Hello Remoters!

[jimivan]

Hello Remoters,

I'm not sure if this is an appropriate forum post but I thought I would just say hello as this is my first post here in the great Remote Possibilities Forum (which I plan on using often).

I have just started up a new company featuring a flight packed mobile rig (based in Pennsylvania, US) and having worked mainly in "the studio" and FOH tour mixing I'm sure there will be many issues that you all can help me out with! So thanks in advance and keep up this great forum.

Regards,

Jimivan

www.avalonrecording.com

[audioez]

nice site and welcome...I used to work at that Con Ed sub-station over there in Hell's Kitchen too, what a place!!!!


http://www.ezraudio.com

[jimivan]

Thanks Ezra!

Yeah, I used to commute from Jersey for a while and walk up to PS from the Port Authority....... Always a fun cruise up the West Side.....very scenic...

[Remoteness]

Hello there Jimi,

No, this is the perfect forum for your post.

Thanks for the kind words about the forum. I'm glad to hear from you.

Throw us all your remote recording issues. There are plenty of us that would love to help you out!

I look forward to hearing more stuff about your rig...

[jimivan]

Thanks Steve!

I just took delivery yesterday up at Professional Audio Design. I'll get some pics up on the website soon. I'm looking forward to the wealth of knowledge available here in the forum!

Regards,

Jim

[Jim vanBergen]

From one Jim van to another, welcome brother! I hope your business venture kicks ass! I owned a remote truck for a while.... our regular biz and 2 major clients tanked after 9/11 and we threw in the towel, now I keep a flight rig with Trident/hard disk, all from my personal studio but lots of mics and preamps ideal for this work. Just got back from recording an AMAZING Rachmaninov Piano Concerto #3 in Dm, Opus 30 down at the Spoleto festival, plus some multitracking of jazz and traditional Chinese music. Lots of fun!
Anyway- welcome, let us know when you have the pics up! I hope to see you here, Steve Remote's forum (and bizness) rocks and this is a wonderful place to get together and shoot the breeze. Cheers!

Jim van Bergen, aka JVB

[jimivan]

Hello fellow "Jim Van"!

This sure is a much differrent industry these days...... Sorry to hear you had to give up the truck. I have tried to make my system as "scalable" as I could so that we can adapt to a varied range of projects and not have to lug the whole rig around for everything. We'll have to see if the business model actually works the way I imagined!

Thanks for the reply.

Jim

[joaquin]

Hello and welcome JimmyVan. Best of luck with your enterprise!! I do remote jobs but with a lot more humble set up than yours and the fellow remoters in this incredible forum. Any way, Cheers!!

Originally Posted by Jim vanBergen

Just got back from recording an AMAZING Rachmaninov Piano Concerto #3 in Dm, Opus 30 down at the Spoleto festival, plus some multitracking of jazz and traditional Chinese music. Lots of fun!

Hey Jimmy Van!?... this is going to get confusing Please tell us more of that adventure!! Traditional Chinnese music!? How do you record that...what are the instruments and mic setups? Tell us about the whole Festival...please!!
Congrats to both Jimmys......................Joaquin.

[jimivan]

Thanks Joaquin,

Sorry for the confusion! Maybe Jimivan and Jimmyvan?
My setup springs soley from my background and the want to move a fader that actually has audio going through it......... Call me "old fashioned" but I'm banking on the idea that "everything old is new again".......

Thanks for the hello.

Regards,

Jimivan

[joaquin]

Hi Jimivan!! I notice in your website , that you have a "Custom Built Transformer Isolated Mic Split" by Radial Eng. There's been a lot of questions in the search for a good splitter http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php3?t=31720 and I just bought for my studio work a X-amp and J48 from Radial, I think they are great...can you tell us about your splitter? ...features? ...how much? ...service?
Thanks..............Joaquin.

[jimivan]

Hi Joaquin,

I cannot say enough good things about the guys up in Canada at Radial. Their latest systems are what they call "convertable", meaning you can add or subtract channels in the split as you need. They come out in 8 channel single space modules. The advantage is that you can start off with a smaller system and then easily add channels as your needs grow.

You can take a look at the Convertable V12 system here:
http://www.radialeng.com/rcs/snakes_v12.htm

There are lots of options and choices of transformers as well. Their pricing is comparable to a Whirlwind system, maybe a little lower even, but you have to factor in the shipping costs as these things get pretty heavy. The quality of the system though has a much more solid look and feel than other name brand systems I looked at and their customer service has been really good. It was around 6.5K for a 48x2 system with 100' main snake and a 20' fan out on the split side using VEAM connectors for all.

I also got a few of their JDI direct boxes which use the Jenson transformer. They are solid as a rock and sound fantastic!

Bye the way, I'm not associated with them in any way other than being a customer and I'm not a "gear pusher"......... I hope this helps someone in thier splitter choices.

Regards,

Jim

[joaquin]

Thanks Jim!! Indeed the V12 system seems to be amazing!! Congratulations
As I mentioned before, I got the J48 and the Amp-X, They sound great and are built like a tank!! I imagine the same quality for all the radial gear.

Originally Posted by Jimivan

Bye the way, I'm not associated with them in any way other than being a customer and I'm not a "gear pusher"

......me neither

[jimivan]

Hi All,

It's been a busy week. The DA16X we got brand new turned out to have a single bad analog output channel! Took a little time to suss it out as who would of thought something like that would be the problem with all those connections and cables.....

I have not had a chance to get the website updated so I thought I would throw a few quick pics up on a .mac site. If anybody is interested go here:

http://homepage.mac.com/avalonrecord...otoAlbum3.html

I also have a question to put forth. We are in talks with a facility that has an empty control room and may be installing the desk in there permanently and will have to re-configure the remote setup for use without the desk. It is only a 24 I/O Apogee setup so I am looking to purchase 24 mic pre's and a back-end summing system to facilitate this.

I am looking at the new Rupert Neve Portico 5012's as well as API, Reso Pre, True Systems, more TL Audio (we have an Ivory 5001) and Audient.

On the back end we are looking at either the Audient Sumo's or the API 8200's (much more capitol though...). Has anyone used an API DSM system yet?

Any comments, suggestions, or first-hand knowledge would be appreciated.

Regards,

Jimivan

[Freakuency]

Looks great
Dig the vert mount A/D/A and sync

good luck

[Jim vanBergen]

Originally Posted by joaquin

Hello and welcome JimmyVan. Best of luck with your enterprise!! I do remote jobs but with a lot more humble set up than yours and the fellow remoters in this incredible forum. Any way, Cheers!!

Hey Jimmy Van!?... this is going to get confusing Please tell us more of that adventure!! Traditional Chinnese music!? How do you record that...what are the instruments and mic setups? Tell us about the whole Festival...please!!
Congrats to both Jimmys......................Joaquin.

Joaquin, I apologize for not replying promptly. I think to fix the name problem, I'll stay JvB, and leave JimiVan to his own name & sig!

OK...Chinese music: here's my first problem, I can't pronounce or spell the instruments they used! This is a group that does "Contemporary Peking Opera" using 3000 year old instrumentation.

Basically they use Chinese traditional lutes, violins, zithers and hand drums. Here are some ideas: http://www.chcp.org/music/Vmusic.html.
If you have ever heard Peking Opera, it can sound like a dozen cats mating and fighting...I was knocked out by this opera, which is called "Kingdom of Earth" and is the retelling of MacBeth but in the Han Dynasty.

How do you record this stuff? I sat down in the orchestra pit for an hour with a translator and listened to the orchestra play, then asked each instrument to play an example of a solo or featured section. Based on the similarity to western instruments, I used standard stuff: Neumann km140/km184s on strings, D112/Senn 421s on drums, Earthworks QTC-1s and B&K 4007 on overheads, AKG 414s and 391s on resonating instruments and a few Beyer M88s and SM57's/58s on stuff I was unsure of. Shockingly, it all sounds amazingly good, better than I expected! I think it always comes down to really good mic preamps, as we have all learned that even a shitty mic in a geat Pre with some EQ can sound stunning.

Oy....gotta stop for now, lemme know if you want to hear more!

Cheers,

JvB

[jimivan]

Hi JvB and all,

I wanted to say thanks to Mr. VanBergen for sacrificing "jimivan" for me!
I am just an old 80's engineer trying to have some fun in the new millenium and appreciate your efforts.

I did a wacky project last week that I thought was worth showing some pics of. If this kind of thing is not appropriate here in the forum someone please let me know.

It was so crazy that I thought you all might get a kick out of it.

We tracked, over-dubbed, and mixed a tune in an office! It was a lot of fun and quite a challenge at the same time. It was done in the evening of course as I really did not want the sound of phones and copiers to be printed but it turned out not too bad for what we were trying to accomplish. This is a local band that wanted a quick production on the song and this was the only place we could come up on short notice. (The office was someones involved in the project....)

(for those that already viewed this post I decided against posting the ruff mix..... jv)

I hope this makes some of you chuckle!

Regards,

Jim

[jimivan]

Couldn't fit the dreaded mp3 in the last post so here it is. Remember all..... this was just a ruff mix! Please don't tell me how bad it is............

Regards,

Jim

[Remoteness]

The "J-Van" syndicate. Awesome!

Wacky projects and showing them off is what "Remote Possibilities" is all about -- Well, almost what it's all about.

I wish you kept the MP3 file up. But, that's just me.

Hey, a (live recording) work in progress thread with updates from time to time would be a cool idea. Maybe we can set something up like that in the near future.

JimiVan, those minipics were no challenge. I was able to view them better through my carefully positioned gooseneck magnifying glass. Try "micropics" next time around...

[jimivan]

Sorry for the "mini-pics"! I always see people complaining about how large the pictures are on forum posts so I thought I would hedge my bets!

I'll try to repost some later that are actually viewable without a magnifying glass.

As for the ruff mix of the "office session" what the heck, here it is but please no criticing or flaming allowed.....

(Steve. I can't seem to make the mp3 stick in this post. It keeps telling me I have already uploaded in this thread but does not show a link for it. I'll try more later, I'm off to do an afternoon project..... )

Regards,

Jim

[joaquin]

Hey Jim!! Thanks for the reply. I'm glad that you are happy with the ending sounds. It must be very intersting music...thanks for the link. So, there was a Orchestra Pit, and the singers? were they on stage? How did you manage to get the moving singers? A stereo Pair? I'm picturing a a regular Opera!?...how do you record an Opera....with Lavs!? Where did you setup your Gear?

Originally Posted by Jim vanBergen

... it all sounds amazingly good, better than I expected! I think it always comes down to really good mic preamps, as we have all learned that even a shitty mic in a geat Pre with some EQ can sound stunning.

What Pres did you use?
Thanks for the Info. Cheers..........................Joaquin.

[joaquin]

Originally Posted by jimivan

We tracked, over-dubbed, and mixed a tune in an office!

Men...I see that you are a real bussisnes Man!!
I'd like to hear the song...How were the acustics in the office? a lot of parallel walls with flat surfaces!? I bet the producer was like ...no good take... no donuts

[Remoteness]

Well, I restored the post that has JimiVan's MP3...

It's the post above my magnifing glass post. Check it out.

[Remoteness]

Jimmy baby,

How's the rig and stuff?

[jimivan]

Hi Steve,

It is always great to see the reserection of a long lost thread!

Lot's of changes to the rig as always seems to happen. Most of the gear is now working in a fixed studio and the big mobile rig has all been dismantled. It was just too much for this market......... You live and learn I guess.

The Audient is for sale along with the cases and the remote patchbay/wiring rig and I am currently shopping for a new desk to put in a new mix/post podruction room. I have also been considering putting some automation in the Audient but am still looking for the right system that won't break the bank. Anybody looking for a nice ASP 8024-36 all ready for mobile work?

I still am "remoting" though with a small Nuendo/RME/Apogee/Portico system and enjoying the ability to fit it all in the back of my Jeep!

Bye the way, that crazy project in the office actually ended up pretty good for what it was. We brought the gear into the studio that it now lives (Cape Sound) and added a few things and then re-mixed it on the Audient.

What the heck, here is the final mix that ended up on the bands demo. It never really got mastered so bear that in mind.

One of these days I'll be headed into the city to visit a friend with another Audient. Maybe we could "do lunch" or something.

Have fun all and keep up this great forum!

Jim (a.k.a. Jimi Van)

[Remoteness]

Lunch sounds good... Give us a call to schedule it in.

Thanks for the reply!

Oh, do you have any pictures the the rig you want to sell?

If applicable, post it here.

[jimivan]

Thanks Steve,

Here is a link to the sale page with photos if anyone is interested. There are also some good shots of it earlier in this thread (the outboard racks are gone though).

http://www.avalonrecording.com/sale.html

Jim