Older devices no longer used in the studio

I got the diamonds in a car bootsale years ago for £15 quid.  The idea was to get a system more like the average home setup up at the low end of the budget to compare during making the music. These gave many years of service, doing exactly what they were supposed to, but the sound response was quite poor and completely lacked any significant bass response.

I built the monitors as shown on the left many many years ago, originally as disco speakers but they ended up being used as monitors in my studio.  The sound they produce is loud but that's about it and there is little in the way of quality. I guess they are great for recreating a non-ideal environment such as the one my music might be listened in.  For more accurate sound reproduction I had a small pair of hifi speakers and there is always headphones. These speakers have served well, however and have endured may parties and discos. In fact I think they are virtually bomb proof. I have also built a mosfet amp to go with them but this is only used for parties!

These have now been replaced by the above systems, but don't worry, they still re-appear for the odd party!

I originally used a home built 14 channel mixing console which added its own sound to many of my tracks! In my older songs the noise was quite audible in the background as French radio signals that the mixer seemed quite good at picking up - especially at around 8 - 9.00PM! I later found that the 'radio effect' in the mixer was controlled by being located directly above a hot radiator, in the end, I moved it away so it was colder, quieter and happier! Eventually I replaced it with a bought one. The mixer, centre of my studio is now a rack mounted mixer (mainly to save space) and is a Behringer 2804 Eurorack.

The mixer has enough inputs for everything I need and there is still some spare and there are enough auxes for my requirements. Mic inputs are provided but I don't invisage using more than one of these - unless - hey! I could mic up my drumkit! Yes!!

I had a problem with this unit as one day for no reason it didn't power on and the lights went mad and there was no sound. I returned to Behringer who charged 100-200 uk pounds to fix and it turned out to be a decoupling capacitor on an IC!

I notice this unit gets -very- hot after a couple of hours of use as well, I think it needed a fan or something installed, or maybe just different electronics! I'd be interested to know if anyone else has had heat problems with this model or similar.

1. Expander section
2. Compressor section
3. Peak limiting section

1 - the expander cuts the level dramatically when a lower threshold has been reached, the idea being that noise is removed when there is nothing desirable to record.

2 - the compressor can vary in complexity but always has a desired level you set, above which the gain is reduced so the level does not exceed that level. There is invariably a ratio control (calibrated 1:1 , 2:1 etc to 1:infinity) which determines the effectiveness of the compression. 4:1 is supposed to be a good starting point. The Behringer also has attack and release controls which can be set to auto.

3- the limiter abruptly cuts the level above a set threshold , useful for removing heavy spikes but will adversely affect the sound if used too heavily.
 

On the Behringer the two channels can be synced, essential for stereo use and there are many other features such as sidechain which allows an auxillary sound source to affect how the compression works.

For a while I used a 'Hifi' minidisc deck to master all of my tracks, but now I tend to save the raw WAVs and copy to CD when required.

After trying to use high quality tapes it was wonderful. Gone are the days of not knowing where on a tape a track is or finding undesirable glitches in the recording.
 
 

Though minidisc* is not supposed to be up to the recording standards of DAT or ADAT etc, when I used to use the MD I didn't notice any sound degradation when mastering anything I had created in comparison to the original. This is in stark contrast to the problems I have had using MP3 compression. I guess the guys at Sony had time to perfect their 'ATRAC' compression algorithm.

For those who don't know, the disks are very handy in physical size and you can store track names and disk names so you know which is which just by flicking through. Some disks come with a nice selection of labels and protective covers and there is software for your computer to automatically print the labels with designs of your choice.

So impressed by the Minidisc was I that I immediately bought a second recorder! This time in the format of a walkman which I now use with a stereo mic to grab sounds out and about. The unit has been to Venice, Dublin, Milano to name three (in the course of work) and has recorded many interesting sounds I am now using in new tracks.

Apparently Kiss 100 are using Sony MD for all their jingles (and other stuff too?).
 

*Minidisc is a trademark of Sony Corp.
 
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