Tracking Technique

[ausrock]

Kewl Skippy,

You've done it again!!! Great info that I will have to play with. Seeing my Spirit Studio doesn't have a meter bridge, I use the D160's.......bit small but it will do. Out of curiousity, have you any idea whether it would be feasible to make a meter bridge.......I know circuits (and kits) are available for led level meters. Anyways, it's just a thought.

ChrisO

 

[skippy]

Just make sure you use a well-designed input buffer amp in series with any LED ladder you add to your gear, and take care to isolate the LED driver power and grounds from your audio signal path. I remember using one of the early Studiomaster boards back in the day... it had a "meter blank" switch right on the front panel that could be used to turn the meters off. I always thought that was braindead, until I actually used the board for tracking. With the meters on, you'd get this odd "zipper noise": as the signal level increased, you'd get a little click each time a new LED in the ladder turned on (or off). So in tracking, when the meters would bounce, you would get little "zip-zip-zing-zip" distortion sounds in sync with the level changes... Great fun on kick drum, and rather unexpected (especially since it was post-EQ!).

Rather than spend the money on buffer amps to isolate that noise, they just put a power switch in the +15v to the comparator/LED driver chips. Simple solution, I guess.

To this day, I *still* regard LED ladder meters with some suspicion and worry, and listen for that zipper noise on every piece of new gear. Haven't heard it since 1982, but that doesn't help: I'm still paranoid. And I don't own any Studiomaster gear, either. No smiley.

 

[drstawl]

Thanks again to all of you "Mix Wizards".

Today was the day, and I got notice of same about 3 hours in advance. They backed out last week. This week just the keyboard player backed out.
One less mic!

I didn't need to sand bag as hard as Skippy suggested. I ended up puttin' on the potato sack for 6 dB max. These guys are fairly disciplined in that arena. I couldn't see any way to use an AT 4033 on the vocals like I'd planned. They got a 57.

The singer/guitarist is used to being right on top of the mic at the clubs he plays and we didn't have a pop filter or a place far enough away from the drums for this mic to work. The mics on the vocal and guitar were sent to the mixer and then I used the direct outs to feed a small PA so that the band could feel at home with the sound in the room.

I went with two rodents as "overheads" about 6' in front of the kit, pointed toward the guit cab (L) and bass cab (R), through the dbx 386 and then into two channels on the Mix Wizard, and a 57 on the guit and bass cabs and one more 57 on the vocal as previously mentioned. Even the drummer suggested I move the "overhead mics" away from the drums, because the high-hat was obnoxious. A couple of inches did the trick. From there the LR mix was sent to the CDRW balanced, through very short cable.

We got 9 usable tunes in 3 hours spread over 34 tracks on the raw CD.

That dual RNC compressor unit is looking pretty good to me about now.
More money down this dark hole.
More shit to carry around...
But I'm having frun.

We did get one "ringing" artifact at the end of one bad take that remains unexplained. It built up like a slow feedback loop and never reappeared during the rest of the session.

 

[skippy]

-6dB is a great place to *end up*, after everyone is settled in and in the groove. You can sneak it up a little as you go, tune to tune... I'd bet you started out at closer to -12 on the first tune, though. Poisoned your mind, I bet!

I just booked a date to do some one-take-wonder demo work for an *excellent* jazz quintet, right after Christmas. My wife and I are gonna set 'em up up in the living room here, so that they can use our acoustic piano. That and acoustic bass, tenor sax, 4-pc drums, and vocals. Live to multitrack, no overdubs, what you get is what you get... And then mix, compose, and burn a CD. 6 hour budget, load-in to load-out. They'll take however many tunes will fit. Whee!

Good news is that I already know how to mic my piano, and I know their style- so I can have all the mics selected, set up on stands, patched, the snake run down the stairs to the basement (which will just be a control room for this deal), the foldback speakers set up and levelchecked, and the board configured for tracking, with mic/channel/track assigns done, rough levels and pans dialed, and everything tested and ready before they arrive in the driveway. I'll have them mic'd up before they finish unpacking, and then it's time to track. The Christmas tree is just going to be an unusual acoustic treatment...

I learned early in my career that it's all about preparation. For those guys, I'll bet that the potato sack will only have 6-8dB in it as well, right from the start. They are true, seasoned pros, and know mic technique and studio discipline very well. They know their stuff _cold_, and now it's up to me to bring the same approach to the nerdy, knobtwisty parts of the date. This is gonna be just like old times!

This session is going to be a major hoot- I'll have to shoot some pictures, and get the rights to reuse some of the material. If I do, I'll post some here.

 

[drstawl]

Skippy was Right! sonusman too....

Just looked over all the raw tracks in Sound Forge magnified down to their highest setting and see that I should have sand-bagged just a little harder.

>Poisoned your mind, I bet!

I'll remember to bring more mind poison next time.

I haven't found any blips that I can hear over the intended grungy transients but I found a few that visually were obviously beheaded without a fair hearing. sonusman was right about the Mix Wizard handling a little overage in a very tasteful fashion.

The best results I've ever seen achieved in this same sonic environment were done with everybody direct and the drummer stereo miced. Bands just won't listen to sound advice.
Oh well: It's their dime.