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If you're just recording with vocals and guitar theres several under $100. I like the Marshall MXL mikes for the price. The results are going to be pretty much the same with all of them though. The placement may be more forgiving with a condencer when recording acoustic than a cardoid. A cardoid looses all its low end beyond 6". If you plan to eventually use it for live PA work at some time a large diaphram will feed back. An SM57 or 58 would be best if you want to use the mike for live and recording.

Find out what the wal construction consists of now. If the wall isnt insulated Insulation would be a good start. It would require removal of the sheetrock though. Sand would work but the weight would blow the existing sheetrock out due to its weight. Blow in insulation works very good. I had my garage professionally done and it did and incredible job. Uoy could probobly get it in there yourself bu cutting a slot at the top and pooring it in between the studs and packing it down with something as you go. Then all you would have to do us seal the holes, tape spacle and repaint. If its still not enough you can then think about relayering sheetrock. When I did mine I added wood slats between the original wall and the new sheetrock layer to have an air barrier between the two. I dont think this would be nessasary for voices. You'll also have to do something for the door. A solid wood or steel door may be the only option. Most home doors are hollow with some cardboard to maintaing separation and rigidity. If you pulled an end like the top out (which would be an effort), you could pack the door with insulation but it isnt going to be 4" like the walls. Wood or steel is the best bet.

Theres no way to sound proof (Isolation) from noise without adding mass. The best way is to build a wall within a wall. Walls made of brick/cynder block, Several layers of Sheetrock with walls having insulation blow in etc. This requires major reconstruction and major cash. There are no magic coating thet are going to block low frequencies. They travel through walls by making the walls vibrate. Sound also travels through heating/AC ducts which is another issue. Standard inner walls in homes are often just sheetrock with no insulation in between. This isnt much to stop sound other than voice level talk.

Heres one trick to getting a great reverb sound while still being able to hear the words clearly. It was coined the Exciter and has been copied by many Theres a few other cool tricks but the Motown sound is pretty cool and sounds pretty good with even cheaper hard or soft reverbs. http://www.recordinginstitute.com/R2KREQ/excomp.htm

I would either try a mike and a direct signal and dual track it or use 2 mikes. if its an open rear cab you can get some great sound recording on mike on the front grill and one in back of the speaker with a reverse phase adaptor connected.

Volume level has nothing to do with the quality and detail of the data being recorded. (Except if you exceed 0db rms recording and digital distortion begins to occur which is nasty and should be avoided) As everyone said you HAVE to dither down to 16 its before burning a CD. CDs are recorded at 44.1/16 bits. The reason for going to a higher 24/96 is to capture maximum clarity. Effects added at 24/96 will sound alot better as well. Then you can mix down and whatever processing to the tracks you did will have less negative impact degrading the music quality than if you added effects at a lower bitrate. You could imagine it as a quick laymen reference like this. 24/96 has trice the sampeling and dynamic rance of 16/44.1 Say an effect/processing degrades (consumes) 5% of the quality of a recording That 5% damage will have half the impact to the 24/96 than it would to a 16/44.1 (Or 16/44.1 would have twice as much dammage as 24/96) If you dont need to do alot of processing or EQing Or adding Reverbs etc. 16/44.1 should be fine. If you need to process bad vocals and tweak things to mix well you will eventually degrade the sound quality. The choice comes down to is, If you're dealing with Great musicians who have a great lsound, and know how to record, you wont need to process the crap out of the music to make them sound good. 16/44.1 should be fine. If you're dealing with amatures who cant tune their instruments, Have no experience using recording equipment and suck playing live, it really doesnt matter what you use. No recording system will make an amature sound like a pro. So the only thing left is a cost factor. A 16/44.1 systems are pretty much obsolite now and should be dirt cheap.

Another option you can do is to use a program like RAL. You can run a good mike mike in front of the monitors and see what the responce looks like with pink noise running. I do this with my monitors and a large diaphram mike and get the responce completely flat at 85db which is the standard. This way I dont have to guess any more.

Then why did it work when you were just playing guitar by yourself? Sounds like a classic case of finding evidence because you want to believe. Kinda hard to hold a can and play at the same time unless I was trying to play slide with it. Lighten up man, I was speaking about soloing tracks. Not trying to convince myself or anyone else. Just thought it was something kinda neat others may want to check out. Sympathetic vibration is nothing new. Had a singer over once that would hit a certain note and we kept getting an after ring. After combing all the equipment we finally found a coat hanger in the closet vibrating making the noise. Didnt need to convince myself it was happening it just did.

I tried it again myself last night instrument by instrument. What you're able to do is feel the music at your fingertips like a guitar player feels the strings on a guitar vibrate. You can distinctly feel when the bass and kick are tight plus the guitars. This is probibly what I rememberd when I first noticed it.

Well I'll give you this, Untill a mix is half way decent I dont tend to crank it up. And I dont tend to drink during mixing cause I tend to get ear fatigue after a few hours. Beer tends to make fatigue worse. But yes I did do it during a mix once, and it was very noticeable when I had everything properly balanced. Again listening to playback of completed mixes with the guys in the band (I did Have whitnesses who observed the same thing I did) the really good tracks did it, the ones that werent great didnt, or at least not as much. It may be that I only went so far with the poor mixes and decided I would be better off masking a poor sounding guitar or vocal due to a poor performance. It may also be true I brought those same vocals and guitar out front with a good performance and it was the performance that influenced the final mix especially in the midrange area where alot of vocals and guitar happen. I can say this. Nothing changed between sessions other that the performances. All Mike positions and levels remained the same during tracking.

Knew I would get these kind of posts, And its all in good fun. I am throwing alot of levity in here you know, but I'm dead serious about a good mix vibrating the can and the volume doesnt have to be real high. Like I said I used to notice it during band sets when another band got cooking, The vocals/Guitar/mix was great and it would start happening. Its something you have to be aware of to notice. With loud music everything tends to vibrate. But a resonanting can is pretty noticable. I'm sure some guy thought it was cool to rub his finger around a wine glass and make it resonate. Who would think Ben Franklin would make a new instrument from that. Think it was called a Glass Armonica? Maybe someones in their studio who has an empty coke can can try it and chime in with the results.

Blue Heaven, Its called BYO. Pretty common when you play out now days. $80 for a tank of gas is pretty rough. Club owners in Texas dont mind if it keeps their cost to higher a band down. Most resteraunts and ice houses allow you to bring your own as well. Pretty wierd after having grown up in the north east. They only passed laws for open containers here 10 years ago.

I would reverse Danbronsons statement. The can isnt used to tune the mix, but come payday I may have to try it the other way around. Wonder how I'd be able to figure out the resonant frequenct of an alluminum beer can. With and without the tab. If I think of It I may have to use a FQ generator and see where the maximum vibration occurs. It would be a real hoot if I discoverd something in the manufactures design though I'm Sure its just a coincidence. I must admit the bottom of the cans are kinda like an inverted carribean steel drum. Those guys took those oil drums that floated in during WWII and made a completely new sound and music by denting the dums up with a hammer. Carribean and raggae music were born during that time from something disigned to carry oil. Maybe the old 1950s/60s cans with the flat tin tops and bottoms had a different tone for a different Genre?

Both. Truely though, Try it sometime. Must be something to do with the midrange and drum frequencies happening there. I show it to people every once and a while. They laugh just as hard as I do. Brand doesnt matter which I'm sure will be the next comment. It can be a soft drink can. Alcohol has nothing to do with it.

Wondering if anyone else noticed this before. If not you may want to try it. Over the years when I go to a club and heard a really good band sitting at the bar with a near or empty beer can. I'd put my hand on the can and it vibrated heavily from the music. I thought to myself, what a great subliminal alarm clock for someone to get a refill and increase beer sales. Later when I got heavy into recording, I accidently found the same vibration occuring during mixdown when I had a great mix happening. It may just be coincidence, But Its something that definately happens.

My room is super flat as well. This is why I use several different types of monitors including my PA which is about 3000W. I use nearfield for mixing, but switch over to a stereo amo and speakers, Hi end computer monitors with sub woofer, a set of 6x9 triaxials, and like I said my PA. I may find one instrument that doesnt produce as well on the other systems and need to adjust gain or eq to get it to sit properly and not be masked by other instruments. Though I do run a Frequenct analizer during mixing often, and the mixes are fine after mastering, I have had great succes in minimizing mastering processing to retain better dynamics by getting a better mix.

When it comes to the history of recording, digitally auto tuning is a fairly recent thing. all they are is a harmonizer set for unison triggerd off set notes. Anytime someone bends a vocal note the thing isnt going to kick in on a semitone properly making the tone sound digital broken or skippy. Eventide was one of the first and best to make vocal harmonizers and that only dates back to the 80s. Digital recording didnt even become popular till the 90s with the advent of large hard drives. If someone was to tell me that 99% of all artists in the past 10 years have had to have pitch correction I would have to say there is a serious abuse with the tool or all of a sudden all the singers after a hundred years of recording have suddenly gone tone deaf in the past 10 years. (Which is a possibility) There may be some new high end auto tune program out there I havent tried yet but all the popular ones suck. If you mix 100% with them theyre jerky and synthetic. If you mix 50% or less theyre phasey, Jerkey and synthetic. Double tracking vocals is way better than any of that nonsence. I've used them for experimental harmonies or special effects, but for serious recordings I think theyre still pretty much a joke.

Hate to blow the bubbel. Many pro singers have perfect pitch and timing and have littel or no need for that kind of pitch editing. Pro studios may record 15 or 20 tracks of the same vocal part. If theres a bad spot in a vocal line they just take the vocals from another track and splice it in. Switching between tracks is alot easier than jacking with software to do the job. Theres alot more to it than just pitch and timing. Capturing the emotion of the lyrics and the message of the song and dynamics will be decisive in what parts of what tracks will be used. I've had pros record in my studio who sang only 2 takes to a song. I couldnt tell any difference between the two cause it was so good and it was a toss up which would be used. The recording as is wound up being a soundtrack to a western TV series to be released next year. The pitch software is mainly something for budget studios or home recording where the singer may be one step up from a karaoke singer. Often the bands cant pay much and expect alot. Even then if the person is off alot it wont fix it. The only time I use it is when I know the singer sucks and wont be able to hit certain notes nomatter how many tracks they do. Thats usually the point where I cant hack hearing them sing anymore so I tweak it in instead. What I'd like to tell them is go take lessons and come back when you learn how to sing and ocassionally do if its got no chance.

Tweaking something in is time consumimg, and in a pro situation relates directly to $. Tweaking a track in for minor problems isnt a big deal or cost. If the problem is worse, then getting a person to retrack a part may be a cheaper option. If the track is really that bad then I say no tweaking is going to fix it. My advice would be find someone else for the band who can sing or play properly to begin with or instead of spending big money recording spend it on lessons.

Well I think I have everything pretty much cranked up at this point. The file moving crashing problem seems to have gone away. Its still slow to move big files but its not too bad. I spent one night 9 hrs trying to get a dual boot system working with XP and ME that were already loaded on 2 different drives perfectly setup with all software working. I found out it was taking too much time so I just put XP on another partition. I Did this so I can run old and new hardware/software on the studio box. Also by combining 2 drives I would avoid setting up a ton of audio progs and plugins and saving all my shortcut settings which is the #1 issue. You dont realize how many hours you spent setting up different settings getting different plugins set until you do a complete changeover. I still think I can pull them over from the old drive but I have to get the other stuff done first. I still have to get networking working yet. I spent 8 hours last night banging my brains out againt the wall trying to get my vista nad XP unit to see eachother. I finally found an article that explains right off what the differences were and saw my problem instantly. I read 20 different "How To" articles but didnt see it. Vista has a new workgroup name called "Workgroup" and XP and 9x are called "MSHome" How stupid can I be to have see that. Well one more round should finish things up. Oh and for my old studio box I might take it and one of my small monitors and build them into a rack box with wheels. I can use it for remote/Live recording. It would be cool to just plug it in and whip out the mike wires already plugged in and just set up the mikes. I think I can probbibly be ready to do a live show in 15~30 minuites recording 8 Tracks live digitally. I can speed the box up too by removing alot of unneeded software too. After a show I'd just bring it back to the studio, plug it in and pull the files over for mixing. Ive done alot of shows with 8 Teack tape and even this unit before. But havung it built into a rack that just zips around on big wheels for a setup would be real cool. What the heck I could rent the thing out to bands who want to try it on their own and not have to do anything. Then I can charge more for mixdown and audio salvage

Its an old pentium gateway with intel chipset. It was solid as can be. Maybe I'll use it to record video cam during rehursal. I also have an old midi pickup and interface for a guitar. Theres a bit of latency but it was cool playing some midi piano, drums, synth etc on guitar. Think I had it writing in tab at one time automatically.

Randy G. I read the wikipedia description of it. I'm not sure how usefull it would be in s studio. If I ran 98 on my old box and used it to run XP software or something it might be useful. I'd have to read up on what it does in an upgrade situation. weather it would leave a fully loaded 98 or ME box functional yet fully intergrate to an XP enviornment. For my old box I'll probibly run ME anyway. Networked I've had no issues moving files. Security is a non issue. It would be a closed network. If I do a dual boot system It may be cheaper than buying another XP liscence and still work on the older box.

I've read there are some guys getting it to work just like or better than XP. They stripped it down to bare bones progs and services. They say its less likely to crash which is probibly true. With 4G of memory in the box it should be pretty good. I was able to get XP cranking on my old box which was a compaq presario 1.1G. I stripped the system down the other night to nothing and put my sound card in and copied all my files from the old old box. It kicks butt for tracking now. I do have some problems getting my older multitracks to play right. Its mainly some plugins that arent installed properly but after I finish mixing those saved songs I will be working on all new tracks. One thing I am going to do though is take the new wireless keyboard and mouse and swap it in the studio. Its supposed to be good up to 30'. I can actually do live drum tracks if I want and run the daw from across the room Horay. I still have that older Studio tracking box I need to do something with. I could throw in a cheap 4 or 8 track card or something. It might be cool to have it for extra tracks, mixdowns or something. I could set it up as a server backup or something. I can put NT or Lynix on there which I have on hand and load it with all the extra hard drives I have around. Need to find some software to automatically backup the others. I'm pretty sure XP and Vista both have backup progs, I think I have norton backup also. Anyway thay can be a rainy afternoon project for the future. I may need to get creative with it. Its been a good box for 8 years and I dont like letting a good box go. Need to find a new use for it. Hold On - I'm so used to doing audio tracks I didnt think of it right away. How bout a strictly Midi Box. I have 3 Keyboards - Midi sound Moduals and a mini moog. I could build a new Keyboard stand and have the monitor mounted on it Throw in some older alesis midi effects and Run Virtual midi tracks out the sound card etc as well as record midi only to steinberg etc. Steinberg has some cool Native instruments in it and theres tons of free ones. I love the B3 it sounds as real as can be. Another posibility might be to Midi all my hardware sound effects and work them from the wireless too. Wireless Footswitch for PA effects?

Blue2blue, Thanks for the link Sorry about the op system entry. I work in the industry and everyone has verbally called it that since they had computers. I have another article written strictly for daws at http://www.studioauditions.com/proaudioarticledetail.php?WritingID=243 As far as drivers go its a non issue at this point. I wont be adding any older hardware at this time. Its not a bad unit for $800. Its an HP Pavillion 2.6G - Dual core athalon processor 500Gdrive 22"flat panel monitor and light scribe dvd burner and the front panel has all kinds of ports for memory cards and such. Sound cards 7.1 surround and lets you record in 4 channel via front and rear line ins. Sample rates studio quality up to 96000. The memory ports are handy as hell because Im starting to do videos and syncing them to the masterd audio tracks. Plugging in a smart card from the camera is a lot easier than downloading from a cable. The flat pannel was a biggie too. My old monitor went so it was priority #1. Hardware wise Its a decent box. I could have built my own and probibly had a quad core for the price but my wife works at HP so to get an OK to buy a new unit it naturally had to be an HP. Back to Vista, Vista upgrade from XP is pretty much like the upgrade from 98 to ME. They just loaded a good XP systen with as much WOW crap they could, Then they created so many security popups for theyre User Account Security that you think youre connected to a porn site. No serious business will run this program as is. It would be totally non productive. Still I'm going to see how much I can slim down and speed this program up yet still be safe. I found a pretty good guide for shutting down unnessasary services, and a few Tweak programs for customizing. I'd try and figure out the tweaks on my own but there must be a minimum of a couple of hundred buried in there and I dont plan on spending a month learning them all right now. Another Major concern is when I burned a CD on the DVD burner. I was moving some stored audio progs and drivers to the old box to studio unit. I couldnt see the files burned to the disk on the other op system. I wound up using a flash drive. I would move the files, Delete them on the old box, Then plug the flash back into the new box and wa-lah, the files were still there. Vista must write the files differently to other drives, which goes along with the original problem I posted. I suspect it some kinda data compression that prevents data loss thats at the root of the problem. Also Liscencing of audio recordings could be a big problem with studio recordings. If this system has what I think it does The copy security system could cause problems with wave and video files. I also dont like IE explorer type tool bars. Even in the classic mode you have to navigate with an arrow or via a tree in the left pane like win 3.1. Another biggie I been trying to find out how to change screen resolution size. Other versions had a slider under monitor settings to change the viewing screen size. Large Ikon pictures gotta go too. Theyre OK on the desktop but not to populate folders. some of these are littel gripes which I can get used to but some are just plain NFG

If anyone has a known fix for this problem let me know.... I think its important to anyone thinking about trying vist as an op system. I finally went and bought a new system for my mastering and was able to put my old system in the studio as a day which really cranks now. I didnt want to go with vista but didnt have a choice cause all new boxes come with it unless you special order it. While setting up this unit I found the op system has serious flaws all users should know about. The most critical one for recording work is the op system crashes or freezes when moving large files. There is no official fix from microsoft. I was moving about 30 gigs of files to the new drive and it took me an entire day. I had to move wave files a few at a time to get the job done. At first I thought there was a compadibility issue between the XP backup drive and vista but I found out differently. I did a google search and found 1.6 million posts with angry people experienncing the same Freezing and crashing that occurs moving any size files. The best I came up with is the estimated time to read the move is screwed up due to its pre read and write security structure. As of today microsoft has no fix and the op system has been out for how long? What I did find was a some "Try it and see if it works items" which I will still need to try but if they dont you need to install a 3rd party program to move your files around. This is about as stupid as it gets. The first basic function of a computer is to copy cut and paste. Even in DOS and Word perfect (Remember the late 80s)it was the first Moferxx Frekin commands you learned and has been at the heart of every op system designed. This is rediculous absolutely rediculous. I found some sites that give some tweaks to shut off all the extra junk running and will need to shut most of it down. Also the popups are endless. I spend half my time getting past security promps that will need to go asap. I will most likely move it back to a XP 64 system if I can get it close to what I need But I'll give it some time before I completely scrap it.