What are YOUR essential rack effects?

D

DeshevldMusic

New member
Hi guys.
I'm a newbie that has only ever recorded with line6 plugins and a line6 interface but would like to learn more about rack effects and combinations and figured a good way to start would be to ask all of you experienced folk what you use in your set up and how you use it.

thanks
Andy:spank:
 
I use no rack effects and mostly write my own VSTs. I could also build my own effects, but there is little point in that, they just consume unnecessary power.

The possible exception is a hardware reverb unit, those are kinda fun to play with and coding a good software reverb is very difficult.
 
mshilarious said:
I use no rack effects and mostly write my own VSTs.
Click to expand...

That's very cool that you do that. You pretty much create whatever "gear" you need. :cool:



I could also build my own effects, but there is little point in that, they just consume unnecessary power.
Click to expand...

Yeah...but there's something magical about all them electrons flying through them wires! :D

The days when I'm actually tracking or mixing, and I fire up much of my studio racks and mixer...there's just a nice vibe with all the stuff powered up and glowing.
When I'm just editing/comping in the 'puter with a mouse-n-keyboard and staring at the LCD screens...it's like, yaaaaawn...rather lifeless.
But they all really are cool technologies...there's just so many ways to record these days! :)
 
Dogbreath said:
pretty much.


except for the variety part. :o


:D
Click to expand...
Yeah, variety is wonderful, but many of us just can't afford that - at least not all at once.

Conventional wisdom would be to try for at least one two-channel compressor, one two-channel EQ and one stereo reverb unit to fill out the standard minimum compliment, with the potential to add on from there as time and budget allows. This is what I did originally and have been very happy with it, both at home and in mobile situations (same compact rack for both.)

But there are a couple of exceptions to that conventional wisdom I'd recommend, depending upon one's individual situation:

If one is looking mostly at equipping a home studio on a tight budget, I might recommend backing off on the EQ and reverb, sticking with ITB for the time being for that, and budgeting that money instead for a gold channel or two of higher-end mic preamp or channel strip.

On the other side of the coin, if one is looking for something that will work not only for home recording, but as live PA rig as well, save some of your gear budget perhaps for a couple of extra channels of utilitarian (i.e. not necessarily high-end) compression for feeding to the PA.

G.
 
Big problem with low-end rack effects is they are mainly digital anyway, and the stuff that is floating around in the low-end is generally lower quality digital than you can download free VSTs. So I view that as a waste.

Comps, sure if you need one, but again the cheapo rack stuff isn't better than freeware VSTs. You need at least RNC quality, if you really need a tracking compressor. If you are recording yourself in your free time, you shouldn't. Recording bands professionally, probably you do.

Reverbs . . . well the fun reverbs I was talking about are real hardware, with springs (you don't want to use a spring too often though) and if you are really crazy, plates.

EQ, whatever. If you are going hardware, you probably have EQ on your board. If not, I'd think you'd want to use a different board. A&H MWs can be found cheap and have useful EQs. Mackies . . . eh, I get stuck using those too often :(

If you have tons of money and can afford the sexy outboard stuff, you probably wouldn't be asking the question.

I have a simple solution to the "I don't like to look at my monitor" problem: bizarrely, my mains are behind me, so I have to turn around for critical listening (I can reorient my desk if I feel like it, but I usually don't). Therefore, I am looking neither at LCDs nor power-sucking racks full of blinky lights and old-skool VUs lit by incandescents.

Also, I'm really drunk :drunk:
 
mshilarious said:
Reverbs . . . well the fun reverbs I was talking about are real hardware, with springs
Click to expand...
Yikes!

I may be completely sober, Jon, and therefore completely uninteresting with my posts, but if given a choice between using a spring reverb and inhaling an envelope full of anthrax spores, I'd have to think about it for a minute... ;)

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
If one is looking mostly at equipping a home studio on a tight budget, I might recommend backing off on the EQ and reverb, sticking with ITB for the time being for that, and budgeting that money instead for a gold channel or two of higher-end mic preamp or channel strip.
Click to expand...
Unless you don't use mics. In which case, I'd say the first thing to get that would OTB would be a nice hardware reverb unit. I still find software reverb lacking... although haven't heard the new Lexicon jobbie that costs over $1000, but at that cost, it better deliver!
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Yikes!

I may be completely sober, Jon, and therefore completely uninteresting with my posts, but if given a choice between using a spring reverb and inhaling an envelope full of anthrax spores, I'd have to think about it for a minute... ;)

G.
Click to expand...

Just talking in terms of effects, although the UA RE-201 is one of my guilty pleasures. I have a spring tank I should rack . . . and I get weird ideas about using cymbals as plates . . .

A rackmount "hardware" reverb isn't hardware, it's software running on dedicated DSP. So the good ones are expensive, and the cheap ones are cheap. Older Lexis are a reasonable bargain, but the premium VST solutions are nice too.
 
mshilarious said:
Just talking in terms of effects, although the UA RE-201 is one of my guilty pleasures. I have a spring tank I should rack . . . and I get weird ideas about using cymbals as plates . . .

A rackmount "hardware" reverb isn't hardware, it's software running on dedicated DSP. So the good ones are expensive, and the cheap ones are cheap. Older Lexis are a reasonable bargain, but the premium VST solutions are nice too.
Click to expand...
Agreed on almost all counts. The only one I can't comment on is the UA, because I have never had the opportunity to play with one.

But I agree wholeheartedly on a nice plate verb. I've been toying with the idea of building a wallmounted one to stick in the new space - there's some good plans available on the net - but my incredible lethargy gets in the way :(.

G.
 
DeshevldMusic said:
Hi guys.
I'm a newbie that has only ever recorded with line6 plugins and a line6 interface but would like to learn more about rack effects and combinations and figured a good way to start would be to ask all of you experienced folk what you use in your set up and how you use it.

thanks
Andy:spank:
Click to expand...

At one studio I work in there's a Manley ELOP limiter which I sometimes use. At another studio there is a Drawmer 1960 and an ART Pro VLA which I find useful during tracking. But I wouldn't bother with more mundane hardware processors given what I can do ITB.
 
I have a few rack things that are "must have's" for me. Most are either homemade like my mixer or expensive, like my Summit tube eq and compressors. I have an old Yamaha SPX1000 reverb that sounds good to me, better than any plug ins I have.

The only cheap crap I use is a pair of Boss compressors that sound good to me.

Here's my basic lead "anything" trick, from one of my favorite producers, David Foster:

I take the lead vocal track out from the computer and put it through the Summit passive tube eq and crank the shit out of the treble, then put it through a compressor (in my case the cheap Boss) to squash that treble peak down. What it does is "adds a glaze" to the whole track, so there's this "AAAHHHH" sound on the vocals. It makes the vocals stand out, adds a shine. The sound I'm looking for is the same as when you see a Walt Disney cartoon and Bambi is stuck right on top of the background, if that makes sense. It's important to me that the vocals, or lead whatever, have more "shine" than the cymbals or anything else, or it makes "Bambi" blur into the background.

I started as a cartoonist... it could be that no one affected me more than Walt Disney, he's got to be the top producer of my lifetime.
 
That sounds like the ol' Motown compressor trick too.

I recall the now ancient Yamaha DS2416 cards had one of their onboard DSP chips, but I forget which. Back in 1999 it was pretty sportin' to have 16 tracks with EQ and dynamics on each, plus two effects processors, all in one PCI card. Takes me back . . . anyway, yeah their reverbs were OK. The UAD EMT 140 is like crack cocaine though. I suppose a Bricasti hardware unit would be like powder cocaine . . .
 
mshilarious said:
A rackmount "hardware" reverb isn't hardware, it's software running on dedicated DSP.
Click to expand...
Yes. But it's easy to have DSP intensive code such as good quality reverbs running on dedicated DSP processors, where as on a generic CPU you hare to compromise because even with powerful CPUs, they still have to deal with running all kinds of other things. So in the end you end up with a code that's CPU "efficient"... i.e. has corners cut so it runs fast enough for you to be able to actually use your DAW that's hosting your reverb plugin :)

I haven't tried the UA plate thing, although I've heard a lot of good things about it. That's partly because I am not looking for a plate sound. I want nice smooth algorithm based reverbs w/o any of that grainy nonsense that you get from a lot of software.
 
Historically that's been true, but it's slowly changing due to the massive amounts of power now available. The question is, will plug designers code for the state of the art boxes, or for the LCD? It's tough marketing to say here's a great verb, but it will run at 33% of your quad core for one instance. And when you make stuff that hungry, sometimes it will crash some boxes due to the sheer variety of stuff that is out there. So that's the advantage of hardware DSP, but it's fading fast, I suspect it will be gone in five years.

The developer of the Bricasti stated that his box has the power of 10 quads, which is impressive, but a quad is more than 10x the power of a 10 year old computer . . . way more. 1B transistors vs. 40M.
 
Why doesn't somebody invent a hardware box that you can download VSTs for with real knobs and stuff on that would be configurable to whatever you download to it by Firewire or USB? Then you could transfer it from DAW editing to live use, as you wish. You could have a selector switch to jump between VSTs and if you feel like spending more, you could collect more units and stack them up. To change the order in the signal chain, you could just select what you want each one to do...?

Just a crazy thought. I love the idea of reverbs having real springs in. I was amazed when I saw the inside of an amp with an old fashioned spring-verb for the first time. I had no idea it literally meant real springs were in there!

Dr. V
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top