Retrosaurus Rex

The engineer at this studio I visited actually talked about that trade-off. He also was one of the designers and builders, so he talked about the thinking that went into the design. There was a significant amount of glass in the vocal booth, so line of sight could be maintained thru-out the main room and with the control room. There was also a curtain in the vocal booth because some singers actually prefer to be completely isolated... Also, they knew they would be doing a significant amount of spoken-word & voice-over work where interaction with a group isn't an issue, but a clean, dry sound is essential. And the main room was big enough that the whole band could be there if they preferred, so it was the best of both worlds, in that sense.

I've never thought a week-end lasted long enough... not even when I was unemployed!

Hi John, Good point. I had the good fortune to spend some time in a working studio this past summer and the single most impressive thing was that it's dead quiet in there. Other than the sound generated in the room, it's almost as quiet as space, even the air conditioner was barely audible when it was the only sound and you concentrated on listening for it. I stepped into the vocal booth and pulled the door to, and the easily audible conversation that was going on in the main room disappeared completely. The control room had a very dead sound, so when you played back, you were hearing the monitors only, and very little of "the room". This is probably also the biggest single thing that separates a pro-level studio from the serious home-recording hobbyist. Most of the actual gear, including the real "go-to" gear is pretty much in reach for the average person, and there is a lot of inexpensive gear that does great, not to mention software, but the difference in environmental noise is still expensive to address, and treating the room requires specialized knowledge. And most people never think about addressing it anyway... In this studio they used noise gates only sparingly, for instance, to cut off the decay of the snare drum to stay out of the way of the hi-hat. In the average home recording situation there's some trade-off between squashing noise and having natural sounding decays. The good news for computer recordists is, if you record in 24-bit and use proper gain-staging practices (which is another thread...), you should be able to get a signal-to-noise ratio that is acceptable for all but the most intimate recordings, and still leave plenty of headroom for processing, and to get that puppy LOUD, unless you live near an airport or something.

hammersounds.net & soundfonts.it have some interesting stuff, but they're mostly instruments .sf2 files, rather than GM mapped sets. Worth checking out. Also, the redoubtable KVR.com has a soundfont "master list" in their forum. Quite a few broken links but also worth looking at. I hope this helps...

Any 5 numeric digits will do for a US ZIP... beginning with 90 if you want them to think you're SoCal...

Like I said earlier... but then Steve said he wanted to play the keys and hear the sound, which I took to mean he wanted to get a "live" vibe from hearing the sounds respond to his playing in real time. Hard to get around soft synth latency in this case. A friend of mine uses a sound module for exactly this reason, and I know his computer is better than most, and he has the expertise to maximize its' performance... FWIW...

Actually, that would be a significant problem for your intended use... I'm not a key player, so I mostly compose MIDI and play that back thru a synth in the box.

Hi Steve, If I recall, you were recently bragging about your newly updated workstation, and its' specs were quite a bit more impressive than my old clunker... Due to budget I haven't invested in any of the softsynths described here, but I use quite a few freeware synths and results can vary, but my system doesn't get glitchy unless I'm running multiple synths & effects. The synths usually have better performance than the audio effects, actually. Also, the more powerful synths max things out quicker (or just don't work in real time), but I get drop-outs rather than system crashes. If I want to use a synth that is driving the system to overload I can always bounce to audio. And I stress this is using freeware. Commercial synths are, on average 40-60% more CPU efficient than freeware synths with similar capabilities. I would just want to make sure I exceed (not simply meet) the minimum requirements that the manufacturer recommends... Hope this helps...

Sparky, thanks for the guitar amp sim, looks really interesting...

I've been making use of the 1973 channel strip and Event Horizon limiter from Stillwell. The limiter is really musical and not too hard on the CPU. The channel strip is supposed to be an emulation of a Neve channel strip. Can't say how it stacks up, if had a real Neve channel I wouldn't be trying to score free plug-ins. I can say that you can change settings in real time and hear the results, but the effects are always satisfying, at least as much as my music will allow and automation is fully implemented. They're not "free" by the way, but the full versions are available as an unlimited trial, so they're as good as free if that's what your budget will allow. The other products seem good too, but I haven't used them much as yet. If, er, I mean, when I start making money from music, I will certainly pay for these... http://www.stillwellaudio.com/?page_id=28 Check them out.

WOW! What a deal! and from someone with exactly one post on this forum! Thanks for all your terrific contributions!

I could be wrong, but I believe Audacity includes an .mp3 encoder...

Interesting overview, but if you're really interested in building your own guitar, there are a lot of places where you can buy bodies, necks & hardware, and even get some customization for a not unreasonable amount of money. You don't necessarily need to spend a lot on special tools, but there is a learning curve in the actual construction... The biggest bitch is painting the thing, you can rent equipment, but you have to have time, patience, and a well-ventilated work-space...

That is absurd, for only a little more you could get an really good interface with audio and MIDI inputs....

Do you need portability? Multiple inputs? How many? Do you need a mixer?

Hey Steve, Sorry I didn't notice this sooner... If you're playing games you need a great grafix card. But if you're only doing sound you might still need an OK grafix card. This is because the grafix chip on your MB uses CPU cycles, but if you have a separate grafix card it handles a lot of that processing on the card, which frees up CPU cycles for more audio tracks, more plug-ins, more soft synths... if you're into that sort thing...

Cheeky monkey...

I would say as far as charts go it's as good as I've seen, and any budding recordist would find themselves getting better mixes faster by using it. I would stress that these are somewhat generalized starting points and may not apply exactly the same in every mix. You have to trust your ears at every step of the process. The best primer I've seen on EQ gave a series of steps to find the right EQ profile for each instrument in your mix. It's more time consuming, but it really helps to train your ears and get things to sit in a dense mix.

The SM57 is a dynamic mic, I don't know about the Unisphere... Depending on the quality of your voice and your mic technique it is possible to get excellent results with the SM57, but you need a condenser if your goal is to authentically capture acoustic instruments such as those described. It's hard to give very specific advice without knowing more about your situation. For example, the kind of music you're recording, particularly, how "dense" will the mix be? If one instrument is the focus it will be necessary to get a mic that faithfully captures the entire frequency range. Also, the sonic environment you're recording in... For example, I don't need a mic that faithfully captures every nuance of my neighbor's reggaeton music while I'm recording... Also, with a condenser mic you need phantom power, so you will need a pre-amp or a mixing board that can handle this. Each of these is an issue unto itself...

I've come across a couple of charts like this, and I find them to be useful starting points. Also if you're trying to work quickly and get things to sit well in a rough mix it's a useful guide.