minimalist recording setup
i set up a bare-bones recording setup so we can get moving on recording the rest of christa's songs while i continue building the studio. setup consists of a mic, pre, compressor, small mixer, computer audio interface, and monitors. here's a pic i snapped of the setup:
christa came over this afternoon and we laid down vox for a tune whose guitar part we recorded about a year ago. this was my first chance to do a serious recording in the room as well as being able to give my new great river preamp and RME audio interface a whirl.
the good:
i love the hardware and software interfaces for the RME stuff. they're much easier to work with than my delta 1010's. all the important stuff on the box (word clock, sync source, -10dBV/+4dBu switching, etc.) is accessible on the front panel. the software seems very well suited to handling multiple interfaces, and it's much nicer being able to return to hardware that'll let me have up to 3 interfaces per card rather than having to deal with the one-card-per-interface crap. the clip lights on the box are dope, especially since they kick in a few dB below 0 dBFS, allowing me time to quickly adjust levels before ruining an otherwise good take with digital clipping. other converters i've used either don't have any level lights on the box or the clip lights are of the "if you're seeing this, you're hosed" variety. oh, and of course the converters sound quite nice and are a welcome change from the slightly-harsher-sounding deltas.
the great river pre is...well...great. lots of headroom. christa's a very dynamic singer, and it was able to handle her full dynamic range without me having to be constantly riding the gain or really holding it back. the 6-segment level indicators are a great feature. the sound is great and very easy to work with, at least for vocals--haven't tried anything else yet.
while i was setting things up i was listening to a bunch of mixes, both my own and those on commercial cd's. i'm amazed at the bass response in the room. the bass traps have given an extremely tight and clear low end. i heard some things in my own mixes that i had never heard before and, remembering some of the challenges i had when mixing the low end on those songs in my old place, i had a few "ahhhh! so that's what i wasn't able to hear accurately" moments.
working on actual music in that room after spending a year doing almost nothing but construction work in that space was a very surreal experience. this is going to sound kinda hokey, but instead of having a sort of "i'm sitting here and here's a desk and there's a person over there singing" sense of distinction, i felt myself and everything around me to be more...idunno...liquid, i guess? the room, the equipment, the singing, me...it all just kind of fused together. it's weird having a space of my own where i don't feel like the room is the enemy of the sound. here the room really embraces the sound.
the bad:
those frequency response spikes in the room around 200-350Hz are quite noticeable--they show up when recording and are exacerbated on playback. i started building a helmholtz resonator yesterday but haven't finished it yet. i really hope that will help tame those frequencies, as that will be critical to getting good recordings and good monitoring.
the console desk sits about 6" too high for my liking. taking the casters off will help at least somewhat, but it still won't leave me at an optimal vantage point once i install the console. and i'm definitely going to have to remove those rack shelves along the very top and knock the overall height down to provide a single surface on which to place both of my computer monitors and aux monitor speakers.
i'm not overly thrilled with the speaker stands i got last week. the main reason i got them was so that i could set them slightly higher than 48" and then angle them down towards me with MoPADs. however, they get really wobbly under the weight of my mackies. the connection between the stand and the bass isn't quite what i would call strong. i need to play around with them for a bit in the coming days and see if i can make them more sturdier. once i get the desk height down i'll also be able to drop the monitor height several inches, which should help at least somewhat.
so overall i'm quite pleased so far, although there is still much much work left to be done.