sonusman
Banned
So here is my take on the above.
1 - Toobs, solid state, hybrids, whatever. If they pass signal, they will have their virtues and their crap factors. I have used Bruce Averill pre's that couldn't touch a Mackie in certain applications.
2 - Well performed parts with a proper tone will usually require little to no compression to make it stand out in a mix. EVERYTHING in a mix doesn't have sit up front and center!
3 - Reverb is cool. Effects are cool. Use them to ENHANCE an already good mix. Do not make your mix rely on them.
4 - Right out of Harvey Gerst's own mouth: Any mic can sound great in any application. Learn to use what you have to it's fullest potential.
5 - Kill the early reflections in your room! THAT in itself will go the farthest is helping you hear your audio at it's best. Most "low end" problems go away when you can hear transients that are not clouded by frequencies in the 160-400Hz range. I will tell you all the truth. I have never heard the difference between bass traps being installed and not. NEVER. If it still concerns you, put a chair in the corner. That way, you at least have a place for one of the artist to sit (or your friend), and that will do probably just as much for low end build up in the corners IF that is what the biggest problem is! I can assure most of you though that you probably have much bigger problems in your room than a little bass build up in the corners that have dramatic effects on what your hear! Simply putting bass traps in a room will do little if other acoustical problems that have far more bearing on what you hear are prevelent. Early reflections are what cloud what you hear. Kill them and you can work. John Sayers mid/low traps on side walls will make far more difference in the acoustical environment than any bass trap will! Period. Consider bass traps once you have solved the bigger problems of the early reflections from the wall behind the monitor and the side walls are solved. I think you will find that after solving those problems, you will hear little difference at your mix position with or without bass traps installed.
The above is my opinion based upon just doing this stuff for a long time. I have no credentials as an acoustic designer. I never claimed that I do, and never will. If you want to build/purchase bass traps, knock yourself out! My experience has been that they don't make enough of a difference to worry too much about them. Learning to use a high pass filter on tracks that don't need low end in them will sure help a lot though!
Rick, you actually make some great points about "schools of thought". You can take mine if you choose. You can leave it too. I asked for NOTHING in offering mine! You didn't have to purchase a book to read mine. It was freely given. Sorry if you haven't ever heard any of my work. In the last year, I haven't posted much of it. But I have posted probably no less than 100 mp3's over the 3 years or so of stuff I have worked on. Not just the stuff I thought turned out well. I have posted some pretty bad sounding stuff friend!!! Stuff that HURT to listen to. Usually, I offered "opinions" about what went wrong with the bad sounding stuff, as well as what I thought went right with the good sounding stuff.
At least annually, I post something here where the gist is:
Just start recording! MIX MIX MIX MIX!!! Try EVERYTHING! LEARN from it all.
You can read until you are blue in the face about audio. Think of it like this:
You can study music theory. Does that make you play your instrument any better?
Absolutely not! You have to practice.
I think sometimes people are asking the wrong questions but don't know it. They feel they have a problem with their audio and need a solution. 99 times out of 100 the problem is they didn't actually try doing something different than what they did! If I have learned anything about audio over the years it is simply that if something isn't working, I try something else! I keep trying until I run out of time, or I get what I want.
I have been just as guilty over the years of recommending gear to overcome problems in audio. Too many times, I have made statements that you gotta have this or that to get a good sound. You know what actually made me slow down on that? John Sayers once posted two mp3's of a piano, one mic'ed with a AT 4050 mic, and one of the same piano and performance mic'ed with a Shure SM-58. He simply asked people to guess which was which. Not a single person could guess with CERTAINTY which was which because they sounded mostly identical! I have posted mp3's where the ART preamp was what was mostly used and had people give the audio high praises. Many comments that it sounded about as good as anything they have heard in the same genre.
Most of what I have ever posted was recorded in basements! Mixed in basements or bedrooms. You know how I got over the horrible acoustics and made pretty decent sounding recordings under these less than ideal circumstances? I EXPERIMENTED. I REFERENCED my work. I did LOT'S of "push mixes" and played them on other systems. Just good ol' tried and true stuff here. The very same things that most any ol' big time engineer REALLY does. If a mix had too much bass, well, I turned down the bass. I made myself adapt to the situation because frankly, it is MUCH cheaper for me to experiment and adapt than to purchase new gear and build acoustical treatments in the attempt to create the "perfect" monitoring environment.
JUST DO IT! Nike had it right (heh..I happen to live about two miles from the world headquarters...nice property...)
As to what some you feel is my "condescending attitude" and what not.
1 - Some of your guys come across as such nice guys on the bbs and are probably big jerks in person! Toche'!!! If you place a lot of value and your own personal worth on MY online persona, I feel very bad for you.
It is not that I don't empathize. When I was in college, I had instructors that seemed very condescending and had that "know it all" attitude. Thing was, I learned the most from them. Regardless of what I personally felt about their "style", they had a LOT to offer and I took it! What I did find out about them once I got over my little bruised ego was that some of these instructors were in fact very nice people and gave me a lot of "out of class" time to explain things to me when I sought that out from them. They usually were very quick to admit what they didn't know if I asked questions in those areas.
I have a contact list on MSM (microsoft messenger) that is full of "audio people" that I talk to. A couple of these guys have worked on stuff that most of your have probably heard. Others are just guys starting out in audio. Others are people about where I am at in engineering. We have a great time chatting. We all learn from each other. In my opinion, I have a LOT of patience and am pretty good at getting to the point and understanding where the problems really are.
Sometimes, a thread like this does far more to get people's attention than being proper and polite. Like it or not, that is the approach I take. Frankly, if you don't like WHAT or HOW I post, don't read it! It is as simple as that. But please people. If you are going to lash out at me with insults and long tirades about how I am condescending and arrogant and what not, and tell me how wrong that all is, maybe you should look in the mirror! If you truely feel that way about me, then in my eyes, you came down to that same level. If you feel you don't need my condescending attitude concerning audio, certainly you can understand that I don't feel I need YOUR condescending attitude concerning what your perceive as being my intent! Is it an eye for an eye with some of you? "Ol' Ed can be that way. So will I!"
You don't have to take my word for it, but really, I am a pretty nice guy if I say so myself! I will not even begin to try to justify my online persona. It is okay for some. Others don't like it. Take it or leave it. But at least try to understand first what I am talking about.
This post started because of a conversation I had with another engineer who's work I respect highly. I made the comment that bass traps seem to be the new "cure-all" thing. She said "I thought it was compression/limiting". I told her that was last years cure-all and that it was tubes the year before that. It just grew. She finally made the comment that she could solve all her audio problems for about $1000. I thought it was funny and started this post.
Glad a few got it!
Ed
1 - Toobs, solid state, hybrids, whatever. If they pass signal, they will have their virtues and their crap factors. I have used Bruce Averill pre's that couldn't touch a Mackie in certain applications.
2 - Well performed parts with a proper tone will usually require little to no compression to make it stand out in a mix. EVERYTHING in a mix doesn't have sit up front and center!
3 - Reverb is cool. Effects are cool. Use them to ENHANCE an already good mix. Do not make your mix rely on them.
4 - Right out of Harvey Gerst's own mouth: Any mic can sound great in any application. Learn to use what you have to it's fullest potential.
5 - Kill the early reflections in your room! THAT in itself will go the farthest is helping you hear your audio at it's best. Most "low end" problems go away when you can hear transients that are not clouded by frequencies in the 160-400Hz range. I will tell you all the truth. I have never heard the difference between bass traps being installed and not. NEVER. If it still concerns you, put a chair in the corner. That way, you at least have a place for one of the artist to sit (or your friend), and that will do probably just as much for low end build up in the corners IF that is what the biggest problem is! I can assure most of you though that you probably have much bigger problems in your room than a little bass build up in the corners that have dramatic effects on what your hear! Simply putting bass traps in a room will do little if other acoustical problems that have far more bearing on what you hear are prevelent. Early reflections are what cloud what you hear. Kill them and you can work. John Sayers mid/low traps on side walls will make far more difference in the acoustical environment than any bass trap will! Period. Consider bass traps once you have solved the bigger problems of the early reflections from the wall behind the monitor and the side walls are solved. I think you will find that after solving those problems, you will hear little difference at your mix position with or without bass traps installed.
The above is my opinion based upon just doing this stuff for a long time. I have no credentials as an acoustic designer. I never claimed that I do, and never will. If you want to build/purchase bass traps, knock yourself out! My experience has been that they don't make enough of a difference to worry too much about them. Learning to use a high pass filter on tracks that don't need low end in them will sure help a lot though!
Rick, you actually make some great points about "schools of thought". You can take mine if you choose. You can leave it too. I asked for NOTHING in offering mine! You didn't have to purchase a book to read mine. It was freely given. Sorry if you haven't ever heard any of my work. In the last year, I haven't posted much of it. But I have posted probably no less than 100 mp3's over the 3 years or so of stuff I have worked on. Not just the stuff I thought turned out well. I have posted some pretty bad sounding stuff friend!!! Stuff that HURT to listen to. Usually, I offered "opinions" about what went wrong with the bad sounding stuff, as well as what I thought went right with the good sounding stuff.
At least annually, I post something here where the gist is:
Just start recording! MIX MIX MIX MIX!!! Try EVERYTHING! LEARN from it all.
You can read until you are blue in the face about audio. Think of it like this:
You can study music theory. Does that make you play your instrument any better?
Absolutely not! You have to practice.
I think sometimes people are asking the wrong questions but don't know it. They feel they have a problem with their audio and need a solution. 99 times out of 100 the problem is they didn't actually try doing something different than what they did! If I have learned anything about audio over the years it is simply that if something isn't working, I try something else! I keep trying until I run out of time, or I get what I want.
I have been just as guilty over the years of recommending gear to overcome problems in audio. Too many times, I have made statements that you gotta have this or that to get a good sound. You know what actually made me slow down on that? John Sayers once posted two mp3's of a piano, one mic'ed with a AT 4050 mic, and one of the same piano and performance mic'ed with a Shure SM-58. He simply asked people to guess which was which. Not a single person could guess with CERTAINTY which was which because they sounded mostly identical! I have posted mp3's where the ART preamp was what was mostly used and had people give the audio high praises. Many comments that it sounded about as good as anything they have heard in the same genre.
Most of what I have ever posted was recorded in basements! Mixed in basements or bedrooms. You know how I got over the horrible acoustics and made pretty decent sounding recordings under these less than ideal circumstances? I EXPERIMENTED. I REFERENCED my work. I did LOT'S of "push mixes" and played them on other systems. Just good ol' tried and true stuff here. The very same things that most any ol' big time engineer REALLY does. If a mix had too much bass, well, I turned down the bass. I made myself adapt to the situation because frankly, it is MUCH cheaper for me to experiment and adapt than to purchase new gear and build acoustical treatments in the attempt to create the "perfect" monitoring environment.
JUST DO IT! Nike had it right (heh..I happen to live about two miles from the world headquarters...nice property...)
As to what some you feel is my "condescending attitude" and what not.
1 - Some of your guys come across as such nice guys on the bbs and are probably big jerks in person! Toche'!!! If you place a lot of value and your own personal worth on MY online persona, I feel very bad for you.
It is not that I don't empathize. When I was in college, I had instructors that seemed very condescending and had that "know it all" attitude. Thing was, I learned the most from them. Regardless of what I personally felt about their "style", they had a LOT to offer and I took it! What I did find out about them once I got over my little bruised ego was that some of these instructors were in fact very nice people and gave me a lot of "out of class" time to explain things to me when I sought that out from them. They usually were very quick to admit what they didn't know if I asked questions in those areas.
I have a contact list on MSM (microsoft messenger) that is full of "audio people" that I talk to. A couple of these guys have worked on stuff that most of your have probably heard. Others are just guys starting out in audio. Others are people about where I am at in engineering. We have a great time chatting. We all learn from each other. In my opinion, I have a LOT of patience and am pretty good at getting to the point and understanding where the problems really are.
Sometimes, a thread like this does far more to get people's attention than being proper and polite. Like it or not, that is the approach I take. Frankly, if you don't like WHAT or HOW I post, don't read it! It is as simple as that. But please people. If you are going to lash out at me with insults and long tirades about how I am condescending and arrogant and what not, and tell me how wrong that all is, maybe you should look in the mirror! If you truely feel that way about me, then in my eyes, you came down to that same level. If you feel you don't need my condescending attitude concerning audio, certainly you can understand that I don't feel I need YOUR condescending attitude concerning what your perceive as being my intent! Is it an eye for an eye with some of you? "Ol' Ed can be that way. So will I!"
You don't have to take my word for it, but really, I am a pretty nice guy if I say so myself! I will not even begin to try to justify my online persona. It is okay for some. Others don't like it. Take it or leave it. But at least try to understand first what I am talking about.
This post started because of a conversation I had with another engineer who's work I respect highly. I made the comment that bass traps seem to be the new "cure-all" thing. She said "I thought it was compression/limiting". I told her that was last years cure-all and that it was tubes the year before that. It just grew. She finally made the comment that she could solve all her audio problems for about $1000. I thought it was funny and started this post.
Glad a few got it!
Ed
Thats the most words I've EVER seen John say in one post. Damn, must have pissed him off. Either that or my desease is catching.
