OT: Recording software

"-MIKE-" <m @mikedrums.com> skrev i melding

i use nuendo. i have, however, never recorded actual sound with it. i've
only manipulated already existing music, or used synthetic sounds. it's nice
and easy, though.

regards,
-kyrre.

I'm using an older version of Cool Edit, but I think Audition has this same
feature: In multi-track mode it attempts to "pre-mix" a file based on the
current settings to get a head start on mixing for playback. When you get
more that a handful of tracks going it just soaks up all of time doing disk
writes, and it never stops. Down in the bottom left corner of the
multi-track vire there's a grey progress bar, if you click on that it'll
display a red X over the bar it'll stop the pre-mixing, which really
improves the performance. I can run 12 tracks with and never have a problem
keeping up.

On the other hand, I find XP to be the worst pig of an OS ever. I also have
a 300MHz Celeron running Win98 that is just as fast as the 2.0GHz  XP
desktop I use at work. My main system also runs 98, and I'm in no hurry to
upgrade.




Thanks for the kind words. It was actually a lousy set-up for drums since we
were recording the whole band together in a really bouncy space. I had the
over heads way closer than I like them which is one reason why the tracks
sound very centered. I also got away from panning the overheads to the
sides, I like to leave the fringes open for the spatial effects and keep the
main stuff more in the center. This was using two Oktava MC-012 overheads
and an Oktava 319 on the kick, nothing else.

From my experience and the recording engineers that I talk to, the trick is
to get the drums into a great sounding room and get some distance between
the drums and the overheads. Wide cardoid pattern mics give a real nice
off-axis response, and in a good room you're better off working with the
room than trying to fight it. Get everything you can out of the overheads,
and only bring up any individual mics enough to fill in the sound. If the
close mics dominate the mix you'll have endless phase problems from the
cymbals. As for getting a great tom sound from the overheads, the consensus
seems to be that you just need to beat the crap out of them. Recording
engineers HATE quiet drummers.

Bass drums are weird to record, what sounds great in the room can sound like
crap when you record it. If it really sounds that good in the room than get
the mic away from the kick, try backing off three feet or so. Another thing
to try is to set the D112 (which I've never used BTW) about four inches in
front of the reso hole, close enough to get the blast of air through the
hole but far enough back not to pick up the basketball boing that you can
get inside the drum. That's how I had the Oktava set for the recording,
FWIW.

Since then I've picked up an Audix D6 and mounted it permanently inside the
drum (and got rid of the reso hole too). It's a hyper-cardoid that doesn't
pick up too much of the ringing inside the drum, and from about six inches
away from the batter it just kills. At tonight's gig I didn't have it hooked
up for the f

Overheads can be about 61/2 feet up, dead center of the kit and this will
give a nice image. You can also try the Bill Bottrell method which is knee
micing, place the mics at about 3-4 feet high and at a triangle in front of
the kic, about 3 feet. This picks up a very nice image.
As to the PC, you just have to mess with the latency and see what works best
for your system. You might try msconfig from the run bar and see what is
starting up with windows that's not needed and turn them off.
I use a D112 and get fine results, my eq settings are usually, high end
about 2, mids rolled off and low end at around 1 or 2.

recording/editing/fx



Hmmm. I've got an Athlon XP 1500 with 512 RAM but I get horrible problems in
CoolEdit Pro multitrack with 8-9 tracks even if only one or two have
realtime fx (never anything too taxing, just EQ or light quickverb). I've
played around with the buffer settings and stuff, I shutdown background apps
from task manager (I use XP) and keep a pretty clean system. Any ideas?




Sounds nice. Are the drums in mono? They sound very centred, but great
sounds. Do you have any tips for getting a good kick sound, making the most
of a D112 (I know...) with a small-ported reso? I put the mic just inside,
pointed at the batter head, but I usually get a very flat thud that I have
to EQ the snot out of in order to get a decent boom/click, and it sounds
quite fake. Minimal muffling inside the drum, EQ4 batter and ported EQ3
reso. Sounds great in the room - should I just get a different mic, or am I
doing something wrong?

Also, how high do you put your overheads to get a nice stereo image without
using panned tom/cymbal mics?

TJ

I have Cool Edit Pro, Cubase VST 24, and ProTools free on my system. As
Randy said, memory is a big factor on a win based machine, so I have 512M
for a 1G cpu. I have a MOTU 1296 interface and I have no problems recording
12 tracks at 44.1 / 32 bits concurrently. Even the worst cpu hog plug-ins
run several times faster than real-time.

Cubase doesn't get used, but it doesn't play well with standard wave devices
and ASIO for the MOTU doesn't play well with my PC.

I use PT free to get basic mixes together, where I need to fiddle with lot's
of plugins before I commit to a mix. I use it for doing submixes of the
rhythm tracks so I know everything will fit in the same mix.

By far the one that I use the most is Cool Edit. The only problem is that
everything besides volume and pan is done out-of-band, which is why I use PT
to figure out what is going to work and then use Cool Edit to implement what
I tried out in PT. It's a pain, but there are just too many feature in CEP
that I depend on to do everything in PT free.

Regardless of what I use, a good finished product takes me an average of 1
hour per track minute to produce! It took me four weeks of working nights to
get 12 songs completed for different band demos. I saw a sig line on R.A.P
recently - "creating the perfect mix is like painting a 747 with a Q-tip" -
how very true.

Here's probably the best sample I have up on the web right now, it took
about four nights to mix and I still hear things I'd like to tweak:
http://www.southernmusician.co m/KnockOffs/After%20Midnight.m 3u

Sean

"Randal Walker" <randysdrumsno @cox.net> wrote in a message


A lot of cheap "slow" RAM is better than a smaller amount of "faster" RAM
(we're talking nanoseconds of difference). For working with sound files, I
suggest at least 1 gig of RAM (if your MB can support it). A 1 gig CPU with
a gig of RAM works better than a 2 gig CPU and 512 megs of RAM. I run an XP
system with a 1.5 gig Athlon chip & 3 gig of RAM on a nice MSI motherboard.
... no problems with graphics or sound editing. ;-)

I bought the RAM whenever Best Buy or Circuit City had a sale. They usually
run a deal where you can get a 1 gig stick for $79. (I remember the old days
when mem sticks were $100 per meg - yeesh!)

Try the "Kristal audio engine"  It works like yer typical mixing board
and is free as well. Go here to read about it and download it.

http://www.kreatives.org/krist al/index.php#pagetop

Regards
Mike

"TJ Hertz" <tjhe @hotmail.com> wrote in a message

Cakewalk/Sonar

It's apparent you're running Win-based.
Nuendo is very popular around Nashville.  Radar, too, but I think
that's high dollar.  They will pretty much all do the same thing.
I've found the real key is finding the one with the interface and
tools that match your personality and computer preferences.

I would suggest downloading every demo and working with them for a
few day each.

-MIKE-

"Playing is not something I do at night, it's my function in life"
    --Elvin Jones  (1927-2004)
--
http://mikedrums.comm @mikedrumsDOT.com
---remove "DOT" ^^^^ to reply

I use both SONAR by Cakewalk and Vegas by SONY. Both work well.
You will find that unless you have mega amounts of RAM, that the system will
tax out if you are running plugins and that goes for any digital recording
program, not just Cool Edit.

Protools free won't run if you are using Windows XP or above.