PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Completed Audio Setup - Love it!

At home the soundcard is fed from the mixer subgroup outs (8).
At Barry's they are connected to a patchbay. Either works fine. Using both would seem redundant.
When doing vocals at home I often pull a cable from the mixer end and use a dedicated preamp instead, and when I do that it sits that way until I need all the mixer outs again. Taking a second to swap a cord to get the desired signal path isn't a waste of time in my eyes.

Less devices in the signal path = less noise and often a cleaner, clearer signal.

One key point is the concept of "people do things different ways". I am a gearhead from the 60s. I have instruments that I can not play and won't likely ever bother learning how, but they are cool to have. I have a King flute that my father would have a hand in building since he worked at King band forever. I don't play flute. I have a 1910 era autoharp. I have no idea the usefulness of an autoharp, but it looks cool. I have some ridiculous brass instrument that is too small for a trumpet and too big for a cornet. (Matt? Little help?)

And this concept filters down to the things we buy as well. You mentioned a Rondo guitar. From my old school brain, guitars say "Gibson", "Fender" or "Martin" on them, no other options. I don't even know what Rondo is. They might make THE best sounding guitar out there, but BB King, Clapton, Beck, Allman, Hendrix, Howe, Christian, Montgomery, Tufnel (LOL)... none of them used Rondo, so I can only make the assumption that if the masters did not choose Rondo, they made that choice for a reason, and I would be more likely to follow their lead. However, that opinion is just mine and does NOT translate to "Scott is a chump because he'd buy a Rondo guitar". (Of course Rondo was not around when Wes Montgomery was alive, but you get the idea.)

I get taken to task a lot for the length of my songs, too. Well, at 4 days short of 61, who did I come up listening to? Pink Floyd, Todd Rundgren, Moody Blues, Yes, Chicago, BS&T, Rush... all of whom wrote a lot of "theme" albums that were close to being ONE 60 minute song.

One of my best friends is constantly harping on me to use soft synths. He told me all about the Hammond soft synth. And my reply was "Okay that costs $300. I then have to sit here and learn how to use drawbars. For $150, I bought my Ensoniq ESQ-1 with 119 other sounds, and when I want a perfectly acceptable Hammond sound, I go to INTERNAL and select sound number 2 and I have what I want. I run it through a phase shifter and have Leslie like control." I mean, geeze, I like brunettes but that doesn't mean I don't like his blonde wife....

It all comes down to what you know best and like most, and are comfortable using. In teh end though.....

MORE GEAR!!!!!

@Eddie
If chosing between having a mic goiung straight into a focusrite pre-amp & recording OR going throught the same & then into a mixer & then recording then there is really no choice. Apart from having an SSL mixer then the focusrite will ALWAYS be better than going through a mixer afterwards which will always degrade the sound.

If you have the luck to have focusrite pre-amps, why would you want to degrade that?

Why would I go into a focusrite (whatever that may be) and then to a mixer? I wouldn't. My mics are plugged into a Mackie mixer mounted into a 44 space rolling rack with the 4 digital reverbs, the 31 band stereo EQ, the compressor, the vocoder, etc..... and that mixer's outputs go to a patch bay (1L and 1R if you are keeping score), which gets patched to my M-Audio (24L and 24R) when it's time to sing. Most of the time, I let RB compose EVERYTHING and just sweeten some with manual parts. RB plays better than I ever did, so why mess it up with MY playing?

The whole idea of my post is that I don't want to ever touch cables if it isn't absolutely necessary. Other than jumpers to route stuff through the patch bay, I never have to cable anything. When I want the sampler for a track, I run 2 short red jumper cables from 22 to 24, which sends 22 (the sampler) to 24 (the M-Audio interface). All the synths, the drum machine, the vocoder.... everything... all routed through the patch bay. Other than those 2 12 inch red patch cords, I never plug anything in. The M-Audio is wired permanently to the powered Wharfedale near field monitors so I never touch those. There's also a bunch of MIDI routing in there but that's boring.

And honestly, all the "adds noise" talk falls on deaf ears to me. One more step in my signal chain doesn't take my signal from "cemetery at night dead quiet" to "bulldozer pushing gravel across a corrugated metal runway". I take that kind of thread with the same shaker of salt as the "I only use Monster Cable because...." bandwagon nonsense. Those people couldn't tell Monster Cable from the Monster Mash if they didn't know in advance it was or wasn't Monster Cable. I DO find a great deal of comic relief from those people though.

Like the guy years ago who I let use my Les Paul one night while his was in the shop. He went on and on about how he LOOOOOVED the sound of Dimarzio pickups. Wouldn't play a guitar with ANYTHING ELSE. Told him the were Dimario. He was happy as a clam. Right up until the end of the night when I broke his heart and told him they were Seymour Duncan pickups on my Les Paul. While he THOUGHT they were Dimarzio, he loved them. I LOVE doing stuff like that to people!

And if they get mad at me, I blame rharv.

Eddie, bupper's comment was going through mixer preamps and then the focusrite.

I'm not saying that it's the cemetery vs. bulldozer thing.

However, with 24 bit recording, with a really clean signal path (I'm not talking just copper here, I'm talking about active electronics that have a real 'self-noise' aspect - just so you know, my speaker cables have always been bulk lamp cord from the hardware store!)

I'm talking cheapskate factor here as well. Let's not forget that.

BTW - my VFX-SD took a dump back in February. It's probably repairable, but right now I'm saving for a Casio XW-P1. Almost there.

-Scott

Bupper.

You were quite right, of course. I just enjoy being controversial. Also, I love my Focusrite Scarlett.

Hey, I know Beverley well - lovely town and not more than an hours drive from here.

How long have you been in France and what's your French like? I've just started contributing to the French Forum, because they're trying to build up a bit more interest there and they're happy for anyone to post, as long as it's in French. They're a friendly lot and they don't seem to mind me using it to improve my terrible French!

ROG.

My French is pretty good, my missus is French. I've been here 23 years. My father lives in Beverley & I lived there for 10 years I remember having a good few nights out around York (only 40 moles) & almost never missed a race meeting. I'll have a look at the french forum

The Focusrite Scarlett is the best value for money on the market.

Just curious Bupper, does the French version of "Bande Dans Une Boîte" include comments in the help files like "You Ameree-cons are so steu-peed...."?

@ Eddie
I wouldn't know, I have the english version. I do hope thats just a feeble attempt at humour rather than an attempt to antagonize.

You don't know me well if you have to ask that question.....

Between me and Silvertones, we are always the first to send out the wise crack....

This reminds me of the time I walked the 285 circular steps to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. As I sat at the top, gasping for air and pretty sure that this was the place I would finally have a stroke and die, my ex wife comes walking up to me and said "Why didn't you take the elevator?" And I said, between gasps, "There's an ELEVATOR????" to which she replied "What did you think you were paying that 8 bucks for?"

Note.... EX wife..... I don't think she knows to this day, 10 years later, how close she came to becoming road debris on the Champs-Élysées.... and there was a trash can RIGHT there....

Elevator....