ironbut

This one's almost danceable (need a vacation or somethin')!

Never been caught running a stealth rig but I have had a few tense moments when security seemed to be taking an extra long look at me. I can't imagine trying to keep my cool with an $$$ rig like that! Fun times!

Love Schoeps!!! I used to use a matched pair for recording ensembles and overheads/room sound. You get that "light as a feather" super clear sound with the omnis I used to use. Used a Grace 808 pre or an early SD 702. Either way, it has that audio jewelry feel!

Stumbled across a great video on M/S recording and processing. The example is done in FL Studio (I think) but you can do this in Cubase just as easily. I sure wish I'd seen this when I first fooled around with this technique! It kinda messed with my head just reading about it?

A quick look at that GS thread,.. It sounds like a some folks are comparing recording an instrument like guitar with 2 mics (super common) with one mic on the neck and one on the body and stereo recording. In that case, matching really doesn't matter. You just move the mics around until you get what sounds best to you with those mics, instrument and room. grawk is right about using a stereo bar. It all depends on the kind of recording you going to make on what technique you employ. IMHO the best way to do a stereo recording of a room and avoid any of the typical headphone issues like you mentioned is M/S. You're working with 3 channels mixed down to stereo ( 1 mid with 2 sides). I guess you could use a bar with the mic's lined up back to back (instead of side by side) but if you have two boom stands, the one over the other (one upright and the other upside down pointed at each other) is what I've always done for M/S. If you plan on doing much recording, I think it's worth picking up Bobby Owsinski's book "The Recording Engineer's Handbook. It has examples that make great starting points for recording setups for most instruments and ensembles. Just add time and patient listening and you can make great recordings with very humble gear IMHO.

I've never been a fan of the threaded clamp on my Aires. I have the stock one and the heavier TNT version. I also tried a couple of non-VPI weights with the same results in various degrees (non-threaded). It's probably just personal preference but the sound is more open without a clamp. I've never put a meter on it but I don't doubt that I'm trading some low freq definition for the highs. Just my 2 cents.

Happy Birthday Al!

Nice virtual tour of Wright's Imperial Hotel.

His videos are completely addicting (once you start,..)!

I finally got around to giving Apple Tv+ a try and I'm loving Servant. I don't know if I'd say that the acting is top notch but the casting and the quirky characters all the principles have applied to their parts really tickles me in all the right spots (particularly Rupert Grint and Lauren Ambrose who I love-love-loved in Six Feet Under). If you haven't grabbed your 1 week freebie, give it a try.

I've never owned any UAD plugins but I have used some at studios with their cards. Be aware that their plugins require the use of one of their Apollo interfaces or a computer with one of their DSP cards installed. I'm not so sure how relevant these systems are anymore since computers are much more capable than they were when these systems were developed. Still, putting cpu intensive software on another computer or another processor system (DSP cards) makes a lot of sense if you do a lot of laptop work or just want to load up a ton of plugins/processing. There are other non-UAD options to get that Neve sound. I have the Slate Digital virtual mixbus and Waves virtual mixer. Both have Neve settings. I prefer Slate. https://slatedigital.com/ I believe it is easy to get a demo or try Slate's for a month or so. Channel strips are nice for mixing and probably half of the plugins I own are primarily for mixing. I haven't done very much mixing in the last couple of years so I don't find myself using them that often anymore. For music production I try to make the tracks sound the way they should in the first place but sometimes I do try console type modeling to add a little something. All a matter of taste I think.

Either way,.. What a match!!!! That whole era of fights were awesome and I loved the "Pay Per View" gatherings my buddies used to have for them.

I saw that too and meant to post it here. Pretty cool no matter how it was filmed!

As far as the Native Instruments crossgrade trick goes, I don't know why I shouldn't just post it here since it isn't like some kinda big secret. It has changed a bit since I took advantage of it a long time ago. The idea is to get a free or cheap Kontakt instrument that comes with the full version of Kontakt (there is a Player version which is always free). When I did it, I used the free Senheisser Drum Mic A instrument but I guess that no longer works. Anyway, once you have a full version of Kontakt, you can crossgrade that to a Komplete bundle during a half off sale which is usually a month long during the summer (or something like that). Here's a thread from 2020 from the Reaper Forum (best computer music forum ever IMHO) where they are talking about it. https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=238076&highlight=drummica Like I said, it's been a long, long time since I did this and IIRC I had to do a crossgrade for about $200 and an upgrade for about $200 and in the end I had Komplete Ultimate which was twice that much retail. This can only be done during the summer upgrade/crossgrade sale. It's possible that they may have sales on Komplete bundles that are close to this these days.

Kinda hate to interrupt Marc's cool series but,.. https://phonocut.com/

I've been a happy consumer of plugins for quite a while. I have around 300 and that's not counting the ones that come with my daws. That was over a decade of fooling around with these things and I've learned a few things about buying these things. Maybe I sound a little like a character from a Woody Allen movie but "never pay retail!" There are a few companies that sell their software for pretty reasonable prices (Valhalla DSP for instance) but for the most part, plugin developers big and small have regularly timed sales and many have "flash" sales that exceed 50% . Take Native Instruments. I bought their Ultimate Komplete bundle back when I was in school. It retails for around $1k but I picked it up for half that much (if you want to do the same PM me for the trick to doing that). Same for iZotope. I bought Rx 1 when it was first introduced for about 40% off and I just upgrade it every other year (up to Rx 6 Advanced now) when they have their half off upgrades. I have Ozone Advanced, Iris, Trash, Insight, Breaktweaker and some others I can't quite remember right now (you get the idea). Same for Komplete Ultimate. This summer they'll have a special upgrade sale for half off so I'll upgrade form Ultimate 11 to 13 for about 100 bucks instead of 200. There are several "brokers" that discount plugins from lots of developers and it's well worth registering with them and getting their spam. Plugin Boutique is one of them https://www.pluginboutique.com/ Just don't go down their rabbit hole or you'll end up with a bunch of expensive stuff that you'll never or seldom use. That's kind of the trick here. Think about what you NEED to do what you hear in your head. Of course it's up to you if you want to buy a bunch of stuff and I think that the industry counts on that to keep the ball rolling.

Here we go!

Native Instruments and iZotope will share the same corp roof! https://www.musicradar.com/news/native-instruments-and-izotope-come-together-to-create-an-unprecedented-alliance-to-shape-the-future-of-music-making-and-audio-production Pretty big news for me (I'm in Deep with both companies software). There's the usual Panic/Excitement arc running like wildfire on the creators forums. Only time will tell if the update sales that I have been betting on this summer will be better or worse and how this will effect future software?

Happy Birthday Fitzy!

Happy Birthday Bonnie!

I thought I seen Tkam's kat through the chip tunes!

My Mom grew up in Hollywood and went to Hollywood High School. When she and her sister were walking home from school one day, Gable was sitting in his Auburn Cord at the Goodyear store. My Aunt shouted "Hey Clark!" to which he turned and replied,.. "Well, hello girls." My Mom and Aunt screamed all the way home! Her stories alway made me feel connected to those days and I love that imagined kingdom (in b&w though).

Happy Birthday Nate!

Happy Birthday Craig!

Happy Birthday Naaman.