What's limiting YOUR recordings??

What's the weakest link in your recordings?

  • My recording chain (mics, pres, etc)

    Votes: 156 18.4%

  • My monitoring chain (monitors, phones)

    Votes: 66 7.8%

  • My room(s)

    Votes: 258 30.4%

  • My own ability

    Votes: 368 43.4%
  • Total voters
    848
raddo said:
Hey Rokket,

One plus I have is I'm not married. My plan is to buy all my "priorities" first, then get married. But of course, then I'll just have to sell all my gear when she decides we need something. Married guys: isn't that about how it is for you? :)
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Actually, wife is very supportive of what I am doing. She only steps in if I want to spend a butt-load on gear when we have to get things for the house we just bought, or something that is really important. I am getting close to retirement from the Navy, so we are preparing for that.




And she has already promised me that once we are settled, I can build a studio... :D
 
I need a wife, kids, mortgage and cars that don't suck every penny out of my pockets. I'd just like to upgrade from my 266mhz computer with 320mb Ram so I can actually record 24 tracks without it glitching every 5 seconds.
 
digit said:
I need a wife, kids, mortgage and cars that don't suck every penny out of my pockets. I'd just like to upgrade from my 266mhz computer with 320mb Ram so I can actually record 24 tracks without it glitching every 5 seconds.
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I feel your pain. I had the same problem until I bought my new pc... and I don't record directly to it, but a high track count is still a high track count! :mad:
 
I have successfully eliminated the recording chain, the monioring environment and the room itself, having optimized these considerably through the judicious usage of liquid capital and elbowgrease.

Now, the only thing holding me back is...

No, Wait! It's the API & Neve preamps I need, plus a whole mess of Apogee converters, a Bossendoerfer (sp?), a vintage Marshall plexi and ...

Nevermind. It's me...
 
I'm glad this thread has kept going ... this year I am trying to buy almost no new gear (although have promised myself some mics in April) and consolidate my abilities until I have squeezed what I can from my gear. I like the Big Bad Bear's theory of your ears telling you when it's time to upgrade ... I can hear that already in my monitors but the next step up worth taking would require me to sell my car :)
 
...

One of my New Year's resolutions was to NOT buy any new music/recording gear for 2005. I've done pretty well on that, this being only Feb_01, but I did purchase a Tascam PE-120 condenser mic a few weeks ago. Well, so much for my resolution, eh? Anyway, I'm trying to stay away from the major expenditure of another recorder, mixer or Portastudio, for the most part,... the several hundred dollar items, which I truly do not need more of,... :eek: Buying a simple $60 vintage microphone seems innocuous enough, without totally blowing my "no gear in 05" resolution.

Or,... am I just fooling myself?? :eek: Heh.
 
A Reel Person said:
One of my New Year's resolutions was to NOT buy any new music/recording gear for 2005. I've done pretty well on that, this being only Feb_01, but I did purchase a Tascam PE-120 condenser mic a few weeks ago. Well, so much for my resolution, eh? Anyway, I'm trying to stay away from the major expenditure of another recorder, mixer or Portastudio, for the most part,... the several hundred dollar items, which I truly do not need more of,... :eek: Buying a simple $60 vintage microphone seems innocuous enough, without totally blowing my "no gear in 05" resolution.

Or,... am I just fooling myself?? :eek: Heh.
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You are only fooling yourself if you can't answer the question: was it a need or a want? I say mics are a need. You can never have enough of them. So you didn't blow your resolution on something you didn't need (I've seen the pics of your gear, there isn't much you don't have).

The only recourse for you is to lose your mind and go digital....


Like that's going to happen... :D
 
Does "I use the crappiest pile of editing software the world has ever seen" count as recording chain or monitoring chain? Because it kind-of seems like both.

Between the DAW that seems to think 48kHz projects are 44.1kHz and proceeds to tell this lie to Auto-Tune, the buggy VST plug-ins (one of which I already threw out and rewrote from scratch), the random DAW crashes and hangs unless I disable one CPU, the spurious DAW stuttering if I use a FireWire HD (haven't they heard of prefetching audio data?), and the nervous Command-S twitch that I've developed as of late, I think I'm ready to throw something.

Happily, with a new DAW (and a project translation tool that took all my free time for about three months to write), I'm finally able to finish this project, but after all this torture, I'm having the hardest time finding the motivation to do the relatively mundane editing tweaks that I have left.

Should I vote "me"? Is there any hope of my sanity returning? :D
 
I voted "room" I don't really have a "sound proof" room to record in, and I end up throwing blankets over my PC to hush the damn thing up, not to mention the damn dogs walking around upstairs bleeding through, or the Phone rings, or the heater kicks on unexpectedly, or the wife and kids come home in the middle of the perfect track and all hell breaks lose upstairs. I plan on taking 1/4 of the room next to the "studio" room and converting that to a "sound booth" as soon as spring arrives. It will be 9' x 12', and should be enough for just about any thing I can think of to record. The wife is not thrilled, but oh well.
 
My room is the main factor. I mean, I could always have better, fancier gear, but I'm happy with that side of things, and I'm happy with the way I grow as I record and mix. But my room is a 10x20 storage space, in a complex full of bands, many of whom play really loud death metal. Some nights when I go out to my studio to record, I can't. More often I just have to wait for a band to pause or stop.
 
Quiet Please

I will have to echo the assessment of a large majority here---Its the Room and the space that is the biggest problem QUIET PLEASE ! ! if I had $$$$ I would build a studio outside the home -- what a mistake to not have carved out my stake in my new home for the appropriate space needed for a proper home studio-- but I was just fooling around with a 4 track Sony cassette recorder at that time --I'm stuck in thr basement---I don't need to say much more. As time went on I developed GAS ----- I bought a digital 8 track then a 16 track Akai dps. More out board gear and more mics etc etc etc. Now what I realize is I can get pretty OK sound ---what frustrates me is the inability to use the gear without interference.
I tend to think (although I may be wrong ) that the DAWs out there that have decent 24 bit AD--DA converters capture the sound much the same--be it Akai/Roland/Korg etc.--its the front end that matters more --good preamps and compressors and OK mics. That would be the #2 limiting factor but the mics and preamps I have are OK even though they are not high end---- but there has to be something to 2000 dollar Avelon pre amps and Neuman mics. I do both my own tunes building tracks and live recordings for community performance groups --I'm always trying to convince everyone the room matters and even with relatively humble studio gear I've got some OK projects --but God it would be so nice to have the best room.
 
I voted recording Chain

i think that if i was using a firewire soundcard with 8 ins that i could everything thing sound so much better cuz my drums are just a single track from a mixer and i cant change anything after its recorded. plus i could indivually EQ each drum and pan.
 
cellardweller said:
You got nothin'. Nothin'!

5 kids, yes... let me spell that F-I-V-E!!!

Talk about TRYING to find quiet time, it doens't exist. There is only the "hour with least decibels" in my house. Let alone the day to day crap , endless amounts of laundry and dishes, rides to social event/school events/friends houses/relatives/stores & shopping (yea, I didn't know they were different either)....

Okay, I'm done ragging.
I...I....I...I just really feel you guys listen :rolleyes: :D
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Do the following terms mean anything to you cellardweller?

Condoms, they're not just for breakfast anymore

Put a helmet on it, soldier

Cover up

Keep it in your pants

Find something to do with your hands

Think with the OTHER head

But it won't save you any money on car insurance

;) I know the feeling... I have four myself but that was a long time ago. The youngest is 16 now and a player himself, although only a beginner with his Peavey Destiny and Marshall. And when the first was born back in 1981 home recording was a gleam in someone's eye.

7
 
noisedude said:
Man ... I live in a single-glazed house less than two miles from an internation airport ... and you guys want to turn this into a thread moaning about our houses? ;):p:eek:
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I live in the FLIGHT PATH of an Air Force base!!!!! Ever have a bomber or an F-16 buzz the tops of the trees while you're doing a vocal?
 
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