This week we have a segment from Nick Behlman comparing his new Apogee Ensemble interface to his M-Audio Profire 2626.
In the comments section we discuss: Reflexion Filter; static electricity in the studio; compression pedals; Going from Pro Tools to Reaper; Boss BD-2 Blues Driver; Pedal Mods from Monte Allums; tape machine as a preamp or effect; gtr amp speaker changes; more clean power for pedals; headset mics and noise on stage; singer headphone mix; monitoring in two-room home studio/livingroom; best use of $800 for full band recording; and more.
Special thanks to Nick Behlman and Jordan Reynolds for their contributions to the show this week.
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Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2
Flitz metal polish
CAIG DeOxit
Cool show! My GAS was getting really upset with this one.
This is totally off topic but I thought I would share. I had a bunch of crap gear that I never used lying around my bedroom so I impulsively traded it for a really cheap Jasmine acoustic guitar. I think the actual price is slightly over a hundred dollars. My father has a six or seven-hundred dollar Takamine, so the next logical step was a shoot out! So far I’m extremely impressed with el cheapo, and I even think it sounds better than the more expensive guitar. There is no fret buzz, there IS a truss rod unlike other guitars in the price range, the bridge is adjustable from what I understand, and it holds tuning really well. Here’s a link to the shoot out. http://snd.sc/125xJ8Y It’s just generic strummy stuff double tracked with a Studio Projects B1 a foot away from the 12th fret in my bedroom treated with furniture pads. Let me know what you think! If you’re looking for a nice sounding guitar that you could bang up, I highly recommend it.
Hey guys…. I am in the process of trying to rehearse with some friends over skype (which sucks with latency) I remembered your problems with the video chat thing. I tried Oovoo and it seems to work a little bit better not good enough for rehearsing but good enough for interviews. I would sure love to watch videos of your show. Maybe teach us some DIY stuff or something. Anyway I’m sending you some jar money.
‘kip da shiken alay’ (Keep the chicken alive. In spanglish)
Heads up
40 dollars discount on slate VCC at audiodeluxe: http://audiodeluxe.com/products/slate-digital-virtual-console-collection
…For two days more… So act fast if you want it. Does require iLok 2 and registration at audiodeluxe, though…
BR,
Michael
Hey Jon, how are you finding your TC Electronic delay and reverb pedals? I noticed your twitter post regarding using them on vocals. In what cases would you prefer to use Valhalla plugins and in which case would you prefer to use the TCs (or your echoplex)? Any specific genres, instruments, type of sound you’re looking for/ or would you use a mixture of them? Have you found any use of the toneprint editor in your daily work yet (mixing)? (I’d imagine it would be a bit difficult to use if you want to – let’s say – retrieve your recall your pedal settings into the app, or be able to tweak the settings while listening in real time)…. Also, the pedals support line level signals – do you run it through a reamp box first or do you directly go through them? Do you set the pedals to kill dry mode (100% wet) when you mix?
Hey guys,
Thanks for all that you do.
I have gone through the entire archive history of your show, starting at number 1 and continuing through to the current episode, so I hope you can let us all know when the next round of HRS diploma’s is going out.
That said, I am a first time commenter.
In this episode, Ryan and Jon were talking about online courses. I have recently completed my first ever online course, Berklee College of Music’s “Introduction to Music Production” I would certainly have felt like I had learned something, except that I was easily able to score in the upper 90’s without reviewing the course material, based on the information I have learned from your show over the past year. While I was there, I also signed up for “Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering”, “Hardware/Software Interface” and another “introduction of electrical engineering” course which starts this summer, in which we will get to build a working guitar amplifier from scratch.
The Electrical Engineering course was extremely heavy on math, and I started late, and didn’t actively participate in the course exercises, but even listening to the videos while commuting for work provided a more thorough understanding in the fundamentals of signals than I could have ever achieved. This gives me an excellent launching point for continued self study, and this is what these online courses are intended to do. If either of you are geeks like me, you should go to http://www.coursera.org and check out their selection of free courses.
That said, please keep up the excellent work. I always look forward to new HRS episodes.
Learn all about chickens through self-directed online study.
MSR
GSAA,
I actually heard a bigger difference in the clean clips than I did in the dirty clips. I figure it’s either because I don’t know what the hell I’m looking for or its because I play mostly in drop C and are more prone to listening to the lower end. do you guys find it if you mix a certain sounds range more frequently that you tend to focus in that range?
HRShole out
I really looked forward to Nick Behlman’s converter shootout when I read the title of the show, because I am a happy owner of a 2626 myself. But I would liked to have seen a converter-only comparison between the Ensemble and the 2626. As I understood the setup, the preamps of both units have been in the chain, what made me think: What did we compare here? The preamps or the converter quality?
Yes, it is true that the test conflates the conversion and the preamps. I only did the test to try to quantify the difference between the two pieces of hardware. I had spent a good amount of money on this upgrade, and wanted to know how different the two pieces of gear are. It is easy to listen to a shootout and say “yes, this one is different,” but decided which one is actually better is a different story. If I had done a shootout between converters, I find it unlikely that we would be able to hear which one would stack better in a mix. The only thing I would take away from that shootout is that they are different. Having used the Apogee for a few weeks, I now see an improvement in the sounds I am capturing. Can’t say with confidence whether its the preamps or the conversion, though. Not trying to be defensive or anything. I think we’re all in the weeds with some of this shootout stuff.
Ha the Flitz moment cracked me up! Thought that was the end of my day job but maybe they’ve come to pity my bursts maniacal laughter as some sort of psychiatric tragedy. Either that or they’re scared of me.
GSAA and many thanks Nick
gsaa,
regarding the ts9-dx… the different modes merely change the maximum level (not gain) of the pedal. normal mode equals the standard ts9 circuit. there is a page by keeley iirc that explains some details of the pedal but i wasn’t able to find it. i’ll post when i run across it.
give the chicken a diploma, *then* ride it.
stephan
oh and i looked very stupid laughing very hard about the “black metal” snippet. thanks for making me look like a weirdo in public. you rock 🙂