Archive for the ‘studio’ Category
Someone on Facebook semi-accidentally pointed me to the first photo I put up of my studio. Welcome back to 2009:
SO EMPTY. So unconditioned! So… echoey! It didn’t take me long to start building more sound baffles, I remember that.
I particularly like the weights set. In case, you know, I needed to do some sets between… sets. XD
Here’s the same room now, three full-length albums, an EP, and a couple of singles later:
I just spent the whole day – daytime day, I quit at dinner – rewiring my studio to better isolate the AC power lines from everything else, because it’s pretty clear at this point that our AC power is just scary with RFI, and the new high-gain preamp is AC all the way to its motherboard, unlike everything else, which is DC power once you get past the adaptors.
Result? All this did NOT A FUCKING THING for the high-gain preamp. In fact, it’s worse tonight. Enough that were I trying to use it, it’d be difficult and I’d have to be stupidly careful with cable placement, or something, and hope I get lucky.
At that point I thought I’d achieved nothing at all, and had in fact fucked it up somehow – which didn’t make any sense but that’s never stopped me before – until then I poked at my primary input board for semi-unrelated reasons, and HOLY HOPPING CHRIST ON A POGO STICK the difference.
SO MUCH QUIETER so much quieter
Even at max gain, zero input shows up as zero on my main input board. It’s not actually zero – I can hear it – but it’s too far down to light the metres, which puts it at somewhere around -75db.
So at least I didn’t fuck things up. That is a thing which is good to know. I actually achieved my design goal for the rewiring, to a surprising – nay, astonishing – degree of success!
And it did absolutely fuck all for the problem.
goddammit.
I’m still sure AC Power is a problem though, because if I plug the preamp straight into the wall, the RF pick up is REALLY LOUD; through a computer power strip (which filters, some) it’s less; through the battery-backup and power strip, less still. I suppose it’s possible there’s another reason for that, but I don’t know what it would be.
eta: I took apart the preamp, convinced myself of a few problems, maybe improved it, maybe the RFI just calmed down a bit on its own. Who knows? Here’s a recording of a suboptimal cable position after the resoldering. That’s boosted all to hell, of course; at normal recording levels, it’s inaudible, but I hate that it can be found. It’s also still cable-position-dependent. I tested literally every cable I have; this was the most RF-resistant one. If I have it on the right side of the mic stand, it sounds like this. On the left: no audible signal.
eta2: I opened up the case again and twisted the internal side of the AC power lead (9v AC) as tightly as I thought I could get away with. The test afterwards contained far lower RFI than previous tests, but that’s not necessarily meaningful – it’s a different time of day. (All my previous daytime tests have been mid-afternoon.)
That said, for the first time, there was no sign at all of KUOW 94.9, which may be a first. And I didn’t hear BBC World Service in there either. I was picking up KIRO, dimly – but I don’t know whether I was picking up the AM or FM station. Most of the time they have separate programming, but they simulcast during Seahawks handegg, from pregame through post, and that’s what was on. And I had to dig at it to get that much, which is actually good – if I can’t stop it entirely, I can at least make it something you really have to work to find.
So, yeah. Ongoing. I think that twisting the internal AC power lead bumped it down another level. But I’m not sure. It gives me some hope that the RFI chokes I’ve ordered might help.
Fucking ghosts.
I was picking up radio on the ribbon mic’s pre-amp, at really high amplification gain. Ribbon mics need tremendous gain, because the base signal is so low, which meant this mattered. It wasn’t enough to appear in most – emphasis on most – recording situations, but I didn’t want it at all, because it indicates a potential circuit problem.
For the record, you start listening to EMF noise boosted by 96 to 142db (from extremely low levels), and you start chasing some serious fuckin’ ghosts. Somebody get me a skiffy channel show, stat.
Anyway, earlier in the day, I’d gone through all my patch cables, isolating the most RF-tight via comparative testing. It was a pretty big range. But even the best ones were still picking up some of that radio sound, and with some work, I could get it in clearly – tho’ always at extremely low levels.
Now, before I set about finding my best patch cables, I’d isolated out the microphone connection, to reduce complexity and eliminate other noise sources.
Turns out, a 3mm run of unshielded null signal wire can bring up a surprisingly durable amount of RF, in the form of BBC World Service on shortwave. Pulled that back out, popped in a microphone cable (connected to the ribbon mic): no more radio.
The goofy thing is that Cascadia is notorious for shitty shortwave reception. I can’t get BBC World Service reliably on my shortwave radio. AND YET.
At least it’s sorted, now. I still need to evaluate a few more cables, but the explanation is in hand, and that’s the important thing.
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.
What’s new:
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.
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!
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.
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:
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?
I’ve never been fond of extended sitting around – I’m just not fond, and add a desk to the mix and I’m all just NOPE. But my digital audio workstation is at a desk. So I decided that was dumb, and I’d like a standing workstation, but those cost hundreds to thousands of dollars,and tried a standing configuration with my monitors at maximum height, using a music stand as a keyboard holder.
Since that worked, I decided to make a better keyboard holder, one that would also hold my trackball.
It attaches to any stand that will take a standard mic clip. This was of course intentional. It’s 3/4″ thickwall PVC pipe, filed out on the inside to make the inner diameter wide enough to slip over the microphone pole of a standard mic stand. It doesn’t screw on, it just fits on, so don’t file it too much or it’ll get wobbly. The fit should be snug.
The top board is just some leftover plywood I had lying about, tinted with some leftover stain and polyurethane. Completely unnecessary, but looks nice. The board is held to the PVC frame with plumbing securements and brass bolts. Don’t use wood screws; quarter-inch ply doesn’t give you enough of an anchor for that.
Also, there’s a layer of double-sided tape between the metal securement hoops and the PVC end caps. If the fit wasn’t tight, that wouldn’t work – but it is, so it works well.
The end caps are important. You need them so that the T in the middle of the PVC support and the ends of the PVC support present the same frame diameter to the attachment system. If you didn’t do that, either the board or the PVC pipes would bend a little once you bolted everything down. This way it’s consistent and flat.
I think it came out as an attractive bit of kit. The screws aren’t flush, but the keyboard has feet and those are thicker than the screw heads, so it works out. I kind of expected the screw heads to sink in a little, but they didn’t; you can always drill a little bit into the wood with a bit the size of the screw head to flatten it a little bit further, if you need to. But that’s tricky with 1/4″ ply, since it’s so thin.
Since the mic stand’s telescoping pole reaches the top of the T inside the PVC frame, you can raise and lower the tabletop just like you would a microphone, so it’s adjustable to the height you like – at least, within limits.
The PVC pipe is also the right exterior diameter for a mic clip! If your mic stand is stable enough, you can totally do this, too, which lets you raise or lower the table like a boom mic. My stands aren’t awesome enough to be stable doing that for a heavy thing like a keyboard and trackball, but I could use this for other, lighter items if I wanted. The hard part is getting the clip not to rotate left and right – the clamping bolts on my mic stands don’t clamp firmly enough. If yours do, then great!
Very quick build, about an hour except for the staining and polyurethane, but that’s optional. This is quarter-inch ply, and that seems plenty strong enough for this purpose. It’s 65cm wide and 26cm deep, which was about as small as I could get and fit the keyboard and trackball.
What I’d really like is something I could move around just a little, kind of like a mobile rack for the monitors and keyboard, but that appears to be crazymoney. This seems like a reasonable middle ground that cost me, um… two disposable brushes plus stuff I already had on hand. ^_^ So far, I’m getting more work done since this indulges my dislike of chair and desk. We’ll see if that holds out over time.
I found these on Tumblr and edited them up to print resolution. 😀
The studio is actually on one of the upper levels of the Lair. The last thing you want to do is lose satellite signal when you’re aiming energy bolts at your enemies. It’s just sloppy. Besides, if we’re going to be launching jaegers, who wants to wait in elevators?
Extreme crush hazard. Extreme.
THE NEW SINGLE
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