What a day yesterday!

[RainbowStorm]

Yesterday I was in the studio the whole day, what a day!! I recorded two mixes and experimented with different things. I changed my studio setup (rearranged my keyboards) so that it would be a little more practical and placed a lamp on the desktop to make it cosier. Earlier the Mackie HR824 monitors had been laying with the treble and bass speakers side by side, but now I made them stand with the bass speaker under the treble. It had a great impact on the sound! Now after I have started using the pres in the Mackie 1604 VLZ-Pro mixer instead of the pres in the RME Fireface 800 I've got a marginally better sound, it's marginally louder, so I've got a little cleaner amplification even though I'm now going through the mixer when I'm recording and I'm using a pair of extra cables from the sub outs to the Fireface. Earlier I used the mixer without the Phantom power turned on, I think that was a mistake back then, I ended up not using the Mackie mixer at all, then I used it for monitoring only, but now it's a part of the recording chain.

Yesterday I took several new sound quality records, when I compared the productions to my earlier recordings it was almost like night and day and now I'm really close to the quality of my reference CD and doing everything ITB. Most of my progess comes from learning to use the right gear in the right way (more efficient use) and also due to new updated mixing techniques. I can't believe I come this close to that quality even though I'm using a mid priced consumer setup and record with keyboards (compared to real instruments on my reference CD). But I think I am soon hitting the max limit of my gear. I've done more than 500 mixes over the last year and that seems to have paid off really well! I have also now reached the max limit of my CPU power, actually Nuendo shut down yesterday when I tried to place one more effect on the mix and before that I also noticed some latency problems with the buffer set to 512, so I'm really pushing my gear to the limit now...! That's why I have to do something about it!

I got 500 euro from santa to spend on something. I don't have any mic yet (meaning I have a 50 euro mic) so I can't record vocals, but I think it would be nice to be able to start making mixes with vocals and background vocals. So I'm thinking about spending in a nice mic... I think it will be a large diaphragm mic, maybe an AKG C 414 B-XL II (then I have to spend more of course). Has anybody here tested and compared this microphone with other professional microphones? I want a warm, soft, clean sound, really good for lead vocals and background vocals.

[Jules]

Might get more for your money if you buy second hand..

[RainbowStorm]

Originally Posted by Jules

Might get more for your money if you buy second hand..

Thanks Jules, what a great advice, I had almost forgot the possibilities with used gear...! thumbsup