So Monday night I had one of those "slap myself in the back of the head but I can't because it's in my ass" moments. We started the evening analyzing the tracks from Sunday that we felt were useable and we also patched the playback to another channel on the mixer so I could let the talent hear what we were about to record. During analysis and preperation for day two we detected some low-level noise in the recordings and set out to troubleshoot. The root cause was twofold:
1) The Creative Labs X-Fi Platinum Pro with external box is a POS. Every input on the external box is amplified, and the amplifier is crap so it was injecting noise into the recordings. The line-in on the actual card is muxed 3 ways - line-in, microphone and digitial I/O. As such, even with it set to non-amplified line-in we were still getting noise.
2) The dynamic microphone needed to be amplified so much to the correct recording levels that it had a soft but distinct hiss.
After almost three hours of tinkering, cable rerouting, slot jockying to reassign interrupts, etc., we went back to my tried and true Audigy 2 Platinum and routed the amplified (fader controlled) outputs on the mixer to the dedicated line-in jack of the Audigy. All noise was gone except for the low-level hiss of the mic. I was back to my dilemma of "do I drop another $200-300 on a decent condenser mic or not?" And then it hit me like a ton of screaming Texas hogs. I found myself staring at my ME66/K6 Sennheiser shotgun mic that I'd been using to talk to him through the headphones wondering, "what if?" We switched the mics, and... oh... my... GOD! We were able to cut the gain in half. The compressor happily chugged along, smoothly cutting overamplification in appropriate spots due to the heightened sensitivity of the ME66. The resulting sound coming through my monitoring headphones was so realistic that I'd swear he was right in front of me. It picked up every little nuance in his voice and even added depth to the guitar. We peppered some effects into the mix, and we were off and recording again.
Last night, we recorded 14 of his original songs all at 192KHz, 32-bit (as a Master that we will downsample for DVD/CD/MP3). All recordings sounded very good (provided you like Country music and acoustic guitars) and are now ready for additional tracks (percussion, piano, backup vocals, etc.). He can also compose on piano so we plan to take our sound dampening chamber to another location so we can lay down some piano tracks. I am definitely ready for ADR with this setup should the need arise.
Soundtrack for the movie is now in progress as he eagerly goes off to write material just for it. The story is based in Texas so his style should fit. The attached file is not for the soundtrack, of course, but I couldn't help but share some results for those following along. The project's soundtrack and title song will be much more subdued than this.
WARNING: If you don't like Country music, don't download this file! You will cup your ears in your hands and run from the room screaming provided your head doesn't explode first! Dustin is about as southern as they come.
1) The Creative Labs X-Fi Platinum Pro with external box is a POS. Every input on the external box is amplified, and the amplifier is crap so it was injecting noise into the recordings. The line-in on the actual card is muxed 3 ways - line-in, microphone and digitial I/O. As such, even with it set to non-amplified line-in we were still getting noise.
2) The dynamic microphone needed to be amplified so much to the correct recording levels that it had a soft but distinct hiss.
After almost three hours of tinkering, cable rerouting, slot jockying to reassign interrupts, etc., we went back to my tried and true Audigy 2 Platinum and routed the amplified (fader controlled) outputs on the mixer to the dedicated line-in jack of the Audigy. All noise was gone except for the low-level hiss of the mic. I was back to my dilemma of "do I drop another $200-300 on a decent condenser mic or not?" And then it hit me like a ton of screaming Texas hogs. I found myself staring at my ME66/K6 Sennheiser shotgun mic that I'd been using to talk to him through the headphones wondering, "what if?" We switched the mics, and... oh... my... GOD! We were able to cut the gain in half. The compressor happily chugged along, smoothly cutting overamplification in appropriate spots due to the heightened sensitivity of the ME66. The resulting sound coming through my monitoring headphones was so realistic that I'd swear he was right in front of me. It picked up every little nuance in his voice and even added depth to the guitar. We peppered some effects into the mix, and we were off and recording again.
Last night, we recorded 14 of his original songs all at 192KHz, 32-bit (as a Master that we will downsample for DVD/CD/MP3). All recordings sounded very good (provided you like Country music and acoustic guitars) and are now ready for additional tracks (percussion, piano, backup vocals, etc.). He can also compose on piano so we plan to take our sound dampening chamber to another location so we can lay down some piano tracks. I am definitely ready for ADR with this setup should the need arise.
Soundtrack for the movie is now in progress as he eagerly goes off to write material just for it. The story is based in Texas so his style should fit. The attached file is not for the soundtrack, of course, but I couldn't help but share some results for those following along. The project's soundtrack and title song will be much more subdued than this.
WARNING: If you don't like Country music, don't download this file! You will cup your ears in your hands and run from the room screaming provided your head doesn't explode first! Dustin is about as southern as they come.
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Rest assured, though. The soundtrack won't be near as "country". We'll leave steel guitars out of the final mix. I promise. And, no. I don't expect this project to make any waves. It's meant to make me educated and experienced. If I can entertain someone in the process, all the better.
