Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I've been doing some recording lately for the first time in about 30 years and have been using my Korg D-1200 and multi-tracking, playing all the parts myself as I try to get the hang of it (which ain't all that easy for some of us old guys who tend to be techno-challenged) but I'm basically having a blast.

Back when we used to record in studios, the control rooms were covered with egg-crate foam and carefully placed speakers and wall baffles to give accurate sound for mixing, adding EQ, etc. Just about every decent studio also had some sort of ******-looking box about the size of a shoe-box sitting on a shelf over the board. This contained one 6"x9" oval speaker, straight from General Motors. They were awful speakers, but typical of what came stock with most car radios. After doing the mix on the big speakers and before cutting a master, you would always check it by playing it through the 6x9 to see how the mix would hold up on the radio and in less-than-ideal conditions.

I'd love to have one of those fancy calibrated control rooms, but I don't, so I'm just recording and mixing in my office, through headphones. I've noticed that if I cut a sample CD and take it out to the car, or over to the stereo in the living room or or if I stuff it into my computer, the sound produced varies radically. A mix which sounds great on one system may sound awful on a different one. My question is what's the best low tech way to get a good mixing sound system that will generate something that's decent in "normal" conditions - or at least on most systems? I'm leaning toward investing in a seriously good pair of headphones to run straight out of the Korg, but wondered how other folks have solved this problem in home-studio situations?

Sound samples if you're really bored:

Old guys that rock are cool - short chunk (1.5 Mb) We always talk about that nice jangle sound with Ric twelves, but nobody ever seems to comment about just how much hard-driving power you can get out of one.
http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/12%20with%20lead.wma

and today I started playing with the "Drummer-in-a-Can" on an old Dylan tune for something totally different. Unfortunately, even a 30 year rest for my voice between sessions wasn't enough to improve it any. Makes it easy though, you just do one take, because take #100 isn't going to be any better. Big file (4Mb)
http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/Queen%20Jane.wma

Todd, having a recording professionaly mastered isn't very expensive, and will give a reasonably consistant sound on varying systems. Also punches it up a bit.

I've had some ancient, tacky home recordings mastered, and wow, they sounded many percentiles better.

Also headphones vary in quality a great deal. Maybe it would be worth your while to augment your setup by spending $350 on a pair of adequate studio monitors that have a pretty flat frequency response. I recently re-built my home studio and am going back to remix my song catalogue; all of the stuff I've mixed with the new monitors and headphones sound pretty decent, even before mastering, on all the systems I've tried so far. It turns out all of the old mixes were not so good because of my substandard speakers and headphones.

I don 't think your recordings sounded "bad" but getting rid of some of that noise might help, bring the drums up quite a lot if you're leaving them in the middle, and make sure your guitars are in tune
Your singing is fine imo, Dylan couldn't do much better. Keep up the good work!

The first place I would start are a set of decent monitors, it is very difficult to mix in headphones. The only way to overcome the shortcomings of a less than optimum mixing room is trial and error, since the room itself (or headphones in this case) is causing you to hear things incorrectly.

One piece of advice is to compare your mixes to commercial recordings on the same system. This can help you learn how things should sound on your system so you aren't trying to compensate for what you think you should be hearing.

Another suggestion, if you don't mind.

On your home system or car system, listen to a modern recording with you eq set up as you like it or as you feel the song gets the best response. Then play your recording on the same system.

If you don't have to tweak the treble/bass/eq too much, your pretty much there.

Oops, as was pretty much stated above.

I just bought a pair of M Audio BX5a's last weekend and they are pretty darn good for the money. A little bass-heavy, but a huge improvement over my previous setup. And I too have found I need to not only remix everything, but re-track them since I picked up a preamp too.

Regarding Jerry's suggestion about setting the EQ - I would recommend always running EQ flat when doing comparisons. Any EQ will add phase distortions that can hinder your ability to make correct judgements. It isn't a bad idea to play with the EQ once you think you are close to finished, just to see what happens, but I would never monitor or evaluate mixes through an EQ.

As an addition to my post above, you need to not only do comparative listening with commercial recordings in your own room, but also on other systems. Unless designed to be flat (meaning expensive), every room will emphasize different frequencies, some through absorption, some from standing waves/reflections, some from simply not being able to generate the wavelength in the space (ie low frequencies require a large room to generate a wavelength). It may be beyond your interest to have your room analysed, but knowing how the space you are working in is affecting what you hear is half the battle.

Thanks guys. I think the last thing I recorded before these was a Kelloggs commercial for the "In The News" Saturday morning kiddy TV show, back about 1976. So this new "be your own digital all-star band and recording company" is certainly a whole new ball-game. I don't really plan on doing anything with recording other than have fun, but it sounds like a pair of decent monitors and maybe a padded room are in order (or maybe just a padded room and we can forget the rest). I also should probably buy a decent vocal mike and stand as hand-holding an SM57 doesn't cut it. It is painfully obvious though, that it's very difficult to do this stuff when you can't hear some sort of reasonably accurate representation of what's going on, and not just when mixing. I've also noticed that since I have fairly bad Tinnitus most of the time, there are a few frequencies that I don't hear well and there is no such thing as true quiet. There can be certain types of static and background noise going on and I just don't hear them or can't tell if they're real or just in my ears. Needless to say, a career as a highly-paid recording engineer is likely not in my future...

At this point I'm still getting into the most basic levels of the machine and working mostly out of the quick-start guide, so I really haven't even started messing with EQ and most of the built-in effects yet.

My wife's comment was "Don't you know any happy songs?". So I did this one for her. It has a couple spots where the vocal is too hot, the bass is a bit boomy and the guitar track has a couple flubs and needs to be re-cut (three minutes of chickin'-pickin' without screwing-up is enough to drive you up the wall) - but it's happy.

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/Rainbows.wma

See honey....do you hear that little distortion on the vocal right there? If I buy a better microphone I can get rid of that stuff...... Oh OK, then maybe you should get one.....