Week 4?? 5? what ever week following the post before this one ha ha.: DISC EDITS

This week’s forum excursion found me falling asleep in disc edits. In my half-asleep haze I learnt that these guys got in on mastering CDs nice and early. Their soundproofing and design was impeccable, their equipment good quality and their couches allegedly pretty comfy. Disc edits have been operating since around 1992. Originally I think they intended to do other things like recording voice-overs. The equipment for this is still present and used. However, as CDs came to the fore of the audio landscape, it became apparent that something needed to replace the editing process present in tape recordings, something was needed to restore a little warmth to digital recording, disc edits set out to become a mastering studio. Like other mastering studios we have heard about, disc edits possess an array of analogue devices through which signal can be processed. They also make good use of equalisation and have an oscilloscope device that can tell you what the stereo image is doing. I was somewhat perplexed to learn that they usually listen to music at 80 db (at this level, you can work for an hour I think before needing to take a break). Personally, I would try and work at as low a level as possible (so at night, you could probably get away with considerably less than 80 db). However, it is imperative that every different recording requiring analysis for effective mastering is listened to through the same speakers and at the same volume. An hour and 45 minutes into this excursion, I woke right up when our disc edits man gave us the history of recorded music in 15 minutes (impressive). All of the manufacturing processes up until the point of CDs I was at least a little bit familiar with and yet this guy managed to make it sound interesting. Finally, he arrived at the era of the CD and not only told us about ‘Glass Masters’ but showed us one as well. In fact, he had 3 Glass masters (I think) and was able to show us the Glass, the Glass with a nickel coating and the Glass after it has been etched. He seemed mystified as to why bands might ask to keep their Glass Masters. That is no mystery to me, they look COOL.

blog for week 4 in the semester numbering 2: CD city

Here it is folks, the ins and outs of CD manufacture (surprisingly hard to find pictures of on the net). You take one master CD that meets the industry standards to the factory where a pair of technicians will spend 8 hours putting information on a 'stamper'. (The stamper is a reverse mold of the original information which is made from metal covered by glass). Then there are the CD production lines. The biggest issue with CD manufacture is getting your job into their schedule. In a large factory, a disc can be printed every three seconds. The process is approximately as follows...plastic pellets are melted down, stamped as they reach melting point, coated in metal and coated in more plastic. Finally, the disc needs a government approved barcode, I'm not sure if this is every individual disc with its own code or if the code is relevant to the information printed on it. If you want to be stingy, you can attempt to burn uber numbers of CDs at home...I don't recommend it. However, if you insist on this course of action, there is a program called Bravo that will slowly burn your discs for you (like maybe over night). Finally, your disc needs a picture, you have a choice between offset printing (photographic quality) or silk screen printing (more dotty). You could get a CD in the shape of a business card. Pretty expensive and they can only be played in CD players with trays but how cool is that!!! You can get CDs in other custom shapes too, they need only to be balanced. The plastic for these needs to be of a high quality. So, when you get all your CDs back, keep your master copy in a safe place. Oh, and of course, use refutable manufacturing plants who will take good care of your master while it is in their hands. David Grice suggests having three copies of the master, one for listening, one for safe “tape it up, never listen to it” and....another one for safe. Not surprisingly enough, people still manufacture tapes (you can sell anything to people crossing the Nullabor) and vinyl (it retains a much warmer sound). In Australia, there is only one place that produces vinyl, it is in Melbourne I think. Now, a little more class project feedback: ME – Instrumentally sound (good drums oh yeah) the vocals are out of tune, is this necessarily a negative (NB, the band went and recorded a bunch of stuff with someone else and put it on their Myspace and kept all of the ear drum mutilating partials int eh guitar and bass sounds, they obviously like to sound bad and, as a professional, I needed to give the band what they want. Ponytails gets thumbs up for panning of guitars and vocals, vocals maybe a bit loud. Simon – Mixed in headphones equals boom double tracked guitars good vocals in mono would be a different creature voice double tracked Jake – Rockin could have used a Rhythm part Don't work with pissed people Daniel – open lid for piano recording middle string miced with u87 good honky tonk feel

week something: Paradise (not surprisingly, not my idea of)

Well, never could two studios be as different as Mix Masters and Paradise. The former, in true Rock tradition I think, assembled over a life time of engineering and collecting, many devices being old/salvaged/restored/emulating the old, the engineers being their own masters (the guy from Paradise kept on referring to “the band’s producer” as the person who decides what to do. Producer? I have never seen a local band with a producer.) The building was old and homely unlike Paradise, which featured narrow corridors, wide screen TV, egg chairs and the smell of paint. The Paradise equipment was all bought brand new, top of the line stuff (no two inch multitrack taping machines kicking around this joint). The Paradise engineer a mere 23 years old, shipped over from Sydney to do Church recordings. So, what did I learn? Our guide said most sagely that it is better to get things right when recording than spend ages trying to fix it up in the editing stage. He also said, most intriguingly that, once you have a little experience and a little confidence…abandon the clean recording. If you have an A grade compressor at your disposal, run your vocals through it, it’s compression will sound infinitely nicer than anything Protools has to offer. If your desk is a quality beast of a desk, set your EQ at sound check, the result will be pleasant (and save messing around in post production). Upon examining our offerings of recorded material, the Paradise engineer played recordings through two different sets of speakers, one set of which Ken declared to sound ‘appalling’. This statement was met with the explanation of needing some poorer quality speakers for a more objective monitoring system (harking back to Stephen Fieldhouse’s adventures mixing on his car stereo). Alas, the overwhelmingly commercial attitude (manifest in such ideas as ‘if the drummer can not play to a click track, tell him to practice until he can.’) of our guide meant that I had trouble not tuning him out and gleaned little more knowledge than what you see above you. I can conclude that, I liked Mix Masters a lot more than Paradise and, I could never do work experience at Paradise. Too Much Church Music!

Mtf wk 2 or semester 2: Ideas city

At last, a bit of real world application, this week’s forum was spent investigating the Mix Masters recording studio up in the hills. Upon our arrival, we were shown an array of old-school analogue technology. Nifty devices included a 2 inch multitrack tape recorder and a Radar, countless reverb and compression units, ribbon mics and an analogue desk (that is never-the-less hooked up to Protools which Mix Masters essentially use as a filing cabinet/editing tool). All semester, I have been wondering why the old sound engineers are so reluctant to let go of analogue recording devices. Now, finally, I have an explanation. Quite simply, the attraction is distortion from track to track on the 2 inch multitrack tape. The less than perfect technology allows for a little bit of contamination (or ‘fuzz’) from the neighbouring track the end result being a nice kind of distortion that binds everything together. In the pursuit of a compromise between the mind-boggling ease of digital and the ‘warmth’ of analogue, a computer with a super ADC/DAC converter has been created. This is known as Radar. I think I would like one, can I have one please? Mix Masters have one wired up and often use it to record. The fellow who showed us around suggested (with his infinite array of options) that, just because you have access to a collection of equipment, you may not need it for a good sound. He would probably tend to start with nothing and add devices as the sound quality (or lack there of) dictates. He also had a nice collection of mics including very old, top notch vocal mics and assorted ribbon mics. He had found with experience that the best quality mic may not produce the best recordings in every situation. At the end of the day, it is a good thing to avoid simply follow a formula. Good advice given included the suggestion of trying your best to record warm ups as, they often as not prove to be the best take you get. Same as live situations, setting up more mics than you need is preferable and, much to my surprise, our guy suggested building rock mixes up from the guitars/vocals, something that I am keen to try with my recording from last semester.