The market for low-cost large diaphragm condenser microphones has become a little… well, clogged in the last couple of years. Some early, decent entries have been overtaken by a flood of me-too competitors in sub-$400 price range. The current crop is a hodgepodge of average-to-crappy mics that are designed to appeal primarily to home recordists who have little studio experience and even less experience auditioning and selecting microphones. Faced with a potentially big-ticket purchase, most of these consumers take what seems like a safe route: buy cheap.

When established studios buy expensive mics from a reputable dealer, they always have several options to help in the purchasing decision. First off, many dealers will allow the studio to rent the mic for a few days to audition it in their studio. Or, the studio might be able to get a selection of mics on loan. Reputable engineers sometimes get loan product direct from the manufacturer, just to try out for fun. And, if the unit just doe ... Read More »

So, waddaya wanna talk about?

Procrastination is my enemy. By screwing around, I have been scooped by other writers, beaten by changes in technology, or have just run out of enthusiasm for certain topics.

I was going to write about the big deal issue that was a major concern to the professionals. Watermarking of digital audio has their ranks in an uproar and has got as much discussion on their forums as Napster has gotten on other, less professional forums. But that has now been done by one of the print mags.

I was going to write about DVD-A, explaining it and talking about why we may or may not want it. That, alas, has also been done.

I had a great article all assembled in my head about DVD-A packaging. At one point this was the major obstacle to getting DVD-A on the shelves. (Yawn.) Who cares?

DVD-A should have been a major product release for this Christmas season, and the post from which would pivot major changes in our software, hardware, ... Read More »

Every time I go to Los Angeles, I worry about my soul. It might just be a fear that I might actually start liking LA, and then I might want to live there. Or perhaps the danger is real...

The Overheads

Bass Drum

Fig. 3: Starting place for drum mic

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Barry Rudolph

Snare Drum

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Barry Rudolph

Tom-Toms

Over the years that my husband and I have worked together in show business (my writing and performing music, he creating and performing magic) I have learned what I have found to be some potent principles of business dealings. Just as his is a line of work that requires a high skill level and fluency of craft while interacting with people, creating music for someone else's project requires rising to the occasion creatively, efficiently and appropriately within the client relationship. To even get to this point, however, you need to get the gig.

If you are already a busy working professional, you have undoubtedly developed a method that works for you. If you are at all green in the ways of dealing with new clients, some of what I have picked up might prove useful.

The Opener

Drowning in the River...

Is That A Saftey Pin Through Your Nose, Or Are You Just Glad To See Me?

Keep On Growing

If there's been one trend in music gear in the last couple of years, it's been cheap mics and prosumer tube preamps. They're everywhere. The explosion in home recording has instantly created a market for these devices, and companies have rushed to market with all kinds of products to help you keep your wallet empty.

Make no mistake about it. Many of these products are average at best. Some of them are pure-D crapola. But a few of the current crop of prosumer products are destined to be classics. Some of them will still be gracing the gear racks of the biggest studios in the year 2020.

dbx's Silver Series line of mic preamps and compressors is that company's attempt to make a high-water mark in the tide of prosumer gear. The Silver Series is a premium line of tube-based preamps and compressors, with models including a dual channel preamp w/ EQ and limiting (586), a dual channel compressor (566), and a single-channel preamp w/EQ, limiting, and compression (576). All of these units ... Read More »

More than any other song on this project, "Everything's a Lie" makes use of layered guitars and oddball noises. Most of the other songs on the CD, by comparison, are straightforward two-guitars-bass-and-drums arrangements.

The drums on this track were cut live, then cut into loops and reassembled into the final arrangement. The bass was cut live to the looped drum parts. Then the guitars were cut live, and either looped or used as-is.

Amplifier Approach

DS Soundware has only one product so far, and with a title like The Ultimate Orchestral Percussion Sample Library, they're certainly inviting a bit of scrutiny. Good news for them and for you--they have more than lived up to their own hype. This is a library worthy of instant classic status. It is the absolute standard-setter in orchestral percussion samples.

All the basics are covered in very high style. There are beautiful quality multisamples of snare drums, bass drums, orchestra chimes, glockenspiel, cymbals, xylophone, timpani, temple blocks, and a slew of small instruments and assorted esoterica. The recordings are pristine, and capture the sounds of a dream section. These are best-of-class instruments being played by professional orchestra players.

The production concept here is a great departure. Mic positions were designed to achieve a realistic presence of the virtual percussion section in relationship to an overall ensem ... Read More »

Yamaha has long been associated with studio monitors. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the ubiquitous Yamaha NS10s grace the meter bridge of many a studio, great and small. With the introduction of the all-new MSP10 powered monitor and the SW10 powered subwoofer, Yamaha staking a claim in the ever-popular (and increasingly crowded) powered near-field market. I was lucky enough to get my hands on a pair of MSP10s as well as the new SW10 subwoofer.

MSP10

Last week I had occasion to attend one of the NARAS "Ask A Pro" Series events. This one was Called "Radio Today" and the panel contained radio execs, program directors, DJs, and label representatives.

It was an interesting, if somewhat disheartening event.

The Spirit of Radio

Since the late 1920s, it has been all about radio. In the 40's the first rock and roll records were played on the radio and a synergy was created that exists to this day. Rock and roll radio rules the airwaves, and impacts the lives of most Americans at one point or another as they follow their daily routine.

The really cool thing about radio was that it seemed to be a place for rebels. Small owners ran stations the way that they wanted to, playing the music that they wanted to, supporting the causes that they believed in, and catering to their own particular if not peculiar audiences. The parallels ... Read More »

When recording rock rhythm tracks, I prefer to have the band all play together. That way the drummer and bass player are hearing all the cues they need to make performance decisions. For example, when a drummer doesn't hear the loud guitars he's used to hearing, he'll back off and won't play hard enough. Then you add in the guitars and wonder what happened to the energy in the drum track. I also like to attempt to get a keeper rhythm guitar track whenever possible. The guitar that's cut together with the bass and drums will have the raw energy of live performance.

For this record we wanted to get a natural, versatile drum sound. The goal was to capture a "studio" drum sound - tough and slightly larger than life, but not overly gated or processed, and with a nice dose of real room sound.

Drum Setup

Many things will affect the performance of digital audio software in general, and multi-track production software in particular. The performance of the disk drive being used to store the audio data is only the beginning. Naturally, this component must be of optimum efficiency in order to allow real time streaming at a high track count.    However, this isn't necessarily always going to be the limiting factor in a DAW's performance. There are other places to look as well.

Modems: Having a modem plugged into a DAW's PCI bus can lead to conflicts, particularly if the modem is a voice modem. Some production software will attempt to configure the modem as a sound card. While more "aware" programs such as Cakewalk will report a modem upon finding it and allow you to ignore it as part of the sound system setup, other programs may not, and could default to a lower bit depth or sample rate as a result. Many DAW users agree that an external modem connected to one of the computer's serial ports ... Read More »

The SCSI interface is an old timer. Before there was IDE, there was SCSI. It was used not only for disk drives, but scanners, printers and even to interface the PC with synthesizers and automated sound and light boards. For a long time, SCSI was the only really high performance disk interface, and in early versions, high performance was a whopping 5 MBytes/sec. WOW! Remember, that was in the time before the PC-based DAW, before Windows and before a person could buy a PC with more than 1 meg or RAM. Here's a quick rundown on SCSI.

The History of SCSI

IDE, or more formally, IDE/ATA, is the most common system for connecting a hard drive to a PC.

In modern systems (to which this discussion is limited), they plug directly into the motherboard through a 40 pin cable. Most motherboards offer 2 separate IDE channels and thus 2 connectors on the board. Each connector can support 2 IDE devices, be they disk drives, CD drives, tape drives, removable drives and so on. If a channel has 2 devices on it, one must be designated a master and the other a slave. This is done simply by moving or removing a jumper on the drive itself.

As a result of this configuration, any system can have 4 IDE devices connected to it. Using an external controller board connected to the PCI bus supporting 2 additional channels, up to 8 devices and be supported on a PC. This is the limit, and attempting to add 4 more devices with an extra controller will consume more interrupts and other system resources. This contrasts with modern SCSI which can have up to 15 devices