djwayne
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My 3 channel home recording rig....
I wanted to share with you my home recording rig I recently put together. It starts out with an Auralex MudGuard mic shield with a moving blanket clamped on it. It has three mics, a Shure SM7b with a CloudLifter CL-1 signal booster for vocals, and two Neumann TLM 102's mounted on a 12" stereo bar for stereo guitar recordings. There's a piece of foam that goes horizontally to separate the vocals from the guitar. This comes in very handy for mixing. You can either bury the vocals or bring them upfront or anywhere in between. The mics go into a Focusrite 18i8 USB interface, then into Sonar Platinum. It sounds great and my initial test recordings came out really good. Here's a pic.....
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chuckebaby
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 09:54:36
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you have 2000 dollars worth of microphones but are using moving blankets ? I need a second to try and fathom this  . I love the concept and I was joking about the blankets (well a little anyway). the TLM's excel on vocals I find. I don't use it as much as my RODE NT 1000. I prefer that for vocals anyway, sometimes a singer finds a mic that fits his jandra, his range perfect, that's my NT 1000. the Shure SM7b I thought was mostly for broadcasting stuff, how do you like it ?
Windows 8.1 X64 Sonar Platinum x64 Custom built: Asrock z97 1150 - Intel I7 4790k - 16GB corsair DDR3 1600 - PNY SSD 220GBFocusrite Saffire 18I8 - Mackie Control
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djwayne
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 12:22:04
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Well the SM7b model was used by Michael Jackson on the making of his Thriller album. It's a very low gain mic and needed a boost from the Cloudlifter CL-1 booster, the CL-1 provides 25 db of gain and makes the mic sound fantastic !!! So, if it's good enough for Michael Jackson, it's good enough for me !! After working with it for a while, I can see why he chose it. I like it, but it does need the CL-1 or a high gain (expensive) pre-amp. The moving blanket act as sound a deadener, and stop any reflections that my room may give...they seem to work very well. I can scream into this setup and it just absorbs the sound very much like a sound booth does. The TLM102's sound great on acoustic guitar. I wanted a stereo pair to aid in mixing, so far that's working out very well too !!
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chuckebaby
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 12:26:08
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I agree the TLM's work well for all kinds of acoustic instruments. I only have 1. but I would love to be able to put one near the hole and the other near the neck maybe even a third for room ambience.
Windows 8.1 X64 Sonar Platinum x64 Custom built: Asrock z97 1150 - Intel I7 4790k - 16GB corsair DDR3 1600 - PNY SSD 220GBFocusrite Saffire 18I8 - Mackie Control
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djwayne
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 12:36:08
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Yes the mics are expensive, but after working with them I know why...they sound great. Very directional, which is great for an untreated room like mine or in any home studio. The SM7b seems to block out everything except what it's pointed at. Great for vocals. For once in my life I wanted to use real deal mics, not Chinese knock offs...believe me it makes a difference, a big difference. I'm still just doing test recordings, but they sound really good. Better than anything I've recorded before. The mics are keepers !! Shure and Neumanns ?? I am truly blessed !!
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djwayne
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 12:54:30
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The moving blanket was cheap, about $5.00 bucks at Harbor Freight. I know it looks funky, but it does the job it was intended to do.
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xiwix
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 13:13:10
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Love the DIY! And you spend your $$$ where it matters. Another 100% totally wrong thing to try would be mid-side processing on that 3 mic rig - totally wrong with the potential of wonderful unknown results.
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djwayne
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 13:31:28
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I'm very happy with the current setup. I pan the left 102 to the left and the right 102 to the right, I keep the SM7b panned to center. This gives me a nice rich tone, sounds like the guitar is right in front of you. The vocals can then be brought out front for a really nice sweet spot blend. You can bring the vocals up to make the lyrics really stand out so you can hear them well. It has a very nice professional sound you can't get with one mic. Being able to mix these separated tracks was the goal and mission accomplished.
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djwayne
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 16:40:30
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The microphones weren't quite $2,000 bucks, I got them gently used or "new open box" for quite a bit less on eBay. So I saved about $500 bucks. I checked them out, they were all in very good condition and work perfectly.
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Jeff Evans
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 21:06:54
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There is a much more elegant solution. Using two figure 8 mics. By positioning them the right way you can get near perfect separation between vocals and guitar. http://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-how-can-i-use-figure-eight-mic-midside-miking-setup It is still not perfectly clear here but you mount them both horizontally and each stand needs to be on opposite sides. The vocal mic in the picture looks good. See how the null of the vocal mic is pointing towards the guitar. The guitar mic needs to angled in such a way as to the null is pointing towards the vocals. But the diaphragm is still pointing towards the guitar. When you do this you will get near perfect separation between vocals and guitar. The only caveat here is that the figure 8 mics are also picking up from the other sides so you need to point this whole setup into a well damped part of the studio. eg the area opposite the singer/guitarist needs to be well damped if possible to stop room reflections from getting in. Once you do this though you will get excellent results. You don't need two mics on the guitar either to get stereo. You can use the mono guitar channel and process it with various effects to create a stereo ambience around the guitar sound. eg Bob Katz's plugin SHEPPi which is free but still only 32 bit as far as I know.
post edited by Jeff Evans - 2016/08/20 21:37:18
Specs i5-2500K 3.5 Ghz - 8 Gb RAM - Win 7 64 bit - ATI Radeon HD6900 Series - RME PCI HDSP9632 - Steinberg Midex 8 Midi interface - Faderport 8- Studio One V4 - iMac 2.5Ghz Core i5 - Sierra 10.12.6 - Focusrite Clarett thunderbolt interface Poor minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas -Eleanor Roosevelt
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djwayne
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 21:43:05
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First off I don't have a well dampened room, all I have is my living room. Secondly I don't have any figure 8 mics. I have what I have, that's it. No more mics. I don't want to pick up any room noise, my mics in their configuration with this rig does this job nicely. I don't want to process a mono track, I have stereo mics, why not use them ?? It sounds great to me without processing. Having two mics on the guitar, allows me to blend them together to find the sweet spot. I don't want anymore plug ins than I have already...
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djwayne
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 21:54:41
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Jeff Evans
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 22:18:32
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Although that recording is 40 seconds long I can only hear the first 23 seconds. The rest is silence. It could be due to me using an older XP machine though not sure. So I cannot tell much. Can you check.
Specs i5-2500K 3.5 Ghz - 8 Gb RAM - Win 7 64 bit - ATI Radeon HD6900 Series - RME PCI HDSP9632 - Steinberg Midex 8 Midi interface - Faderport 8- Studio One V4 - iMac 2.5Ghz Core i5 - Sierra 10.12.6 - Focusrite Clarett thunderbolt interface Poor minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas -Eleanor Roosevelt
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djwayne
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Re: My 3 channel home recording rig....
2016/08/20 22:29:33
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Yes that's right, I put on a bunch of silence and the end of my track because of Soundcloud's habit of playing other songs right after mine stops. It quite annoying because their songs are usually very loud. So a period of silence is a gift. Yes I know it's a very short clip, but it's only to demonstrate the sound of the mics.
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