Message Board

SansAmp bass driver pedal saved my arse a few times. T'was my "secret weapon" - I would "reamp" DI signals through it whilst mixing. That and the Aphex Aural Exciter with Big Bottom (C4 I think? I just bought it 'cause the name was so funny, but used judiciously it can be helpful in tone shaping a D...

If you are doing sessions on-location with things like overdubs and punch ins, editing and mixing, as much as I hate laptops, coupled with the right interface, they are definitely the best tool for the job when portability is a factor. When i do sessions, I'll usually roll a backup of some kind like...

Thanks so much for your reply- I think you may have misunderstood my purpose though... Yep - my bad. I'd like to try and stay as close to "high end" as I can with this setup, which is why I'm looking at Apogee Rosettas. They're converters that I see all over the place in nice, fairly high end studi...

Might have missed it, but didn't see two really important things amongst the suggestions here: 1 - transformer-isolated mic splitters. You need these to do live gigs so you can share mic's with the PA. Get the best you can afford - cheap transformers suck. Take the direct side unless the live sound ...

Ha! That's the first time I've seen Beyer suggest a windscreen for that. I remember lots of engineers saying over the years that you should not use the same M88 for vocals that you've used on a kick drum. Was turned on to the M88 as a live vocal mic some years back. It's OK, but not my favorite in t...

Have you tried mixing from the vocal channel first? Like get that sounding as good and balanced for the entire band as possible and then bring in kick, bass DI, whatever to beef up what's missing in that mic? Instead of getting the band slammin' and then trying to bring up the vocal on top of that?...

Hard to say anything for sure without hearing how bad the bleed actually is, but here are some things that might help 1 - bleed is part of life - you will have to embrace it to some extent. Understand that you don't get the "drum sound" solely from the drum mic's on a live record - it is made up of ...

Interestingly though, in Alan Blumlein's original patent of the m/s technique he used an omni mic as the mid-mic. I've had this out with a few people - not sure why this myth persists. He specifies two velocity microphones for Mid-Side in the patent (meaning figure-of-eight cosine pattern). Read it...

Boundary mic's tend not to sound as diffuse as I'd like "room" mic's to be - but perhaps you'll have better luck with them. I actually like TLM103's as "ambient" room mic's. I find their coloration tends to work quite well - especially in a situation where you have sound reinforcement. However, rath...

SM Pro Audio M-Patch 2 passive switcher/attenuator:

http://www.fullcompass.com/product/381649.html

This one helped me out when I was first trying to learn about this stuff: http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Yourself-Electricity-Electronics-Gibilisco/dp/0071377301 I treated it like a class: I read it cover to cover a chapter at a time and took all the quizzes and tests. Not that I'm all that great with ...

The best sound I have ever gotten out of my upright is by shoving one of those DIY mini-omni mics into the actual wooden bridge hole pointing at the bass. Here is a link to make the mic. http://tinyurl.com/6upelak It gets a great blend of string attack, boom, and it's pretty easy to tape it in plac...

For me, the biggest problem with upright bass on a stage is leakage. The direct is always good to take for safety, but it usually sounds like a$$. The best pickups I have heard were called "Realist" I think... In any case, whatever mic you put on the bass invariably ends up becoming another drum mic...

How many inputs do you have available?

What are you using to record (beyond the mic's & pre's)?

What are the expectations of the clients?

I am usually working the music side of things, so my kit is a bit different, but from what I have seen over time I'd say the expectations for a typical location film guy are: Sennheiser 416 (or lately been seeing the Schoeps shotgun a lot) with blimp and dead cat for outdoors; Schoeps CMC641 hyperca...