Pipeline!

I Have Insomnia (book-learnin’ inside)

I haven’t been able to sleep for the last two days, so I decided to make myself useful and write up an in-depth breakdown of the automatic pop filter circuit I posted the link to previously. It’s a little bit hazy on some details (it’s been awhile since I dissected a complex active circuit and a lot of the math seems to be gone), but I think I’ve got most of the essentials there. Tried to avoid lapsing into jargon when possible, so not too much electronics knowledge is required. Questions, comments, and snarky posts pointing out any blatant factual errors it may contain are welcome.

Realtime Analyzer software (the free kind)

We should download this and try using it to get a more quantitative feel for the sound of all the different monitors we’re testing. Looks pretty comprehensive and it’s only $25 to register if we like it. Are there any other good, cheap realtime analyzer programs out there?

Bag End - Take 2

Just had my first real stab at mixing on the Bag End system last night (Shore Leave on Pipeline). My impressions aren’t really too much different from Ramsey’s, but I’ll reiterate them for posterity here:

- Mains are unbelievably clear blah blah blah. They’re $1K apiece; you apparently get what you pay for. They’re about comparable in clarity to the Dynaudio mains (Ramsey likes these better, I like the Dynaudios; I think it’s really just a matter of personal taste). Interestingly, the imaging on the Bag Ends is much more noticeable than on any other monitoring system I’ve used; you really get a sense of the room whatever you’re listening to was recorded in, which applied to the reference CDs I was playing with as well as the actual live recording. I’m assuming the concentric-cone design of the mains has something to do with that (no phase difference between the highs and lows when they reach your ear), but I’m not enough of an acoustician to prove it.

- The subwoofer is godlike. It rolls off somewhere way below my low-frequency hearing threshold and exhibits detail in the sub-200Hz regime that I didn’t even know was possible. While there are some unfortunate side effects to such a complete low-end response (the sub actually managed to hit the resonant frequency of a few metal objects in the room and cause them to vibrate and rattle annoyingly), it adds a whole new degree of freedom to mixing.

- My ear for matching a mains/sub combo still isn’t very good. I kept the sub where Ramsey had it during the last mix and dropped the mains about a notch on the Gemini power amplifier driving them and the translation is a little bit off; my recording sounds just a touch too bassy in my Sennheiser HD270 headphones (which are kind of crap on the low end, so it might be even worse on a decent stereo). Unfortunately, the digital nature of the amplifier controls is a limiting factor here; the notch above where I had it seems to give a weak bass in the final recording, while my settings result in a hyped bass. The sub has a volume knob that we haven’t really played with though, so maybe we can find a happy medium.

- We had a near-disaster during soundcheck when the right monitor started making weird hissing/clipping noises and generally acting like it was blown. It turned out to just be a bad speaker cable, fortunately; we should probably at least use better extension cords to tie it to the amp if we’re not going to buy a spool of actual speaker wire.

I’ll probably spend some more time trying to match the sub and mains with reference CDs before my next mix (something garage-y for Gorilla Got Me next thursday) and hopefully get a better sense for these things after I’ve done at least two on them.

Bag End Monitors: impressions

Bryan and I spent some time with the Bag End monitors that Andy dropped off for us to review.

It’s a 3-piece system, two mains and a sub. The two mains are the M6 Time-Align, which are passive, and the sub is the Infrasub 12 PRO, which is active. The mains contain a 6″ low frequency cone and a tweeter, arranged concentrically (or coaxially)–that is, the tweeter mounted in the center of the midrange cone, right where the dust cap usually is. This has been common practice in car stereo systems for many years (mostly to save space) but is uncommon in pro audio; it’s part of what Bag End calls Time-Align. Check out their explanation at the previous link; concentric speakers just a part of the system.
Continue reading Bag End Monitors: impressions…

New M-Audio Portable Recording Device

Our friend Ariel just sent this my way–looks like M-Audio is coming out with a dedicated portable recording device in August/September. They’re calling it the “Micro Tracker” or “Flash Tracker”, and the specs are pretty darn impressive (taken from The Sound Professionals):

Compact Flash and Microdrive Media
2x TRS mic/line jack inputs
48V phantom power
3.5mm jack mic in with 5V power for electret condenser mic
SPDIF RCA input
3.5mm headphone jack
RCA stereo out
USB 2.0
24-bit 96kHz recording

You can see specs and a picture on their site here.

Street seems to be around $400. Not cheap; you can get a high-end MiniDisc player for, what, around $300 or so? BUT, I think MiniDiscs suffer from some significant flaws as live recording devices:

–The software to interface the MD to your computer is Windows-only.

–They’re not designed to just be audio recording devices. So there’s tons of options/features/menus/junk that just get in the way if you just wanna record audio using a mic.

–For a long time you couldn’t transfer audio recorded directly onto the MD (using a mic for example) to a computer at faster than realtime. Though to be fair, it looks like you can now with the newest version of Sony’s MD software.

For a while I’ve wanted something that’s small, records audio digitally in a bunch of formats, and can be connected to any computer for simple drag-and-drop file transfers onto a computer/audio workstation. Perhaps this is it?

UPDATE: Thinking more about studio uses, could this be a good device to mix to? It’s got both SPDIF and analog inputs (TRS), can record at up to 24 bit/96 kHz, and is obviously portable. It’d be even easier to take your mixes with you… Big question: I wonder what the converters sound like? For $400 street it would be a letdown if they sounded like crap. We’ll see.

Fun with circuits (audio geekery within)

I was looking around online today trying to figure out how to design an arbitrary analog phase-shift circuit that’s constant for all audio frequencies. That didn’t go very well (short answer: it’s pretty goddamned complicated), but I did run across this page in the process. It describes two useful-sounding circuits (a pop filter and a 60Hz hum eliminator) in excellent, readable detail; it’s a good way to get acquainted with some of the basic principles of audio electronics as well as get ideas for future soldering team sessions. Basic understanding of circuits required; I might try to write up a more intuitive description of how they work later this week.

Dynaudio Impressions

I finally got around giving the Brian MR session a listen at home and again on the Dynaudios. For the purposes of clarification, “home” means a Musical Fidelity Elektra through an NAD 317 and a pair of Origin Live bookshelf models.

First, I’ll talk about mixing with the Dynaudios. Apparently these monitors cost roughly ten times the ticket price for the Samsons. Andy wondered aloud to me whether the Dynaudios could justify the price tag. I can hear the effects of the dollar, dollar bills, and these effects… Continue reading Dynaudio Impressions…

Pipeline! archives now available online!

Miss the Pipeline! last week, when your favorite band was on? Well, no more worries. Starting today, at any point in time you’ll be able to go back in time and listen to the past *2* shows. And it’s not just Pipeline!–the same goes for all shows on WMBR.

To get to the archives, go here:

http://wmbr.org/?p=sched-tue#pipeline

Remember, though, that you only have two weeks. Unfortunately, for legal reasons, we can’t host more than that. Also note that the live sets start very close to 9pm, which is 1 hour into the show.

Next up, at least for Pipeline!: podcasting. It’s basically a way for your computer to automatically download the most recent show and put it on your iPod (or other mp3 player), all without you doing anything. Currently you need special software to do this, but Monday it was announced that an upcoming version of iTunes will have podcasting support built-in. ETA for new iTunes is around 2 months; hopefully we’ll have the podcast feed up by then. Stay tuned.

Quick Note: Rane PEQ 55 Parametric Equalizer

Recommended by a friend for live sound use:

PEQ 55

Looks like it’s around $800.

Pricey, but nice to have some parametrics for any live sound situation.

DynAudio monitors - first impressions

So after doing two mixes (Les Breastfeeders and the Charms) on the DynAudio monitors Andy brought by last week, I’ve got some early comments (in bullet form because I’m too lazy for complete sentences today):

- Having a subwoofer in the monitoring system is annoying, bottom line. It’s one more thing to mess with, one more thing to go wrong on you, and one more thing you have to find a home for. This is a pretty nice subwoofer (gain control, high-pass outputs, and a low-pass filter on the input that can be varied from 50-150 Hz with a pot), but I’d still rather just have mains that can push a reasonable amount of low-end.

- On the other hand, having a subwoofer four inches from your crotch while mixing is an oddly enjoyable sensation.

- The first time anyone mixed on them (UV Protection’s outside engineer) I had the subwoofer gain at about 10 o’clock and the bass in the control room was way too high. After fooling around with reference CDs (Gang of Four - Entertainment!) for an hour or so, I concluded that the optimum bass setting was between 8-9 o’clock, roughly. That album doesn’t really have a lot of really low bass though, so we’ll probably want to repeat that experiment sometime with Dalek or the Beastie Boys.

- The low-pass knob on the sub was more problematic. I never quite managed to get it to sound right, but the best setting seemed to be in the 100Hz neighborhood (6 o’clock). This is roughly in keeping with the fact that the mains are set to roll off at 80Hz (they have a high-pass on the input that can be set to 0, 60, or 80), so it’s close to the “sweet spot” where overlap between the sub and mains is minimal but there’s no gap in the sound. The overlap was still enough to muddy the low-end a fair amount during both mixes, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t live with. Given the cost of these things, I think some more experimentation will improve the sound quite a bit.

- The mains are what you’d expect from a high-end set of monitors; highs and mids are very bright, clear, and detailed. There are some settings on the mains for high/low/mid shelves and things like that, but I didn’t even bother; they sound fine out of the box.

Both mixes translated to OTA reasonably well, but I still think I like the Samsons better. Their only major drawback (weak low response) was fairly easy to work around once you understood it, and they were much less of a hassle to work with. As I said though, these things could sound awesome after some tweaking (and better, since they cost quite a bit more than the Samsons), so we’ll see.