Mike Rivers

I don't know the story about Carvin - they may have been a subcontractor to some of those companies at one time - speaker cabinets, circuit board assembly, and such - but I can assure you that Mackie, QSC, and Behringer, as well as PreSonus, Focusrite, Allen & Heath, JBL, etc. are made in their own factories and designed by their own engineering teams. Interestingly, there's less "me too" in designs of similarly functional products than there was 20 years ago. Most are manufactured in China, but this isn't as fearful regarding quality as it was 20 years ago either. This gives you more reasons to buy one over another, based on a unique feature or two that you might find useful.

And I use those computers for everything. I have two computers with active DAWs (or at least as active as a DAW gets around here) and DAWs scattered here and there among the other computers, primarily for trying things out. The other computers are used for things like forums, e-mail, writing, dumb web surfing, smart web surfing, and bookkeeping. I've never had a malware problem. I've tried installing a couple of DAWs on a knock-around Win7 computer and been greeted with "This program requires Windows 10" with no reason given. Too bad, PreSonus, I can't get a peek at the newest Studio One. I think I have Studio 1 Version 3 installed on one of the "DAW" computers, though I've never used it. I've also tried a couple of IK Multimedia programs - ARC3 and MixBox - that installed and ran, but the menu bar at the top of the screen was obscured by a Windows menu bar so I couldn't get beyond the main screen of that program that I wanted to run. Same problem with both programs and with two computers that I tried them with. Tech Support tried to help but was baffled. When I had a Win10 computer here for evaluation, I installed both and they worked fine. It's not terribly important for me to be able to use those programs so I just accept it. But some day I might find something that I really want to use and will have to break down and set up a Win10 computer. I've actually been wanting to do that for several months, but my local used computer store closed up so I don't have a suitable (to the software and me) computer to set up. Anyone got a 5 or so year old Win10-capable desktop computer with a few bus expansion slots that they want to give away or sell for under $200? That's my limit.

I was thinking of it more for vocals, and processing the main feed. For guitar, all I really need these days is a Helix. Oh - like what the live sound engineer using an analog console might carry a rack with him, or include a VPR rack with the PA system to replace a 2-foot high rack case with half a dozen processors in it. I think it's (still) too expensive an approach for the local bar bands, and they're all using digital consoles with their own effects that are (you'll pardon the expression) good enough for most routine sound reinforcement gigs. The big stars carry their own favorite processors as part of the show, even those who are running digital consoles.

I'm surprised, too, that the price of 500-series modules hasn't come down much, but many make a point of using premium components - Jensen, Lundhahl, Carnhill, or whatever was in the original that the 500 plays) dollar capacitors, and sometimes potted op-amp modules built with discrete components. There's also mechanical work - all stuff that's cheap as bits when building a plug-in. Though, still, I continue to be surprised at the price of "name brand" software plug-ins. The hardware module might be $700 (and you only get one of them), and the plug-in might be $300 (but you get as many as your computer can handle), so the plug-in is still a better deal, but not a steal. As far as the idea that a rack of 500-series modules might be good for a live guitar rig, well, I dunno. Pedals are pretty cheap and there are hundreds and hundreds of standard brands (how many were in the Sweetwater Guinness Record setup?) and they have familiar controls. It's what guitar players like. However, a famous brand name engineer or producer may very well carry his lunchbox with modules that are part of his sound for certain things, and it's easier to plug into a patchbay than to load and authorize a plug-in on the studio computer (or bring your own computer). But this is a high priced solution for those who can afford it and, to some extent, around which they've built their reputation. There are, indeed, some plug-ins that are are a real steal if you want and like what they do. But somebody's idea of saturation for $19 won't replace the sound of a $90 transformer. That being said - If you're not familiar with a genuine Neve or API preamp, a plug-in will probably be just fine even if it's not a lab-perfect copy. Oh, and another thing that fizzled is the name. Officially, modules are supposed to conform to the VPR Alliance specification, but nobody calls them "VPR." I never did find out what VPR stood for It's not even in the standard., and even API calls them "500."

Seems like every issue of a magazine, there's a review, or at least an announcement, of a new 500-series module. Like software plug-ins, there are many that have the same nominal function, they're just a little different. And where there's a new audio product, there's an open wallet somewhere. Let's face it. There are people who believe that sometimes there's no substitute for real analog processing, and the 500-series concept is a good deal for today's computer-based tabletop studio that doesn't have one room with the Neve console, another room with an API console, and a third with an SSL.

I've been sticking with Windows 7 on all my computers except for the ones running XP. I wanted to try Windows 10 to see if a couple of IK Multimedia programs that I wanted to play with would work better than on Win 7 - they ran but the GUI never was right. I've been accustomed to buying 5 or so year old computers from our friendly local used computer store, but, alas, that store is no more. I was hoping to find a new laptop, and Micro Center got a lot of new Lenovos for $200, so I picked one up. The IK programs worked, but there were enough other things that I didn't like about the computer (including Windows 10 - my first Win10 computer so I didn't have time to housebreak it) so that I returned it. I guess that the user is getting as old as the computers around here and I'll have to live with it. One of the things I didn't like was that it had no Ethernet port (it assumes WiFi everywhere), so no using it with Dante gear, which was somewhere out there on my RADAR. Also, this was to replace a travel computer, and, while it had a 14" screen, it was larger than the classic 14" laptop and too big for me. New hardware? The new hardware around here is a vintage 1998 Mackie d8b console. No computer required. I don't think I'll live long enough to get anything here running under Win 11.

Good point. But all too often these days, while information in a magazine article may not be incorrect, some things written articles are all too often useless to most readers. How important is it to know, when reading about how to record guitar, what amplifier is being used? What would be useful is to read how a particular amplifier was selected, though for many beginners, their own answer is "the one I have." I see a lot of technical errors, too - wrong units of measure, misuse of "phase" is very common, in several contexts, and most commonly, incomplete specifications or specifications that are irrelevant to the topic - for example describing a mic as "edge terminated" when what's more important is that it's a large capsule condenser mic. It's really hard to self-edit, and there usually isn't someone to look over an article and point out (and fix) technical errors or missing useful information.

I think that's kind of stretching the term "sound design." Putting tape over a buzzing guitar string is fixing a problem with an instrument. Now if you didn't fix that buzz, but rather extracted it out of the recorded track, ran it through a few pedals, got it to sound like a melodic fart, and mixed it back into the tune (or saved it for another tune), now that's sound design. In those cases, as well as the taped snare drum head or putting tacks in piano hammers, or faking a banjo with a guitar, you're changing the sound of your source, but you're doing it at the source - before it's recorded so I wouldn't call that sound design. Unless [and I thought of this later] the fact that the engineer said he heard some strange tones rather than saying "you have a string buzzing" qualified it to be sound design because (he thinks) you're working with "tones." - Geez it's hot today and I can't think too hard. An example: If you don't know what instrument you want to use for a track, you could play that track on piano and record the MIDI data, then play the MIDI data back while sorting through instruments and deciding which one you want to use for that track, that's sort of sound design. To me, what makes it sound design is that you can change it again at any time, and probably will by the time you get to, or close to mixdown, Is tuning the low E string on a guitar down to D, or putting the guitar into a non-standard tuning - both make it sound different from a conventional guitar - could that be sound design? I don't think so, but feel free to disagree.

Everything has some harmonic distortion. If I may, I'd call some distortion "organic" - in the sense that it's unavoidable in the design of the piece of equipment that the signal passes through from source to ear - and that's a lot of stuff that contributes to total distortion. There are some great microphone preamps with nearly immeasurable distortion. Any flavor of compression creates new harmonics due to the non-linearity over the gain change range, though this is often ignored in real hardware in favor of distortion introduced by the non-linearity of tubes, transistors, and transformers. Similarly, there's inherent and "organic" distortion with magnetic tape. Microphones have all sorts of stuff coming out that didn't go in, as do loudspeakers. Probably the lowest distortion parts of our contemporary recording chain is the analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. Perhaps it's those distortions that have been eliminated from the chain such as by using a synth piano rather than a real piano, room, microphone, preamp, and recorder need some of those distortions put back in order to make them sound like what you're accustomed to hearing. There are many plug-ins that do that, and I expect do it very well. But when recording live sources you know what it sounds like at the point where you place the microphone, even with multiple microphones when listening to the mix. It's impossible to exactly match the source with the playback because there are too many variables, but at least you can know what you're recording and decide when you're getting as close as you want. Taking that recording and modifying it with plug-ins becomes sound design - and I have nothing wrong with sound design - but it's not the same as correcting mic placement or a dead string on a guitar. Groove depth is set by the cutter and is a function of the thickness of the lacquer coating on the bank. What makes disk playback louder is greater groove width, and that's where the mastering engineer's skills, tools, and directions come in. There are some variable limits, for example, you can cut a groove that some playback styli can track and other styli will jump out of the groove. You don't want to cut a record that's not playable on most players, so it's important to know how wide your grooves are. This is where compression and limiting comes in, controlling the maximum current that goes to the cutter head, and, along the way, changing the waveform and therefore adding distortion that's (literally) baked into the grooves. You want it to play loud - you cut the widest grooves you can and the distortion added by the compressor that's keeping the groove width within the limit probably makes it sound even louder. We didn't need digital recording to start the loudness wars.

Seems like a lot of the focus is "big" and "detailed." Usually they make things big by creating distortion, or, in terms that let you put more controls on the process, "adding harmonics." The distortion is described in several colorful ways, but they all amount to adding harmonics, some pleasant sounding, some less pleasant or "bigger" sounding. I'm not sure what "detailed" is, but I suspect that it also involves harmonics. Low order harmonics for "big" and higher order harmonics for "detail."

Old news, but good to hear you got the back page gig. The two guys who had been doing it were pretty boring. They need a technical editor really badly. Put in a good word for me. Anyone else here remember when each issue of Mix was about the size of a medium sized phone book, and that the articles about people and studios were pretty heavily slanted toward the Bay Area (where it was, and still is AFAIK). And I remember the first issue of Pro Sound News, too. Both good mags, but very different, and both have shrunk substantially in recent years. I hope the consolidation will put some spark and more interesting kitchen table reading in their content.

I'm not quite sure what to say that doesn't sound snobbish, but if you have a "pristine tone," why mess with it? Why make it move if the player didn't move? I guess what I'm saying is that there's a difference between capturing a sound and sound design. If your recording sounds like the original guitar sound and it's not the sound what you want, that's the time to move the mic, try a different guitar or player, or maybe make some adjustments on the amplifier. If you start messing with pedals, delays, and other approaches to changing the sound (like adding harmonics, for example), then you're using your recording as raw material and designing a fresh sound that you can't make with a pick and strings. That's OK, though once you get into this, the sound of the original recording doesn't matter quite as much as if you left it out in the open as it sounded when recorded. Most of the new effect devices and plug-ins that appear in the marketplace do things that you could do with basic tools, but you just never thought about doing this or that - what they've done is collect a set of tools, arrange them in a specific way, and with a blend of a pinch of this and a smidgen of that, which sound good to the developer. I guess what I'm getting to here is that we have so many ways to make a new sound with a few mouse clicks that we don't understand what's going on under the hood - things that we could have done with the sort of experimenting that you're doing with the tools that you have. So you get a pass - -) but I dunno about the guy or gal who reads a review, buys a plug-in, and creates a new sound from what was played. Is this necessary? Sadly, I think so, more often than not, because you don't know what you're aiming for, you just want something different, and it's so easy to cut-and-try without knowing what you're after, that you might have been able to get at the recording phase. It's the sense of "I don't know what I really want but I'll know when I stumble into something that works in this song."

Sounds like too much trouble, but I guess there's always a way to improve the sound, though "improve" is subject to opinion. I might not say "Ugh! That sounds distorted!" but I might say "So what? What's really better? Who else can hear it?"

A friend with an huge bluegrass music collection (78s and 45s as well as LPs) filed his Flatt and Scruggs records under L for Lester (Flatt). Go figure.

Used to be that they did that by stepping a bit toward the (one) microphone for a solo. Probably changed the harmonic content a bit. How well does your parallel harmonics trick work on full mixes or live direct to mono or stereo recordings? Do you need a clean track for it to make a solo pop a bit?

I don't have a great turntable, so I don't find that LPs sound better than their digital copies. Generally the reason why I digitize an LP in my collection is because I want to share it with someone else. That's about it. I don't routinely digitize my LPs because I don't get the urge to listen to one all that often. If I listen to one when I'm digitizing it (and of course I always pay attention when I'm doing this sort of work) that's enough to satisfy my desire to hear it that will hold me for quite a while. And when I want to listen to it again a couple of years later, it's easier for me to find as an LP than as a file, since I don't really have a system for filing my digital music. My equivalent to that is to go to the computer or Internet radio tuner and put on a station like WWOZ or Bluegrass Country (WAMU-2) that almost always plays music that I can listen to with one ear consistently. It keeps music coming in one ear and out the other, and occasionally something will stick in the middle long enough for me to take note of it. And, chances are, I'll forget about it before I have a chance to look it up and hear/learn more about the song or artist. I'm just that way about music. I think that in the end, that's how it is for most of us.

I've tried to sort all of my (physical) music collection several times and it never works. I just go over, pick out a record that I'd like to hear, and enjoy it. If I have a particular song running through my head that I'd like to hear, unless I just happen to know where it is on my shelves, I go to the Internet and take the low-fi MP3 version. After all, if it's a good song, sound quality, unless it's really horrid, shouldn't spoil it for you.

Now that I think about it, probably mostly in Tape Op magazine review. They seem to be big over there (including many of the interview articles) in modifying sound in every which way. I may be skewed by that. I understand that there are plenty of interesting time-based effects that don't have distortion at their heart, but it seems that many of them sneak in a "drive" control that the reviewer always mentions. And you'll find that on equalizers and compressors as well as amplifier (and mic preamp) modelers. Of course. Some tolerated a little distortion because the music was great. Where would James Brown be without the sound of the meters slamming against the pin with 3M 111 tape? This wasn't really controlled, it just happened, and it didn't sound bad enough to do another take. However, today's "tape simulation" plug-ins go well beyond this, with all sorts of tweaks that people learned about how to make tape sound better in ways other than adding harmonics. I'm not arguing against this - I think it's cool that people can learn the tricks of analog tape recorder setup without having a tape deck. But many don't understand what they're doing and their goal is to just get more distortion. So go ahead and be cranky but distortion is part of how we've learned to listen and I blame all the people who could have made everything sound like a Paul Anka record. I also thank them for NOT making everything sound like a Paul Anka record!!!!! Well, not every singer sounds like Paul Anka, thank goodness. I don't mind creativity in the studio, not one bit. The thing that bothers me is all the talk about bringing out subtle details of this and that instrument and how much flexibility you have. But what happens when you mix? Does it really matter? Does it sell any more records? I don't know, but it sure sells more plug-ins.

I once taught a recording class at the local Mars Music store (remember those?). It was one evening (7-9 PM) a week. They had a pretty decent, certainly functional, recording demo room where I had wanted to teach the class, but they wanted to keep that open for customers who wanted demos so they offered me a room downstairs where they taught other classes. We loaded a cart with enough gear and cables to put together a "Mackie-ADAT" 8-track control room in a few minutes, which was cool since after the first couple of classes that were mostly about gozintas and gozoutas, the students took turns assembling the studio before class. Things went along nicely for the first few classes until the drums came along - they had scheduled a drum class at the same time as the recording class, just a couple of rooms down the hall. It was even difficult to talk, much less listen to music or record anything. The store just never thought about the possibility that there would be noise interference. They couldn't re-schedule the classes, but promised that if I taught another session after this one was over, they'd be sure to keep things quiet during the recording class. I didn't trust them, and didn't offer to continue the class. The store (the whole chain, I think) went out of business a couple of years later. I don't have a problem with local bands, but it seems that there's always a house under construction (or de-and-restruction) in the neighborhood so there's always hammering, sawing, and generators. We have four seasons here - Lawn mowing Leaf Blowing (overlaps other seasons) Chain Sawing Rainy, hot, and cool (some call this Summer) Most of the nearby home have a lawn maintenance service so there's almost always a few gas engines running nearby. Same for leaf blowing. Chain saw season is best for recording because it's intermittent. The other seasons, the noise is nearly constant. One of my neighbors asked the lawn service that worked in the next house over if they could start an hour later (they were starting around 7 AM) and they accommodated. Perhaps that approach would work with the band - make the point that while they're not THAT loud overall, but that there are elements of the music that travel further than others, and that's what's interfering with your work. Nothing I can do about it other than enjoy the fact that I don't really have to work in the studio at specific times.

I have two outboard mic preamps, two outboard compressors, a delay, a gate, and two outboard reverbs. Most of the patch bay holes are empty much of the time, but they're there for, for example, when I'm copying a DAT tape and want to run the DAT's analog output through the console, make some fader and EQ adjustments and maybe through a compressor - some might call it "mastering, though I don't. I have my choice of any two of 24 line inputs to patch it to, though I usually use 1 and 2. And then, that channel has insert out/return jacks on the patchbay for plugging in that compressor. Alternatively, I can run the DAT's digital output directly into the computer for the cleanest copy if that's what I'm after, and monitor the analog output of the computer where it comes into the console's monitor section. If this was an analog console and I was one of those finicky engineers who know that each channel sounds different, I could patch it to the channels that sound best for each song and really run up the customer's bill [HAH!!!]. I think it's Brainworx that has a whole console plugin where each channel is modeled against a different channel in the developer's own vintage (and that also means "aged with all the parts aging a little differently for each channel strip) console. That's not for me, but it can, and has been done, and no doubt people who spend too much time mixing love it. I have had dirty patch cables and jacks though over the 40 years that its been in use, but it's maintenance. How many times have you had a plugin quit working and, after eventually bringing it back to life, not being really sure what made it fail. You got your bits, I got my electrons. I find it easier to "see" electrons, or lack thereof. I suppose if I wanted to be cranky I should start a new topic about why every new plug-in and hardware processor I read about is about how many ways it can distort the input signal so that it sounds wonderful. Why did they not record it so that it sounded wonderful? Oh, I know, it's because distortion adds so much more detail and color, something we need more of.

I've installed three updates to my Mackie hard disk recorder and one update to my Mackie console. Neither one affected any plug-ins, because there aren't any. I'm in the process of re-configuring and re-wiring some things in my patchbay to accommodate input and output differences between the Soundcraft and Mackie consoles and accommodating my accumulating pile of players for my "digitizing station." THIS is a plug-in.

How cool! I picked up the autoharp in the 1960s when Mike Seeger lived in the DC area and performed locally. As a fan and friend of the Carter Family, he helped renew interest in the instrument during the Great Folk Scare. A local high school science teacher and music fan, Howie Mitchell, showed that you could play other music than the Carter Family's on the autoharp (Howie also helped start the hammer dulcimer revolution) and pretty soon the autoharp became a minor hit both in the folk revival and in pop music. Hope you do likewise and not squeeze samples of a few chords into the sound of a building collapsing or a helicopter landing in your back yard. Here's[video:youtube] Kilby Snow playing his version of Earl Scruggs' Foggy Mountain Special on the autoharp

No banjos? It'll never work without a banjo

I look at it differently. A dedicated recorder is a microphone with a recorder attached. Better than a phone for sure, but not as good, or as easily put in the right place (once you find it) of individual mics. Since you already have a dedicated recorder (the R8), you can start building a microphone collection and learning how to use mics to their best advantage. You'll have another 17 years before the cicadas come around again, and in that time you will have accumulated a lot of gear - including, probably, a handheld recorder. My Android phone recording of cicadas

Except for the front and back covers, black and white, for a couple of reasons. One was cost - and in those days color printing was more expensive than it was today. The other reason was that I modeled it loosely after the Mackie manuals of the day (I worked on a few) so that's what I was used to seeing and working with. Besides, there really isn't much to see in color that's better than in black and white. There are only a few photographs, and screen shots were of dull looking screens. If I was doing an electronic-published book today, I'd almost certainly make it in color because the cost is the same either way.