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The only advantage in RB seems to be that you can re-gen a few bars of RT's instead of the whole track in BIAB.



I find the control over the Real Tracks is better for me in RB. I like to do things like generate many solos over the 8 or 16 bar solo space and cut and paste sections together. I have done as many as 8 to get what I wanted.

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I don't know what "mixer fade automation" is, but I have to have it! (so that's another strike against RB -- ha, ha).



If you use a control surface, as I do now, you can boost and cut sections of a track and the automation feature will remember those mixer moves. Like is for some reason, 8 bars of vocal is weaker than the rest. Rather than having to go in and gain change those 8 bars in RB, you can just slide the fader up for those 8 bars and then back down again and the software will remember that move. And you can watch the mixer fader go up and down when it happens, so there's the cool factor as well. What is funny, and shocked me the first time it happened, is when you start a new project in Sonar the faders on the mixer will snap to zero. The first time it happened I almost jumped out of my chair and grabbed the ceiling.

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Eddie, by the way, in a couple of threads you've mentioned that someone said you had too much reverb on a vocal -- but your vocal was 100% dry. I don't know if it was me (probably), but if the vocal was dry and you still had too much reverb on it -- then it was room reverb due to your recording setup.



You have done it once or twice but several others have as well. When I record, I am in an almost 100% anechoic environment. I will try to draw a picture with words.

I acquired a bunch of old doors for free. (Love Craigslist!) I also acquired some thick moving quilts for free from the local U-Haul when they replaced their stock with new ones. (Knock on a door or two! The worst thing that can happen is they say no.) I laid 2 of those doors down on the floor and, after installing hinges, stapled one of those quilts to it. Then I did the same for a second set of doors. When I record vocals, I take both of those door pairs and stand them up flexed to 90 degrees to make a square out of them with the mic set as deep into a corner as possible. The only opening in the carpeted square booth is a space to reach my arm out and click the mouse. I also turn the room speakers off and use headphones so the vocal track is not recording ambient music from the monitors. Also, the wall directly opposite the workstation has a quilt that I got for 2 bucks at Goodwill stapled to it, starting with the angled ceiling and on down to the floor.

I will also at some point build one of those 180 degree sound diffusing chambers that Guitar Center wants $100 for. I am still thinking about the right way to mount it to a mic stand, but I know how I will build the 180 degree C-shaped shell, and I have a bunch of foam sheets to glue into it. I may actually make it more like 270 degrees with a hood. We'll see.

On early efforts, I was doing everything outboard. The instrument reverb was usually setting #3 (.3 seconds) on an Alesis Midiverb II rack mounted reverb unit, and the vocals were setting #11 (.8 seconds). I was also using a Behringer stereo 31 band EQ. That was giving me WAY too many things to play with, and I only got one shot. Once it was recorded, it was down. With onboard effects, as you know, you can just delete the effect and start again with a clean track. I learned that if properly recorded and EQd, reverb is usually not necessary. I also started making slate sheets for every song with track assignments and notes like "vox have 1600hz boosted and 400hz cut - everything else flat".

This has been such a learning process and I am thoroughly enjoying it.