace page, don't rush to put your music out there. I see alot of unfinished demos and stuff on there and its just not needed. Wait till you've got the songs how you want them and recorded how you want them, then put them up. Putting unfinished music out for promotional purposes will only make you look worse compared to waiting and putting a professional sounding track out there. Just a suggestion.
xxxx
Click to expand...

Yes i know, it was just a way to show my band members what we got so far, theyre going to be taken down like within 30 mins :)
 
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