From: Joe Cooper (joe_at_swelltech.com)
Date: 11/03/03 01:30 EST
Message-ID: <3FA5F5ED.7060804@swelltech.com> From: Joe Cooper <joe@swelltech.com> Subject: Re: [Ardour-users] cheapest setup for 96K recording Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 00:30:05 -0600 Paul Winkler wrote: > On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 02:55:33PM +0000, philicorda wrote: > >>In the end though, I decided the investment was better spent on >>improving room, mics etc.. I was just getting more accurate recordings >>of things that were not sounding how I liked at source. > > > I should have just said that and not blathered on so long :-) > > For myself, given a limited budget, I prioritize upgrades > in roughly this order: > > 1) microphones > 2) acoustics & monitoring > 3) mic preamps > 4) higher quality 24 bit converters > 5) 96k FWIW, I would put acoustics and monitoring first and second in this list, if these areas aren't already well covered...It is the thing that gets neglected in 'project studios' that produce records that sound like they came from a 'project studio'. Even some of the best recordings ever made have the lowly SM57 on snare, but I guarantee you that in a bad room, you'll never get that sound with an SM 57 or any mic costing 100 times more. No matter how sweet the gear, the crummy room is what you'll hear. And if you can't hear your mix, you can't possibly get it right. And the most expensive monitors are still inaccurate in a room with lots of bass frequency cancellation, and weird reflections. So, acoustics come first. (Just some fabric-covered Owens Corning 703 and 705 rigid fiberglass on the walls and across the corners is a good step, though all rooms sound bad in unique ways and have to be addressed appropriately. I spent the weekend measuring the response of my room, and I've got my 703 and 705 coming in on Tuesday.) These are usually one-time expenses, so it doesn't hurt too badly to make them a priority. To put it in perspective, I've spent about $1000 on new gear for my studio and I already had about $1000 worth of old gear...and I've recently spent about $300 on room treatment (with another $100 or so going to the wood and fabric and such to mount and cover the fiberglass), and $100 on a nice set of reference headphones. And I'll be spending about $1000 on monitors, as soon as I've decided on the monitors that suit me. That's more than half of my current budget...but I won't need to spend more money on those areas for years to come, assuming I stay in the same, or similar, room, and I'll know what things really sound like when I put them to disk (at 24/96, or otherwise). To bring this back on-topic, to measure my room, I generated a bunch of sine waves in audacity, focussing on bass frequencies, and also a bit of pink noise, all in a single ~5 minute long file. I then imported this file into Ardour, and setup a mic in place of my head in the listening position. Then cranked up a single speaker, and recorded a new track of the playback of those tones and pink noise. I could then see very clearly how badly the amplitude fluctuates (extremely...visually there were frequencies that had less than half the SPL as others--that's why the room is getting $300 worth of treatment this week). And I chopped out the pink noise and ran it through Ceres3 to get a spectrograph. Not as interesting, since I'm not familiar with reading the ceres3 output, but I could clearly see troughs of lower sound and peaks at certain frequencies. I'll be looking for those to go away when I start treating the room. -- Joe Cooper <joe@swelltech.com> Web caching appliances and support. http://www.swelltech.com ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SF.net Giveback Program. Does SourceForge.net help you be more productive? Does it help you create better code? SHARE THE LOVE, and help us help YOU! Click Here: http://sourceforge.net/donate/ _______________________________________________ Ardour-users mailing list Ardour-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ardour-users
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