The Listening Sessions - Session 2 is online

[Dot]

thelisteningsessions.com just went live.

Session 2 is now online.


Session Notes: Session 2 was approached differently after the unexpected success of Session 1. We'd gotten a lot of good feedback and some constructive criticism — most notably on needing to tighten up the consistency of the performances and audio levels. We feel we've done that. Also, since Session 1 had been acoustic guitar and females vocals, we thought we'd bring something different to the plate. TLS contributor Jesse Holms showed up with a stunning 1952 Goldtop Les Paul and a vintage Fender Deluxe amp and Lazy I Studio owner Brian McKenzie did the honors. We open this session with some rock guitar — also thinking it was time to let the Phoenix Audio DRS-2, Great River's, Neve and API's breathe a little. Have a listen.

For the vocals, we asked Don Thomas, who nailed take after take. We decided this time to use a public-domain composition, and quickly settled on "Amazing Grace". What you'll hear in the first set of takes are different microphones. We ran them all through the John Hardy M-1 to provide consistency. Finally, to audition the mic preamps, we settled on using the AKG 414 B-ULS and the Audio-Technica 4050.

We also kept careful track of gain settings and other notes during the session — which are included in the table for Session 2. The signal chain for these recordings: MIC---MIC PREAMP---RADAR 24---APOGEE ROSETTA---EDITING SOFTWARE

We hope you enjoy Session 2 and find it as enlightening as we did. — DR

 

[JuSumPilgrim]

Thanks for posting, Dot.

The beyer-->great river mp1 pretty much trounces all else (of the guitar tracks). Its got the most depth, and is tighter on bottom than any of the others by a decent margin. Right behind that would be phoenix followed by neve (with the 160). The beyer and the sm57 are very complementary mics and combining both in a mix is hard to go wrong with but the great river wins on the sm57....not as clearly as with the beyer though.
What happened to joe meek in this lineup?
The speck is kinda disappointing and lifeless. The VTB1 was very solid. John hardy is ok, nothing glamorous, just a good hard working pre. The 5051 was also nice.

As far as the condensers, the C1 obviously has more bite than the 4050 in this scenario. Id vote again for great river.


The vocal tracks are not up as of 6:25am eastern time.