Recording set ups...

[john]

Where did you get that NeXT cube, where did you get that NeXT cube...

Do you use it? Does it crash a lot?

[Steve]

Sorry can't resist...

...as I unpack I find...

Recording

Soundcraft Spirit Studio 24:2

2 x Tandy 4:1 mic/line mixers

Tascam DA20 DAT

Aiwa HDS-100 DAT

Sony MZR-1 Minidisc

Aiwa ADF 450 tape deck

AKG C-1000S mike

Tandy PZM mike

Monitoring

JPW Mini Monitors

Mordaunt Short MS35Ti hifi speakers

Marantz PM-35 hifi amp

Various ( about 5 ) pairs of Sennheiser headphones in various states of repair

Synths/Samplers/Modules/Drum machines

(ahem)

Roland JX10

Roland D50

Roland SH101 ( on loan somewhere )

Roland U110

Roland/Boss DR550

Casio CZ3000

Casio SK1

Kawai K5m

Kawai K1-r

EMU ESi-32

Yamaha CS1-X

Novation BassStation

Evolution EVS1

Computers/Software ( nothing pirated )

Dell 8100 P4 512Mb

Atari 1040STFM ( somewhere )

NeXT cube

Amiga 4000

Various old 486/P1/P2 PCs in various states of repair

CuBase SL

WaveLab 3.0

SoundForge 5.0

Rebirth 2.0

Outboard

Behringer MDX2100 Composer

Alesis Midiverb 4

Alesis Microverb 2 ( I'm sure I've still got it somewhere )

Digitech TSR12

Real instruments

Bongos  

  BS

No guitar then?...  

[BongStuff]

Where did you get that NeXT cube, where did you get that NeXT cube...

Do you use it? Does it crash a lot?

It fell off the back of a lorry. Then rolled down University Gardens...  

 BS

[BongStuff]

No guitar then?...  

Actually, my wife has one of those wooden boxes. The oscillators ( long stringy things! ) drift a lot though

  BS

[Steve]

Actually, my wife has one of those wooden boxes. The oscillators ( long stringy things! ) drift a lot though

  BS

So... A wife that produces beautiful babies AND real music? Obviously the talented arm of the family...  

[BongStuff]

yep that pretty much sums it up...all I produce is the cash to pay for it all  

 BS

[davlan]

OK here's mine. A few years ago I sold a pile of modules and keyboards to make the kit easier to use and very compact.

Computer

Hardware

Carillon AC1 PC

CPU P4 3Ghz

Hard drives 80G system   + 120+120RAID array audio

RAM 2G

GRAPHICS Matrox Parhelia triple head card

2X ACER 17in flat screens

Creamware Powerpulsar +zlink

Creamware A16 16 in/out breakout box

Steinberg Midex 8

Terratec DMX6 Fire (FOR SALE)

Dell Inspiron 5150 3G CPU + 60G hard drive

Mackie 624 monitors

Software

Cubase SX 2

Absynth 2

Pro 53

Atmosphere

Halion 2

Halion String Edition

The Grand

JX 220

JX Synth

CS 80V

Outboard

Synth/Keyboard

Clavinova P100

Roland U 20

Evolution MK-149

Roland JV 1080

EMU Proteus 2000

Alesis Quadraverb

Art SGX 2000

Focusrite Voicemaster

Berhinger Composer (compression)

Peavy midi patchbay (FOR SALE)

Sony DAT machine (FOR SALE)

Roland VS1680 (FOR SALE)

Spirit Folio Mixer

Rode NT2

AKG3000

Shure SM78

Guitars

Yamaha APX 4A Electro Acoustic

Yamaha CGX 171CCA Electroacoustic classical

[BongStuff]

Very nice Dave. I trust there's no WAREZ in there

You gonna put up an artist page then?

  BS

[davlan]

Bong/Chris

Cheers. Wats a WAREZ? Yeah I'd like to put something on the site in particular some MP3's. Don't know if this is possible. John? The Dave's Diary thing is likely to focus on the course I am doing and therefore it might be cool to post some of my musical assignments.

What about you. Any thoughts about the artist section?

ANd why do you have Soundforge and Wavelab?

Dave

[BongStuff]

WAREZ - cracked software!  

The artists pages will let you link out to offsite mp3s, but as I understand it, Songstuff itself won't host them. I'm gonna try it by uploading my music to my free ISP webspace, and then having my Artitst page link to there.

I've found some old stuff in the crates full of dusty DAT tapes that could be interesting. Some half baked ideas that could be, erm, reheated And maybe some old classics from my gaming days.

I still actually get "fan" mail from, well, nutters ( mostly Scandanavians ) asking for copies of old Amiga and Atari tracks that I did 15 years ago. Hey, maybe I could do an album of them, with modern kit?! Problem is, a lot of that music was even pre-MIDI files - the tracks are actually long lists of handwritten bytecodes that sat in memory to be "played" by a music driver.

AS for WaveLab and Soundforge - Soundforge is the one I know best, but back in the dark days when I was doing LOADS of editing ( 96/97/98 ), Soundforge didn't do things like batch conversion and MP3 encoding, so I used Wavelab for that. Sheesh - I really am out of date!

   BS

[davlan]

Nope, no WAREZ. I made a decision to make sure that everything on the music PC was legit. My warranty on the machine would probably have been void if there was. Also I am hearing that some companies have gone bust because of it. Pinnacle bought Steinberg out for a paltry 20 million. It has been said that if all the copies out there were legit then Steinberg would have bought out Pinnacle. Some companies, e.g. Roland won't touch soft synths for this very reason. Which is a shame because it makes such a lot of sense. You've already got the hardware so just buy the software at a ridiculously low price. For Xmas I got a copy of the new Yamaha CS80 emulation from Arturia. The original machine in 1977, adjusting for inflation would have set you back maybe £30'000. I think mine cost £170. This is great value.

Although I appreciate that it is easy for the cash strapped musician to easily download this stuff with their sense of guilt in denial but truth is it's stealing. And you are only hurting the thing you love.

This would make an interesting thread on it's own. I'll post it up.

Yeah but an article on your seedy computer games past interesting find I would I think. (drunken Yoda voice)

D

[Steve]

Yeah but an article on your seedy computer games past interesting find I would I think. (drunken Yoda voice)

Yes. Me too my young apprentice....

[john]

Hey

I thought I'd resurrect this thread and see if any new members wanted to discuss their set up. Or for that matter, previous posters might want to give an update.

Me? Nothing new resording wise. Just some extra storage (another hard drive for my sampler), oh yeah, I got hold of a couple of P2 450 PCs that I intend using as basic synths using a Creative AWE 32 and a Soundblaster Live! I have kicking about. Still to set them up though...

Cheers

John

[Steve]

Would you link these up directly to your present PC? Or use them as outboard synths?

[john]

Would you link these up directly to your present PC? Or use them as outboard synths?

To keep it simple I was going to use them as outboard synths, though I did think of using ones as an outboard effects processor.

[Prometheus]

Desks and Routing Devices

Spirit Studio 24:8:1 (Direct Feeds From all Channels)

Yamaha MD8

Spirit Folio 8 Track

Peavy Unity 8 Track

Behringer Ultra Patch 48 point Patchbay

G & T 48 point Patchbay

M Audio Delta 10 10 Analogue Digital Converters 24 Bit 96 Khz

Tascam 4 Track

Outboards:

Behringer Composer Pro

Behringer Composer Pro XL

Alesis 64 Channel GEQ

Yamaha Reverb unit

Boss Reverb Unit

Boss Compressor

Behringer Multigate

Behringer UltrafexII

Digitech Time Domain Effects Unit

Recorders and Editors:

Tascam DA 30 Mark II

Sony Stereo MD Recorder

Cubase V5.0 on AMD Athlon PC

Cool Edit Pro v2.0

Miscellaneous:

MIDI Plus 61 Controller Keyboard

Roland Juno 6 Synths

Stagg Condenser Mic

Behringer B1 Condneser Mic

AKG Dynamic Mike (Very old)

Park Guitar Amp

1 x Boom Stand

1 x Straight Stand

Alesis Point 7 Monitors

Ariston Micro Monitors

Hohner Bass Guitar (Precision Copy)

Stagg Les Paul Copy

1 x Violin

1x Tambourine

1 x Shaker

1 x Epiphone SG35

Probably a few more bits and pieces I've forgotten...

[FinnArild]

Ok - here's my stuff - not much, but it works pretty well:

Listening post

Samson Resolv 65a near-field monitors

Eurorack UB 1622FX-Pro Mixer

Digital Recording

AMD Athlon 1.8 - plenty of HD space, but hums like an airplane

M-Audio Firewire 410 soundcard

Cubase SX 3

Halion 3

Hypersonic

Plenty others, but these I use most

Instruments and mikes and stuff

Hansen CR1-87 big membrane condenser

Hamer custom made elgitar

Squier precision 5 string bass

Roland JV-50 Synth

Digitech GNX 3

Wishlist? Too long to mention.

[tzer]

First off - sorry - I tend to ramble...

My Setups:

Computer(s)

• PC (XP Professional sp2 - 2.4GHz Pentium + 512mb RAM + 40 gig HD + SoundBlaster Live! soundcard)
  
• PC (Vista Home Premium PentiumD 820 (S) DC (2.8GHz / 800 MHz); 2MB L2 cache; Dual Core + 1GIG RAM + 320GIG HD + RealTek Soundcard)
  
• Laptop (Toshiba Satellite - 1.4GHz processor - 196mb RAM - 40GIG HD - integrated audio)
  

Software

• Sonar PE 5.2 (on laptop)
  
• Sonar PE 6.2 (on both PC's)
  
• Reason 2.5
  
• Ableton LIVE! (?ver)
  
• Soundforge 8
  

"Outboard" Gear (Laughable! 2 cheap-o mixers and a POD - but hey, they do what I need for now! LOL)

• Phonic MM1002 Compact Mixer
  
• Behringer UBB1002 Compact Mixer
  
• Bass POD XT (Kidney Bean)
  

Mics and Preamps

• Church Audio PreAmp and Binaural Stealth Mics
  
• Oktava MC012 Cardioid Condenser Microphone
  
• Shure SM57 and SM58 mics
  
• An array of other mics similar to the SM58
  

Monitors

• Pair of Alesis Monitor ONE MK 2 near-field monitors (not hooked up cuz I don't have a power amp yet - BOOO!)
  
• so, for now I am using my cheapo Aiwa bookshelf-style component stereo, circa 1989 - yes, one of those CD/Tape/AM-FM tuner all-in-one pieces of junk you used to see in most dorms or first appartments.
  
• Sony noise-cancelling headphones
  
• Sony over-the ear, typical walk-man style headphones
  

How I use my setups:

I record every rehearsal of my project band and burn CD's for everyone after rehearsal. This is the best way to get songs worked up quickly!

I have the stealth mics and the Oktava condenser capturing the room. I mix them through one of the small mixers and send that signal to my laptop where I record it all using Sonar. I then export each take and burn CD's for us all to have in our cars. That way, while we drive around town, we can listen to and think about our tunes. This seems to go a long way toward getting parts really refined and fixing stuff that does not work well.

I use the best rehearsal recordings as scratch tracks for multitracking later.

Because I do not have an AD/DA converter with multiple I/O - I have to make due with everyone tracking in mono/stereo - including the drums. I lay the best rehearsal track in as a scratch track in Sonar, mic up the kit, hand the drummer the cans, get him to lay down his part while playing along with the scratch track. Then on to the next victim - guitar, keys, vocals, me (bass) - the idea being that we take what we did live and re-do it multi-track style. Using the live rehearsal recording as our scratch track helps to retain the live feel for each individual track even though we are not actually playing the new tracks together. I have found that music that is constructed a track at a time can really lose that "human" quality. When people play together, there is a quality that is apparent and hard to reporduce in a 100% overdub scenario. After everyone lays down their parts I am able to mix out the scratch track and begin mixing the new tracks to get a much more "real" sounding version of our stuff.

Using the cheap-o Aiwa compact sterero as my reference monitor with all of it's BS EQ presets turned off - no bass boost, no "ROCK EQ", I am able to mix these tracks and be relatively confident that they will sound OK on most boom boxes or car stereos. I can't wait until I can affort a half-way descent power amp for my good monotors, but until then, this seems to be doing ok. I am always very pleased when I plug the headpones in and have a listen - I get so used to the lo-fi quality of my cheap-o monitors, when I get to hear a more hi-fi version throught the headphones, it always sounds so much better!

I have no delusions about fooling people into thinking our stuff is professionally recorded - I have too much respect for the pros - but there is no reason we can't have a half-way descent version of our stuff, right?

Wish List

• Multi-I/O AD/DA converter (like a Delta1010)
  
• Stereo power amp for my Alesis Monitor ONE MK 2 monitors
  
• A large diaphragm kick-drum mic
  
• A few dynamic mics for the kit
  
• Outboard Gear - Compressor/Limiter - EQs (but I know very little about any of this, so I don't know exactly what I need or want)
  
• A headphone mixing system of some kind and some reasonable headphones for the band (7 total)
  
• Material to acoustically treat both the band room and my home mixing/mastering room
  
• And a partridge in a pear tree
  

[Steve]

And a partridge in a pear tree

You should speak to Zarin about this! He is well established in the provision of all livestock!

[john]

hey 12 Steps,

I've split your post into a new topic...

http://forums.songstuff.com/index.php?showtopic=8996

Cheers

John