Archive for June, 2007
Sunday, June 24th, 2007
Probably the cheapest mics you will find, the K-Micro is a 2″ long condenser and only costs $5, or a matched pair for $20. I bought a matched pair last week and when they came in I was surprised at how small they really are, then I thought: how the hell am I going to use these without a mic clip.
So upon testing the mics, comparing to my Audio-Technica AT2021s I made these observations:
They are much ‘hotter’, than the ATs
They are also much noisier
Mounting these mics is problem at the moment, they should come with clips, even if it costs more.
They are not as bright, the frequency response is not as flat, but did have more lows than the 2021s
I’ve only tried them on a guitar cabinet so far, and really I wouldn’t ever use a pencil condenser on a cab, so its not really a good test, but the differences can be heard.
For mounting these mics I have these giant foam twist ties from the local dollar store. They work great for a variety of things, but I will be looking into getting a proper mic clip for these.
Some samples:
direct k-Micro 2021
http://www.karmaaudio.com/kmicro.html
Posted in Gear, Microphones, Shootout | No Comments »
Sunday, June 24th, 2007
Every Monday I highlight free plugins new and old that are worth checking out. See all posts in the Free Plugin Of The Week Series.
Jeroen Breebaart’s Ferox is this week’s featured free plugin. Ferox is a tape saturation modeler VST plugin with controls for saturation and hysteresis effects. Tape echo effects can also be achieved.
I really like this plugin, I was looking for something to add a bit of analogness to Pro Tools and without buying the McDSP or DUY plugs this one works for me at the moment. I add it to my mixdown aux to kind of glue everything together and on vocal tracks to add a bit of saturation without it sounding distorted. A word of warning, watch out for that Feedback knob and there are a few presets designed to feeback instantly, if you’ve got headphones on its going to hurt.
Also check out Jeroen’s Omniverb, a quite nice free reverb.
http://www.jeroenbreebaart.com/
Posted in Free Plugin Of The Week, Plugins, Software, Virtual Effect | 1 Comment »
Sunday, June 17th, 2007
If you’ve been on any recording forum in the past month you’ve probably seen discussion or an ad for Kenny Gioia’s Protools tutorial videos. I’d seen a couple of them before which lead me to The Womb forum and I found out Kenny was making more of them. There are 40 videos in the download or DVD, and they are well worth the money. Right now they are 20% off making them $39.99.
Kenny’s tutorials are easy to follow along with and really open up your mind to new ways of working in Protools both with editing and mixing. Some of the tutorials are PT HD only such as the Beat Detective Collection Mode one but most of the others can be easily adapted to work with LE and M-powered.
You can view some sample videos and order here:
http://www.grooveboxmusic.com/store/training-videos/pro-tools-tips-and-tricks.html
Posted in Plugins, Pro Tools, Software, tutorial, video | No Comments »
Sunday, June 17th, 2007
The next batch of Nine Inch Nails multitracks are available now. The are in Garageband/Logic format (.aiff?) for Macs and .wav for Protools or Cubase or other DAW.
The songs are:
- Vessel
- God Given
- The Beginning of the End
http://yearzero.nin.com/
Posted in Download, music | No Comments »
Sunday, June 17th, 2007
In Kenny Gioia’s Pro tools videos he sometimes uses a program called QuicKeys for automating various tasks in Pro tools. Doing the keystrokes manually is time consuming and when its 4 or 5 button presses or menu options you tend to mess up. With automation software you can record every key press and replay it instantly. Quickeys is great, and its available for Mac and Windows, but…its $80, thats money that could be spent on mics and other recording gear.
There are other options, but I spent all Saturday morning trying out everything I could find, and none of them worked as well as Quickkeys.
Macro Express 3 worked ok.
I couldn’t get anything to quickly open an audiosuite plugin.
If anyone knows of one that works well with Pro Tools email me.
Posted in Pro Tools, Software | No Comments »
