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MikeRivers

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About MikeRivers

  • Birthday 02/20/1943

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  • Biography
    http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com

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  • Location
    Falls Gulch

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  • Occupation
    Retired Bum

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  1. "Remember those ground posts on turntables with the screw terminals where you could attach a ground wire to keep hum at bay? Have you ever seen ground posts on anything else? Of course not!" Craig's memory is a little faulty here. Turntables had a ground _wire_ that was permanently attached. The ground post, where you connected the spade lug on the other end of the turntable's ground wire was on the receiver or preamp. So convenient - you didn't have have to buy a piece of wire to ground your turntable's innards, nor did you have to solder anything or drill any holes.
  2. Always good to see Sister Rosetta Tharpe included in such a list. She should be #1, though. The clip here is pretty tame, but she's where Chuck Berry got his licks, and without Chuck Berry, where would real rock and roll be?
  3. It's about time somebody wrote an article like this. Guitar switches and knobs are notorious for being unmarked and in the "well, everybody knows what that switch does" category. The real meat here is in your last paragraph, except that I've never seen a manual for a guitar (maybe because I've never bought a new electric guitar) or much of an explanation on the manager's web site. Ask a clerk? Ummmm . . . maybe they know more about guitars than microphones or mixers. But thanks for the starter info.
  4. The problem with fretting one string to get it to the pitch of the next higher string is that frets aren't always that accurate, and even if they're spaced mathematically accurate, the bridge is in the correct place, and the instrument is set up well, you're still at the mercy of the tempered scale - unless of course you have one of those kinky oddly fretted fingerboards that attempt to compensate for what was designed for Mr. Bach's Well Tempered Clavier. One system that works better most of the time is to compare octaves. It's easy enough to hear if two notes an octave apart are identical by listening to beats and tuning so there aren't any. You'll have to fret a bit, like tuning the D string by fretting it at the 2nd fret and matching this E to the 1st or 6th string, which you've already tuned by octaves to match. Or better yet, get a clip-on tuner, tune each string to it, then correct it by ear. At a workshop at a Newport Folk Festival many years ago (back when a "festival workshop" consisted of a pole stuck in the ground in the field, with a sign on it and a chair, someone asked Reverend Gary Davis why he always tuned his B string a little sharp. He replied "Well, it's SUPPOSED to be that way.
  5. "While I don't see guitar companies doing away with the 3/4†jack anytime soon," I think you mean 1/4" jack. There was a Gibson system (the Les Paul Recording) that used a balanced connection between guitar and amplifier on an XLR connector, but they left the 1/4" jack so the guitar could be played with a conventional amplifier.
  6. "Don't ever go over 0 VU when recording digitally." Digital gear doesn't have VUs or VU meters. The level you don't want to exceed, and actually, that you can never exceed, is 0 dBFS. If you're using a VU meter for reference, for example on an analog mixer or mic preamp, you need to establish a relationship between 0 VU on the analog meter and 0 dBFS on the digital meter. Usually the system is calibrated so that at 0 VU, you'll have a recording level somewhere between -14 and -20 dBFS, depending, if you have a choice, of how much headroom you want to allow. See my article entitled Meter Madness" http://mikeriversaudio.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/meter-madness_1-2_revised.pdf
  7. Here are some important details for those who have never done anything like this before. First, readers may not know what a "signal generator" is. You don't need a piece of calibrated lab equipment for this. Most DAWs and audio editing programs have a function to generate a sine wave. For something more portable (I hate to be tied to my computer workstation when doing shop tests or troubleshooting) there are web resources for downloading WAV or MP3 files of sine waves. You can transfer those to a handheld recorder and that becomes your test generator. Alternatively, there are a few apps for mobile devices to generate test tones. You'll need to be creative with cables but that shouldn't be a problem. I have a few cables with common audio connectors on one end and alligator clips on the other end to make it easy to hack together something temporary. The article doesn't state where the generator and amplifier or other device under test are to be connected. Since signal flow on a diagram is usually assumed to be left to right, so the generator should be connected to the jack on the left (3). The device under test (DUT - an amplifier or other input device) should be connected to the jack on the right (1). It really doesn't matter once you understand how a pot works, but it's best to set up a convention. As drawn, the pot will be at zero ohms (or, technically, as close to zero as it will get), when the shaft is turned fully counterclockwise with the pot oriented so that the shaft is pointing toward you. Check it with the Ohms setting on the multimeter just to be sure. Measure the generator level at the jack to be connected to the DUT, but with nothing but the meter there connected yet. Write down the voltage and then connect the DUT with the meter still connected. Then rotate the pot and stop when the voltage across the DUT input has dropped to half the open circuit voltage. The drawing show a 1 megohm pot, but some devices have in input impedance greater than that and even with the pot at maximum resistance the voltage at the DUP input won't drop to half the open circuit voltage. You can stop there and be happy that you have an input that's greater than 1 megohm, or you can start tacking 1 megohm resistors in series (between the pot and the right (1) jack) until you can get to half voltage with the pot, and then add the extra resistance to what you read when you measure the pot. You could get a 10 megohm pot, but that reduces the resolution at the low end, should you want to start measuring everything within sight, where line level inputs are typically in the 5 to 20 kilohms. Before you go off checking you mic preamp's input impedance, understand that nearly all mic inputs are differential. You can use this same technique and test setup, but you'll need to connect the generator between pins 2 and 3 of the XLR input and ignore pin 1. You'll also want to monitor the preamp to be sure it's not clipping. You may find that the input impedance varies over a small but measurable range as you adjust the input gain of the preamp. If the preamp output is connected to a DAW input, you can skip the voltmeter measurement, just set the generator output low enough so that you aren't clipping the preamp, and monitor the output level using a meter in the DAW. First check and jot down the level with the pot at zero ohms, then turn the pot so that the level drops by 6 dB (that's 1/2 the voltage) and measure the pot's resistance. -------------- Mike Rivers used to write regularly for a few magazines but they won't let him do it any more because all of his articles are too long. He has retired to the safety of on-line writing since adding another page doesn't require selling another ad.
  8. My tool of choice for holding nearly anything small enough to solder with a soldering iron is a small Jorgensen parallel jaw wooden handscrew. With two of them, it's like having four hands. https://ponyjorgensen.com/products/specialty-clamps/
  9. Don't artists use more than one or two microphones? So many companies have interfaces along the same model as these new Mackies and they continue to get better as far as raw audio quality. But high quality 4-mic interfaces that connect via USB seem to be as scarce as ever. I suppose if you're creative (or maybe indecisive) enough to want to record more than two channels, you're "pro" enough to have a Mac or one of the rare PCs with Thunderbolt.
  10. Hey, Phil - Thanks for the review. I've been trying to get one of these for a review for over a year now. Glad they're finally getting out and I'll get mine. In the spirt of the Pro Review, I have a question for you: "You'll also find two large rotary controls on the front panel. The one near the display is used to select various menu items, and has a built in push-to-select switch. The other large knob is a main output level control, and adjusts the level of the rear panel 1/4" TRS balanced +4dBm output jacks. These jacks provide a summed output of all the recorded tracks courtesy of the uTrack 24's onboard DSP mixer, or serve as main control room outputs when the unit is used as a computer audio interface. " Can you route a pair of channels from a DAW monitor mix directly to those rear panel "control room" outputs? Or do you need to return the DAW mix to a pair of channel inputs and then route that to the monitor outputs via the uTrack's DSP mixer?
  11. Oh, so this is about using only the hardware box, not the PARIS system. OK. I can get that. I'm in favor of being able to put something to good use that you already own. It's But does it really sound better than, say, a Focusrite Scarlett? I don't know. And it did have a nice control surface. Does that work with Pro Tools or Reaper?
  12. I never got close enough to PARIS to learn what's inside, but doesn't it make WAV files somewhere along the line like every other recording system? Like any other DAW, the editing/playlist functions are internal and don't transfer to anywhere else - that's why everybody uses Pro Tools. However, a new ASIO driver would allow the hardware to get audio in and out of a contemporary computer. If the PARIS software will run on a contemporary computer, you could at least use it again. Maybe. There was another issue, too, and that's with the PACE dongle. The software that supports that dongle doesn't run under 64-bit Windows 7 and later (I don't know that the Mac situation is) and since it's a challenge-and-response piracy protection system, it needs new response codes now and then, and the last ones issued have expired. Maybe the $50 solution also bypasses the PACE protection. By the way, PARIS is an acronym for Professional Audio Recording Integrated System.
  13. Good to hear that someone's keeping it alive. Paris was a really great system, not just for its day, but, I'd say, for any day. Very well thought out, sensible user interface, and it sounded just fine. Me, I'm still trying to help people keep their Mackie HD24/96 HDR and MDR recorders working. Few DAW editing tools make as much sense as on the Mackie HDR24/96. That's my preferred tracking system. If someone wants to take home a Pro Tools file, I give them a set of WAV files and send them on their way.
  14. It's hard to get people to believe that. The "vintage sound" was the sound of good musicians and good singers who could play together and, without nit-picking every breath or string buzz, record a song that caught the listener's ear. Sam Phillips didn't have any particularly exotic equipment - RCA and EV mics and Ampex recorders. That, plus his good sense of what was musical and how to get it on tape is what made hit records. Today, moneymaker hits are made in a factory, and individuals just want to get their music out and maybe get a few thousand Facebook friends or YouTube plays. And that's another problem - For most people, studios were the only place to record - studios cost money to build, staff, and maintain, and therefore recording was expensive enough so that cost was at least partially a "quality filter." If you were good enough, someone with industry savvy would foot the bill for your recording and hopefully sell some records, or if you were wealthy enough, you could book your own studio time and do whatever you choose with the recording. Today, for $100, anyone can record at home, so they do. And because they're using a DAW, be it Pro Tools or the one that came bundled with the $100 interface+mic package, they don't have to be able to play or sing very well, or put together a group of players and singers to work with them. They can, and do, piece things together using the technology. Like the blind squirrel who eventually finds an acorn, they manage to put something together. Some keep at it long enough so that they have had time to learn not just how to work the technology, but how to record well crafted music, and come up with some good work. But that takes enough time so that most get bored and do something else - maybe make videos???
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