Apr 03, 2006 - Using a Fostex VF160 with an ADAT input to Adobe Audition 2.0

Occasionaly I get questions via e-mail about Audio Technical Stuff... I wouldnt say I'm an expert...yet, but if I know something, I will try and help.

Have decided that Here in my blog I will post those questions and try to answer them to the best of my ability :-)

"Quote:
Hi Michelle

You don’t know me but I am from Ireland and found you and your website while searching to for help online with my Fostex VF160.

Please excuse my boldness in contacting you for help but I am at a loss and you describe your setup as exactly the same as I am trying to achieve.

I have the Fostex VF160 and am trying to hook it up to my PC using an E-MU 1212 sound card with ADAT interface to run it through Adobe Audition 2 but I am completely lost. It seems like I have all the tools but not the know how.

At this point feel free to ignore my email and I will fully understand but I would appreciate any guidance you may be able to offer in getting this to work.

I am trying to get a home studio up and running for the sole purpose of recording my own band and this would be a great step forward for us to bypass the monotony of having to burn everything to CD and then bring it into Audition.

Kind regards and I look forward to hearing from you

David

End Quote"


Hi David,

This is what I do... I hope it helps.

On the Fostex VF160:
*Enable all the tracks you would like to send to the adat (either 1 to 8 or 9 to 16). Also enable record button.
*Go to Setup menu (press setup button top right hand corner), scroll down to "DigitalOut" and set it to "ADAT"
* Now everything going in to your fostex should be going out the ADAT line. Connect adat cable to computer.

In Adobe Audition 2.0 (previous versions of Audidtion don't support ADAT multitracking):
* Go to the "Edit" menu, and find "Audio Hardware Setup"
* Select the "Multitrack View" Tab at the top
* Choose your "Audio Driver" from the available options - you'll need to choose an ASIO one for multitrack purposes it will probably be called ASIO EMU driver, mine says either "ASIO 2.0 VSL2020" or "ASIO Digidesign Driver". It will try and test your configuration - let it do its thing.
* select the "Control Panel" Button, and under "Advanced" set the Clock source of your driver to "adat" instead of "internal" - this is an important step, as it will stop any strange static noises and glitches/jitter you might otherwise get if its using the other time source.
* Further down, Under "Input and Output Ports", Choose "Inputs" - It should come up with a list of available inputs on your Sound card. The ADAT channels should come up on that list.
* Press "Apply" and "Ok" to whatever boxes come up.
* Now, on the individual track that you want to record onto, you should be able to select your input - hopefully the adat channels will come up as options.

you should be set . If you have issues with latency, you might have to go to the "Options" Menu, select "Montoring" and try the "External" option. I'd probably try them all to see what gives you the best result.

All the best,
Michelle

Apr 02, 2006 - What a month March was!

* Significant progress on Sonic's Album
* Started Amperzahn's Album
* finished tracking five of own songs... now I just have to fins the time to mix!!
* Mellatones Album underway
* Ishtar and Alpine Fault EPs underway
* upgraded PA being used live now
* Room within a room finished at The Rock Factory (our shed)

*I have mixes currently underway for:
Miscreant, Subserviant, Dawn Session, Inverse Order, Kolektiv, Fries With That, The Glory Sea, Killt, Amperzahn, Alpine Fault, own stuff, Ishtar, Sonic...

and Mark (my partner) is doing songs for The Twitch and Tahuna Breaks, and lots of live sound.

Hopefully we are going swimming with the Dolphins this coming Sat - it will be a well deserved break.

Feb 25, 2006 - New Recording System...

Have finally upgraded from the digi001: Here is a picture of my new system - digi002 Rack with Intel dual channel 2.8GHz PC. My Awesome partner built the rack it is in - fully portable... and mine all mine... um well, at least it belongs to my credit card/bank right now ;-P



On the random side, I've also started ballet lessons again. I love my point shoes!

Feb 09, 2006 - YAY!! Recording my own stuff!!

As an Audio Engineer, I have come to realise that all my own stuff always comes last on the priority list of things to do... but this week I have actually made some progress on two facets of my own musical projects. On Monday, we recorded drums for 3 songs, for the bands I'm in call "Amperzahn", with the new drummer we are training up (what a great way to get him to learn the songs! lol) On Tuesday we did some bass and guitars. All the while my list of other things to do is getting longer - but I figure I have been doing so much for everyone else lately, that I deserved some ME time... so today, I spent the day doing my own songs, with a good friend, Andrew (formerly of the band Apollo Drive), who is just the most Awesome keybaord player on the face of the earth (IMHO! lol) - he is an great session musician! and I've promised to record his own stuff in exchange for his time :-) yay!!

I know I'm gonna have lots of fun doing that.

Jan 28, 2006 - Miking up Guitars to get a grunty sound....

Now I think it helps to have a good guitar amp and cab, the favourites that I have been lucky enough to record are a huge Orange quad run by a Peavy 50/50, as well as a beautiful Soldano amp someone once brought into my shed. Very close behind these two are the JCM series from 800 to 2000 (play around enough and you'll get a nice sound out of those) and also the Mesa boogie double or triple rectifiers - though the sound tends to be a bit more fuzzy than I like... oh and marshall AVTs and and engls tweaked right give a nice sound too...

More important than the type of cabinet or amp though, I think is how you tweak the knobs and mike it up. I'm not really an expert, but here are some tips that I think help:

* If the guitar amp has "tubes/valves" in it, use a condenser that is clean and crisp like an Rode NT2 or an AT4033 or similar.

*If the guitar amp is solid state and has not tubes, you might want to use a "Tube" microphone like the Rode K2 or similar.

(Rule of thumb - "warm" microhpone with "cold" amp, "cold" mic with "warm" amp... I pretty much use the same rule with vocalists - infact any instrument.

*Listen with you ear infront of the cabinet where the microhpones might be placed, and adjust the bass, treble and mids to your liking while your there.

*Use 2 microphones - one I will always use is a trusty SM57 right up against the grill and about a quarter way in from the edge of the cone(easy), the other (condenser - chosen as I have written in astrix above) I will place a little further away from the amp, usually by "ear" - what I mean, is I will listen to the guitar tone where the microphone is, or if that is too ear peircing, I will use a set of headphones and move it till I like the tone. You will be able to hear a "phasing" effect when you move the micohpone back and forward whilst your listening on headphones. Place it where you think it sounds gruntiest. One thing I have learned over time is, no formula works better than your ears - use them!

* Get the guitarist to listen to the sound coming from their guitar amp through your monitor speakers, and have them make any adjustments they might want to make (or you an do it, but a guitarist often has in mind a tone they like)

*Record at least 2 takes with the 2 microphones - I will often do more so I can bring in a "wall" for choruses. Pan the pairs of guitars to your likeing ( I think symmetry is important), making sure the same take on the different microphones are not "paired" for example, I might pan the condender mike takes hard left and right, and the SM57 takes at 50 % on each side so for example from left to right I might have:
L Condenser Take 1 at 100%L, SM 57 Take 2 at 50%L Centre SM57 take 1 at 50% R, Condenser Take 2 at 100% R.

* I will the adjust the mix of SM57 to Condenser microphone, adding more 57 if I want more "omph" and adding more of the condensers if I want a more "bright" sound in the mix.

* If I want seperation in the mix, i will often low cut the guitars, rolling off in a slope everything below 100.

* When I'm mixing I think about everything having its own space both panning wise and frequency wise - both if at all possible.

*Compression of the distorted guitars can add some "Omph" too.

*Layering, for example with "Octave guitars" in crucial bits of the song can add a new dynamic, bringing more guitars in in the chorus will often make a difference too. Also adding an acoustic or clean guitar sometimes, just in the background of a distorted chorus adds some definition and variation to sound.

*Over dubbing extra rhythm guitars when the guitar solo is happening - left and right...
and over all EQing left and right a little differently, eg L condenser having a little low Q, 3db boost at around 250, and the right sm 57 having a little low Q boost at around 1KHz... that kind of thing will enhance stereo effect.

That's all I can think of for now!
I say go forth and experiment, no matter how small you guitar combo.
My partner got a huge sound out of a 100 Watt Peavey Scorpion on a fairly low volume. Loud volume is not always feasible or necessary, especially when you have lots of people living in the same house.

Here's an example mix with guitar sounds captured using techniques above:
It is a SM57 against the grill, and Rode K2 between a foot and 2 feet away, Some sort of Marshall AVT amp and quad cab.

Click Here!

More discussion!

Jan 21, 2006 - Tips for Using Adobe Audition - My favourite Mixdown program

Marcus D wrote to me asking about how I use Adobe Audition in my mixdown process - here are some of the details:

Although I record into Protools, I consolidate all the files so that they are the same length and then import them into Adobe Audition - I don't use Protools to mix because I don't; have enough memory on my mac, so it starts complaining as soon as I add any plugins.

I basically use all Adobe Audition plugins, The "Studio Reverbs", The "Graphic EQ" and the "Dynamics".

Her are some other things I do:
*first I will compress and EQ and clean (silence any unwanted noise - eg between the toms) every track seperately and according to instrument, especially the drums, saving the processed files by another name like "Kick_Compressed_Eqd", "Bass_Compressed_Eq'd", "vocals_Compressed_PitchCorrected". i use quite a few of the presets that come with audition, though often will create own presets for each band I record.

*create 3 buses, one with Drum Reverb (Plate), one with vocal Reverb (Plate) and one for the guitars/instrumetns (Guitar verb)

*send all drums at different percentages to the Reverb, OHs, Kick - very little, perhaps max 30% and Snare and Toms usually at 100%. I also make sure that the Dry is coming back 100% on the bus/channel strip. Vocals I usually send 100%, and also ensure the dry is on 100% as well again. Guitars, I use the reverb very sparingly on distorted gats (max 25%), but will add a little more to acoustic guitars.

*I will usually add extra EQ on the channel, on top of what I've already done to each track, because when they are in the mix, making them stand out can be a different ball game to how they sound by themselves.

That's all I can think of for now...

here are some snapshots of EQ and Compressor settings for drums/ individual files:







Read more here:

More discussion!

Jan 20, 2006 - Crazyness!

On Wednesday we recorded 32 tracks of a band called the Spacifics "Live", then proceeded to mixdown each track... took til 3 in the morning. It was really weird because the band are involved in a Reality TV show, and so there was a camera crew in our face all day.

Now I'm really tired, but I'm enjoying Mixing a "These Four Walls" Song called "Walk Away"... It's starting to sound pretty massive. I hope everyone will like it as much as me. I keep on singing along!! :-)

NZ ON Air Funding round deadline next week, so I have lots of mixers to do for bands so that they can submit their songs before next Friday.