First off, this is not an official work by Rick Rubin, but a collection of a ton of interviews from both Rubin and all the artists he's worked with. Actually, I find this to be a good thing because when guys this big attempt to make a “how to” kind of thing, they always get lazy and never make it as comprehensive as it should be or lose perspective on just how much they know.

Of course, this book wasn't intended to be all-out everything-you-need-to-know about producing kind of book. It was intended to be a fun read that gives some huge insight into the way Rick Rubin works. I plowed through it in two days.

It's very easy to forget just how much Rick Rubin has done. Being a guy born in 1980, I'm very familiar with his work. However, it's easy to lose track of just how expansive his catalog really is. Yeah, his work with the Chili Peppers is obvious. Everyone knows he started out with the rap thing. Most people know he got Slayer and System of A Down going. When you factor in Johnny Cash, Dixie Chicks, Linkin Park, Mick Jagger, Danzig, and The Bangles you start saying, “Oh, he's done EVERYTHING!”. Hell, he even produced “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix A Lot. Awesome!

I did find it slightly annoying (not too bad) when the artists themselves are describing the recording process. You see, I hate bands and don't trust anything they say. When Anthony Keidis starts talking about the band being one energy, I have no idea what that means. Not one. There is a significant amount of that sort of thing in this book, but again, it only gets slightly annoying and I am the kind of guy that is easily annoyed. So most of you guys will have no trouble. If you LIKE bands talking about nothing, you'll love this book If you are used to drummers looking for a “blue snare sound”, you'll handle this just fine.

What this book has done for me is given me a huge kick in the butt and reminded me why I do what I do. It's reminded me to get aggressive with my band and eliminate all the busy playing and that sort of thing. It's pointed out many things that I already known, but pointed them out in ways that are so aggressive, you'd have to be a nitwit not to be a better producer after this book.

The producing lessons in this book (implied as they may be) are absolutely indispensable.

I didn't realize just how absolutely successful Rubin has been. It's one thing to say, “Yeah, he's done a 30 big records.” It seems that 9 out of 10 records he does end up being astronomical successes. I didn't tally up how many diamond records he's done, but it is absurd! It seems that everything he touches does extremely well both in artistic and commercial terms. This was the big point for me.

As you'll read, Rubin's approach is to not care AT ALL about album sales and just getting the artist to max out what they do, remove all gimmicks, and make sure the core is as badass as it can be.

I see so many bands who think that if you are selling your albums, you are doing something wrong. They've went so far off the artistic deep end that they believe that if you sell 10,000,000 records you've sold a part of your soul in order to do it. This has never sat well with me. I've always felt that the best artistic statements sell the most records. There are exceptions out there, but this book's theme has been that great music makes money, not record label Milli Vanilli crap.

I come from the school where the ultimate album has maxed out artistic merit and commercial merit. To me, they are one and the same. So when these two sometimes differing worlds end up at the same point, you know you are on the right page and that's the main reason I highly recommend this book.

Read it!

Back in July, I came up with this hypothesis that latency was TOTALLY screwing with my vocalists after doing a few little voiceover things myself. I felt that the ability of the singer to hear themselves was all screwed up. The delay from their own voice in their head and the headphones causes a distinct comb filtering that makes everything sound totally NOT distinct.

Well, I'm happy to report that after testing this over and over that zero-latency headphone mixes are the ONLY way to go. I will never go back to recording vocals with any noticeable latency. Singer comfort seems to increase dramatically, complaints about headphones have dropped dramatically, the results seem to be better, and good singers who struggled with pitch seem to make miraculous improvement. (Crappy singers are still crappy, unfortunately.)

There are still some singers who aren't in love with using headphones as this can is not necessarily a person's natural way of hearing themselves. I've found the singers that HATED singing with 96 samples of latency in their headphones now seem about 10x happier

Getting FX In Zero-Latency Land

DAW Monitoring
Many DAWS will allow you to record vocals via direct monitoring and then route that signal to the reverb. In this case,the latency will delay that reverb signal. This is the exact same thing as pre-delay, which is a very common reverb control anyway. In fact, for big vocal reverbs (Celine Dion-type stuff, it's required anyway) so a little more won't hurt.

Hardware
I bit the bullet and paid $220 for a Kurzweil Rumour hardware reverb. This requires the ability to route signals out of your interface or it requires a hardware mixer. In either case, you need the ability to send signals and bring them back in on a new channel that can be heard. Users with 2-channel audio interfaces are out of luck.

Conclusion

Find a way to record vocals with zero latency and never look back. It works.

Racks Are Way Too Expensive

If there is one area where you can blow outrageous amounts of cash with no real hope of retaining resale value, it has to be gear racks. Take a look around. For a “thingy” that does little more than hold your gear in place, a person can easily shell out $300. (The cheapest I found was this, but that one didn't feel right.) I'm talking plain jane, no-frills, no shock absorption racks.

I can't figure out why this price is justified. One can argue about aesthetics, but the kind of racks I like to look at have nothing to do with audio gear. When dealing with ugly racks, I find that it doesn't take much work to get a few cheap pieces of wood to look “pretty”, if that's your interest.

In terms of strength, the rack gear itself rarely needs much in the way of support. In fact, one could argue that they ARE the support. Unless you reside on the San Andreas fault or have a guy who looks mysteriously like Tesla performing resonance experiments under your apartment, I can't see how strength is a huge priority anyway. I figure as long as drop kicking your rack does more damage to you than your gear, you should be in good shape.

The World's Cheapest Strongest Rack

I'm fairly certain a person won't be able to top this rack for strength, size, or budget. Hell, it probably ranks quite well in the ease of construction department as well. I have the construction skills of the guy down the street with seven fingers. If I can build this thing in 20 minutes, you Stag drinkers could build it in two. Even if you are a vegetarian, have never shot a gun, and talk with a lisp, the longest this would take would be 22 minutes assuming you had the right tools. (Note: I'd bet you HGTV style lisp-speakers will give the Stag drinkers a run for their money.)

Materials

2 - 2x4's cut to 33.5”
2 – 2x4's cut to 17”
2 – 18” rack rails (found at Musician's Friend (#1 , #2) or Parts Express)
2.5” drywall screws
1” drywall screws

Total Price: $35 (approx)
Build Time: 2-22 minutes

Upward Angle

I highly recommend that you angle the rack rails so they point slightly upward. This has improved visibility immensely for me and I'll require it on all racks I use.

What Size?

Some guys worry that using too large of rack could cause unwanted direct reflections from your monitors. You definitely don't want this. If you are in a position where the monitor's sound is not going to slam directly into the rack's side and into your face, you can go pretty large (18 space and larger). If you think this may be a concern, a 12-space rack may be about as high as I want to go.

Upsides To This Rack

This rack design is extremely strong. When you give it a good push (with plenty of gear in it) it won't budge. It feels extremely stable.

The rack has great ventilation. Some of my gear runs hot. By keeping the sides open, ventilation is improved dramatically over racks with solid sides.

Obviously, the price is right.

Downsides To This Rack

As is, the rack is unfinished. I've found that a little stain and polyurethane go a LONG way as you can see by the racks I use with my current setup.

The sides are exposed and this can look messy. At the time I built this rack, I wasn't concerned with aesthetics. If you aren't worried about ventilation, covering the sides with a prettier material is a no-brainer. On my latest design, I wanted to retain ventilation so I used fabric to cover up the sides. It does the trick and people who are into visual crap think it looks good.

This rack is not the most portable thing (whether within your room or taking it out on the road).

This rack design relies on the gear itself for strength. If you only have a few pieces, it may not be quite as strong as I've implied here. With it full, the thing is a tank. I've added a back support brace on my latest design to keep the rack square as I've found the back likes to expand outward a bit.

I had some guy griping that his username was already taken here at the RecordingReview.com forum. I deal with this sort of thing daily, but this time the guy actually claimed to have the name trademarked. I thought, “Hmmm. This is interesting”.

The username in question was “Mixerman”. A quick search in Google pointed me to a certain book called The Daily Adventures of Mixerman, which promised to be a true insiders look of the day-to-day goings on in the major label big boy land. It seems our Mixerman was a real engineer doing the kind of records that people used to pay for.

Mixerman and I shot the shit a bit through emails, he gave some advice on consoles (coming soon), and he helped me out considerably. In return, I snagged a copy of his book from Amazon and off we went on our separate paths.

I generally try to read a book a week, but I usually have 4-5 books I'm reading at any one time. It took a while for my queue to make it to the Mixerman book.

Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned.

You see, I'm a very busy dude. I always seem to attempt to squeeze more than is physically possible into any given 24-hour period. The end result is I end up getting mad and demoralized when I feel the rippage from the overstuffing. If you've got some dirty ideas in your head, you are not too far off track.

As I turned from page 1 to page 2, I find myself being reminded of that chapter in Mind Of The Market (Michael Shermer) where he explains how the brain's pleasure center juice causes us to not want to stop certain behavior. In short, this damn book turned me into a temporary crack addict. I simply could not rationalize putting it down. I felt I was committing treason every time I stopped reading it. My only savior was the finite number of pages. I don't find many books that keep me THIS hooked....and I read a lot of freakin' books.

What Is The Stupid Thing?

The Daily Adventures of Mixerman is a daily journal of everything that happened on a major label gig from an audio engineer's perspective. No, he didn't document compression ratios and attack times, unfortunately, but he certainly painted a vivid account in a non-holds-barred fashion as to what it's really like being a “big boy”.

I think, deep down, all of us home recorders who've been beat up and down by our local clientele have always wanted to sneak a peak at what the big guys are really up to. All the sessions I've attended didn't get much done. Now I know why.

I came very close to seriously “going for it” in big boy studio land (another story for another time) and always wondered what it would have been like if I had chosen that path. The are certain delusions of grandeur that the greener grass of big boy land intoxicates as we struggle with often closet-sized room, micron-sized budgets, and even smaller-sized talents.

I can't think of a way to get any closer view of the engineer's perspective in big-boy land than The Daily Adventures of Mixerman.

Fair Warning!

Mixerman is a certain breed of human......a hair cynical, highly intolerant of bullshit, even less tolerant of idiocy, quite intelligent, and maybe even a bit smug. To put it frankly, he's an asshole. At the risk of insulting Mixerman, I've got to call a spade a spade. Mixerman is honest. He says what he thinks and I laughed HARD dozens of times.

It's no wonder he had people flipping over his once-publicly viewable journals. Honesty is about as welcome as birth control in a Catholic orgy these days with the one exception (which just happens to be this book's core demographic): other assholes. (It taking one to know one may apply.)

Conclusion

The Daily Adventures of Mixerman is a MUST READ for anyone who owns a microphone. The humor is on the crude side (which MAY offer some explanation as to why I enjoyed it so much) and the old Make Twain quote about the difference between fiction and non-fiction being fiction has to actually be believable may apply here. In short, this story is INSANE.....therefor proving it's validity.

Just one note: Because this is a journal, don't expect a giant Lord Of The Rings battle at the end with the good guy coming out on top. The ending isn't a bad one, it's just of a Sony Picture Classics-style ending as opposed to however Bruckheimer ended his last “movie”.

Order The Daily Adventures of Mixerman (Book) Today.

Just a second note: I did attempt to contact Mixerman again before posting my review, but either he didn't get it or he doesn't respond to private messages with the subject consisting of a 4-letter explicative followed by “you”. I'm not sure why my tact didn't warrant a response. Oh well.

Hobbyist vs Crazed Hobbyist vs Total Idiot

First off, you've got to figure out what your engineering goals are. Are you just wanting to have a little fun making noise? Are you looking to be the flat-out best engineer you can possibly be? Are you looking to put together a pro facility in which you could record tip-top bands? Are you somewhere in the middle.

I think the biggest reason so many people are mislead on this whole preamp thing comes from not understanding a person's needs. I've been struggling for a while in explaining why I've acquired some fancy pantsy preamps but then rarely recommend this upgrade to anyone here at RecordingReview.

The Music Always Takes Precedence

#1 I'm of the opinion that a person can definitely make exciting music with gear that is “just okay”. Stock interface preamps fall into this category, for example. Even in a not-so-hi-fi state (which high end pres in no way guarantee), exciting music means the recording IS exciting. This was the motivation for this blog: Preamps Don't Matter?

I'd prefer to listen to great music with cheapo preamps over stale, boring crap any day of the week. Everyone with a pulse is this way. If they say differently, avoid them like a gay rapists with big guns.

Good New For: Broke and talented people
Bad News For: Skilled engineers recording uninspired noise, anyone untalented

Squeezing That Last Drop

#2 Dumb metaphor time: If cash is no object, you get the lightest gear possible for 10x the price when climbing Everest because too many people have died trying and that last 100 ft is harder than it looks.

Even the best engineers are going to have a hard time with that “last 100ft”....the thing that separates the ultra men from the men without the fancy preamps. Of course, #1 is still applies here.

Good News For: Skilled engineers with deep pockets who want to be ultra-skilled engineers, hobbyists who aren't attempting to “climb Everest” and therefor don't need idiot-gadgetry anyway
Bad News For: Broke people climbing Everest

No Bailouts

#3 There are a billion places a person can screw up a recording (with or without the high end preamps). Fancy pres don't bail you out of bad sounding situations....ever!

Good News For: People who've really got their shit together......which is basically no one
Bad News For: Anyone trying to make a butt kicking recording

What's Wrong With Cheapo Pres?

#4 The two main problems with cheapo pres is they sound “blurry”....kinda like a VCR tape where stuff is kind of smudged/smeared or they take on the megaphone effect a bit. How much? Not THAT much, but it's certainly something no one I know would prefer.

You can clearly hear what I'm talking about in The Interrogator Sessions in Killer Home Recording. Once your ears are acclimated, it doesn't take much work to hear how the cheapo pres compare to the high end pres. There's never a time when the cheapo pre would win. The top notch pres always have this “extra excitement” in them while the cheapo pres seem more “sluggish”.

I divide the preamp thing into three categories: cheapo, adequate, and fancy. Once you get passed the cheapo stuff, the adequate pres do the job just fine. They may not add anything interesting, but they don't murk up anything and they don't add the megaphone effect. The True Systems pres fall into this category, among others. I thought the pres in the Yamaha MR816 weren't TOO far from being adequate, but they didn't quite make it. I've rumors that the pres on the RME Fireface 800 may be playing not too far from this ballpark. So when you read reviews about these upper-range interfaces sounding “amazing”, they really just sound “almost adequate” if we take the Total Idiot stance from above.

Adequate preamps do a fine job and could be used on everything without any real issues.

The special pres do a certain something extra. This “extra” thing could be good or bad depending on what you are going for (we'll get into that) and this is where knowing exactly what each preamp is ideal for comes into play. Certain special pres push you into a corner a little bit.

#5 Not all fancy mic preamps are ideal for use on everything. Big, dark sounding preamps can cause big problem when using them on everything. Too many “big” sources makes mixing a challenge. It's best to use the big sounding pres sparingly on the bigger stuff and use the tighter pres for everything else.

When I started out with my Vintech 1272 on the very first recording I had ever done (I was told I absolutely NEEDED it!....asshole!) Anyhow, that preamp is more on the bigger/thicker side of the fence. It doesn't have the hi-fi sparkle that many pres do, but it does have a the Neve-style harmonic in the upper mids. All Neve-type pres have this and it's a dead giveaway in shootouts. The Vintech does not have the hi-fi Neve thing that the Great River Neve-style pres have. It's more of a darker sound.

This is not a preamp I would recommend starting with. Even though I do pull it out for certain things some of the time. The Vintech 1272 can be great on vocals that you don't need to be ultra bright (particularly with an SM7b among others) but want to sound big. The lack of sparkle paints the 1272 into a corner that's only useful at certain times. It kind of reminds me of when mom puts the special tablecloth on at Christmas. It's only great once a year.

For what it's worth, the pres in the Yamaha MR816 don't have near the sparkle of a Manley TNT solid state channel, Martech, or Great River either, but the more neutral approach to their design makes them more usable across the board. There's something impractical about certain high end pres as a daily driver. A person would be better off with a new Ford Focus than a 500Hp Hemi Cuda if they only had one car. For a person who only has single-car garage, there are powerhouse BMWs and Mercedes that can do the daily driver thing and can do it with super high performance. This is where the high end sparkly preamps mentioned above come in.

In short, spending big bucks on some random pre is not the solution and could actually get you into a place that is worse than decent interface pres.

Good News For: People with a wide variety of pres who know how and when to use them, People who have a single faster/tighter preamp they use on all overdubs
Bad News For: Guys overdubbing exclusively with one fancy preamp that may not be ideal for across the board use

My Recommendations

Hobbyists – If you are a guy just having fun, don't buy a fancy preamp. If you want your recordings to sound good but have limited time and aren't going to get upset if your productions don't blow away the big boy bands, just have fun and don't let anyone convince you need to make a huge investment.

Crazed Hobbyists – If you do this for fun, but have a few bucks to blow, have a little fun with adequate preamps first. You may not need a big selection and your needs will depend on if you are entirely doing overdubs or if you are recording multiple tracks at once. However, in this world, I recommend preamps on the sparkly side of the fence with tight low mids. You saw a few examples above. The True Systems stuff definitely gets the job done in this realm, but if you want to go all out the solid state Manley TNT channel is my go-to preamp for sparkly stuff. The Great River gear works really well. I definitely wouldn't go with something not-so-tight in the low mids for my single pre again. Those were some long years!

Total Idiots – If you are going for the top and climbing Everest, I'll tell you what I've done. I just bought a Toft ATB32. It supposedly has okay pres to hold me over when I run out of fancy stuff. I picked up an API 3124, a Wunder PaFour, and a Focusrite ISA 428. I'm keeping my Manley TNT and most likely selling everything I've had previously. (I haven't decided about my Chameleon 7602s yet.)

I expect the API to end up on close mics on drums and probably most things I'm overdubbing. It doesn't have a super sparkly top end and it's quite colored. It'll smooth out shrill stuff. My Manley TNT solid state is definitely sparkly and doesn't smooth out anything. The X factors here are the PaFour and ISA 428. I'll have to report back when I've put them to the test, but the Wunder should do more of the Neve thing with the extra harmonic in the upper midrange. The ISA should be sparkly like the Manley TNT SS, probably a little less colored, maybe a little faster. I'm speculating.

For what it's worth, there are only a few qualities that are that important. Why a person needs 22 different models of preamps is beyond me.

• Meaty Transients
• Sparkly preamp with tight low mids (for brighter vocals, acoustic guitars)
• Tamed Upper Mids, Harmonic Content (for most vocals, electric guitars)

You can make it much more complicated if you want to, but I don't see the reason. I really do think the old view of just using a console worked on most the cds in my collection. I've leave the optional hair/atom-splitting up to you. I've got noise to make.

The tighter, more focused pres are where it is at for day to day tracking. There are times when you want the bigger, darker, and less-focused sound but the most part I'm not into it. In the tighter/focused category you have all kinds of options to choose from and various attributes that make them more or less ideal.

Here's a 1992 Chicago Bulls basketball analogy that I think sums it up. Michael Jordan is API. BJ Armstrong is Great River. We are recording my “sparkly” acoustic guitars again. (Work with me, I know this sounds, and is, stupid.) BJ Armstrong is the point guard and so it's his job to bring the ball up the court. Is it going to really be the end of the world if Michael Jordan has to handle the ball? Probably not. Basically, we get an extra point in the sparkly department by selecting the Great River. We don't necessarily lose anything with the API. Your girlfriend probably won't notice and the bass player definitely will not notice.

Then again, when all this stuff aligns and you select the pres that give you what you want at various times (and combine that skill with an equal amount of across-the-board engineering skill) the band will definitely notice.

Conclusion

Broke home recorders don't have to worry too much unless their aim is absolute robo recordings. A hobbyist will usually have goals that are more modest than the guy engineering the next INSERT BIG BAND's album. Some hobbyists are dealing with limitations in music, musicians, instruments, room, and engineering ability that hold them back and in any of those situations, the fancy preamp thing is unnecessary.

For the crazed hobbyist, If the wrong pre is used throughout a recording, a person can have their work cut out for them in mixing. Because of this, I highly recommend tighter, more focused pres to be used overall and then, in time, adding a big sounding pre for special situations (vocals, kick, etc).

For the guys going for the absolute echelon of ultra recordings, there are specialized tasks for various pres than can make life a little more fun. Understanding when to use what is part of the skill of a great engineer. While there have certainly been numerous recordings made with a console only, and great music music will always come through, most people agree that there are sound quality benefits to specializing.

Here we go.

First off, what makes a good recording? The answer is simple. A great song that the engineers and musicians didn't screw up too much. (I believe the whole point of engineering is getting the hell out of the way of where the music is supposed to go.....even if that means ultra-mangled, ultra-processed, ultra-edited, and “ultra-fake” music in which the engineer has to be entirely proactive).

We can get into the details of what constitutes an engineer “screwing up”. I guess the best analogy I can think of is when the guy holding the camera in the naughty movies films the wrong stuff or you can't see the stuff you want to see as well as you want to. Focusing on a guy's nut sack is a case of “bad engineering”, for example.

If lyrics are important, make sure the damn things are loud enough to make them out clearly. Songs that tell a story fall to pieces when you can't hear the damn story! When stuff is out of focus (boxy, boomy, etc) it's hard to “see” what the artist originally envisioned. The solutions for these sorts of things aren't always simple, but anyone with an opinion and at least one ear can AND SHOULD form an opinion about they like, no matter where they are in their engineering quest.

What's All This MUSIC Talk?

The more you mic a guitar cabinet and the more you put a compressor on a bass guitar, the more you realize that engineering doesn't exist in a vacuum. In other words, the skill of engineering ONLY works with some kind of intense emotional thingy behind it. Otherwise, it's just some noise making electron flow. BOOOOORING!

Let me illustrate.

Take a minute to record the sound of a door closing. We'll pretend we are making a movie and we need some foley (background sounds). Toss your “best” mic two feet away from a door, hit record, and shut it. Take a listen. Does the door sound excite you?

It probably sounds exactly like a door to you and unless something went wrong (poof of air caused wind noise, the mic was backwards, etc) it probably sounds exactly like a door closing. If you were to analyze this, you'd say, “Yes, it sounds like a door”. If I were to ask you how you would improve it, most of you would be a little confused. If I told you I wanted a better door sound , how would you try harder?

For the life of me, if I've got a door sound that doesn't sound too dull, too bright, too ambient, or too boomy I'm probably not going to think of a way to improve it.

Hint: To you ultra-beginners, I can just see you guys automatically reaching for the compressors, equalizers, and (god forbid) exciters. It's as if these gadgets are “sound quality knobs” and all you have to do is turn them up. Not going to happen. Those only work when you have a specific problem to solve.....except for the exciter. Those don't work on anything.

This is where it gets interesting.

I don't know if there are “good” and “bad” door sounds, but there are wrong and right door sounds. Imagine the door sounds in a Vince Vaughn comedy.

Think long.

Think hard.

I'll give you about 30 seconds to ponder.

(If you are drawing a blank you are on the right track.)

Now imagine the door sounds in a horror movie. Jackpot! I immediately think of the slow, eerie, squeaky door slowly closing or maybe the slamming “boo” type of door sounds when a haunted house decides to fight back. I even imagine a certain ambiance on those doors.

Of course, the door has to be closing at a certain speed (the performance) and it has to have the right squeak (selecting the right instrument) and the movie can't blow ass (the song).

When these three things are present, you can just slap a few mics up and call it a day, for the most part. There are times when the engineering is part of the instrument. Distorted vocals, gated reverbs on the snare, etc all are part of the creative process for maxing out the song. However, these are used entirely for cranking up the emotional intensity.

I've encountered guys who will mic up a guitar with high gain, palm mute the low E, and then ask if it sounds good. As long as there are no OBVIOUS problem (all that stuff mentioned above - too bright,too dark, too boomy, too ambient, etc) we really can't comment. It is what it is and if there is no creative emotional context to go on, that emotionless guitar track may as well be a recording of static from the TV, the noise coming from a fridge, or a door closing.

The “Best” Vocal Sound

When we think of certain great vocal sounds, you'll find the only reason they are great is because of the context in which they fit in. An ultra-airy chick vocal like on an Enya-type production would sound flat-out bad on dudes from 2 Live Crew or Henry Rollins. Everything that sounds angelic on the Enya thing will sound like these guys have spitting problems. In fact, you may wonder if they have some kind speech impediment!

This immediately shows that engineering is chasing whatever the music is demanding. That's why fizzed out Nine Inch Nails sound awesome on The Downward Spiral, but would sound stupid on a Cranberries song....(or not!). That's why Power Station drums and 70s Fleetwood Mac drums are not interchangeable. Neither would work on the other's music, but on their own they work pretty damn well.

The longer you do this, you'll find that there are a whole lot more ultra-dark vocal sounds and a whole lot more ultra-bright vocal sounds than you ever thought possible. You quickly realize that you screwed up in thinking there was a “good” vocal sound. There isn't and there never will be. This applies to all instruments. You get the idea.

I Could Go On

I could go on and on and on about this sort of thing, but I already have. This is just one example of probably 832 issues that the beginner has to face in this whole home recording thing and that's specifically why I created Killer Home Recording. I'd like to think I covered all of these issues in Killer Home Recording so you can cut through the bullshit and skip straight to Level 4 (whatever that is) and focus on the stuff that really matters.

Good luck!

Brandon

A recent example is my Steinberg MR816csx. The thing PROMISES..... I want to emphasize that when the features are listed for a given gadget at Musician's Friend or the manufacturer's website, it IS a PROMISE......that it has 8 channels of inputs via ADAT Lightpipe and 2 channels of ins via S/PDIF. This combined with the stock 8 analog ins SHOULD give a total of 18 inputs. (Yes, they do call the unit a MR816 and you can read that it is a 16-channel interface. However, it's never really explained how what appears to be 18 inputs is actually only 16.) Well, it turns out that you can't use all 8 of the ADAT channels and the 2 S/PDIF channels at the same time. You can use 6 ADAT inputs and 2 S/PDIF inputs. This isn't the end of the world, but it's generally accepted in recording land that this isn't an either/or situation. It should be stated how/why they arrived at the “16” number.

The Problem

The problem is there are 700 choices AFTER you've narrowed down your choices. I just took a look at my spreadsheet I created to help me with selecting a new audio interface. Yes, I had to create a spreadsheet to manage all the freakin' possibilities, features, and requirements. It's so easy to get hung up on this phase with tail chasing research, rethinking your needs, rethinking your budget, trying to speculate future problems with chipsets, operating system bit depth, etc that many of us just look at one, throw our hands up in the air, and say “That one!”. You pull out the credit card, throw a Hail Mary, and sign your life away.

The Clue

The very first thing MOST of us do when dealing with a fancy piece of gear (no, we aren't talking DVD players here) is fire up the manual. We know that audio interfaces don't fit in “asking for directions” territory. (Reading the manual is a necessity to getting things done. Asking for help while driving is immoral.) If more guys could discern the difference between reading manuals for recording gear and asking a gas station attendant where Clark St is those people would be cranking out dramatically more and dramatically better recordings.

Anyway, the first thing we SHOULD do is read the damn manual. Then, when are free from bs marketing jargon like “pristine quality” we get the real truth. This is where we find ourselves saying “Whoops!” when we have severe conflict issues. Common issues now are audio interfaces that won't run on certain operating systems due to issues with the bit depth of that operating system, incompatible chipsets, features that require you to buy more stuff, etc.

As stated above, this is where you also find out which features the unit actually has and which will work in your specific situation. The fancy DSP plugins found in the MR 816 CSX don't work if you use the S/PDIF output on the interface. The Cubase intergration is reduced to “not much” in this situation, as well. That's stuff you won't see in the ad. Guess where you do find it. The manual.

The Solution

So, after 10 years of practicing this craft, it finally occurred to me to go ahead and fire that manual (that I'm going to read anyway) just BEFORE I pull out the credit card. The manual is not going to be a literary marvel, but it will at least be honest with you. It's not going to sugar coat all the limitations of unit. It's going to explain how stuff works and that means they are going to tell you what the unit can not do. I find that all the red flags end up being in bold anyway.

You'll find that disabled features are highlighted. You'll find how many inputs the damn thing actually uses ahead of time. Basically, you'll encounter what you should have been told by the bs marketing. I guess that's why it's called “bs marketing” and not “facts” or whatever. Hell, this gives a person an excuse not to read the manual once the interface shows up! That sound pretty damn manly to me!

With my big plans of building my “superstudio”, I've found myself gearing up to provide a whole new level of service to my future clients. The idea of a big fancy analog console is something I can't get out of my head, even though I'm well aware of the number of hits mixed in the box. I find myself being drawn more to analog this and hardware that.

With that said, in this blog I'm thinking twice before I spend the kids college fund to get me a “real studio” from 1995. I'm seeing the “painful truth” of the old ways and I thought this would be a great place for us to duke it out.

This Whole Superstudio Thing

I've had plans of getting a real facility since the day I learned why a small room sucks to record in. It looks like the dream of great sounding rooms isn't too far away. As I move into that mindset, I keep thinking that I need to tap into a market that I've totally ignored. In my hometown there are the “affluent” who gladly take the 4-hour drive to Nashville to make their recordings on a regular basis because there are no big dog studios here. We are talking studios that cost as much as $100 per hour. My home studio is what it is, but these customers demand a REAL environment (regardless of the results we want get in my current not-so-ideal facility. I don't blame them. I've wanted a REAL environment for a long time.

So what is this “real” thing? The short answer: It's the kind of thing that makes your band choose Studio A over Studio B even though Studio A costs more assuming that both studios are cranking out excellent sounding work.

The Big Analog Console

Since I've taken this “real” approach to planning my studio, I find myself coming up with some mega functional ideas and some turbo-ridiculous ideas just for the sake of being “real” (but also to shake up my current view of the recording world to see if there is a better way.) The first one that comes to mind is a big analog console. I've said many times that almost no one needs a mixer for home recording. I still stand by that claim. For all practical purposes, few pro studios really NEED a mixer for pro recording. With fancy analog gear used on the way in and summing used on the way out, the needs for an old school console get dramatically reduced. (We've all already debated the impact of fancy pres and summing as well.)

My motivations for getting a console were to cover all my preamp and analog EQ needs on the way in, offer summing on the way out, and look cool. As much as I'm hoping for the usual 1% benefit for spending huge dollars, I want a console because it looks cool. Yeah, you heard me. I'm the world's least interested in aesthetics, but in my old age of 30 I've come to the conclusion that me and the other guy who feel this way are a bit outnumbered. As my brand new old saying goes, “If you can't beat 'em, exploit 'em.”

The greatest benefit of the console is it immediately allows me to increase rates. I could buy 3 API 3124s and no one would pay a dime extra to record at my place. The 12 preamps and 3 rack spaces don't add direct value that they can SEE to the client. The console does. For the record, I'm not talking about Mackie boards here. I'm thinking something like a Amek or Trident console.

The Dark Side Of The Analog Console

Another aspect of girls I've graduated high school with becoming “cougars” is I'm start to think a hair more like my grandpa (Not my parents!). You know that kind of advice you get where you say, “Sure old man! Whatever!”? Now I realize that after I don't listen, I end up giving the same advice to the younger dudes after learning my lesson the hard way.

In short, I'm hearing countless warnings about the upkeep and massive time and headaches spent maintaining an analog console. I'm hearing it enough to believe that I'm pretty much making a deal with the devil if I buy a not-so-great console. It appears the same logic that goes into buying an 8 year old American car goes into buying a console. For those of you who maintained your American pride after 'Nam and 'Nam 2.0, this analogy basically means you can expect to spend the price of the console keeping the damn thing going.

This may be a hair on the pessimist side.....or it may even be a hair optimist.

The Ass Pain Factor Of The Devil's Hardware

When I decide to use analog EQ or compression from my rack in a mix, it's not as simple as firing up a plugin and compressing away. I have to create an external effect bus in Cubase, patch the gadget in, cuss because I goofed something up for usually 10 seconds, and then start tweaking.

--Sometimes when plugins can't get a job done, the hardware can
--Sometimes I spend 30 minutes playing (because knobs are more fun) and I never really get anything done.
--Sometimes I listen and don't hear the superiority that was so obvious to me on another session and another situation.
--Whenever I bother to use the analog gear, I have to re-record it into Cubase 5 so I can actually maintain the ability to instantly recall (which is absolutely huge to me). So I always need to spend an extra 5 minutes on a mix for each track I want to run through analog stuff. This time can add up.

What Set This Off?

So why am I suddenly questioning all this hardware stuff when I've been drooling over the idea of my Superstudio for so long?

I was in need of a hardware reverb strictly for zero latency vocal headphone mixes. I decided to take my advice from How To Waste $10,000 On Recording Gear You Don't Like and go all out and get a piece of gear I've always wanted. I bought an Eventide H3000 - D/SE – Harmonizer. The idea was I would have its reverb for use in the headphones and then when I mixed, I'd have an awesome little effects processor. I remember coming back from Nashville after hearing it in use and not being able to scrape up anything as half as good with my plugins.

Well, today it came in. The unit is a dud. The Ebay seller won't take returns although I'm going to try anyway. The unit hangs constantly after “Loading Program....”. When I do get it to work, the pitch shift and reverb presets have more noise than your average Big Muff guitar sound. Currently, it's entirely unusable. Just getting the manual for the thing is $35 and I have no idea if there is some magic button I can press that can fix it or not. It may be some kind of electronic issue that I don't have the ability to solve.

So right now I have a $1,000 doorstop. I'm not a big enough prick (but I am growing!) to sell this thing on Ebay like this asshole did before me. I can pay to have it fixed for a minimum of $350, but it may end up being dramatically more. The word on the street is these things NEED maintenance every 4 years. Ouch! I didn't plan on paying $100 per year on this thing. That totally shoots down the whole idea of using it for free until I eventually sell it.

How Do I Fix It?
When a plugin doesn't load, I can usually cuss for 10 minutes and figure out what went wrong. Even if the computer is totally dead, I can swap out a power supply in 3 minutes. Even if the computer is fried by lightening I can spend $300 on Newegg, have a 4x faster computer and be good to go in a matter of days. I feel totally confident about my ability to solve computer problems (at least most of the time). At worst, getting money back for software can be easier (not always) because there is rarely a tangible exchange.

I now own my Eventide H3000 whether it works or not. I physically “have” it. Yuck! I have no idea how to fix it. I had no plans of NEEDING to fix it when I bought it. I'm used to my setup working day in and day out. Hell, I was aggressive about ditching my Presonus Firestudio and I've got a feeling that it's 100x more reliable than a console or an Eventide product. This is a HUGE point and something I need to think about.

Conclusion

Maybe a big, fancy studio with an analog console does give an aura of magic that pulls in the doctors, lawyers, and wallets. However, it also may be the equivalent of pulling out my intestines. I'm a busy dude and if the thing ain't working, I'm not working! To quote Bill Murray in Scrooged, “If I can't work late, I......CAN'T........WORK......LATE!!!!!”. That's bad! Really bad.

Even if I do get this Eventide H3000 to start functioning for an additional $350, I still have all the analog ass pains to go through and my workflow will suffer, although I'm still positive from a “vocal sound” standpoint, I'm about to gain a quantum leap. How does it compare to the Eventide plugins now available? I'm guessing there's a difference, but there ain't THAT big of difference.

As Mixerman, author of this stupid thing (which looks AWESOME btw) pointed out to me in an email, the mic preamps in the Trident 80b console are nothing to scream about, but they aren't going to get in the way of a great record. I like this “get in the way” concept. I'm sure the UAD version of the Eventide plugins wouldn't get in the way of me doing my thing. My Eventide H3000 sure is getting in my way right now!!

So right now I need to balance the mojo of the old days with the knowledge that when my grandpa wanted to talk to somebody across the globe, he had to use a pen, paper, and stamps. Yuck! There may be something to this modern appreciation for old stuff that is little more than a trap. It's hard to say. It appears I'm gonna have to drink someone's kool aid. I just can't decide on the flavor.

A buddy of mine in high school didn't do what everyone else did. (I seem to remember a slew of brand new 1997/1998 Chevy Cavaliers in our school parking lot.) His first car was a Corvette. It was a Corvette that was 15 years old. This means it was at it's all-time lowest value and would soon be going up. He bought the car for $10,000 and sold it for $11,000. He did have some upkeep bills that were certainly higher than my Honda Civic. I'd say he spent $3,000 on it.

The moral of the story was he got to drive a classic Corvette for six years for $2,000. I remember most of the Cavalier people paying $13,000 and selling them for $3,000 in that same time frame.

Why in hell would a person pay $10,000 to drive a miserable Chevy Cavalier when they could drive a Corvette for 1/5 the price?

This sort of thinking is quite common in circles of people with money. Why the hell I can't remember it is beyond me! (Besides the obvious fact that I DON'T HAVE MONEY!)

What's Magic Worth?

After going to Disney World, the largest digital camera vacuum the Earth has ever scene, I've really gotten into this “value of magic” idea. The bottom line is magical items are priceless. An otherwise poor recorder will pay $2,000 for a microphone that is going to give him the magic. The wife can't see (or hear) this magic and will tell him it doesn't sound any better than his $400 mic. However, most of us in recording land believe in this magic and can generally hear it, too.

Cubase 5 costs $499 (the upgrade is much cheaper). It has more automation, features, total recall, and convenience than many consoles costing over $100,000. We all know that there are many records out there these days that are mixed in the box even though it's probably safe to say the big consoles sound a little better. But why do people buy these consoles? Because there is magic in them! If you don't believe me, take a picture of your studio and then take a look at these pictures.

THAT is magic!

Where I've Screwed Up #1

I had a rack full of stuff I never sold on Ebay that I found this week. I had forgotten all about my Presonus M80. It's an 8-channel preamp that was a heavily marketed 10 years ago back when I was first starting. It sold for $2,000 originally, but I snagged it for $1,000 used on Ebay. That should have been a clue! If the preamp lost half it's value in a year or two, what's it going to be worth in 7 years?

I can answer that question because I watched a few of these on Ebay just to see. The answer is $350! Great. So this preamp has handed me a loss of $650. A person could argue that I got to use it all this time. They wouldn't be wrong. However, if I would have bought anything used with MAGIC in it, I could easily see that I had lost zero. My Vintech 1272 costs on Ebay now what I paid for mine back in 2001. (Ignore inflation, that's a political issue I'm choosing to ignore for your sake!) My Vintech is a superior product, too. So, because I chose to CHEAT myself out of a high end product and the improved sound that comes with it, I'm rewarded with $650 subtracted from my net worth. Great!

Where I've Screwed Up #2

Two years ago I was low on cash and my Delta 1010s, which had served me very, very well for 7 years, were toast. I decided to save money and take a chance with a Presonus Firestudio, a $700 interface, knowing there were some presumably fancier options out there. The Firestudio is fine on many levels, but always seems to get buggy when I don't want it to be buggy.

I did the math on a few recent sessions to calculate how many billable hours I had to take off a clients bill because I was restarting my computer 10 times to get the dumb thing to sync up. It became obvious that if I could get an interface that ran well pretty much every day, it would easily pay for itself in only a few months.

I've decided to try out the Steinberg MR816 CSX interface. If it doesn't offer bulletproof reliability, I'm off to RME. If that can't do it, I'll spend big bucks and just make credit card payments. Interest will be cheaper than refunded hours!

These Firestudio interfaces are going for about $350-400 on Ebay right now, so that means it's lost half it's value in just 2 years. Not good!

Long story short: The Presonus Firestudio bugs cost me A LOT of money AND I didn't get to have the fun of a “magical” interface AND the damn thing has lost half its value.

Where I've Screwed Up #3

After I got up to #8 I decided to simply say, YOU GET THE POINT!

Is Paul999 Screwing Up?

Paul999 runs a full blown studio with a big ol' console and a stupid amount of hardware most of us would give our left wife for. He was using the kind of logic that I don't seem to ever follow but am well aware of in this thread:

True cost analysis of ITB vs OTB. Is ITB actually cheaper?

I've got to say that it seems a little counter intuitive to think that a $2,000 compressor would be CHEAPER than a plugin. The idea of $20,000 in hardware compressors being cheaper than plugins is so extreme that a person MUST take a second look. Either way, Paul999 may be on to something!....or totally out of his mind!

Who Are You?

Guys like Paull999 and I may have different needs than you do. We'll be recording music until we croak. Thinking 2-30 years into the future changes the way a person looks at most of this stuff, and there are certainly savings to be made with a bit of strategy. Paul999 and I are also guys that want high end gear. Is it NEEDED? No. But it makes my job easier and I'm cool with making huge investments that give me 1% benefit.

The idea of buying magical gear because it is CHEAPER may not occur to you or you may not be in the position to invest so much into these magical items. However, if your needs change you find yourself going a little fancier, it may be cheaper in the long run to treat yourself to a big, ol' dumb purchase!

When Just Getting Started

When a person is just getting started, rarely are they thinking they are going to surpass X big boy production on the first try. Just finding the bare minimum gear for their needs is a total pain. (See the Killer Home Recording: Setting UP freebie ). It's when people start upgrading to marginally better that that things can go wrong in the long term.

Winners and Losers Is The Long Term Value War

Winners
-- Magic hardware items (mics, preamps, and compressors) with big time names (Neumann, Neve, API, SSL, etc)

-- Specific magic items (LA-2A hardware compressors) that people SPECIFICALLY search for.

-- Super hyped items. When Musician's Friend has a high end product, that product becomes an instant celebrity. I get asked by clients (who don't even know what a compressor is) if I have any Avalon gear. Why? They saw it in the catalog. This definitely spills over into recording land. I expect Avalon products to maintain their value for a long while. Then again, if Musician's Friend and a few other dealers pull the plug, the could be forgotten. Regardless, hype generally sticks when it comes to perceived value in recording land.

-- Anything You Can't Afford. You already know you can't afford a full-blown Pro Tools HD3 system, right? No need in looking, right? This whole “no need to look” thing is a big reason guys like Paul999 and my buddy with the Corvette have fun toys and get to play with them often for profit. Basically, this “can't afford it” business is a lie, more or less. While Pro Tools HD3 isn't going to be tip-top for 20 years, it may actually be less expensive than a “decked out” typical home recording setup. Maybe not. The point isn't that I'm pushing Pro Tools HD3. (Most people know my views on Pro Tools.) The point is that the very fact that everyone THINKS they can't afford something is why that particular item is so inexpensive, both in the long term and maybe even in the short term!

So So
-- High end brands that come and go or may take a quality hit – My Soundelux U99 ain't worth the $2,600 I paid for it anymore. Much of that has to do with the fact that Soundelux is long gone. The mic is still the mic, but it's value is not what it used to be. A Neumann U87 would have held all of its value for sure.

-- There are many high end companies that may or may not be around in a few years. As much as I like to buy “fringe companies”, some of them won't be around in a few years. Even worse, people won't be talking about them. The magic will be gone even if the products are stellar.

-- Ultra value companies. I'm talking about the current crop of mega bang-for-the-buck gear that is attempting to run with the big boys at a for cheaper price. Off the top of my head Peluso, Sebatron, and Chameleon Labs come to mind. These brands are cheaper to get your hands on, are very very effective, but don't have the pizazz of the magic gear. It's hard to say how the market will deal with them. These are the “Bud Light” of magic. I suspect the kid using duct taped adapters into his laptop that will be getting an Mbox for Christmas this year thinks a Peluso 47 is some serious magic. So....for the low end, there may be this “affordable magic” thing going on. We'll see.

Losers
-- Budget gear. Gear that is a bargain always seems to lose its value quickly. It has zero magical value. You'll see quite a few 8-channel preamps that cost $600-800 that end up going for $200 on Ebay in a few years. As a rule, the bottom feeders tend to have to reinvent themselves and their products constantly. Brent Averill doesn't need new products. In fact, he's built his business on racking up really old products. Regardless, find a budget 1980s Peavey 16-channel mixer and you'll see what I'm talking about.

-- Budget Companies Making Mid-Level Gear. This is where my Presonus M80 comes in. $2k for an 8-channel preamp isn't cheap. It's not exactly budget-gear. It may not be Mercenary caliber, but it's not cheap. However, the budget name automatically kills the long term value.

-- Computers. Have you ever had a buddy who went to the Mac website and did his “dream computer” for $16,000? This does qualify as what I'm calling “Marriage Magic”. In other words, it seems really good at first, but it won't be long and the magic will be gone. Until you've been ultra excited about a computer and then 10 years later smashed the thing into a dumpster, you won't quite get this one.

It's a given that computers have horrendous resale value. We all know they are disposable. The reason I'm emphasizing it here is I see practically EVERYONE feeling the need for a brand new computer every two years. A person buying a new computer every four years, in comparison, could add quite a bit of magic gear to their rack and their net worth.

Conclusion

Not everyone is a position to blow big bucks on the magic gear, but for those who can scrape up the cash now, there could be tremendous savings in the long haul. I'll be hitting 10 years of recording before too long. I suspect 20 years is only 2 or 3 years away. Plan ahead! If you are addicted to this stupid craft, adjust your habits for maximum domination.

Love,
Brandon

I remember posting on a recording forum, “I put all the mics in the right spot, but the drums sound like crap”. Fletcher, from Mercenary Audio, stood up said it bluntly, “If it doesn't sound good, you DIDN'T put the mic in the right spot”.

This was a hell of a shock for me, but also a tremendous eye opener. It occurred to me that all these little mic placement pictures you see in books, magazines, etc don't mean a damn thing. In the pursuit of robo audio, anything goes.

I can see how a person just getting started with audio recording may need a little bit of help with ballpark suggestions on where to place the mic.......actually.....SCRATCH THAT! NO, I DONT!

Audio engineering IS the pursuit of mega sound. This “pursuit” business is THE name of the game. PERIOD. If you aren't in the pursuit business, you aren't an engineer. You are just a musician with a mic in your hand. PERIOD. Even bothering to show a person a starting place is a bad idea. It implies that you can just follow some diagram and come up with killer tones.

The very first thing a beginner should be shown is that they shouldn't be shown. If they don't have a good guess where a mic is supposed to go, they need to go out and figure it out themselves. How? Easy. By listening! By trial! Be error!

I can imagine a few of you are shaking your head, as if we are doing a favor when we tell a beginner that a snare mic should go here, a kick mic should go there, bla bla bla. I guess some people put this engineering thing on a pedestal as if it's REALLY hard to learn. While engineer is a process, the biggest difference between a beginner and a guy who makes a nice living engineering is the fact that the big engineers accept the fact that there is gonna have to be a pursuit and they don't give in until they find the magic they are looking for. (There are probably a few other differences, obviously, but I'm positive this is the biggest difference.)

So if you aren't happy with the sounds you are getting, it may be time to start LOOKING for some better sounds.

Brandon