I built an Austin microphone preamp from a kit! It’s for use with ribbon mics, and also dynamics – it doesn’t supply (and cannot be hooked to something which supplies) phantom power, so it’s pretty special-purpose and will never leave the studio. But given that I’m about to have a ribbon microphone, it’s useful! And hopefully fun. Anna made me promise not to blow anything up; when I told her that horse had left the barn, she added “today,” and upon checking the clock I found I could agree.

The kit came in a bunch of components and a few machined parts in an assortment of bags. You also get a PDF with extremely detailed directions. See that printout to the right? You get a bunch of those, along with step-by-step instructions.

Must be Sunday

Building is therefore pretty simple, as long as you know how to solder, can keep your solder under control on a fairly but not screamingly small experimenter’s board – you’ll want a good soldering station, mine certainly earned its keep – and can follow directions carefully.

The supplier even provided all these little jumper wires already cut and stripped! Everything else needed cutting and stripping, though.

Eye recovery makes this a very slow job. Still doable; just… slow.

The supplier said it should take about four hours; it took me rather longer, mostly because of the current limitations in my vision slowing me down. I was also very careful and methodical, for the same reasons. Even with all that, it’s still just a one day project.

Paul asked me right about here whether I was making any headway on that dematerialisation circuit.

No. Stupid time lords.

This is what it looks like when you’ve finished the converter array and have the power rails all set up.

Time to test for magic smoke leaks.

The manual has you do testing at this point, and provides several key warnings. The checkbox-as-you-go system really makes it harder to miss things or to get things wrong, as long as you keep up with their grid system. Thanks to my still-recovering vision, I was checking every solder joint under magnifiers.

First try PASSES!

The kit has two ICs: THAT and OPA chips. I don’t really know why I find that hilarious, but I do.

THAT chip! OPA!

Once the chips have been installed in their sockets, it’s time to start adding I/O ports! This one has balanced microphone input, unbalanced line-level output, and external power connector socket. There’s no power switch; it’s just plugged in to turn it on, and you connect power FIRST – before plugging in to any other hardware like the microphone or the input card – and then remove power LAST, when taking down. This is opposite to my current hardware; I’ll have to add reminder labels.

That, and the whole phantom power thing. It’s an odd beast, for an odd sort of microphone.

I/O ports

Input is boosted enough and output is loud enough that you can test it with headphones; no separate amp required. At the highest power levels, I was honestly kind of astounded at how much gain it had, and quite pleased with the noise levels even at maximum boost. First test of the complete assembly passed just fine.

Yep! That’s a power light!

The printed control panel looks rather smart, I think. It only has the one control – a stepped gain control knob – but it has a good range of boost steps.

All done; all tests passed first try!

I can’t say a whole lot about performance yet – but I can say it’s very low noise at very high gain, and had a nice natural sound on my quick SM-58 tests. The real test will be the ribbon microphone I intend to use with this amp, which is also a kit. Despite fewer pieces, it’s a longer build – there’s materials time, and unfamiliar processes.

But I’ll get there. I’m just hoping my studio is up to gear this shiny. ^_^
 

This is a related article in the Studio Buildout Series, a collection of posts on building my own recording studio.

Whelp, the CD burning robot seems to have packed it in pretty good this time – doesn’t respond to commands, does randomly flail tiny arms around… I’ve managed to revive it before, but it’s never been this random.

I’m thinking of getting a multi-disc stacked CD duplicating controller and some CD burners – I was looking at this controller and this case (which appears to be fine as long as you don’t get a dodgy power supply with it) and a bunch of burners.

The problem is that SATA burners are all multi-layer and Blu-Ray (and thus expensive), while PATA/IDE burners are exactly right and cheap, but PATA controllers are hard to find, particularly given that Amazon has started blowing off search terms like SATA and LIGHTSCRIBE, because apparently they just hate everyone now.

Or I could buy this off of eBay, assuming it actually is five burners and Lightscribe – since the description does not match the title which may not match the photo (the photo looks like Sony Optiarc burners which lack the Lightscribe logo), I’m not sure!

Adventures. Any thoughts?

While recovering, I’ve been reading bits of Mike Senior’s Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio. It’s rather pleasant on the ego that a lot of his secrets are stuff I’m already doing, I have to admit. Ah, smug mode. But I have encountered a couple of facts I didn’t know about, regarding monitor speakers.

Senior is a big fan of dedicated speaker stands – heavy ones – to prevent bass resonance through floors and walls. Resonance leads to inaccurate bass mixes. I have in fact had bass resonance issues, and they have mislead me, so this is relevant to my interests. But if, like me, you lack room for stands, or have other issues that force your monitor speakers onto walls or shelves, he suggests these isolation pads, essentially to prevent the shelf from becoming a soundboard and creating resonance.

Now, as soon as I saw that product photo, I recognised the foam they used. It’s the same foam I used when building my mandolin and zouk travel cases. You can buy it for a few dollars a square foot, locally.

Even better than that, I have some left over from the case project, along with my trusty $3 thrift shop electric carving knife.

Voila:

cheeeeeeeeeap

Now, I did not have enough left to pad my Bose that way. I don’t use the Bose for monitoring, so it’s not that big a deal, but I did want to add some of that isolation since I tested them anyway, and found huge resonance off the shelf and wall. To some degree, that’s by speaker design – Bose wants that – but while I shouldn’t really use them for monitoring, I have done in the past, anyway.

So I studied the effect Senior described, and ended up building a mat out of alternating layers of reasonably thick leather (for mass) and this weird semi-corded velvet (also for mass, but also for motion-absorption) that I already had.

even cheaper

I did some before and after testing, and the differences were stark in both cases.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that to my surprise Bose speakers could have a bit of definition and precision, given ludicrous amounts of room treatment. But the bass was still a bit unfocused. With this padding thrown in, the low end has finally joined the party. The low bass popped right into focus, becoming genuinely crisp and well-defined. It was unanticipatedly, almost shockingly better. And the x77s’ low end – insofar as it has it – became almost laser-like.

It’s super-fun to listen to recordings with really well-engineered bass parts now, just to follow along. I’ve been listening to lots of recordings with particularly good bassists, just for that.

So, there y’go. $10 or less to improved monitoring. Who knew it could be so simple?

This post is part of The DIY Studio Buildout Series, on building out a home recording studio.

So I used a couple of Version 2a comp sheets on a track, wrote down change notes as I went, and implemented them; I think this version is pretty solid.

Comp sheet, Version 2b
Download PDF

What’s new:

1. Little tics every five seconds down at the bottom of each section, to help me place marks more consistently across takes. This gives me a better “big picture” look at a set of takes;
2. A “page __ of __” label at the top, for parts which have more than six takes. I found myself writing that in today, and this change means its always in the same place, making it easier to find. And:
3. A repeat of the total-time-into-song markers at the bottom, in light blue. This is so I can look down as well as up to verify where I am on the page. That’s mostly useful only when working on lines 5 and 6 – particularly six – but I had room, so why not?

I don’t know whether anybody is still following along on these, but if you are: Download Comp Sheet PDF for legal-sized (8.5″x14″) paper.

I made that new version of the comp sheet I talked about this morning. GIF embedded, PDF linked, in case somebody likes it that much.

PDF version

Changes: “Project” label added. Pink subsection lines (very faint in print) added. “Notes” section moved; “Legend” section added (see below). In-worksheet numbers changed from black to light blue, for easier visibility of marks made by pen. Top-sheet labels moved up a little.

I’ve got a fair bit of comping to do, so I’ll get to try this one out soon. The pink lines are just there as guides and print very faintly on my printer, by design. I thought about adding a leftmost column to indicate what each subsection meant, but that cost marking space, so I added a legend section down at the bottom instead.

I tried pink lines in notes, too, but they were really hard to see and I want them more obvious there. So I either needed to change them back to blue, make them a lot thicker, or introduce another colour, so I kind of decided it was best just to go back to blue.

When recording Dick Tracy Must Die, I had not the most idea in the world of what I was doing. I knew about comps, but not comp sheets. Most of you know about neither! Comping is the process of taking multiple takes of some instrument or vocal part and editing together the Best of All Worlds version; the result is called a “comp” take. It’s short for “composite,” and it’s standard and has been for decades now.

Comp sheets are timelines, basically, where you listen to a particular part in a song, and making notes as you go in time. So if there’s something you don’t like at 1m30s, you put a note there, as the song is playing. Very straightforward, really – but they didn’t occur to me, so most of the time my approach was to keep going until I had a track I thought was pretty damn close to perfect to start with, then just re-record the imperfect bits until I got them, too, all as part of the mixing process.

That screaming you hear in the distance? That’s every competent audio engineer in the world hearing what I just said. It’s kind of like inserting important ingredients – like, say, sugar, or flavouring – into the cake after you’ve put it in the oven.

Anyway, it’s also very much taking the slow boat to China, as I learned while working with Leannan Sidhe on her Mine to Love. Now I know better! And me being me, of course, that meant YAY TIME TO DESIGN A THING! So I have!

Version Zero (click to enlarge)
It’s the only legal (sized) thing at Supervillain Studio, ar ar ar ar ar

I was smart enough to print one copy and try to use it, because I’ve already thought of like five changes I want to make. And the hard part about that is making myself not stop and make new changes every time I think of one.

Because hopping christ on a pogo stick, comping is boring. Oh god it’s boring. It’s the line editing of music, and it is farking dull. I’ve been called a fantastic editor by people who’ve seen me work, and I think I deserve some of that rep (assembling “The Diesel-Driven Eight-Dimensional Jet Car Blues” out of bits and pieces from a movie soundtrack was a pretty good educational experience), but it’s still a bit brain-melty with all the tediousness.

And easy graphic design improvements to a tool/form I actually need? CAN DO SPORT.

But I’m being good. I’ll finish this track first. Then I’ll need to print a new one anyway, so I’ll make the improvements then, and test that. Because I can make all the BASK IN THE GLAMOUR OF MY PAPERWORK FORMS jokes I want to, but this really is part of making the music. Not every day gets to be heat rays and kilotesla magnetic fields; just the really good days. 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration – I’d maybe quibble a bit with the numbers, but certainly not the concept. That Edison guy may’ve been a bit of a bastard, but he pretty much got that idea right.

Off to VCON! A reminder of my schedule:

That’s a big, big room they’ve given me on Saturday night. C’mon out and fill it!

Since I’ll be doing a couple of technical presentations today (scroll down to this post to get the handouts), here’s a nice presentation on digital audio processing, on the waveform level. There are other demonstrations I’d like him to include, but there are already many, and it’s quite interesting no matter how you look at it. Enjoy!

…for any travelling musician: the inflatable concert hall!

Unfortunate resemblance to the inside of a stomach
should be mitigated by different colouring agents

Now they just need it backpack sized and we’re good to go.

No?

Darn.

Playing with a waveform rectifier. It’s external hardware, so to bounce stuff through it, I have to route out through analogue and back in, old-school. That’s fine, but kind of slow.

The odd part is, to me, the difference is substantial – at least, when the drums are thrown at it, not so much with the zouk and vox – but Anna doesn’t hear much of a difference. I wonder which is more typical?

Trying to throw an entire drum mix through it and using that in place of the separates Does Not Work, though. If I want to use this even as an incremental change tool, I should use it live (as recommended by maker, actually) or bounce per-instrument. That’s also suggested as reasonable in the manual.

Either way, it’s not showing up that hugely in the mix, even to me, and a lot of what this is doing is reminding me how much better the headphone amp in my workstation is than the headphone amp in my Macbook. By which I mean damn.

But at least I get to say “I have a waveform rectifier.” That’s cool.

Let’s play everybody’s favourite new game, “what the hell is this noise?”!

It’s captured on a live mic in a quiet recording studio; the sound is not audible in the room itself. I’m really curious if it sounds familiar to anyone, and reminds them of anything other than ground loop:

what-is-it-noise.mp3

This was picked up on AKG200 microphones, across multiple mics (All AKG200s) and cables, so it’s not am individual microphone or cable problem.

It starts at about 450hz and goes all the way through the floor. There’s something to amplify throughout that signal range. I put a sweep equaliser and found tones to boost throughout that range. Nothing above that, though.

I realise it sounds like a ground loop, but it’s not; I chased the 60hz question for a while, but it’s far wider than that. I have a workaround that reduces it to inaudibility that involves changing nothing connected to any of the equipment – at least, as long as I’m recording other people. That would not be true for a ground loop.

I posted about this a couple of places last night; the link goes to the Facebook link that got a bunch of comments.

Also, if I change out the mic to an Octava 012, it goes away. Also, a Shure SM57. No cable change fixes any part of it.

Whatcha got?