recordinghacks

Check it out… 30 photos of vintage radio mics on Flickr. Hmm, how would those sound on my drum kit?

(Photos by jschneid)

From dh2’s photostream, this shot is gorgeous. Check out the lighting setup!

Our first T-shirt design has arrived!

Click over to the RecordingHacks Merchandise Emporium to see the new threads.

Note: these shirts include pecs! Never mind that you’ve been hunched over a console all day and you haven’t seen the sun in 72 hours, or 72 takes, whichever took longer. Slip into one of these and you get the posture of a 22-year-old triathlete without all that boring exercise. See photo!

My first YouTube video!

I recorded four songs over a 3-day weekend last October, in a room I rented from a local guitarist who built a dedicated rehearsal space about 10 minutes from here. I put a pocket camera on a tripod first, and shot pictures over the course of the day.

I’m in most of the photos because I used a 10-second delay on the shutter; having my finger on the shutter would have caused the $3 tripod to wobble during the long exposures.

(What’s up with dimly-lit studio spaces anyway? Just because they can’t have windows doesn’t mean they have to be dark.)

The soundtrack is an excerpt from one of the songs I recorded. Its working title is “Droove.” This song started out as the opening groove to the song “Want,” (click for free MP3) which my old band JAR performed all around San Francisco in the mid-90s. The finished song will be released later this year on Andrew Thomas‘ second CD.

In retrospect, I was wishing I’d taken twice as many exposures. So when I tore down, that’s what I did. Check back in a couple days for the sequel.

Forgive the lack of recent activity… I’m tracking a few more songs for Andrew Thomas‘ sophomore CD. I took over the den here at the house; it’s a bigger room than the spare bedroom I used to use (and which is no longer “spare”) and seems to sound better. I’ve updated a couple mics and I’m playing around with some new placement ideas.

Unfortunately, my Digimax FS preamp didn’t get fixed when I returned it for service a few months ago. Presonus’ tech support was pretty good with communications but the repair staff didn’t do the job; there’s still a channel that’s so noisy it can’t be used. It’s not critical, but I’m on the lookout for a loaner preamp for the rest of the session.

Check back in a couple days for all the details.

My low-budget collection, from the top: 3 Oktava MK012s (one hypercardioid and a matched pair of cardioids, all modded by Oktavamod.com), Audix D1, D2, and D4 dynamics, Beyerdynamic 422, Shure SM57, Audio-Technica ATM-31, Beyerdynamic M380, Oktava MK219 (modded by Oktavamod.com), AT2020, AKG C1000S pair, EV 635a omni pair. In the middle: a matched pair of omni STO-2 from Avenson Audio, and a CM-87 from Dave Thomas.

Not pictured: a Crown PZM and an AKG D-112. The latter is mounted via the May system in my kick drum. The former is taped to a mirror in the bathroom, around the corner from where my drum kit is getting set up.

What’s in your mic cabinet? Upload a picture to Flickr and tag it “mymics,” and I’ll show it on this website.

The World of Good is a band from Dublin, formed in 2003 by American expatriate Peter Slankster and French singer Mathieu Belledent. The single from the band’s forthcoming debut CD was chosen by AIB, the Allied Irish Bank, for use in its broadcast commercials.

Listen to a sample of the single: The Roses of San Francisco … UPDATE: they’ve added the full song to their MySpace page

See one of AIB’s World of Good commercials, featuring a down-home banjo interpretation of the song: AIB Horse Trainer

Peter Slankster, former manager of San Francisco’s famed Brilliant Studios (”Tracking Room of the Gods!”), former bassist for elephone (the current lineup has a showcase at SFXSXSW in about 10 days), builder and proprietor of Dublin’s Creamy Sonic Studios and current Creative Director and UK office head for Nashville’s Howling Music, got in touch this morning to point me to the World of Good’s remix contest. (more…)

I added a couple new columns to the search-results grid on the mic database: one each for “Large Diaphragm” and “Tube.” These are cryptically abbreviated “Lg” and “Tu” to help keep the other columns from getting too squeezed, but if you hover your mouse over them you should see tooltip popups to remind you what they mean.

There was already a “Stereo” column, which I’ve now abbreviated “St.”

By breaking these into their own columns, the search results can now be easily sorted. For example, if you do a search for multipattern microphones, you can now gang all the tube mics together, or all the stereo mics together, or all the large-diaphragm mics together, with a single mouse click.

To see this in action, start with the search form on the microphone database.

It’s a way to refine search results — until we launch a real refinement feature (”soooon” ).

What other attributes would be helpful here?

The final piece of the new design is now in place. Please do a search from the microphone database to see our shiny new layout.

As a special bonus feature, the search results table can be sorted; just click on a column heading to rearrange the resulting microphones by manufacturer, price, microphone type, capsule size, etc.

Comments and suggestions are welcome!

The “max SPL” figure for a microphone communicates the loudest sound the microphone can capture without distortion.

However, dynamic mics rarely have a max SPL rating. The reason for this is inherent in their design. As Wikipedia explains, dynamic microphones translate audio into electronic signals via electromagnetic induction: there is a movable induction coil positioned in a magnetic field, and it vibrates due to ambient sound waves. Although it is possible that ambient sound waves can physically move the coil so far that it bangs into its housing, the reality is that any sounds that loud are probably causing much bigger problems.

Compare this to condenser mics, which have onboard electronics (including an amplifier) that can overload. This causes audible distortion, and leads to the inclusion of “max SPL” figures in specification sheets for most condenser microphones.
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A week’s worth of evenings cramming complex data structures into Smarty means the microphone database has a new suit of clothes.

For a limited time you can still see the old look; just do a search. The search-results template isn’t ready yet. Soooooon.