6 Channels

There's a lot of iron in this box. I think my band(s) would prefer if I started playing a Leslie because it would weigh less.

I have six good channels of analog going on here. That's a pair of Lindell peamps above two pair of Neve 1272 preamps.
The A/D conversion is done with the M-Audio 2626 which then feeds the red thing -- a Focusrite Scarlett -- via TOSlink.
You might ask yourself "Why not eliminate either the M-Audio or the Focusrite?" Yeah. About that.
The Scarlett is USB so I can use my laptop. But the analog inputs on the Scarlett are very unhappy with the relatively high levels from the preamps and I can't turn the preamps down enough to work with it without getting into that very squirrely last 1/8 of a turn on the preamps pots. And the M-Audio, which can better handle the preamps levels, is only Firewire (so I can't use my laptop with it.) This means I have to feed the Scarlett with the M-Audio.
Note that the M-Audio's preamps aren't bad. They aren't as cool as the Neve preamps. But they're better than the Scarlett's. I'd come to a determination that I kinda liked the M-Audio's A/D better than the Scarlett's but not by much and so I'd be perfectly happy with the Scarlett's A/D if only the level thing weren't an issue.
Now. Three albums. One of which is an opera.
N.B. That thing on the top left is the power supply for an AKG C12A. I don't really have an awesome place to put it.

Pass the Test

I feel better now that I've given up on trying to test things and will just go with the M-Audio converter at 48kHz and recording at 16-bit. I'd use the Scarlett but I can't get the input levels under control with that thing.
I wouldn't have had to go through all that rigamarole if I'd only watched this video first.

Yes, it's almost an hour. But as a quick course in audio gear theory and testing it's well worth it. Ethan Winer does a much better job of explaining why I was frustrated trying to test things than I did.

Stacking tracks using higher-end preamps and reverbs seems to me to be better and easier to mix. Mr. Winer explains that the distortion on the same preamp on different instruments is a different kind of distortion. Which explains why it can be nice to record a whole record with the same preamps.

Now and Then

Typical for the New York Times the headline of this article isn't really demonstrated by the article itself. Royalties Slow to a Trickle. The key word here is "slow". As in, it's worse now than it was in some time before now.

“In certain types of music, like classical or jazz, we are condemning them to poverty if this is going to be the only way people consume music,” Ms. Keating said. 

Uh. Classical or jazz music... and not living in poverty? When has that ever been true? For four years between '59 and '63 maybe? For jazz artists touring Europe in the 1980's? I don't know.

This is odd thing for me to be cranky about because in this case because we have some actual data about royalties for streaming.
What do I mean then about "slow" or actual data? I mean we know what's happening now. But we don't really know what was going on then. What we don't have is context. How much were similar artists making before Spotify? It may be that information is simply not available in spreadsheet form because it was never delivered in spreadsheet form. 

It may be that artists were having an even worse time before. And now with Spotify there's at least something. Nobody knows. And as far as I can tell there's no way to find out.

Simple Sample Signs

Remember back when I was pontificating on the differences in sample rates and bit depths?

I've since given up. 48kHz and 16-bit is good enough for me. At least with Apogee converters they are. I've played The Great Gig in the Sky out of my iPod so many times now just to invert the polarity on different recordings and find I just don't care.
Actually, looking at the waveforms is interesting. Other than that, though, I just... don't care. My first reaction to hearing the 16-bit 48k recording was "Ooh, I like that one the best" before I realized which recording I was listening to.
I believe I'd already abandoned 24-bit as a recording bit depth when one has any sort of control over the input levels (recording classical music live and dialog for movies are not those times, so I'll still do those at 24-bit).
But I was still on the 96kHz Kool-Aid religion. I now forsake those high-sampling-rate gods. It's not that I believe those gods do not exist. I just do not believe they hold sway over the lands upon which I now live.
Excuse me while I set all my converters to 48kHz now. Oh look, now I can put signals over Lightpipe...

Last of the New Gear

I'm done with my studio for this year. Here's the Lindell 6X-500 preamps in their A Designs powered rack.

No, not the world's most awesome color-combination (brown on cream). I recorded some acoustic guitar with the preamps (boosting a little 6K on each channel just because I could.) The Lindell Test is at 96kHz, the Anubus was recorded at 48kHz. I downsampled them both to 44.1 based on the theory that such an obnoxious downsample would adversely affect both of them about equally. I threw both of the signals through identical non-linear summing plugins. Obviously, the performances are not identical because that would be impossible for me to do.

Now We Know

This is probably the single most helpful critique I've gotten from Taxi. First of all, it reiterated the one thing I'm coming to grips with about my music.

• It is no, nor has it ever been, terribly "modern" sounding. I don't have a contemporary bone in my body.

That's fine. But most importantly I've learned what genre Tyrannosaurus Mouse is.

• Psychedelic Space Rock

And that's spectacularly helpful to know. I suspect the City Samanas are Psychedelic Space Jazz Rock.
Now we know.

Edwina

Here is my pair of Ear Trumpet Labs Edwina microphones.

Numbers 195 and 210.

 The Edwina is a very sweet and smooth-sounding condenser. And you know how I feel about smooth-sounding microphones these days.

The very first thing I did with this microphone was to deface it. I put a little red dot on the front. I do that for two reasons, one is to mark the microphone as "mine", and the other to indicate which side is front. If you're listening to the mic it's very easy to tell which side is front. If you're just looking at it (which is how I do most of my band recordings) you have to know which way the bolts go in. And I know I'll never remember that.
I'd wanted to try them out on the Russian Chamber Chorus of New York. But FedEx didn't deliver until this afternoon.

Russian for Russian

Recording the Russian Chamber Chorus of New York is a spiritual experience. After Sunday's show I didn't think they could be any better. Nope. On Wednesday they were even more awesome.
I recorded using a pair of Oktava microphones. Fitting, isn't it? Russian microphones for the Russian Chamber Chorus.
One of the mics was an old silver one and the other was a newer black one. Even though the old silver one had been beat up over the years I couldn't tell the difference between the two sound - wise (I flipped them right and left during rehearsals just to make sure.)

For the actual recording they were in an X/Y configuration. You can see that the silver one has taken a hit.

I don't know if I'm becoming grumpy in my old age or I'm just letting myself be swayed by stuff I know intellectually or what but I like these Oktavas better for almost everything right now. They are vastly cheaper microphones than the AKG 460's. But they're smoother both on-axis and off-axis. Yes, the AKG mics have a bit more lift in the upper mids which many people find pleasing. But at the place I'm in with my life right now I like smooth.
It may be that I like the non-lobing off-axis sound the most with the Oktavas. Most directional microphones sound yukkity when you're not directly in front of them. And a lot of sound in a natural recording situation hits the microphones from behind (like all the reverberation from the back of the church). That stuff sounding bassy and squffly can make the whole recording sound less... well less musical.
So yeah. Microphone selection is more religion than science.
Now if we could only do something about the heating valve that was just over a quarter-tone sharper than the key I'd be all set.

MW

Mystical Weapons. I heard them yesterday when I was having my very decadent shave in a barber shop. They're totally like Gentle Giant meets King Crimson in a post-aught indy-modern world. Which is funny because their provenance is so not that. Or maybe it is.

I left this at rehearsal last week. Hopefully someone will find it and squirrel it away for me.

Leviathan Moon

Here's another track from City Samanas. I feel like we're getting a hang of this whole recording thing.
Ok. So. I was getting shaved today in a very hip place.

Here's Matt at Person of Interest in Brooklyn taking me to facial heaven. If I were an aristocrat I would get this treatment every day.

Anyway the soundtrack was Mystical Weapon. Yeah I know, Sean Lennon's band. They sound like a cross between Gentle Giant and King Crimson but, you know, with more Zappa influence than you'd normally expect.

Not my best day

Obsessed with remembering the stereo bar for two microphones for recording the Russian Chamber Chorus of New York I completely forgot the actual mic clips. A priest gave me some blue painter's tape*. Yeah. I'm not proud.

But then I had a more pernicious problem. Somebody kicked on the lights in the church and I got this obnoxious buzz in one of my AKG 460's. I thought maybe one of the capsules wasn't seated so I tried re-seating. That didn't work. I did notice, however, that my hand off to one side of the mic reduced the buzz considerably. Like my body was some sort of electromagnetic radiation shield for the microphone.
If I touched the mic capsule I could reduce the low-frequency portion of the noise. And I could get rid of some of the higher frequency noise stuff by putting my hand next to the mic.

Of course, I couldn't stand there with my hand up next to the mic for the duration of the concert. So I ran down and got a music stand, thinking that perhaps a big metal shield would do the same thing my hand did. It didn't. And it sounded almost as bad as it looks.
Amusingly if I touched the stand to the mic element I could get rid of a tiny bit of noise. If the music stand touched the little neck-thing between the capsule and the body of the mic I got some AM radio.

So none of that really worked.
By the time rehearsal was over I figured I'd swap the two mic elements just to confirm that it was the capsules and not the bodies of the microphones. Yep, the noise switched channels. But fiddling with the seating of the capsules a bit more and... the noise disappeared! Oh happy day.
Not for long.
Somebody dimmed the lights. Hoo boy.
So my EMI was back. Now, I quickly found I could shield a little of it (again) with my body. By this point the concert had started. The woman who came in late and sat in my aisle finally stopped rooting around in her purse for her keys. And there was no way I was going to be able to hold my hand up next to the microphone for the duration of the show.
So I did an ugly thing. As there was no intermission and not even any breaks between pieces, I just dropped the mic stand down to head-height right in the middle of the show. It sounds on playback (I just listened to it) like squirrels running up and down the microphone stand.
But with the mic stand down there by me I could shield it better. I had to breathe with my mouth open for the rest of the concert and every little tic and sound I made was louder than gunfire, but the noise was reduced.
Obviously on Wednesday I'm going to have another set of microphones as a spare...
*Sounds like the first line of a blues song.