Here is a short list of free programs I can’t live without on my computer. They aren’t really music related, but help keep my computer running smooth or generally make my life easier.
What is digitalmusician.net?
digitalmusician.net is the place where the international music business community (musicians and producers) meets and works on joint projects.
Our technologies offer you, for example, the possibility to find and sell music jobs via the Internet. This way you can further your career without even leaving your studio.
You can:
This weekend we resumed recording vocals, but this time we improved the quality of the signal chain by recording at Revolution Audio. We got to try out the M-Audio Project Mix I/O and the M-Audio Sputnik tube microphone. To describe them briefly, they are awesome.
The Sputnik has a natural way of compressing vocals that we really liked. Its very warm and close sounding with very low noise. It sounds really nice and its really not that expensive, a huge step in quality above my Audio-Technica 2020 which is quite harsh and dirty in comparison. I highly recommend this mic, and this is my favorite mic of the moment.
The Project Mix I/O was pretty cool, its very much like a 002 or 003, but its got 8 preamps instead of 4. It only has 4 outputs instead of 8 though, but thats a good trade off. The only problems we had was this device is very picky about which firewire port you use. Otherwise we got clicks and pops in the recording, didn’t happen on playback, and only when there was a significant level coming in. It was annoying but now I know about it and its easy to take care of. The faders and transport controls were a welcome change from using the mouse all the time. One thing I don’t like about the machine is the headphone and master volume controls are endless rotary encoders rather than potentiometers. That probably makes it a cleaner signal path, but there is no visual guide to how high or low the level is. You can’t quickly turn the levels down if it is way too loud, but they did seem to have a fine resolution, so I’m still undecided on that I guess.
Oh yeah, Protools M-Powered works just like LE, so if you are looking to get into protools M-powered has my stamp of approval now.
This is an old, but very effective trick for miking kick drums. Take a Yamaha NS10 speaker cone and use that to capture the extra low frequencies of the drum. Without going into too much theory about this, a dynamic microphone and a speaker are essentially the same thing, they are both transducers. They take acoustical energy and convert it into electrical energy or vice versa.
Yamaha Subkick microphone
So what you do is take the speaker out of the box, solder a male XLR plug on a short cable to the speaker terminals. Pin 2 goes to (+) and Pin 1 goes to (-) pin 3 is not used. The matter of mounting this speaker to a stand is a different matter, this is the main reason to go buy the Yamaha Subkick microphone, because of it’s great, easy to use mounting system, that and its also more durable likely than the home version. One way to do it is to take a standard mic clip apart and fitting the slotted part securely to the corner mounting holes of the speaker, that is if the speaker you are using has the 4 corners and not just holes drilled just around the cone [square not a circle]. Or you can attach it to a microphone boom or goose-neck permanently.
The output of the subkick is very hot, meaning you are going to have to attenuate the signal for it to be of any use to you. An inline -20dB pad, a pad at the mic pre, or one built into the mic will need to be used. This guy used a 10k Ohm in series with pin 2 and a 1k Ohm resister across pins 1 and 2 to drop the output about 20dB.
Mic placement: These work really well at the edge of the drum parallel to the skin. Try it under a floor tom too.
Why the NS10? Most time you see these in a studio it will be with an NS10 cone, but why? From what I’ve been told it is because there are usually extra NS10s lying around a studio, all studios had NS10s, you could predict how it would sound, and they have a frequency response that works well. Don’t know how much truth there is to that. You can use any speaker you want, it will obviously make a difference in the sound.
Finally, here is a picture I took of one of the two diy subkicks at Metalworks Studios. Note mounting, placement, and inline pad.
DIY Subkick with NS10 woofer and inline pad
The Second annual KVR Developer Challenge is about to enter the voting phase. There are 41 brand new plugins to try out and vote for your favorite on Sept 17.
Get them here: KVR Developer Challenge 2007
Every Monday I highlight free plugins new and old that are worth checking out. See all posts in the Free Plugin Of The Week Series.
It doesn’t get much cooler than this.
“Sumo is an effect plugin to make any sound as fat as you like.
It’s good for fattening up leads and basses, adding some weight to pads, making your vocals chubby and your drums obese”
It also comes with Japanglish instructions:
“Each button for another taste of revolution of lard. From selection detune of pressing, lag and deformation”
