# More vs Enough



## Sketchy Jeff

i'm audio interface shopping and within about five minutes i'm up against the question of more vs enough 

pretty clear to me that a solo or 2 in thing was going to leave me short since the reason i'm moving away from a USB mic is that i want to record quite a lot more stuff at once. people singing together. people playing instruments together. rather than stacking tracks up one at a time

so i have my name on a waiting list for a MOTU M4 since it appears i'm not the only one in covid times going down this road

but when i sit down with a list of what i want to do i'm right up against it with 4 tracks at once which really quickly bumps me up to something like a focusrite 18i8 or presonus 1824c and with Studio One or whichever software package is bundled with the hardware soon there's no longer much need for my PA board all the sound for either recording or live events is managed on screen unless i want to duplicate functions in order to keep my hands on knobs and faders

friends who record a lot tell me that the whole reason for ADAT is that once you have 8 in it stabalizes for a little while but not long before you wish for 16 and then it stabalizes again for quite a long time before you begin to crave 24 and somewhere in that range you hit a ceiling where it becomes clear that you either need to admit that you run a sound studio or you sell all your electronics and go back to making music and hire other people to record it

more in from the start or not?

j


----------



## Guncho

It looks the M4 can only record two mics at once or am I missing something?

I'm also under the impression that ADAT is a recording medium not an interface but maybe I am incorrect.


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

My understanding is that the Motu has two TRS/XLR/TS combos on the front and two balanced TRS on the rear for line level in. My thought has been that i would most often have the interface connected to balanced line out from my board so the pre-amp function would get taken care of before it hits the interface and i would have short TRS patches from the channel outs or bus outs on the board running into the interface. I have an older (mid 80s i'd guess) 12 channel Seck board that I usually use for live event sound. Say what you will I like the thing and I don't wish I could stop using it. I guess at the time when I started shopping for interfaces I thought I would record a scratch track with a couple of mics and then record each vocal or instrument separately so let's say for a singer/songwriter a vocal mic, a room mic, and 2 mics on acoustic guitar or one mic plus piezo. Then layer on bass and harmony vocals or whatever afterwards. 

But what about when I want to capture that sense of people playing together? Adjust levels and EQ afterwards but live with the bleed in order to get that vibe that comes from people playing music together in the same room? Then I'm over 4 tracks at once from day 1. 

I didn't mean to be smart ass with the ADAT comment but I guess was. I got pitched a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 from a local music shop the other day because it would allow 8 in to start with expandable to 16 through the ADAT port on the interface once i realized that I want more channels. 

All of the stuff I've looked at so far bundles interface hardware with software mixers and plugins. I'm sure that's all cool but I like the instruments and sound gear I have even if it is kinda cobbled together. Who knows maybe I would toss all that stuff in the bin once I learned how to use a full featured DAW and plugins and could adjust all my levels from my smart phone across the room and do midi drum machine but .. i dunno

My ideal thing would have 8 - 12 TRS/XLR combos in, some monitor and headphone outs, Win10 system drivers with settings and nothing else. As far as check list of what it can do and doesn't need to the Behringer 1820 does the deed but reviews are mixed at best and i don't know anybody who has one
j


----------



## Guncho

Yeah sounds like you need much more than 4 inputs.


----------



## Merlin

Behringer is making interfaces that get pretty decent reviews these days. Grab the version with 8 mic pres, and when you need more, they make an expansion unit for 8 more.

i use a Presonus 1818, with a Behringer ADA8000 for a total of sixteen inputs.


----------



## Grab n Go

It sounds like you'll need 8 channels. That's probably the sweet spot. Remember that more inputs means more mic pres, more mics, more cables, mic stands etc. I think 16 channels is overkill unless you're planning on tracking drums.

If you're close to an L&M, then I recommend renting whatever you need for a big recording session. Otherwise, this stuff just sits around most of the time taking up space.

Edit: never mind, it sounds like you've got access to the gear, so maybe 16 channels is fine. 8 analog plus ADAT lightpipe is good.


----------



## player99

I have an RME Babyface Pro with a Cranborne ADAT500. The RME has 4 inputs. 2 XLR and 2 1/4". But it also has an ADAT plug. So with the added Cranborne lunchbox unit I get an extra 8 inputs. But that's not all. They are also able to act as hardware plugins. The adat portion allows the recorded tracks to route back out the BF to the Cranborne via lightpipe and then back in. It also functions as a sum mixer. I have a total of 12 inputs now. I have 5 mic pres, 2 compressors and an eq installed in the Cranborne. This is probably not what you will go for, but just letting you know it's there.


----------



## KapnKrunch

I am sold on the _*Babyface*_ after a lengthy private discussion with @player99 

I will take zero latency over extra inputs any day. 

That said, _*Audient*_ seems to be a solid contender for balance of quality and quantity.


----------



## Kenmac

I don't know if this will be too much but check out this 16 X 08 Tascam:









US-16x08 | OVERVIEW | TASCAM - United States


TASCAM has developed a recording equipment and tools for music production for musicians and creators.




tascam.com


----------



## mrmatt1972

I can't comment on the interface itself, I use a fairly aged AKAI EIE pro still. It is also a 4i4o but has 4 XLR combo jacks on the front and really useful knob combinations that I'm glad I don't have to live without. It's just me in the studio and I have cables in all 4 inputs almost all the time. If I was recording a band I'd want to step up to 8i8o for sure.


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Grab n Go said:


> renting whatever you need for a big recording session. Otherwise, this stuff just sits around most of the time taking up space


One of the things I'd like to get away from is one big recording session. A day or several days of mostly sitting around with short bursts of knock it out of the park scattered here and there. For whoever is doing the recording there's always a crowd of people hanging around watching the process. Some people really thrive in that setting others not so much. 

As far as gear sitting around in the long run that's a good question and I have been thinking about that. Once covid restrictions are in the rearview mirror and everybody can go to a live show if they want to will I still feel like recording as much? Maybe doesn't matter. By the looks of it if I shop carefully for an interface I can make it into part of my PA set-up plus record the show as a side benefit.

Back in the day I thought GAS just applied to guitar gear and all this other stuff was like a necessary evil. Turns out not so


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

KapnKrunch said:


> I will take zero latency over extra inputs any day.
> 
> That said, _*Audient*_ seems to be a solid contender for balance of quality and quantity.


does the RME do signal processing internally to get that zero latency?

the guy at studio economik in Montreal is doing a pretty effective job today at pitching me on a Focusrite 18i20 so props to him on the upsell over the Presonus 1824c. The guys at my local music shops are reading me the same spec sheets I can look at online myself once we get past the entry level 4-in 4-out stuff and availability not so great with backorders i guess it's me and everybody else going in the basement during covid restrictions
j


----------



## Budda

Check recording forums and see who is enjoying what in various price ranges too.


----------



## Grab n Go

Sketchy Jeff said:


> Back in the day I thought GAS just applied to guitar gear and all this other stuff was like a necessary evil. Turns out not so


Oh trust me, I know all too well. 

When I was doing the studio thing I acquired lots of stuff. I still have a lot of it. With studio gear, I tried to keep it within a certain price range because, as the cliche goes, the signal chain is only as good as the weakest link.

Fortunately, I don't suffer from studio GAS anymore... because guitar stuff is more fun.


----------



## KapnKrunch

Sketchy Jeff said:


> does the RME do signal processing internally to get that zero latency


Yes. Internally. The thing that gets me about this device (which has been around for years) is that they brag about specs that nobody else even mentions. Try to find out what the latency is on a Focusrite unit -- it won't be on their website. 

That said, again, Studio Economik knows a lot more about this gear than I do. Good luck with your quest. I look forward to coming over and using your stuff!!! 🤣😂😅


----------



## KapnKrunch

Sketchy Jeff said:


> part of my PA set-up plus record the show as a side benefit.


I too am hoping for this from the Babyface. Brilliant connectivity as far as I can see. 

EDIT: OK I phoned Ronmac (a former member here). Ron is a full-time sound guy who handles a lot of the gigs in Nova Scotia. Last time I talked to him he told me he loved the Babyface in his studio: "you just plug it in and it works" I left a message asking about using the BF in a PA.


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

KapnKrunch said:


> I look forward to coming over and using your stuff!


Yeah come on down although as of tonight you'll have to stay in the camper two weeks before I can talk to you so maybe hold off a while. Manitoba government is having some moments of regret over not clamping down earlier and harder so in the spirit of better late than never we're gonna ramp up border patrol and see what we can do  

I was looking at my live event gear stacked up under a tarp in the shop yesterday. Most of it goes straight into use recording stuff and I've got half a dozen projects that I can do socially distant learning curve things with friends then see where it ends up after that. 

So turns out shipping is the bottleneck. All the knowledgeable real live people I've talked to at actual stores are back ordered on anything they recommend until mid spring. Amazon.ca tells me they can have any of it on my doorstep by Tuesday next week. (actually at the lumber yard in town since that's the way it still is for my rural self) I suppose this is why Amazon is taking over the world but see me participate in the overlord scheme. 

In terms of what I see for features I like the Presonus 1824c. More than I need but not by a lot and good control software by the look of it and I think I could learn Studio 1 pretty quickly. Kevin at Studio Economik carries that stuff but says don't buy it get the Scarlett 18i20 instead for $40 difference the drivers are better the software is more regularly updated the hardware and build quality are better. Makes me feel like dropping down instead of up and getting the 18i8 same hardware except for the meters and since I expect to use it through a board anyway the line in are OK instead of having everything through internal mic pres on XLR channels. 

Seems much like guitars and whatever else. Anything you pick there's half a dozen knoledgable people on the interweb saying it's the greatest deal ever and half a dozen others saying they had it and gave it away it was a piece of poorly conceived crap from front to back 

j


----------



## KapnKrunch

@Sketchy Jeff 

Just got off the phone with Ronmac. He returned my call. Three things he said about the Babyface (before family humour and story-telling took over).

1) "been using Babyfaces for 12years"
2) (use with PA): "oh yeah, plug anything into anything" 
3) "rock solid" drivers and software "never the slighest quiver" 

Last summer my wife and I passed thru MB several times. We were appalled at the lack of concern about the famous flu. Now it sounds like a fascist state there.


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Wow that's a lot of channels in at once with a little software mixer and some signal processing onboard if you had no other gear that could be quite the thing and for 400 the cost per channel is crazy low

Some really bonkers latency numbers but if all you did was record live events with no overdubs that thing could be tempting

Do you have one? 

I've never dealt with cosmo music. If no local shop has anything available and it's between cosmo and Amazon.ca is there a plus / minus? 

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Hey now watch the f bomb there 

I think the idea is to try and create a Manitoba bubble similar to the Atlantic bubble with looser restrictions inside the province and tighter controls on people coming and going . It's been illegal to enter the home of another person in Manitoba for the last several weeks which sounds like craziness but we kind of got used to it and it's a nice excuse to not have people drop in ;-)

I think I'm pretty much going back and forth between PreSonus and focusrite by now. I would like to buy from an actual store but Seems that Between Cosmo and Amazon they can get it to me by Tuesday of next week and everybody else Is backordered until April

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Budda said:


> Check recording forums and see who is enjoying what in various price ranges too.


Haha those guys have their own version of the strat/tele/lp/335/prs argument it would appear 
j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Well after some poking about i went with more channels right away and thanks to Kevin at Studio Economik decided on Focusrite instead of Presonus even though he couldn't get me one since suppliers all out

Amazon said they could send me one within a few days but just to be spiteful i try to avoid them if i can. i can't always but it's disappointing to fall into the arms of the big evil bookstore. no local music shop had or could get before mid-spring. 

which led me to Cosmo Music who whaddaya know had one in stock and thanks to the joys of Canada Post they processed the order on Friday and I picked it up at my rural post office this afternoon - Tuesday - PLUS thanks to the little tracking thingy on the shipping notice I could watch it meander its way from Unionville ON to Brampton to Winnipeg to here. 
Which means that now I am the proud owner and possessor of a Scarlett 18i20 and I have my first recording session booked for Wednesday evening. It's a non-profit organization freebie but I'll need a few learning curve things to work out kinks I'm sure. I did a one track at a time stacked up church thing for some people last weekend and I tell ya I've done enough one track at a time for a while i'm eager to bang half a dozen singers into the DAW at once all nice a socially distant in far corners of the room of course which will also help acoustics

i sold some timber framing tools to make this happen. who am i kidding i'm not going back to timber framing my knees are shot and i'm afraid of heights. stay tuned for buyer's regret coming up in 10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Hmm ... I guess I could have read audacity wikis more carefully beforehand but it turns out that although you can in theory record as many tracks at once in audacity as your interface allows that audacity does not support ASIO drivers without some sort of nerdy internal rebuild that i'm not capable of so the software can record it and hte interface can provide it but they can't shake hands on how to get it from one to the other

which means off to either Ableton or ProTools I go 

it's a conspiracy, man, a conspiracy i tell ya
j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Used my fancy pants new toy last night to record some people in preparation for an online church service. That group has never layered up tracks before and has no interest in it nor the time. What they do is get together in a room play the songs they want to play say the words they want to say and some sort of edited live capture of that event is what goes up on the interweb. Performance and mixing standard is pretty low so far. So in other words a pretty good low risk place to tinker around with recording gear and software in a live off the floor situation. 

A couple of things jumped out at me. First it makes a really big difference taking live off the floor to separate tracks. That particular group of people doesn't balance among themselves very well and now it doesn't matter I can do their balance for them afterwards. Second techy thing I was surprised that I needed to dime the channel gain on the 18i20 interface iin order to get decent signal from four SM58s. Less so for the condenser mic on the piano or the bass DI. I can boost in post and I was running through my old 16-channel TRS snake between the recording room and the room where I was set up but that's all balanced lines it shouldn't degrade that much. One of the reasons I considered the Presonus interface instead of Focusrite was higher levels of channel gain and it turns out that may be a disadvantage with what I got. I captured the tracks in Ableton Live. I don't think I'll keep using Ableton myself it's clearly intended for making and mixing MIDI and virtual instrument stuff but my son was pretty taken with it so we installed it on his laptop later in the evening and he's off and running gonna be tough to get any socially distanced schoolwork out of him now  For me it's going to be a decision between ProTools and Reaper I think. I don't know that I've heard any negative thing about Reaper so far but the working musicians I know are all either ProTools or Logic junkies so just for the sake of getting advice from people I know it looks like the balance might tip to ProTools. Finally that's amazing low barrier to entry. I got the thing in the mail on Monday evening and recorded an event with it on Wednesday evening with full work days and other stuff included so probably 2 hrs at most of research and listening to tutorials and first time setup including drivers and software install that's craziness. 

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

mmm ... turning into a bit of a getting started in recording blog here but that's OK 

installed ProTools First last night on my windows laptop but haven't got it up and running yet. Wow that's a headache. It's a big download to begin with and then you also need to download and install i-lok licence management software which appears to be cloud based so how exactly i'm going to use the thing in situations where i don't have internet connection i'm not sure yet. also so far ProTools opens far enough to name a session pick a template and then open the session. It stays open for about 15-20 seconds and then ProTools closes. I think it may have to do with the handshake with the license software but not sure about that. looking around on help forums it appears to be not uncommon issue and may be that windows defender quarantined some bits and pieces of the download which would mean an un-install and re-install with defender off. 

Plus, and this is the red flag for me, PT First it would appear only allows 4 channels of input at a time you need to go up to the full subscription version to get more tracks in at once. That's a deal breaker for me even if it's powerful editing software once I get that far. My first little trial recording into Ableton the other day was 6 channels in and when I think over stuff I have planned to record it would be 5-8 in at once to begin with and grow from there. I'll be maxing out the mic-pres on the 18i20 and looking for ways to do instrument DI into the balanced line channels so I can have more mics running. So 4 in at once is no good then I might as well have gotten a 4i4 and lived with the limits. That means off to reasearch Reaper I go or maybe I dig in to Ableton more. 

I talked with my sister from Montreal who uses Ableton to run backing tracks for her electro-acoustic projects with Ida Toninato. I guess nothing wrong with ignoring all the pre-made beats and synth stuff and just using it for making and editing acoustic tracks. I had been thinking of booting tracks out of it into Audacity which I'm more familiar with right now but that means a track by track .wav export and separate import that's a lot of work to go down to an arguably less capable software package. 

j


----------



## bw66

Sketchy Jeff said:


> mmm ... turning into a bit of a getting started in recording blog here but that's OK


Keep it coming! My favourite way to learn is from other people's mistakes. 😁


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Well more blog posts on the journey into recording land

ProTools first is a headache to install. I got it downloaded and installed yesterday along with it's iLok licence management software but it wouldn't run. I could go through the setup process to open a new session and then the DAW screen would be visible for 3-5 seconds then the program closes. Poking around on the interweb it seems like it's not unusual to have problems getting this thing up and running. So based on some research I uninstalled it and then re-installed it this evening. Now it clicks right through the setup process to the DAW UI and stays running about 30 seconds then closes. So I guess as far as percentage improvement goes that's pretty good  

Last night I did edit and export the little recording session for the church service i mentioned earlier. It worked well and sounded good for what it was as a first try with both the interface and Ableton Live Lite. Definitely some things to improve on and the whole thing ended up export/import over to Audacity since that's the platform the church pastor uses to record his sermons and what all else. No problems there I got all the balancing and EQ done the way I wanted it then export .wav files which I then imported into audacity and tweaked again before mix and render. Not hard to export a specific group of tracks from Ableton and since the church publishes its audio in mono that made it even simpler. 

One thing to note is that Ableton and Audacity will run at the same time but they don't like each other there's lots of spitty little sounds and glitching in both of them with the other running. One at a time works fine. 

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

The other frustrating mutter grumble is that through this process i intended to try also extracting myself from the grips of Google so I started using the Outlook mail address that the Win10 registration is on. All good. The church service export was a 120Mb MP3 file so I thought OK good time to crank up OneDrive. Got that set up, uploaded my big fat MP3 no problem then sent a link to the pastor. He didn't get the link and I got booted out of One Drive a few minutes later and an email to the outlook address saying that I had sent inapporpriate content through OneDrive I would need to log into my Microsoft account. So I did that and there was a notice that my email and all services are shut down for 24 hours due to inappropriate content. WTF a 50 minute worship service with some not so great preaching and a bit of off-tune singing and a beginner bass player is hardly the best thing ever sent through the internet but it's not account suspending inappropriate either. So back into the welcoming warm arms of Google I went, uploaded the whole thing to Drive hit the pastor with a link and 5 minutes later he had it no problems no questions. 

thus concludes my complaints for the day

j


----------



## Merlin

Going with Reaper could have saved you all the hassle and expense of Pro Tools.

When you say you had to crank the gain on the SM58s, what kind of levels were you seeing for the tracks?


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Merlin said:


> Going with Reaper could have saved you all the hassle and expense of Pro Tools.
> 
> When you say you had to crank the gain on the SM58s, what kind of levels were you seeing for the tracks?


I am in the middle of downloading reaper now

ProTools and Ableton Live Lite both came bundled with the Focusrite interface i bought so there wasn't additional expense in that sense but if i had held off a few days i could have bought the used 20i4o tascam interface that's on my local kijiji today and gotten Reaper for $60 all nice and legal and been somewhat ahead on money but where's the fun in that?

I have yet to see a serious dislike on Reaper and I found out today that you can skin it in all sorts of different ways whatever suits you for appearance so how the graphic interface looks on the screen isn't a dealbreaker and if you get tired of the look you change it up and whaddaya know all the fun of a new DAW and no money spent

on the SM58 signals i had the channel gain on the Focusrite interface cranked and the Ableton channel at about +4 and it was peaking around -18-20. Not a terrible signal and the quality was quite good adjusting afterwards but I guess I was a bit surprised to be dimed on the interface and boosting in the DAW to get that level. That said, the singers are not super confident and with public health orders at the church they have the mics set up with pop filters as kind of distance guards a bit too far from the mics so they were singing about 18" away from the mic and not 100% on axis so some of the low signal is at the source. i have a thing this coming week with some more confident singers in a room where i'll set up in the same room as they are without using the snake i'm interested to see if there's a difference

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

bw66 said:


> Keep it coming! My favourite way to learn is from other people's mistakes. 😁


I wish I was better at that. I seem incapable of learning from other people have to bumble through everything myself and then say oh yeah now i remember somebody warned me about that. So I get the privilege of writing exploratory how-to rants and i know a lot of ways to make most things not work woo hoo
j


----------



## Merlin

Sketchy Jeff said:


> on the SM58 signals i had the channel gain on the Focusrite interface cranked and the Ableton channel at about +4 and it was peaking around -18-20. Not a terrible signal and the quality was quite good adjusting afterwards but I guess I was a bit surprised to be dimed on the interface and boosting in the DAW to get that level. That said, the singers are not super confident and with public health orders at the church they have the mics set up with pop filters as kind of distance guards a bit too far from the mics so they were singing about 18" away from the mic and not 100% on axis so some of the low signal is at the source. i have a thing this coming week with some more confident singers in a room where i'll set up in the same room as they are without using the snake i'm interested to see if there's a difference
> 
> j


Eighteen inches is a pretty long way for an SM58.


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

i did a few hi how are you today check check check trial tracks on reaper last night after installing it and it seems pretty intuitive and saves directly to .wav instead of some proprietary format and generally easy to use especially with 2 screens and an extended desktop layout. first impressions are good and really what i'm doing is pretty simple on the computer end. i want a good quality low latency capture of a bunch of signals at once. i'm waiting to find out some glitchy downside like they datamine all my email or some hidden agenda to go along with the good stuff or max track length is 2 minutes or some base level dealbreaker like that but nothing so far
j


----------



## bw66

Sketchy Jeff said:


> i did a few hi how are you today check check check trial tracks on reaper last night after installing it and it seems pretty intuitive and saves directly to .wav instead of some proprietary format and generally easy to use especially with 2 screens and an extended desktop layout. first impressions are good and really what i'm doing is pretty simple on the computer end. i want a good quality low latency capture of a bunch of signals at once. i'm waiting to find out some glitchy downside like they datamine all my email or some hidden agenda to go along with the good stuff or max track length is 2 minutes or some base level dealbreaker like that but nothing so far
> j


I've been farting about with Reaper a bit too. Similar two screen set-up. I'm sufficiently impressed that I purchased a small business license earlier today, even though their "trial" version seems to be full featured and I'm told continues to work after the trial period expires. It seems like a good product and I'm happy to pay roughly $80 CDN for it.


----------



## Merlin

Sketchy Jeff said:


> i did a few hi how are you today check check check trial tracks on reaper last night after installing it and it seems pretty intuitive and saves directly to .wav instead of some proprietary format and generally easy to use especially with 2 screens and an extended desktop layout. first impressions are good and really what i'm doing is pretty simple on the computer end. i want a good quality low latency capture of a bunch of signals at once. i'm waiting to find out some glitchy downside like they datamine all my email or some hidden agenda to go along with the good stuff or max track length is 2 minutes or some base level dealbreaker like that but nothing so far
> j


I can assure you there's nothing sinister in Reaper. I've been using it for years.



bw66 said:


> I've been farting about with Reaper a bit too. Similar two screen set-up. I'm sufficiently impressed that I purchased a small business license earlier today, even though their "trial" version seems to be full featured and I'm told continues to work after the trial period expires. It seems like a good product and I'm happy to pay roughly $80 CDN for it.


Keep in mind the $ gives you two full version upgrades. I got in on v.3.99, so my first purchase took me up to 5.99. I had to re-up at v6.0 - but that's over a period of ten years.


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

it's hardly cost prohibitive even if you get the gainful employment subscription any one piece of my analog gear or instruments is more $ and does only one thing at once

i don't think my son has come up for air from his Ableton deep dive since yesterday morning. he was supposed to be in school today but it was windy and -38 this morning so no school and back down the virtual insturments wormhole he went

j


----------



## bw66

Merlin said:


> Keep in mind the $ gives you two full version upgrades. I got in on v.3.99, so my first purchase took me up to 5.99. I had to re-up at v6.0 - but that's over a period of ten years.


It would seem that that has been reduced - I downloaded 6.x and my license indicates that I'm good through the end of 7.x. However, it also seems that new versions are slower to come out these days, so I'm probably good for a while. But even if 8.0 came out next Fall, Reaper would still be cheaper than coffee.


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

bw66 said:


> even if 8.0 came out next Fall, Reaper would still be cheaper than coffee


what's worth paying money for is interesting. $80 for a full featured DAW including at least a year and possibly somewhat more of upgrades is the price of a decent used Boss blues driver 

and imagine the cost of a full featured hardware recording setup up through the '80s

this is just crazy benefits for money. really the only limiting factor is my ability to absorb the learning curve and whether i have good ears for mixing

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Well the second recording session fell through for scheduling reasons but I have been having a fun time playing with different audio spectrum analyzers and seeing where exactly the hum points and resonant frequencies of different rooms are at. Oh the things you can do with a smartphone. I recall when I was in university getting a guy who was A Real Sound Man to do a show that my band was playing at. He had some very carefully unpacked very very expesive equipment that we'd better not come anywhere near that showed the audio response in the room with white and pink noise. We thought it was the coolest thing ever and he had a obviously invested some resources and training in the stuff. 

I remember thinking that it didn't really sound very good at that show and a conversation afterwards with him saying maybe we for once had an accurate sound system so it was more clearly obvious how bad players we were. So much for hiring real sound guys it was back to DIY learn as you go after that  

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Sort of related question. 
The church where I did that first recording session has really awful live sound. It's one of those '90s era bland blank boxes high shallow vault ceiling. Pair of Ramsa 15"/horn mains right above center stage hanging from the ceiling and some monitor wedges on stage. There's a small area right in the middle of the room that sounds not too bad and it gets muddier / muffled as you move towards the edges. Get the sound improved at the edges and you're driving ice picks through the ears of people in the middle and risking bursts of shrieking high frequency feedback from the vocal mics. Sound booth several steps above the floor at the back corner near the ceiling so room sound in the booth is nothing at all like anywhere else in the space so the sound people have gotten used to not trusting their ears. Sharpie marks on each channel strip where each adjustment "should" be made by somebody who did sound there back in the day and has been gone for years but God forbid you would question the tradition handed down on tablets of Allen and Heath. There's a big graphic EQ before the power amp that nobody know who set up the way it is or why or how. I assume that a contractor with a church sound consulting service rang out the room in 1992 and set it up and it's been that way since. I've been in there a few times when they have big community events and it sounds better with a full house in the room - about 400 people - but 90% of the stuff that happens there is with 40-70 people in the room and the sound is boomy and hollow even though the space is pretty dead. 

So because of public health orders nobody does anything in that room now other than record for their weekly live stream. Their sound guy talked to me the other day about doing some adjustments to improve live sound when in-person worship services begin again. I can set up live event sound for the room it's in and make it sound good by ear but I don't know that much about permanent setups. Should I run away as fast as I can? Should I make it sound good now and encourage them to be more free to tweak and experiment as group size / event format change? I'm sort of distrustful of the idea that you can set up one mix to rule them all one mix to bind them for all time so my advice would be some version of trust your ears experiment widely and keep tweaking. Thoughts?

j


----------



## bw66

You could always take pics of the settings and patches and then tweak to your heart's content knowing that you could restore it to its former set-up if things go awry. 

Permanent set-ups are really no different than temporary set-ups when it comes to mixing, EQ-ing, etc. Sounds like your main speakers are where you want them. Keep the monitor mix as quiet as possible - that's often where bad sound has it's origins. Guitar amps should be pointed at ears, not knees, and especially not at the audience. Avoid the temptation to over-EQ - the bypass button is your friend - make sure that having the EQ engaged actually makes it sound better (at the same volume). Check it again 24 hours later.


----------



## Merlin

Sketchy Jeff said:


> Sort of related question.
> The church where I did that first recording session has really awful live sound. It's one of those '90s era bland blank boxes high shallow vault ceiling. Pair of Ramsa 15"/horn mains right above center stage hanging from the ceiling and some monitor wedges on stage. There's a small area right in the middle of the room that sounds not too bad and it gets muddier / muffled as you move towards the edges. Get the sound improved at the edges and you're driving ice picks through the ears of people in the middle and risking bursts of shrieking high frequency feedback from the vocal mics. Sound booth several steps above the floor at the back corner near the ceiling so room sound in the booth is nothing at all like anywhere else in the space so the sound people have gotten used to not trusting their ears. Sharpie marks on each channel strip where each adjustment "should" be made by somebody who did sound there back in the day and has been gone for years but God forbid you would question the tradition handed down on tablets of Allen and Heath. There's a big graphic EQ before the power amp that nobody know who set up the way it is or why or how. I assume that a contractor with a church sound consulting service rang out the room in 1992 and set it up and it's been that way since. I've been in there a few times when they have big community events and it sounds better with a full house in the room - about 400 people - but 90% of the stuff that happens there is with 40-70 people in the room and the sound is boomy and hollow even though the space is pretty dead.
> 
> So because of public health orders nobody does anything in that room now other than record for their weekly live stream. Their sound guy talked to me the other day about doing some adjustments to improve live sound when in-person worship services begin again. I can set up live event sound for the room it's in and make it sound good by ear but I don't know that much about permanent setups. Should I run away as fast as I can? Should I make it sound good now and encourage them to be more free to tweak and experiment as group size / event format change? I'm sort of distrustful of the idea that you can set up one mix to rule them all one mix to bind them for all time so my advice would be some version of trust your ears experiment widely and keep tweaking. Thoughts?
> 
> j


if you’re lucky, it’s a digital board, and you can save presets. If it’s analog, consider downloading a blank settings sheet.


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

bw66 said:


> Keep the monitor mix as quiet as possible


That's a funny issue in church sound. In this particular branch of evangelical churches you get a very very quiet room with pretty much zero crowd noise plus the singers whose tastes lean to a big personality southern gospel style like a very loud monitor feed. The church sound guy told me that when they get a southern gospel guest singer in they turn the mains completely off because the monitor fills the house and people still complain that it's too loud and the singer wants it louder in monitor. Worse yet (in my humble opinion of course) a lot of those southern gospel guys sing to SOUND TRACK which is an abomination I don't know how such a thing is permitted without calling it karaoke. They want the sound track feed in the monitor PLUS their vocal in the monitor in a room that you could hear a pin drop in otherwise but the audience/congregation is hearing the whole thing through the monitors bounced off the front wall of the room. 

My own preference for devotional or worshipful music is a resonant room that sings well acoustically with only voices. I want to play with a rock band in a bar on Saturday evening and sing a capella harmony with no power amp on Sunday morning but I am becoming an endangered species and in that sense not much help setting up church sound


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

I think the issue is mostly low confidence from the sound crew. Once they get a sense of what you can do with some EQ on each channel depending who's using the mic on stage it won't take long to pull the confidence up. A few master EQ tweaks and a couple of notch filters to knock down the frequencies that want to howl or die and they'll be off and running. The setting isn't really suited to wandering the room during the event to see how it sounds in different locations but they have the advantage of a fairly consistent small group of 'performers' and over all quite quiet levels so I think they can learn to account for the funny sound in the back corner where the board sits.


----------



## Always12AM

I’m more than happy with 6 inputs personally.
But I’m alone in a basement naked 100% of the time just yelling at the top of my lungs.


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Always12AM said:


> alone in a basement naked 100% of the time just yelling


so really a close mic, two room mics, and a lower mic to catch ambient fart sounds is about all you really need  

when it comes down to it i'm not sure how much i'll use the various line in and out options on the 18i20 but it got me up to 8 mic pre channels for not that much more money than an 8i6. i originally thought i didn't need all the bundled software - ProTools, Ableton, etc - but I did kind of get sold on that idea. As it turns out I'm not at all impressed with ProTools, my kid is having a good time with Ableton, and I'm going down the Reaper path pretty steadily. So in that way I could have gotten the Tascam or other with not too many other options besides a bucketload of mic pres

But I didn't

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Recording tonight with the crew from the church I mentioned earlier. The other day I got together with the sound crew and adjusted the big graphic EQ in between the board and the power amp for better room sound. That helped A LOT. Those big boxy rooms with rows of padded chairs but hard flat walls and ceiling planes have odd resonant frequencies. A bunch of guys in different spots all running Audizr on their phones was an eye opening experience for everybody. Amazing what you can do with free aps. 

I also showed them how to find and kill feedback with the sweepable mid controls on each channel strip of the sound board. That was also a light bulb experience for them who had been taught that the whole expanse of buttons from about the middle of the board on up was a no go zone set in place by the Lord himself at the beginning of time. The church pastor has a very round voice not very loud and not clearly articulated consonants his voice looks like a series of eggs on a string visualized on recordings. Lots of little ironic asides while he speaks. Some of their other worship leaders and readers have super spiky voices that look like throwing stars on recording and come from that Billy Graham / Martiin Luther King era of public speaking loud slow and super articulate with no spare words or sounds anywhere. Some male voices some female. Between them they were having a hard time setting the vocal mics in a way that work for everybody. My advice was no need to do that. Tweak to each one. They felt like that was helpful and freeing. I don't know in the long run if that's good advice. My experience is with live event sound on portable setups so each room and each group of people is a new world you tweak everything to every event separately. Maybe that's too nerdy for people using the same voices in the same room week after week. I guess they can see how it works. There hasn't been church for several months with public health orders but they are open for very limited capacity now so it seems like a good time to make changes that really nobody is likely to notice because it's been so long since the last time an event was held in the room. In my view anything that gets rid of that ringing 800/1600hz feedback is a good thing. 

And lo, the word of the lord came unto them saying, would you shut that damn PA system off i can hardy hear myself think

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

i recorded some people last night and it didn't go so well partly because i didn't have the spine to say look you can't stand there we'll get too much mic bleed from the piano you need to stand over here so your wee thin little voice has a snowball's chance of showing up on the recording

i also skimped on setup time because i had such good easy results the first few attempts so i was scrambling and didn't take the time to get all my routing and channels set up beforehand. that meant the whole vibe of the evening wasn't as relaxed and comfortable therefore the musicians less open to suggestion and they sound more tightly wound less interactive with each other on the recording. more nervous and more like separately tracked parts which is what i was working to get away from. i also had a guy looking over my shoulder who wanted to see the recording process. that wasn't a good idea. the whole point of setting myself up the way i have was to avoid the looking over shoulders thing. 

but the beauty of a lot of tracks at once is that in the end as long as i capture a decent signal on each one there's raw material to work with. i might need to spend some more time editing but it worked from a basic audio capture point of view. and it will be used for a weekly audio stream church service. not to discount that experience for people who are into it but it's also not a make or break career establishing demo recording. what they've been doing until recently is a rough mix out from their house board onto one mono track and then out to the internet unedited so the bar is low lots of opportunity to learn and grow. 

yay for leaning and growing

j


----------



## Alan Small

Sketchy Jeff said:


> i'm audio interface shopping and within about five minutes i'm up against the question of more vs enough
> 
> pretty clear to me that a solo or 2 in thing was going to leave me short since the reason i'm moving away from a USB mic is that i want to record quite a lot more stuff at once. people singing together. people playing instruments together. rather than stacking tracks up one at a time
> 
> so i have my name on a waiting list for a MOTU M4 since it appears i'm not the only one in covid times going down this road
> 
> but when i sit down with a list of what i want to do i'm right up against it with 4 tracks at once which really quickly bumps me up to something like a focusrite 18i8 or presonus 1824c and with Studio One or whichever software package is bundled with the hardware soon there's no longer much need for my PA board all the sound for either recording or live events is managed on screen unless i want to duplicate functions in order to keep my hands on knobs and faders
> 
> friends who record a lot tell me that the whole reason for ADAT is that once you have 8 in it stabalizes for a little while but not long before you wish for 16 and then it stabalizes again for quite a long time before you begin to crave 24 and somewhere in that range you hit a ceiling where it becomes clear that you either need to admit that you run a sound studio or you sell all your electronics and go back to making music and hire other people to record it
> 
> more in from the start or not?
> 
> j


I think Ben, @Always12AM , has solid info on options vs results...Ben?


----------



## Always12AM

Alan Small said:


> I think Ben, @Always12AM , has solid info on options vs results...Ben?


I don’t think anyone should bother with 8-24 inputs unless you have the budget to run a commercial space.

This article is a good starting point for anyone.

According to this guide I’m at “semi pro” studio, but owning the equipment is just the beginning. Learning to really operate it all and tracking, mixing down and mastering is 80% of the battle.









Recording Studio Equipment List: The Essential 33 Items


A Complete Recording Studio Equipment List for beginners to use as a reference. Learn all the components of your home studio inside and out.




ehomerecordingstudio.com




.


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Always12AM said:


> I don’t think anyone should bother with 8-24 inputs unless you have the budget to run a commercial space.


I think I might talk to some people who do event recording for the classical and acoustic instrument world. Mobile setups for good quality capture of live shows for release as recording. In that sense they don't run a commercial studio and there isn't the layering of takes and tracks one at a time or in groups like a rock band in studio. Instead lots of separate mics catching one big performance take. I see them at jazz and classical and new-composition shows with their little wheeled rack carts at the hub of a big spiderweb of cable. 

I don't think I over-bought input. In fact I can see myself maxing out inputs - I had 7 running last night. For what I have in mind I might have too many outs and with a one-big-take setup I won't end up being very concerned about latency. I guess we'll see where it goes. 

Practical details I would like to be able to have the talkback separate from the monitor 1/2 on the 18i20 but as far as I can see they are grouped. I think there's likely a workaround but I haven't dug in far enough in the Focusrite Control software. 

j


----------



## Always12AM

Sketchy Jeff said:


> I think I might talk to some people who do event recording for the classical and acoustic instrument world. Mobile setups for good quality capture of live shows for release as recording. In that sense they don't run a commercial studio and there isn't the layering of takes and tracks one at a time or in groups like a rock band in studio. Instead lots of separate mics catching one big performance take. I see them at jazz and classical and new-composition shows with their little wheeled rack carts at the hub of a big spiderweb of cable.
> 
> I don't think I over-bought input. In fact I can see myself maxing out inputs - I had 7 running last night. For what I have in mind I might have too many outs and with a one-big-take setup I won't end up being very concerned about latency. I guess we'll see where it goes.
> 
> Practical details I would like to be able to have the talkback separate from the monitor 1/2 on the 18i20 but as far as I can see they are grouped. I think there's likely a workaround but I haven't dug in far enough in the Focusrite Control software.
> 
> j


Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with more inputs. My preference is simple and as high quality as I can afford. Which often means having less stuff. But I’m left with very few things that do one or two jobs really well.

If you are just wanting to have some adventures and experiment and track a bunch of live stuff. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. You’ll probably have more fun with a mobile rig than guys who have million dollar studios that took them 56 years to build lol.

I just know that the only way I’m ever going to be using 16 inputs is the day that I build a facility and buy one of these: Tree Audio The Roots I - 16 channel


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Always12AM said:


> only way I’m ever going to be using 16 inputs is the day that I build a facility and buy one of these: Tree Audio The Roots I - 16 channel


i know some people love the studio experience either that adrenaline rush in the live room when the take is running or the control room master of all you survey thing or disappearing into an editing worm-hole making a completely dry track sound like it was recorded in some magical imaginary space
i haven't done enough on either side to be really comfortable but my experience has been that stuff is a sort of necessary evil to the recording process
so for basically a thousand dollars plus the live sound stuff I already have i'm set up to be able to record people where they are in spaces that feel comfortable to them. i'm at sort of kindergarten levels now and the learning curve is steep but it's do-able and we'll see where it goes. it's a side line for me i make my living producing construction drawings for houses. making or recording music occupies the personal interest / spirituality / community service sides of my brain in good ways

ha ha if i had one of those Tree Audio boards I would need to build an altar to set it on and bow before its holy presence each morning and consult it about what i should have for breakfast. i could have a pre-war Martin on another altar like that and a '50s Les Paul too and the Trinity would be complete

either that or build a plywood road case for it and schlepp it around to community halls and churches and backyard shows and waste it completely

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Today I run across the downside of having a fairly big interface
I'm recording some guitar parts this evening. The group is recording live off the floor all the other parts keys and vocals. I want to record and edit the acoustic additional guitar line a bit before adding it to the stereo live off the floor mix. So in the end I'm going with a laptop and Zoom A3 lined into the mic jack and the big interface is staying at home. I get a mic/pickup balance on the A3 sending to a mono track. If I was doing all the recording I would break the different vocals and piano into their own tracks but that's not my project they're already doing that part with somebody else. 
j


----------



## KapnKrunch

Not trying to introduce a "stumbling block" here. Just trying to re-inforce @Always12AM idea that a common sense understanding of sound trumps gear-acqusition every time. 

This link is basically my invitation to reject all the contemporary "wisdom" about knob-twiddling (real & virtual), and to embrace the simplest path. 





__





How far have you taken the two mics and a tape deck?


What's the best thing you've done with two microphones plugged directly into a tape deck? Have you recorded any live music in that way? Assuming you had really good quality microphones, would the average tape deck preamps be any good, or are you better off using one of the several outboard...



www.tapeheads.net





[A local came to me and said the old folks were having trouble hearing the preaching. I suggested taking the speakers off the vaulted ceiling and putting them on the walls. And adding some absorption to the ceiling. I also added that the elders were probably more interested in purchasing new electronics as a solution. Guess what?]


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

KapnKrunch said:


> Not trying to introduce a "stumbling block" here


Whaddaya mean not trying to introduce a stumbling block? Best thing you could do. 

At the church I showed the sound guys how to find and kill feedback frequencies with the mid-sweep EQ on the channel strips and then went up to the front room and added a bit of 6K-9K hz and cut a bit of 300-700 hz so what you end up with is a spoken word mix that's ... how shall we say ... more friendly to senior ears. More "s" and "t" sounds and less of the round lower vowels. It was definitely very clear sound in the room if it was a recorded mix I would have run a light de-esser on it. Sunday afternoon several seniors who usually complain told the pastor he had the best sermon they had heard recently. They felt like they agreed with it BECAUSE THEY COULD HEAR IT so that's something to think about. What remains is to put a simple compressor on the two channels that the pastor usually uses to put some upper and lower boundaries on what his voice is allowed to do. Between those two things he may turn into the congregation's favourite preacher and people will compliment him on how much better written and theologically astute his sermons are when in fact it's just less physical work to understand him.

Last night's parallel recording also worked great. The guy who was recording the group all into one channel felt comfortable so it sounds good. I recorded myself separately with my old Zoom A3 both mic and pickup straight into the onboard sound card, tweaked it a bit, and laid it next to his recording so they can adjust the amount of extra guitar they have as he sees fit. A nice balance of a new thing but nobody so far out of their comfort zone that they start to get twitchy. 

Is this about recording and PA or philosophy? Hey now. 

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

in another topic on that same vein, I make construction drawings for houses for a living. all of that is done with digital models on computers. i own a good drafting table complete with a very nice mutoh head but 97% of the time it serves as a great stand-up desk for the laptop and two external monitors. the computer modelling is very helpful up to a point. you can spin the model around and look at it from any point of view you want. Changes are no problem. Shadow modelling for solar gain. Landscape. Interiors with people and funiture. Car in the garage to show how much room left for the mancave. 

But the other day i looked at some of the first drawings i did when i was a general contractor drawing only for my own customers. They're in pencil and inked done on a drawing board with T-square. They're very good - clear, simple, well focused, no extra information, nothing missing. Easier to work from iin many ways than the ones I do now. 

Do I wish I could throw my computer out the window and go back to all hand drafting? In general no although let me tell you there are days ... . 
But it would be good to keep the simplicity and focused quality of hand drafting as a regular reference so the computerized modelling doesn't get out of hand. 

i'm going to do another distanced choir recording with easter coming up. want to be in it?

j


----------



## KapnKrunch

Sketchy Jeff said:


> And lo, the word of the lord came unto them saying, would you shut that damn PA system off i can hardy hear myself think


Amen. 

------------------------

(No, I don't want to drive to Manitoba to be in a choir. If I was your neighbour, yeah, sure!)


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

i guess i never mentioned it here
at christmas during the height of covid restrictions i put a choir together by having a whole bunch of people sing along to a base track while recording themselves on a second phone. everybody recorded as individuals or family groups and i laid them all together and did a bit of editing and it sounded pretty much like an enthusiastic but not very experienced community choir singing a christmas carol. if i remember right it was about 45 people
people who did it felt super self conscious about hearing their own recorded voices but happy with how their voice added to but also disappeared in the group. people have been asking if i would do it again for easter. 
it's harder to find an easter related song that's known across various religious and secular traditions but suitable for both so that's the bottleneck at this point. the thing isn't hard to do or assemble once the mp4 tracks start rolling in by email






j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Well the Easter choir project is up and running. 16 tracks of Audacity layered up yesterday afternoon gets me two finger picked and one strummed guitar plus members of my family singing a couple takes each of all the SATB parts for three verses of Amazing Grace. That sounds full enough that other people who want to be in the choir get an MP3 of that recording that they feel like they can sing along with. They listen to it through headphones on one phone and record themselves singing on the voice recorder app of another one and send the m4a file to me by email. We layer them all up and trim the entrances and releases of each line a bit and voila it's a choir. 

It was a great quarantine project at Christmas and it was enough fun and well received that I'm looking forward to it again. In some ways it sounds better than a live choir because you can line up the timing more precisely. The one guy singing bass who's always dragging the beat and holding on way too long can record his part and when we're laying them up we just adjust him a bit forward, trim his releases, and he never knows. Same with the sopranos and tenors who push the beat you just edit them back a bit and everybody's happy no arguments. My son did the track lineup for each sectional in the winter and he pretty quickly got to the point where he didn't listen to them at all for the initial time alignment. Just came to recognize what the waveform for 'silent' looked like and dragged each person's first word into line and that was about it the first listen was sectionals to adjust balance between the voices. 

I may do the full edit in Reaper this time. Audacity can only handle 16 tracks at once so we mixed each sectional down into its own composite track and then put those 4 SATB tracks together for the final mix. In the end I would have gone back and adjusted a couple of individual voices but didn't feel like working all the way back up to the sectionals so left it like it was. That probably helped it sound more like a real live choir when it came down to it and also kept the workload within reason so I'm not sure how it will go this time. 
j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Two econo side address condenser mics or one slightly better one?

Two AT2020's or one AT4040?

j


----------



## bw66

Sketchy Jeff said:


> Two econo side address condenser mics or one slightly better one?
> 
> Two AT2020's or one AT4040?
> 
> j


Good question. If I were just recording one track at a time, I would go with one 4040, but for the full-band, live-off-the-floor stuff, I might be inclined to go with two 2020s. I guess it depends somewhat on what mics you already have.


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

bw66 said:


> Good question. If I were just recording one track at a time, I would go with one 4040, but for the full-band, live-off-the-floor stuff, I might be inclined to go with two 2020s. I guess it depends somewhat on what mics you already have.


I have a handful of SM57 and SM58 and similar mics and an entry level small diaphragm condensers AT2021 I think that I used to use together with piezo into a Zoom A3 for live sound on acoustic.

I think 2 is the way to go. I might need to keep an eye on high end EQ a bit more. I can pad the signal at the interface for louder situations I don't feel like I need to pad the mic itself. I'm sure there is some nuanced improvement in the sound of the better mic but lack of nuance hasn't killed me so far and hopefully won't soon. 
j


----------



## bw66

I would be inclined to agree. In most situations, a 2020 is a nice step up from a 57/58 so for me being able to replace 2 57/58s with a better mic is better than replacing only one with a really nice mic.


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

bw66 said:


> I would be inclined to agree. In most situations, a 2020 is a nice step up from a 57/58 so for me being able to replace 2 57/58s with a better mic is better than replacing only one with a really nice mic.


There was a guy in my local kijiji selling two AT2020s and like an idiot I texted back and forth with him a few times but then hummed and hawed a couple days before spending the two hours to drive out there and pick them up. So of course just as I was getting in the car to go get them he texts that somebody else picked them up first. Each time that happens I think you know what it's time to shop more strategically - do the woe is me handwringing first, then decide what to get, then look for it, then when it comes up just swing on over and get the thing and don't bother with the second round of staring into middle distance second guessing. Next time. There is a AT4040 listed locally right now but he's asking just nominally below new price for it so I think for the cost of the taxes I could go and get an actual new one with warranty if I feel so inclined. However at the moment I don't feel so inclined and I'll just make a mental note to be quicker on the turnaround next time. 

j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Here's my little Easter recording project for this past week which does in fact involve a guitar. This is just straight up stacking tracks which people make by recording themselves singing along to a base track that I send out to them. It's got that sort of rough edged community choir feel to it which is actually made quite a lot less by assembling it from parts than if it was a real group of singers. 36 voices in total. I haven't met everybody in the group some of them are relatives of friends of friends. People from Georgia, Alberta, Manitoba, Indiana and Quebec. 






j


----------



## Sketchy Jeff

Working out some thoughts on recorded sound quality. 

I was working with some people last week in a hall with a stage that has the acoustic piano sitting beside it at a right angle - so the piano player can see the other musicians over top the instrument and the audience is to their right. For live playing on acoustic instruments with singers it's a good setup and has served them well for years. Piano player leads and there's a lot of piano sound on stage. 

For recording it's the shits. Piano bleed into the vocal and instrument mics is so high that it can be hard to hear the voice or guitar or uke being mic'ed. We tried tenting the piano with moving blankets which sounded much better. 

But ... the players didn't like it. They've gotten used to a certain sound while playing in that space and feel comfortable with it. It's the equivalent of having the keys turned way up in the monitors. 

So anyway, we tried different recording setups and they hated them all but they sounded quite good. Then at the end they all went back up on stage to their happy spots and let'r'rip. The recorded sound is poor and hard to edit because the piano is in everything even electric guitar I guess through microphonic pickups. 

But the overall sound of the take is much better. The musicians are looser, having a better time, in a happy headspace, playing out more assertively. Much better live in the room feel to it. 

So better isn't necessarily better but it's a funny line. 

j


----------

