Month: April 2006

There is a new community forum on the Freakwitch.net site. There are forums there for both album production as well as Quitchcraft Productions, which is our studio. I think that much of my audiogeek babblage will be located there for a while.

So, if you are interested in Freakwitch, go check out the forum. Register, and speak freely. We’re trying to get all this infrastructure-type stuff in place before the album is done sometime this summer.

Also, Freakwitch.com and Freakwitch.org both now redirect to Freakwitch.net. This means that all 3 domains are now under our control.

I ordered the tubes today. Now, I’m done. For a while.

I know many of my readers are bored. I’m thinking about setting up a separate blog just for my audio engineering stuff, as we move through the Freakwitch album production. Or, I could continue to leave it here.

So what do you think? Should I set up a separate blog for this? Or not? Leave a comment.

Anyone?

::crickets chirping::

Bueller? Bueller?

…I’ve been more or less updating my Everyday Systems log. I’m reasserting exercise — especially walking — now that the weather is warmer. It was a bit chilly tonight, but a good walk….

…I thought I’d explain why I ordered the Shinybox 23 as opposed to the other models.

First of all, there are 2 basic ribbon mic types in this range, the big one (Shinybox 23 et al) and the small one (Shinybox 46, et al). The small one is generally cheaper, and they share the same capsule. However, in the smaller body, the capsule is not symmetrically mounted which means one side of it sounds brighter than the other side. Not good when using the M-S technique.

So the larger chassis it is. The question is then, why the Shinybox, and not the Nady or the Apex or the …. myriad of other rebrandings this mic exists under. Answer: first of all, I like the little guy. Secondly, the Shinybox comes with a groovy case, and is still cheaper than the Nady. Thirdly the guy who runs Shinybox seems to genuinely give a rat’s ass about sound quality.

I placed the order yesterday but I haven’t heard anything yet. Hopefully soon. The site says I should hear within 48 hours.

So I decided to order the Shinybox 23. Waiting for the guy to call me back to answer one last question about it.

In addition, I’m thinking about upgrading the tubes in my ART TubePAC preamps. This is a lower-gain tube than what comes stock, which should clean up the sound a bit. This mod will be cheaper though, I’d need 4 tubes so it should be less than $50.

EDIT: there are two cheaper tubes available, that will probably work just as well.

I found another ribbon mic that is even cheaper than the Shinybox. Marking this for posterity.

EDIT: And another, even cheaper…. These mics are all basically the same mic, rebranded, but there is an interesting article on how to modify the ribbon mic which provides better sound, but makes the mic more fragile.

I’m starting to shift my thinking from getting good rhythm tracks (mission accomplished, apart from some light housecleaning type editing ahead of me) toward getting primo acoustic guitar tracks recorded for the Freakwitch album. I have a decent setup now in terms of recording, but one technique that has interested me for a long time is known as mid-side miking. It involves using 2 microphones, one of which has a cardioid (or omni) pickup pattern, the other of which must be a figure-8 pickup pattern. Sadly, none of my mics has a figure-8 pattern so this has remained elusive for me.

In addition, I’ve been intrigued by ribbon microphones, which have by all accounts a very natural sound, though they come with problems most notably that they are extremely fragile. Ribbon mics have been around for nearly 70 years and are definitely in the “vintage” (read: way too expensive) category. But recently, some manufacturers have begun to sell new units, though they are still probably out of my league cost wise. However, the import market has started to pick them up, and you can now get ribbon mics at reasonable prices.

Most interestingly, ribbon mics inherently have a figure-8 recording pattern, which means I could begin to experiment with Mid-Side miking as well. So I’m thinking about adding a ribbon mic to my mic collection. The one I’m interested in is made by a small company called ShinyBox, which has the added benefit of being slightly cheaper than the Nady, and probably of slightly better quality though they are essentially the same mic. Plus they have a cool name which helps.

So yeah, I have to decide if this is worth doing for the acoustic guitar tracks I’ll be recording soon. Hmmm…..

Yes, this is a joke:

Math teacher arrested
Associated Press

At New York’s Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math’s instruction.

“Al-gebra is a fearsome cult,” Gonzales said. “They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like ‘x’ and ‘y’ and refer to themselves as ‘unknowns’, but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, ‘there are 3 sides to every triangle’.”

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, “If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math’s instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.”

Well, the great Freakwitch recording marathon went well. There are now LOTS of tracks on the hard drive that I have to listen to. There are between 1 and 6 takes each saved of 18 different songs.

Coming into the weekend I wasn’t really sure how it was going to go. My guess was that it would take us Thursday to warm up, Friday to start getting good takes, and Saturday would be spent making sure we had everything we needed. That pattern was kinda right, except condense Friday and Saturday into the last 2 sets played saturday night. Thursday, Friday, and the first half of Saturday were spent warming up. After all, we haven’t played together much over the past month or two.

But, we stepped up when it counted. Time will tell, the recording marathon now morphs into a listening and editing marathon, so I can make sure I have solid, groovy drum and bass tracks for each song. Once that’s done, I get to start overdubbing guitars.

And that’s when the REAL fun begins….

But for now, I must sleep. It’s amazing how draining it is to focus one’s attention on the same thing for 3 days straight.

(click to see the huge tiff file)