CN Fletcher

daw [rhymes with saw] is an acceptable term as is "Dee Ay double U"

Yeah... if you're doing a big rawk show for half a million kids going for 3 days of drugs and music... but if you're mixing a record you really don't want to do it in an unnatural environment. Things like "PA cabs" and microphones are tested in an anechoic chamber... as in zero reverb, as in zero acoustic influence... if you ever get inside of an anechoic chamber you will find it is one of the most unnerving and unnatural experiences of your life... almost to the point of being creepy. In terms of tuning a sound reinforcement system with a Real Time Analyzer the "best" place to do that is at a gig where you're going to be using the system... which could be in a club, in a theater, in an arena, in a football stadium or a great big open field where half a million kids are going to get together for 3 days of fun and music... and nothing but fun and music... When you mix a record you want a room that allows your product to reference well when that product gets out of the room... nothing more, nothing less. While control rooms are "designed spaces" they do share some common traits with the environment in which people will listen to the record... which a big open field will not.

My control room... it references to the street like a mother{censored}er.

The guitar sound in the room is EVERYTHING!!! I have never heard anything come out of a "POD" that I considered to be of even marginal use. Back when I was working on the last "King's X" record Ty Tabor had been using the Line 6 crap for damn near everything. We tried it. The producer [Michael Wagener] waited until we had something close to decent, then plugged in one of his amps to one of his speaker cabinets and the difference was "night and day". No {censored}. The POD crap is fine for quick writing demos but it is absolutely unuseable for making records if you're looking for a guitar sound that actually sounds like a real guitar. Yeah, they're fine for people who are either too lazy or ignorant to make a guitar sound great in the room and then record that sound but the {censored} will never "sound like a record" it will always "sound like demo". The comment about getting the speaker cabinet off the floor and away from the walls was one of the best ones in this thread. What you're doing by getting the cabinet off the floor is keeping the cabinet from coupling with the floor and creating a false sense of low end in the room. Once you get the actual sound of the guitar coming from the speakers then all you need to do is put a microphone in front of it [57's and/or 58's are fine for the task] and hit record. If you move the mic more towards the center [dust cap] of the speaker the sound will get brighter... if you move the mic more towards the surround of the speaker the sound will get thicker. If you move the microphone towards the grill cloth the sound will get thicker [greater proximity effect from a cardioid microphone as you get closer to the source tone] if you move the speaker away from the cabinet the sound will get thinner [not necessarily brighter but definitely less bottom due to the decrease in proximity effect]. The key to the whole guitar sound thing is to be recording a great player. Guitar sounds start and the hands and go down hill from there. Recording engineers do not "get" guitar sounds, recording engineers "capture" guitar sounds and store them in a place where they can be played back later. The equipment is a tool, and the engineer is an operator of the tools so the sound can be captured... but before it can be captured it must be created. The sound starts with the player as engineers can indeed gloss things up a bit or cover some of the dodgy parts but overall we don't do alchemy and can't create a sound. Best of luck with all you do!! ...my apologies for the rant.

Originally posted by GuitarPLayer61990 Why couldn't this be like a band? Actually it is exactly like a band. Chung King House of Metal, Cowboy Technical Services [which is in Brooklyn, NY... kinda far from any Cowboy's I've ever met]... Mix This... Electric Lady... you can call it what ever you feel like. My studio [for which there is no website] is called: THE METHods and Applications LABoratory There are no rules... just call it something you won't mind having to say for the next 20 years. Best of luck with it.

Shure SM-7 Crowley and Tripp "Naked Eye" Sennheiser MD-441 ... and maybe a player to be named later...

Originally posted by Phil O'Keefe Every studio MUST have one - it's the law or something. They are strictly forbidden in my control room... they clash with the "voodoo/pimp and skull" motif... We have a skull lamp in the bathroom [yes, my control room has a terlet... not only that, the seat has a "punisher" logo] the "door" to the loo is a red velvet curtain on a rather medieval pointed curtain rod... there is a curved version of this to hold the curtain back when not in use and another which is being used as a toilet paper holder. In the back of the control room is a cheetah pattern couch [it's actually called a "fainting couch"], black ceramic lamps with white leopard lamp shades... leopard throw pillows, leopard rug, black kidney shaped coffee table in front of the couch with books on Von Dutch and Big Daddy Roth... On the right side wall [from the back of the mix position to the back wall of the room] is a mural [painted by my oldest daughter] with a tree that has people painted on the tree as if they were bark, with spirits rising, a river flowing through it fading into a grassy knoll... on the other side of the room a new mural [by the same daughter] is under way that will look like a cross between a tribal tattoo and a "Medusa" kind of figure. In each of the back corners is a wooden staff with a hand carved skull on the top. On the meter bridge of the desk is my "Ancestral Protection Voodoo Doll" along with a shaker that only works in one direction... on top of my S3-A's is a stuffed shark on the left side and a glow in the dark "skull shaker" sitting on the front inside corner of the monitor... the right speaker has a stuffed armadillo. The talkback mic is a Russian ribbon mic that was allegedly stolen from the Politburo [it actually has a little commie "CCCP" logo on the body of the mic]. The "mains" are UREi 813A's that are soffit mounted with the cabinets cloth covered with the same blue [fire proof coated] cloth that is the side walls, ceiling and loo covering... all with a stained wood trim... the doors are from "Syncro Sound" [The CARS old studio] as are the dimmers for the track lighting. If anyone brings a lava lamp into that room I will personally shove it up their ass then plug it in.

Get a warm, bright, vintage NEEV pre-amp... they're the BEST!!!

http://www.wingtunes.co.nz/public/default.aspx