The RME HDSP9652 was my secret weapon as the least expensive, most reliable, kick butt interface I could fine. Now it's not a secret.

Thinking 3 Years Ahead

First off, I want to say that it does no one any favors to recommend you short-term, crappy solutions that ultimately cost you a lot more money. The only problem is this does require more cash outlay in the beginning. Not everyone wants to commit to a good car, so often times they settle for a cheaper one that works half the time. My experience has shown me that the crappy car is almost always more expensive than the good car IF you are smart about how you buy that “good” car.

The same applies to audio interfaces. So let's get on with it.

If you are to hop into home recording, the first thing you really need to think about is the audio interface. When it comes to the interfaces with 8+ channels, I believe I have found the ultimate solution, although slightly unorthodox. First, let's talk about a few issues/requirements.

Rock Solid Reliability
If you are cussing your interface, you aren't recording. If you put an experienced dude's head on the chopping block and forced him to recommend a rock solid interface that works reliably day in and day out, he's going to get nervous. Why? Because it sometimes takes a while for a person to work all the bugs out of their system. (For more info on that see Killer Home Recording: Setting Up .)

Generally speaking, a reliable interface is kinda like a hitter in baseball. If they actually function 40% of the time (batting .400) they end up in the Hall of Fame. It's not THAT bad with audio interfaces, but interfaces that work 99.99% of the time are hard to come by.

The only one company that I feel comfortable fully endorsing is RME. There are other good companies and maybe even a few great ones. However, based on my experiences they've stood out as being superior.

Low CPU Usage / Low Latency / Direct Monitoring / Extreme Routing
Not all interfaces are created equal in the latency department. There are companies out there, usually those hitting a lower price point, that have drivers that don't run so well. They won't run smoothly at 64 or 96 samples. You'll find that these interfaces that can't handle ultra-low latency tend to use more CPU power. This means less horsepower can be given to virtual instruments and plugins.

Most interfaces have direct monitoring, but not all have dedicated mixers for every channel so you can craft individual mixes for every band member (I rarely do this, btw, but when I need it I NEED it!) The ability to create very specific mixes goes much further than headphone mixes. It allows you to send specific signals to specific outputs. This is a very general description, but I'm positive it's one of the most valuable features on an interface. When you need to send a signal to X and you can't, you have a problem. It's the kind of thing that doesn't hype well in the magazine ads but is absolutely crucial to having a great interface.

Basically, I recommend an interface with a solid foundation in both the hardware and software department.

Inexpensive In The Long Run
This is the biggie. If you buy a $600 interface now and you stick with home recording (either as a serious hobby or maybe you even make a few bucks) you will outgrow it. It will have all the features to get you started and you may be lucky enough to get decent reliability and okay sound, but I can't recommend this route. If you take this approach and end up tearing your hair out, I look like a jerk.

So...I always recommend thinking three years ahead with any audio purchase. A piece of gear that's great for 3-12 months but ends up collecting dust or being tossed on Ebay is too damn expensive.

That's It!
If you can get rock-solid reliability, low cpu usage, low latency, direct monitoring, and extreme routing in your interface you are set. You are flat-out kicking butt and there are few interfaces that fit this bill, btw.

Where Is Sound Quality?

I didn't list sound quality and I'll tell you why. Sound quality in your first audio interface is kinda like speed in a car. Every new car can do 70mph. From an ultra-practicality standpoint, you never really NEED to go faster than that (although who's ultra-practical????). Every audio interface I've ever heard will do the 70mph equivalent.

What The Hell Does That Mean?
It goes like this. A college kid who needs to get to school is broke and just needs transportation. A Formula One driver is going to be pissed if his car is 1mph slower than the competition. The tolerances are dramatically different depending on where you are driving and in what context.

I think every interface I've ever heard is more than adequate for the college kid or the guy on the budget who just needs to get to work. As you transform your needs towards the cream-of-the-crop F1 driver, maybe a Honda Civic isn't going to work anymore. I remember a Top Gear episode where a Formula 1 driver took a new Ferrari out for a spin and later said it wasn't really all that fun. So perspective is HUGE here.

So, your typical 8-channel interface in the under $600 category is going to work for anyone with modest needs who isn't really expecting to sound better than the latest Mutt Lange production tomorrow. Mutt is most likely working in a room with a $300,000 console, $100,000 in outboard gear, and $200,000 in microphones. So do the math. A $1,000 8-channel interface isn't going sound anywhere near the tip-top league either, but it will be a notch in that direction.

The price of going from a Civic to an Enzo is exponential. If you are driving an Enzo on a gravel road, it's still only going to go about 30 mph...just like the Civic. If your rooms, instruments, and performances aren't kick ass, any benefits from the Enzo-caliber interface are moot.

Sound Quality / Price In The Long Run

Most interfaces suck when it comes time to upgrade your sound quality. If/when you decide you want a bit of boost, you are flat-out stuck. There is one exception. The interfaces that give you multi-channel digital I/O allow expansion without total replacement.

Even if you don't think you'll be expanding any time soon, if you are anything like me you are TERRIBLE at predicting your own future.

Taking this even further, it's my opinion that the interface with only digital I/O is the best long term solution.......

When PCI Isn't An Option

The PCI option has been great for a long time. However, I only rate it a few percentage points more reliable than Firewire and USB options. Now that PCIe is dominant, the days of PCI are numbered.

Some computers don't have any additional PCI slots. So that forces a person to look towards USB or Firewire options. Note: Laptops are never my preferred tool for the job unless I'm on an airplane or something. For you guys who bought a high priced computer with no expansion slots, it may be time to rethink your life a bit. (Har har, you know who you are!!!)

The truth is, I'm not aware of a Firewire or USB solution that meets my criteria at anywhere near the $300-400 ballpark a person can snag a RME HDSP9652. That little guy just happens to be the steal of the century in my opinion. He's an exception to the rule.

There are interfaces out there that are stripped down, totally modular ADAT in/out gadgets, but I can't think of one I feel comfortable recommending off the top of my head. (Either the company that makes them is not reputable enough for me to stake my reputation on or the company is usually reliable and I'd need to use the thing before recommending it here.)

If my life changed and I had to go with Firewire and USB I guess I'd have to ditch the main premise of this article.....going fully modular.

My Recommendations
I'd take a strong look at the RME interface that meets your needs that happens to be fairly expensive USED on Ebay. The “used” part is very important here. You MUST find an interface with a high resale value. Most of the RME interfaces do have a high resale value, which is not something I can say for many other companies. The resale value tells you almost everything you need to know.

For anyone on a budget, I can't say enough how important it is to get an interface that you get to use for free in the long run. For a greater understanding of this concept, head here: How To Waste $10,000 On Recording Gear You Don't Like

Back to PCI …..I'm Gonna Seem Like A Whack Job

It's my view that if a piece of gear can be obsolete, it needs to be avoided, when possible and when realistic. In terms of the interface, most guys are going to recommend a Firewire or USB 2.0 contraption that has all kinds of features built in.

In every interface I've owned or used, I've found some kind of limitation that made their built-in features less useful than is implied in the ads. One great example that comes to mind is the, otherwise outstanding, Yamaha MR816. It came with onboard DSP effects. Cool! You just can't use them and the S/PDIF digital inputs. YUCK! This kind of thing happens, to varying degrees, more than you think for everything from headphone signal routing to effects to having less I/O than you thought you had.

So What Is My #1 Interface Recommendation

My number one recommendation for an audio interface is the RME HDSP9652. When you look at it, you are going to be disappointed and may even scratch your head. Why? It doesn't do much. It's just damn good at what it does.

What does it do?

• It's extremely reliable
• Low latency
• Excellent drivers
• Total routing possibilities
• It doesn't use Firewire or USB2.0, which I actually consider to be a slight benefit
• About as not-obsolete as you can get

The Catch

Here's where it gets a hair tricky. For this, I apologize. Beginners are going to prefer more simplicity. BEFORE YOU DO....HANG ON! I'm 100% positive that the additional time needed to figure out your setup will be entirely outweighed by all the benefits.

You will require a headphone amp. If you want reverb during direct monitoring (and don't want to deal with potential latency issues.....see this Latency As Vocal Producing Obstacle Part 2 ) you'll want a hardware reverb. Most importantly, the RME HDSP9652 has no analog ins and outs. This means that if you buy it and nothing else, it won't do a damn thing. You must have external ADAT or S/PDIF converters. PERIOD.

Great Bang For Buck Options
I'd go with Ebay for both of these. You could definitely skip the reverb if you can live with predelay on your reverb plugins. I rarely recommend Behringer for anything, but their headphone amps have been outstanding for me.

Reverb: Kurzweil Rumour
Headphone amp: Behringer HA4700

Using Modular To Your Advantage

Are you looking for a Honda Civic, Ferrari Enzo, or F1 car equivalent? It doesn't matter with the HDSP9652. Why? Simple. You can swap out whatever external converters you wish. It's as simple as unplugging one ADAT cable and plugging it into another gadget and setting one as the Master Wordclock. Done.

For example, I used a couple of Behringer ADA8000s for coverters. (Not bad converters, not good preamps, great bang for the buck, but they aren't as good as my Apogee AD-16x and (2) DA-16x. No shit!) When I upgraded to the mentioned Apogees (that upgrade set me back $6,500) I didn't have to touch the interface. Dumping/wasting that much dough on super converters is something that took me nearly 10 years of pro recording. Before that, I was doing alright with lesser converters. (Note: I did rely on my Mytek AD96 via S/PDIF for two input channels for about five years.)

So I don't expect many of you to be upgrading to ultra converters in the quantity described this decade, it's nice to know that your good ol' rock solid interface just keeps on going. I didn't even have to think about it!

External ADAT Options

Super Tight Budget Options
The Behringer ADA8000 will get you 8ins and 8 outs. The converters stack up great against any stock interface in the under $1000 department. The pres aren't so great. For less than $200 on Ebay one of these will take care of you stereo outs, headphone outs, and have a few left over. You could add external pres to this and not be hurting a bit. (This is what I did for a while.)

Budget Options
The M-Audio Octane ain't no Neve, but at $600 new (much less on Ebay) it's a nice bang-for-the-buck 8-channel preamp with ADAT out. I do like the pres better than pres I've heard in < $600 interfaces.

The Presonus D8 isn't a bad sounding unit either. It's in the $400 ballpark new. Presonus swears these are the same pres in the Firestudio, but I'm positive the low end was dramatically cleaner they had less of the megaphone thing.

High End Options
There are many 8-channel preamp options and most of them aren't going to be ultra-high end pres. Off the top of my head, (2) Focusrite ISA482 preamps with optional AD converters would be a killer 8-channel setup for about $3000. Those are top-notch pres (although I've not used the converters). They are in the big boy league, although they are clean.

Other than that, you'll have to look around at various AD converters. I went with the Apogee AD-16x and it does sound great. It's an “alive” sound which I really dig. That's (2) ADAT channels for a total of 16 ins. I've not experimented too much with high end converters in the ADAT variety so I'm not going to say much here.

Of course, external preamps is beyond the scope of this article. Make sure you check out the 4-channel pre discussion here: Who Needs Fancy Preamps?

Conclusion

The super secrets to an effective, ultra-reliable recording rig.

#1 – Buy a used interface with high resale value.

#2 – Don't cut corners on a budget interface.

#3 – Go with an interface with as few features as possible other than your required I/O (ins and outs).

#4 – Go with modular individual components. Go cheap on the headphone amp, go with a reasonable preamp / converters combo (preferably ADAT). If you get rich, blow a ton on preamps and converters after you have awesome studio monitoring and great rooms.

#5 – Make SURE you have direct monitoring options for your vocals PERIOD. I won't ever go back to monitoring vocals from within the recording software, regardless of its convenience. EVER!

#6 – Maybe consider just watching football on your weekends and skipping this whole stupid recording thing. Har har!

So my ruckus unit (band) and I had some opposing viewpoints. There have been some “points of disagreement” for some time, but overall it was a great thing. It turns out that the biggest mistake I made was not quitting earlier.

Let's Get Complicated

Quitting is always a bad thing where I come from. The idea of quitting a band is near-treason to the guys you've mutually agreed to go on a mission with. The mission needs to complete itself before anyone goes their own way. That's the black and white viewpoint. I'll call it the WW2 point of view.

In reality, life is a lot more like a Vietnam. In my specific band situation, we were all struggling with lack of resources. One guy didn't have much cash to contribute. One guy ran off his fiance presumably because he wasn't giving her enough time. I have fallen WAY behind on my RecordingReview duties (what else is new). The other two guys were dumbasses. (har har)

While I can't speak for the other guys, I was facing MAJOR stress for not doing my RecordingReview.com duty. I felt guilty after each and every band practice (unless I was extra thirsty that day) for not giving proper time to this dream gig I refer to as RecordingReview.com.

What I didn't realize was I bitching about this whole choosing the band over RecordingReview work to my band mates. I was bitching about all the opportunity I was losing. I thought I was just talking about life. I thought it was no different than “my girlfriend cheated on me” or “I broke my leg” or “I got fired”. It turns out that my personal issues were directly conflicting with the band and were bringing down my band mates. They thought I was blaming them for my career problems.

I knew when I joined the band (directly after the first KHR launch in October of 2009) that I just didn't have much time. A part of me wanted to make time for fun after working nearly 400 hours in September of 2009. It turns out that I WAS having fun with RecordingReview. KHR was just a bitch to create and launch. I didn't need a new hobby. I just needed a nap.

The general idea was to make a record, start playing shows all the time, and see what happens. I always had a MAJOR problem with playing the shows because I knew that would throw my life even further out of balance in the time department. For some of you, Saturday night is a natural night for rocking out at the local bar. For me, a studio hermit and workaholic, it was my one time each week to interact with the human species. I would have to tell the woman, my family, and myself “too bad” as I played my shows all over the area. This would cause more problems. In short, I was trying to fit 9 days into a 7 day week. Something has to give and I'm already missing sleep. It would have gotten ugly.

I found myself rationalizing all kinds of reasons not to want to play live when, in reality, I knew it was going to wreck my time and throw my whole life out of whack. I liken this to the guy who now owes the mob boss $80,000 in Vegas after a few bad gambling decisions. I knew I had a debt that was going to be VERY painful to pay!

Hell, I found myself playing guitar ONLY at practice. I'm normally a 1-2 hours a day kind of guy. I wasn't prepared for practice. I was falling way behind. (This was while I was having my ultra-fun console wiring month!) The band knew I was short on time and not contributing like I normally do.

Hindsight #1

Right off the bat, we should have made a list of how much time and money each of us could allocate to all band duties. (I would have came up with 0 minutes if I was being honest with myself.) I should have spoken up and said, “Here is how much time and money I've got for this project. If you can live with it, great. If not, I should bail now.” I never really did that. That's where I screwed up.

Hindsight #2

The band should officially declared our “mission”. (Not a “mission statement” like people who go to “business school” do. I mean a mission like “which village are we going to attack today?”). We should have said, “We are going to play out this often and it's going to cost this much money to obtain PA, props, etc”. Then, everyone could agree to the official mission. If anyone had a problem with playing 8 shows per month, they could say, “Uhhh, this ain't gonna work for me”.

None of us ever formally committed to any form of investment. It was just kinda implied. This reminds me of when you are dating a chick. There's that implied moment where it's not cool to bang any other chicks, and it MUST be spoken that you and the chick are official and that means you are officially off the meat market.

Conclusion

The second you realize that you do not have the required resources to give to the band, get together, talk about it, and if you are holding the band back, GET OUT..

If you are bitching and whining (or just talking about) how the band is a major pain in your life-ass, you aren't doing anyone any favors. You are sabotaging the thing.

If you feel relieved that you skipped band practice, GET OUT.

Call a meeting and tell everyone that you'll only be holding them back as you just can't scrape up the required resources without causing major pain in other life areas. They will already know exactly what is going on. If they are are decent people, they will respect you for admitting that you don't have the time for the gig and understand that your other commitments are what they are. If you are anything like me, you are easily replaceable. (har har)

If they don't realize your contributions have been lacking, or don't respect your other commitments, they are scum. Enjoy watching them get angry with you as it reflects how unaware they are and how much they don't give a damn about you.

Turbo Conclusion

It's been three weeks since I wrote the first draft for this blog. In that time, I've have dramatically more time for RecordingReview.com, the woman, guitar playing, and all the other things that make me happy. It's amazing what freeing up just one day per week and a lot of guilt can do. Life is good. Very good!

I haven't seen my former band mates, and this does suck a little bit, but running out of egg nog the other day was more devastating. Dudes have a way of hanging out when they can and it's not like you lose sleep when you haven't seen them in a few weeks.

Best of all, I don't have this big dark cloud over my head that makes me feel obligated to do something I ultimately don't want to do.

Moving on was the right decision.

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!

After dealing with a variety of frustrations with various audio interfaces, I decided all I really wanted was for my audio interface/soundcard/whatever to act like a good woman. I wanted reliable I/O (in/out), a large quantity of I/O and I wanted route the I/O to wherever I chose. (har har)

I decided that I didn't care about preamps, headphone outs, DSP, or any other feature they are thinking of right now. In fact, I'd be content with a good ol' PCI card. To some this is going to be a foreign concept but as my rig has evolved over the years, I've found out more and more that I'm rarely pleased with integrated features (especially when those features die) and it would be best just to have an interface that let me do whatever I wanted.

I'm cool with PCI because I decided a while back that I DO NOT want portability. All that does is opens the door to hours of wasted time hauling gear and every time I end up breaking something. It's not worth $1,000 of broken gear for me to go record drums in a castle. That's another issue, but basically I like recording at home. If the band wants to rent a big ol' drum room, great. We'll use that studio's computer.

I'm happy to say that the RME HDSP9652 is the ideal mate for me.

What Is The RME HDSP9652?

The HDSP9652 is a PCI card (with an extender that allows for the last ADAT in and out) that has three ADAT Lightpipe ins, three outs, S/PDIF ins/outs, and MIDI. That's about it. (It has some other digital options that I don't use, so you may want to take a look at the manual if that's your bag.)

In Use

Latency is super low. CPU usage is super low. Reliability has been ultra-high. The damn thing just works. There isn't much to say. In fact, I think I had a glitch that required a restart one time on the first or second day. Since then I've had zero problems with it. It's a great product.

I can't explain why this product just works, but I have to say I am impressed. Maybe it's RME and all their gear is rock solid. Maybe it's because I went the PCI card route. Maybe it's because the HDSP9652 has been around a long time.

It has no sound, so I can't really comment on that. It simply passes digital signals to it and from it. That's kind of the idea.

Either way, I should have went with RME a long, long time ago. Their drivers are outstanding. The control panels allow you to do whatever you want. I can route any signal anywhere I'd like. They were designed to be totally modular. This means you can give whatever mix you want to whatever output you want. For beginners, this may seem like a bit much. Personally, I find it much more frustrating to need to do something and then find out this need is impossible than to have to tinker/read a bit to understand to solve a problem.. So when in doubt, go with the gear that let's you do everything in recording land. You can always not utilize those features.

What About The Missing Features?

For all those other features, I rely on my hardware gadgets. With the ability to send signals where ever I want, I've found I can always change my system around to suit my needs. For example, on previous interfaces I've owned, it's been hell getting X signal to the headphone output. Only specific signals were available at specific times.

The RME HDSP9652 doesn't work that way. It just says, “Here are all the signals, do whatever you want with them”. So I just send a stereo signal to my trusty Behringer headphone amp (9+ years without a hitch). Headphone mixes are a breeze whether I choose direct monitoring or monitor from Cubase.

Headphone FX are also a breeze. I use the control panel to send the vocal to my hardware reverb, a Kurzweil Rumour. Done. This allows me zero-latency headphone mixes that the singers love. It rarely takes me more than 8 seconds to find the right reverb using the Kurzweil. Plugins were never so quick for me.

Because direct monitoring is latency independent, I can use higher latency times in my recording software. In the event that I'm using a ton of virtual instruments, I can simply use direct monitoring, crank up the latency to ease up the CPU usage, and go. This isn't much of a factor when recording live rock bands as they use minimal plugins. However, when I'm doing a techno production (particularly when we are arranging it as we record the vocals), it's nice not having to freeze or render the wav files of the synth tracks. Direct monitoring is nothing new for most interfaces. It's just that only a small proportion have effects or even ways to get effects in there.

I Love Modular!

No, that's not a French dude. I love the fact that I'm not stuck when using the HDSP9652. For example, I actually started out with Behringer converters. They didn't sound bad at all, but I had the opportunity to score an Apogee AD-16x and (2) Apogee DA-16 converters at low, but still unreasonable prices. It's great being able to easily swap the converters in my entire system without dealing with the interface in any way. Not being forced to use stock converters has been great!

If I decide I want to ditch this old PCI version of the 9652, it won't disrupt my system either. I'll just toss in the new PCIe version, plug in my ATAT cables and be done with it. If I decide to ditch the Kurweil reverb, I can. I'm not forced to use anything. For me, that has huge value.

This method costs a little more, but it has other benefits. I know of zero interfaces that allow for four headphone mixes without buying new gadgets. I know of zero interfaces that have effects anywhere close to my Kurzweil Rumour (and that thing has been GREAT during mixing, too, btw).

Downsides

Off hand, I can't think of any. Maybe price. New, this card is the price of many full-featured mid-grade interfaces and that doesn't include the converters, headphone amps, or reverb. That could put off some of you. I bought it for $330 used on Ebay. For those on a budget, it should be easy to put together an ultra, reliable system using 8-channel ADAT Lightpipe preamps for under $1,000.

Other than the fact that this card isn't free, I can't think of one disadvantage. I'm finally happy!

I've always been a bit skeptical about RME. People have talked the company up so much that I tended to write it off as excessive hype. I decided that I would put my limited funds into stuff that made a greater impact in sound and toughed out any reliability issues. I should have went with RME from day one. I would saved myself a ton of frustration and time.

Brandon

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

I have a Pintech Edrum kit mated with an Alesis Trigger IO I purchased used a few years back. For certain projects it's quite useful when utilizing modern samples like Superior Drummer 2.0, Steven Slate Drum Samples, or more techno-type pursuits.

I've found it difficult to tame drummers I've groomed for years to beat the living shit out of their real drum kit as if it were a [insert sexist comment here] woman to suddenly treat my plastic gadget as a UPS employee is SUPPOSED to treat his deliveries. In short, they blow through the triggers pretty quickly.

The Bad News

At first I thought I was just screwed. Luckily, replacement triggers are available for about $20 a pop from the Pintech guys. With drummers who have issues with the estrogen gender and plastic, I've found it doesn't take too many sessions to render these triggers useless. On the worst cases, that can get about as expensive as buying drum heads for a real kit. Yuck!

Even worse, nothing evokes that crapped-your-pants feeling in a drummer like when they hit something and it doesn't make any noise. It's a violation of their instincts. So the last thing you want is missed hits due to bad triggers.

The Good News

It turns out that these edrum gadgets are WAY simpler than anyone may lead on. In fact, there is almost NOTHING to them. They use a piezo, which is basically that buzzer/beeper thing you hear when a computer starts up. It's essentially the worst speaker on earth (a buzzer thingy that looks like a thin coin from the old west and two wires). Since it's a speaker, it's also a microphone. Let me explain.

As you may be familiar with the Yamaha Subkick or equivalent, microphones and speakers are more or less the same thing except for one is optimized for sending sound out and one is ideal for bring sound in.

So you've got Doc Holiday's soda money, some foam dampening the shock between the mesh head and the piezo, and that's about it. It's much more primitive than I had realized.

Saving Big Bucks

That $20 piezo from Pintech can be found at Radio Shack (piezo transducer part #273-073 http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062402) for a whopping $2. I'm re-using the foam that game with the edrums when possible, but when those break, I simply use some foam I found around the house. So instead of trigger swapping for the entire kit being a $100 enterprise, it's now $10. (AKA WELL worth my time!)

The only downside with the Radio Shack version is it comes with a plastic shell you have to pop the piezo out of and it won't come with the little wired lead. Once you figure it out, it takes about 45 seconds. You'll have to splice the two wires in. So it does take a few extra seconds and a little electrical tape.

I have this little hypothesis that cutting the foam in half and taping a quarter in between them so the shock of the stick hitting the head, the foam, then the quarter, the foam, and then the piezo may add significant life to the head. It may screw with response a bit. I'm not sure about that. The principal is the same as adding various, isolated layers when sound proofing a room. We'll see. If anyone has tried it, let me know.

On the drums I've used dramatically larger foam to cover the trigger, I've not noticed any downsides. So far, it appears that placing just a little foam underneath the piezo helps to reduce vibrations from the kit, which have been problematic for me in the past. I expect my setup to last longer. We'll see.

BS Theory Time

You could probably do the same exact thing using cheapo dynamic mics. Yeah, I'm serious. Some $20 dynamic mics with foam on them to protect them and running that into a module might even work. It's the same thing in concept. (I'm not sure about the levels going into the module.) When the foam-covered mic is struck, a signal will flow out of the mic, into the module to be converted to MIDI, and into your computer rig. The results would be similar if the module could handle it.

The Fancy Rimshot Mechanism

A big selling point of the Pintech drums is they offer the rimshot possibility. If you hit the rimof the drum, you can use that signal to trigger an actual rimshot sample. This seems like a cool feature (and is most of the time). However, I didn't realize that all they had done was clipped a piezo to the "shell" of the drum. Of course, this "shell" is metal. So when you hit the rim, it vibrates and this piezo picks it up. This tells me that if a person really wanted to, they could just attach these piezos to metal pots and pans and have a functional edrum kit (the feel of the drum may not be up to par, but I've not had anyone comment on the EXCEPTIONAL feel of my Pintech mesh kit either). I suspect there is some way to use sheet metal, cover it in something dampening to get the feel closer, and a person would never need to replace their piezos again. Of course, it would look like something from Mad Max.....(Yes, that IS a good thing.)

So Why Not Build Your Own Edrum Kit?

Now that I know how simple this edrum stuff is, I now know that I can swap out the triggers myself in a short amount of time. Even better, I know that I'm not dependant entirely on what the kit came with. When stuff breaks, I don't feel the extreme need to order factory replacements. For example, when the remaining cymbals of mine break, I have big plans of buying plastic plates that belong in a kitchen, attaching the piezo and seeing what happens. I expect it to work just fine with a little monkeying.

Note: The whole purpose of this blog is to pass on just how simple of a technology this whole edrum trigger business is. I'm not exactly attempting to sway you away from buying a kit. I just wish I would have known that the edrums were THIS simple. It may have affected decisions in the past.

The truth is it is going to be time consuming to develop your own edrum setup that is fully adjustable from scratch and feel good to you.....unless you already have a cheap old drum kit you don't mind tearing up (HINT HINT).

The hihat functionality probably wouldn't be too hard to figure out, but I'd rather just buy a ready made solution.

There is something to starting with the solid foundation, already soldiered jacks, etc of a good edrum kit.

Building Your Own Edrums

Use the ol' Google machine for this one. When I first set out on my edrum quest, I didn't realize just how comprehensive the world of DIY edrum construction was. There are tutorials out the wazoo and tons and tons of people who've put together incredible setups for dramatically lower price than the fancy, high end kits out there.

I just assumed that these things would be clunky or wouldn't have the feel of something on the high end like Roland or Pintech. I can tell you that a trigger gadget is a trigger gadget at least when it comes to mesh.

Conclusion

The article kinda went all over the place. Basically, I have a few points.

EDrum triggers are $2 to replace
Edrum technology is not nearly as complicated as everyone says it is.
Building your own edrums is not nearly as complicated as you may think.
There are numerous tutorials and instructions for building your own edrum kit.

Party On!

Brandon