Re: [linux-audio-user] how to build a studio?

Hi, Monitors In the control room (printing, mixing) we use a pair of cheap Alesis M1Active, I think they were $600.00. They're not the best monitors but I know the room and the monitors. They work great for me. They're tough as rocks, we've never blown one and there's been a couple engineers that cut their teeth on them. For years we ran those little N1 or whatever it was that every studio in the world used. They were the most gawd awful things. I hated them so much that I've blocked their names from my memory. They'd tear your ears apart and you'd experience hearing fatigue. On top of their ripping your head off they'd blow up everytime a new engineer ran the room. Well, not everytime but often enough to piss me off. In our mastering room we run a pair of Mackie HR824. They cost about $1,200.00 a pair. These are pretty damned nice monitors. When we purchased the HR824 monitors, my two studio business partners and I went to a pro audio shop with a handful of CDs that we're all familiar with. We did comparisons on six or eight brands and a couple models for all the brands. Nothing compared to the HR824. There really wasn't much to talk about. The only brand we didn't get to run an A B comparison on was Genelec. But they're about double the price. Out of our range. Microphones If you need one real good microphone that can get you miles of results consider the Neumann M 147 tube. It's about $1,600.00 USD. It's a great microphone for percussion, accoustic and electric guitar, no good for kick drums, good for vocals. I almost always run the M 147 through an Avalon Vt 737sp. With some vocalists I've experienced difficult harmonic distortion or some damned thing with that combo. Then there are those who sound perfect. Maybe it's the combining of two tube devices in one chain. The first time I did a serious percussion session with the M 147 we tracked about 20 different drums and various percussion instruments. After laying all the tracks, the client came into the control room, heard the mix and said, "Ron, I've never heard such beautiful drums." I'd like to take all the credit for creating that magic but the truth is that mic and preamp did alot of the work. Kick drum, AKG D12 E it's the old square one. I think it cost me $200.00 used. It sounds better than the new egg shaped model. Run through the Vt 737sp and it is killer. Snare, Sure Beta 57 Overheads, Sure SM81 which are OK if I ran a bigger budget I'd replace them. Toms, EV N/D 408 or something like that, they're the eggish shaped things on the swivel mounts. I actually like them alot. ron --- Joshua N Pritikin <vishnu(a)pobox.com> wrote: http://why-compete.org __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com