Recording devices

[trane34]

What are all of you using for home recording? I have used a Fostex MR8 for years and it works good but I noticed all of my amps end up sounding the same through it. I think it has something to do with its bandwidth. I want to get something where my recordings sound closer to what I'm hearing in the room. Any suggestions?

[Leo_Gnardo]

What are all of you using for home recording? I have used a Fostex MR8 for years and it works good but I noticed all of my amps end up sounding the same through it. I think it has something to do with its bandwidth. I want to get something where my recordings sound closer to what I'm hearing in the room. Any suggestions?

Might not be the recorder so much as mics & placement. A favorite close mic is the tried n true Shure SM57. (Anything similar will do - SM58, PE54, 55S, like that.) It's also good to have an ambient - room - mic which will give you more of what you're hearing. Any decent condensor mic should do. Mix 'em to get close + ambient sound, or if you have enough tracks, put 'em on separate tracks & find your balance at mixdown. You'll have to experiment with the ambient mic location. A mic set to omni, in the middle of the room at "ear" position works well. Another way - what I do - is a cardioid pattern condensor "aimed" near the upper corner of 2 walls and ceiling, but not too precisely aimed. You get a good "first reflection" scatter from 3 nearby surfaces, and the condensor picks up the room echo besides. There's a couple things to try, give 'em a go.

[niversen]

I use an alesis io26 running into an i5 quad core iMac. The biggest improvements I have noticed is acoustic treatment and cab/mic placement.
For a little over $100 and a few hours of labor you can build some pretty effective DIY acoustic absorber panels (depending on what kind of tools you have laying around). As far as cab and mic placement goes, make sure that your cab isn't facing perfectly perpendicular or parallel with any walls/floors/ceiling. Having the cabinet sit off axis from these surfaces helps a little with early reflections and helps reduce comb filtering issues and phase relationships between the primary sound source and the subsequent reflected sounds bouncing off the walls and then making their way to the mic. Placing a gobo between the back of the microphone a can also reduce some of these problems. Mic placement is just something that you have to experiment with. Try different positions, straight on, off-axis. I like to use the Audix i5. It's very similar to the sm57. A little bit different frequency response, but otherwise it pretty much can do any of the duties of a sm57, and they aren't very expensive, easily under $100 if you look online. I also like to use a ribbon mic with or in place of the i5. I have a Cascade Fat Head and i really like the sound i can get out it. Cascade offers a Bare Essentials version of the Fat Head that is about $130. When i do 2 mics on a cab, I like to get a very good sound out of the i5 first, and then play around with the position of the second mic until they compliment each other. A technique I have come across is to leave the instrument cable unplugged on the instrument end and crank the amp up so you can really hear the hum, then flip the phase on one of the mics. While wearing headphones, move the second mic around until the hum is least audible. Due to the phase being reversed on one mic, in theory, when you switch the phase back, the two mics should be in phase with each other. That's not a guarantee that the two mics in those positions are going to sound great, but at least the phase relationship is not an issue, which is usually the biggest problem i come across. I'm not a Pro, but I have been learning and practicing this stuff for a while. I have definitely witnessed real world results from any combination of these techniques.

[trane34]

Thanks for the advice guys. I need to mess with mic placement more. I have both a sm57 and sm58. Never really tried mixing them. Will try it out and the other things you mentioned.

[LeftyStrat]

I use an alesis io26...

I use this as well, and I just have to ask. Do you find recording at 192kHz more 'open?' I suppose placebo effect, but I swear I think I could pick it out of a double blind

[niversen]

I haven't really messed with sample rate too much. I think i tried 96khz but didn't adjust my buffer size so playback was messed up. Did you mix down into 16 bit 44.1 khz? If so, did you still notice the "airiness"?

[rhardman]

Mac mini- Presonus AD/DA/- 24/48 inline mixer- Alesis power amps- EV 12" coax monitors.

Presonus DAW,Cubase doesn't get used much.

[vibratoking]

Alesis HD24 - lightpiped to Hammerfall in PC with Sonar. +1 one on mics and placement. I find it quite a challenge to capture the true sound of a guitar amp...even with all the good suggestions that have already been made. I've come to the conclusion that it is an ART and I am not that much of an artist in this respect.

[LeftyStrat]

I haven't really messed with sample rate too much. I think i tried 96khz but didn't adjust my buffer size so playback was messed up. Did you mix down into 16 bit 44.1 khz? If so, did you still notice the "airiness"?

I haven't played around with it enough to do a comparison. Might be interesting to do one recording directly to 44.1 khz and another at the higher rated and down sample.

[Gibsonman63]

3 - Presonus Firestudios into a PC running Sonar X2PE. I used a Mackie 1640 until last year. Decent results. It is more about the room than anything. Mine needs to be a different shape other than square, but that's what I have to work with.

[quinnmoore]

lets not overlook the importance of a good mic pre. (yay my first post).