just curious to know who wht desks are you using for recording/live use?? do you prefere digital or analogue desks?? or even old school anyone using tape to record??








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I love the way drums sound recorded to tape, but tape is prohibitively expensive. 1 spool of 24 track tape can cost almost 200 bux.

as for the mixing board itself, nothing beats analog circuitry. a good analog board is much more expensive tho. old modular yamaha mixing boards from the 70's can sometimes be found for a reasonable price. sometimes they're awfully expensive tho, due to the fact that people like to take the individual channels and make mic preamps out of them.

here's one of the mixers we have:



we also have an analog allen and heath that sounds great, but slightly differrent from the yamaha. it's a 16x8, the yamaha is a 16x4 with two additional send busses.








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we don't use the board to actually mix, merely to record into the computer.

once the signal's passed through the circuitry, it already has the unique sonic characteristics of that signal path. I mix everything inside the computer with a usb control surface. I will occasionally send individual channels back out to run through an analog compressor (we have a few Really Nice Compressors, that's actually the name of the thing, as well as an old urei) or things like a Roland Space Echo.








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I'm 100% digital, but I don't record desks.








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Dr. Rodney McKay wrote:

Well, I only know one thing and that is that flying darkness that eats energy can only be very, very bad.

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that yamaha board is about the size of a desk, but even heavier. I hate moving that freaking thing. Lucky for us we finally got into a permanent practice space/studio.

this band has taken longer to record than any project I've ever been involved in. I think that having our own studio has been part of the problem. When you don't have to pay for studio time, you're more likely to do a billion takes of something. What really sucks is when you then end up using the second take.








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Oh no doubt, man. I find that I have to work really hard to control the perfectionism of "I wonder if one more take would make this sound better?"








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Dr. Rodney McKay wrote:

Well, I only know one thing and that is that flying darkness that eats energy can only be very, very bad.

http://www.MySpace.com/PageFive

I put everything through an analog mixer, with line-outs to my 8 track-soundcard/interface. Keeps the analog sound for as long as possible. In real studio circumstances we usually record the rhythm section on tape, and then tranfer it to a laptop. Sounds so much better than whe nyou record digitally, I think.








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I just got a program called Vintage Warmer that puts an analog sound to digital recordings. I <3 it.








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Dr. Rodney McKay wrote:

Well, I only know one thing and that is that flying darkness that eats energy can only be very, very bad.

http://www.MySpace.com/PageFive

yeah, that one's a sweet plugin. magneto's kind of nice too.

watch out with the vintage warmer. it's SUPER easy to be heavy-handed with the thing.








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Heres where i'm currently recording, i dont actually know what the equipment is other than its digital, i only deal with things the other side of the glass like mics and headphones







Oh and we can use it whenever its free between 9-6 weekdays (and i live on the same campus as it)

That's pretty nice dude! I should post some pictures of the studio here at my school. We've got a 36 channel SSL 4000 G+ just like this one: (Although this isn't our studio. This is SAE London.)



So yeah, at school I'm going both analog and digital (with the SSL and ProTools) but at home I'm just digital. I've also used the Otari MTR-90 II at school for 100% analog:

I'm a fan of the SSL, here's the one at my place of employment: (for a little show and tell)

(that's not me)

It's got the extra wing on it to do up to 56 channels. It records to the Tool, we haven't used tape in years.

In the middle of a recording using this Jade board: (not at my place of employment)



For the most part everything was fed through the Neve console (on the right), before hitting the Jade, and again, into the Tool.

If I've got a choice, I'll choose analog board, they add that bit of character, (unless you are using these plug-ins you speak of).

I've also done recordings where mics are plugged straight into a PreSonus DigiMAX (or similar) daisy chained to a 003 (or simliar), with quite acceptable results, pretty good bang for the buck if you ask me.

Vintage Warmer, I'll have to check that out.

Holy massive mixing board, Batman!








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Dr. Rodney McKay wrote:

Well, I only know one thing and that is that flying darkness that eats energy can only be very, very bad.

http://www.MySpace.com/PageFive

Yeah that's nice! What studio do you work at?

InspiRecordings wrote:

Yeah that's nice! What studio do you work at?

I work as a Video Project Coordinator for Technicolor Toronto, I used the term "place of employment", as I work on the video side of things, don't really have anything to do with the audio side of things (other than sneaking in when ever I can!). That SSL is in our Studio 6, really the only studio setup to record music / bands etc. Used mainly for commercial recording, but also gets used as an ADR suite for any big names that may come by, and we want them to feel most comfortable.

This building was formerly known as Sounds Interchange, Dome, DAVE and Manta DSP, ToyBox - depending on who had money in what decade.

For a little more eye candy:

Our Imax mixing theatre: (Studer Console)



And one of our "smaller" mix theatres:



To keep this relevant to the thread, with the exception of the odd VHS copy here and there, as a complete post production facility - just about everyone runs digital. That SSL (I believe) is the only analog console in the building. Sure there are still a whack load of analog out board effects, compressors, eq's - typically of the "vintage" type...