So we're starting to record our second album, and are planning to do a lot of the overdubs at home using Pro Tools LE, especially things like vocals and percussion and other various and sundry. Most of the basic instrument tracks will be recorded first to 2" 24-track and then dumped to Pro Tools. I'd love some recommendations on a basic workable home set-up that will give us good results. Gear that we have:
Mics:
AT4047
SM57, SM58, Beta 58
Occasional access to a Gefell (I think it's a M940)
Pre-amps:
MBox 2 built-in
M-Audio Omni Studio built-in
Symetrix SX202
Occasional access to a REDD.47 ( http://www.redd47.com/REDD47Info.html )
Certainly the Symetrix is much nicer than the built in audio interface pre-amps (which we want to avoid), and I'm considering buying one of the EH 12AY7 pre-amps. Other than that I don't know. We don't have any idea what to do re: compressors -- from looking at older posts here it appears that there's a difference in opinion regarding whether to track with compression or not. The AT4047 is nice, but somehow just isn't working that well so far, even through the nice REDD.47 pre -- I don't know if that's because it needs a different pre-amp or if we just need a different mic. One vocal mic that we used at Tiny Telephone to good effect was a AT4060, but I think the engineer put it through a 1176 on the way in (and I don't even know what pre-amp) so it's hard to tell how much the mic made a difference vs. the nice outboard gear (that we can't afford!) that he used.
I know this is all abstract without some idea of what we sound like, so if you have the time and inclination you can listen to songs from our first record sound here:
http://www.theinvisiblecities.com/sounds/ (click the link labeled "Listen to songs from the record" -- tracks 7 and 8 give you some idea of Sadie's voice, and 5 and 9 give you some sense of mine). Those vocals were tracked in studios, and *not* at home with the gear listed above. The new songs will be kinda different, but then, aren't they always.
Things I'd like some help on are putting together a good signal chain that would work for our particular voices, if there's some critical piece of gear that we're missing, if it makes sense just to rent some really nice gear or if buying some moderately-priced gear is better, etc. etc. In other words, any help at all would be most appreciated! Thanks so much in advance.
cheers,
Han
But yeah, before the API my only outboard pre's were some symetrix 202's as well, which still get used just as much. Unfortunately i had to return the distressor... maybe someday i'll own one.