The Future of Microsound?

[Gary Boggess]

A final note concerning my heavily modified
"antique" TEAC TASCAM MODEL 5:

Socketed IC's are a wonderful thing.
(As long as you use the gold plated ones
to ensure optimum contact.)

Having looked over many of the newer mixing
boards at various audio retailers... I see
a maintenance issue I don't have with my
old module based Model 5:
the larger scale circuit boards used currently
make repairs a major ordeal.

When I have a problem, I have two choices:
a) Remove two skrews, pop the front panel, remove one *****
I meant skrew, *geesh Dave*
and PULL the channel module, pop in a few new op-amps,
and re-install. The process takes less than 15 minutes.

b) Change out a module... but how could I improve on (a) ?

I stock at least 50 spares of each chip type thanks to Ebay.
A while ago, I bought a 3rd Model 5 board as a spare
and for remote use. So, I've always got SOMETHING
to get through the moment.

If I had a newer mixing board... repairs would THEN mean...
UNPLUGGING THE ENTIRE CHASSIS and unscrewing a
major portion of the casing, just to replace an op-amp!

And in my case, where I've harnessed the entire board's rear
I/O's to the PATCH BAY, it just looks like a newer mixer would be
the more trouble than it's worth!

RE: screws, ***** or skrew...
(Pitty to the forum if Dave or "the web meister" get their
hands on a Thesarus of Rap and Heavy Metal words!!!!)

[Rich LePage]

Yeah, these days are def a "when it acts up,
replace it" type of thing - another symptom of much else that's
not as fixable as once was.

It has made some stuff very cheap and reasonably
quiet... but fixable- not! Everyone uses "surface mounted
components" which are almost impossible to repair --if
you can even get parts that will fit. (Mouser and Digikey
are a couple places I've often bought from)

I had left a pair of Audio Technica 4033's at an outside
studio for a few days, someone used them w/o my OK,
and dropped one hard. I sent it to A/T but not repairable
in the end. They tried and sent it back, but it sounded so
diff we refused to keep it.

Just about everything else is same- from your wall oven
to (in my case) a Jeep SUV. Squirrels from hell munched
on its wiring and fried its 2 computers- resulting in not
running at all, big tow bill, and bigger $ to replace both
"modules" and rework the main harness.

When we did the work on the Soundcraft and also on some other
old stuff, we indeed socketed many things, same reasoning as
yours w/the Mod 5. I also had done that for ages on Ampex cards
and on some old UREI pieces - in partic. the "little dipper" filter
set they made, which I used to use a lot.

[Gary Boggess]

I used to but newer "state of the art" stuff.
These days, I don't. Not unless there's a client
asking for it or a project I KNOW will be significantly
better if I upgrade something. As I did last year
with the WAVES plugins. I've watched too many
studios COME UP and GO DOWN because of debt...
while trying to BUY ALL THE LATEST AES hype gear.
The sentiment of "buy it and THEY will come"
is too risky in our current economy.

Once, I paid $9800 for the Emulator I.
(Synclavier was WAY WAY WAY too expensive for me).
I was the first (I know of) studio in Ohio to have a sampler.
For six months, I did have calls to the Cleveland area ad
agencies to do effects sampling and musical application of
hamburgers frying, chopping sfx and etc for GD RITZY commercials.
And there were a few others.

While I was paying monthly for the Emu I... for 3 years...
Sequential Circuits came out with the Prophet 2000
with 10 times the features for $2500 the next year!!!
I bought one ASAP... and eventually two!
I still have them... the filters are ONE OF A KIND!
I also have FOUR Emulator samplers (two e6400 Ultras/E4X/e6400)
which I bought off of Ebay for a total of $1350...
plus I've spent $$$$ on sample libraries too.
These samplers are incredible musical tools... and
sound BEEFY, MUSICAL and have real KNOBS!
I know that many who traded their Emu samplers
for the newer software versions have retreated!
So I love advancements these days... the "crowds"
dump their great stuff for newer junk...
and I can buy great tools for pennies on the dollar!

Unless it's a monitor speaker, or a sensitive device
that's easily damaged, I say buy it off of Ebay
and take your wife to dinner with the savings.
The newer junk isn't THAT much better these days...
and the savings from buying TWO or more years
OLDER gear is just too smart from every aspect.
If you want it today and it's $950, wait a year or
two and you'll buy it for $300 or less.

Not to mention that people are trading off their
stuff way too early to know if the new stuff is actually better!
And in numerous cases, I've determined the NEW
STUFF is often the future CLASSIC STUFF people
salivate for. Case in point, my Moog MINIMOOG Model D.
I bought it in 1972 for $1250 and it's worth over $3700
now if not more. And many of my music clients ask
me to use it on their music.

Old isn't necessarily old... and new isn't necessarily better.
MicroSound is also such a case (for the most part.)

For me to spend money... my decision to BUY is
based on one or more of the following points:

it has to make my work:
a) more profitable and be requested by clients
b) faster and easier without causing more issues

and it has to:
c) be something I need or at least WANT
d) be manufactured with integrity so I can rely on it
e) fit within the design concept of my facility
f) significantly IMPROVE the audio quality to a noticeable extent

And with all that in mind... you'd think I'd already have ProTools!
Truth is, I get about two calls a year that ask for ProTools.
However, I know of several Tampa area ProTools studios
who are no longer in business. The rest of the inquiring people
just want to record and produce their projects.
My hourly rate seems to be the major deciding factor... to
the point I often ask: "does it matter if the person who records
your sound has any experience or knowledge that would make
your recording good enough to actually SELL & MAKE money?"

[Gary Boggess]

Originally Posted by Gary Boggess

I used to buy newer "state of the art" stuff.
These days, I don't. Not unless there's a client
asking for it or a project I KNOW will be significantly
better if I upgrade something. As I did last year
with the WAVES plugins. I've watched too many
studios COME UP and GO DOWN because of debt...
while trying to BUY ALL THE LATEST AES hype gear.
The sentiment of "buy it and THEY will come"
is too risky in our current economy.

Once, I paid $9800 for the Emulator I.
(Synclavier was WAY WAY WAY too expensive for me).
I was the first (I know of) studio in Ohio to have a sampler.
For six months, I did have calls to the Cleveland area ad
agencies to do effects sampling and musical application of
hamburgers frying, chopping sfx and etc for GD RITZY commercials.
And there were a few others.

While I was paying monthly for the Emu I... for 3 years...
Sequential Circuits came out with the Prophet 2000
with 10 times the features for $2500 the next year!!!
I bought one ASAP... and eventually two!
I still have them... the filters are ONE OF A KIND!
I also have FOUR Emulator samplers (two e6400 Ultras/E4X/e6400)
which I bought off of Ebay for a total of $1350...
plus I've spent $$$$ on sample libraries too.
These samplers are incredible musical tools... and
sound BEEFY, MUSICAL and have real KNOBS!
I know that many who traded their Emu samplers
for the newer software versions have retreated!
So I love advancements these days... the "crowds"
dump their great stuff for newer junk...
and I can buy great tools for pennies on the dollar!

Unless it's a monitor speaker, or a sensitive device
that's easily damaged, I say buy it off of Ebay
and take your wife to dinner with the savings.
The newer junk isn't THAT much better these days...
and the savings from buying TWO or more years
OLDER gear is just too smart from every aspect.
If you want it today and it's $950, wait a year or
two and you'll buy it for $300 or less.

Not to mention that people are trading off their
stuff way too early to know if the new stuff is actually better!
And in numerous cases, I've determined the OLD
STUFF is often the future CLASSIC STUFF people
salivate for. Case in point, my Moog MINIMOOG Model D.
I bought it in 1972 for $1250 and it's worth over $3700
now if not more. And many of my music clients ask
me to use it on their music.

Old isn't necessarily old... and new isn't necessarily better.
MicroSound is also such a case (for the most part.)

For me to spend money... my decision to BUY is
based on one or more of the following points:

it has to make my work:
a) more profitable and be requested by clients
b) faster and easier without causing more issues

and it has to:
c) be something I need or at least WANT
d) be manufactured with integrity so I can rely on it
e) fit within the design concept of my facility
f) significantly IMPROVE the audio quality to a noticeable extent

And with all that in mind... you'd think I'd already have ProTools!
Truth is, I get about two calls a year that ask for ProTools.
However, I know of several Tampa area ProTools studios
who are no longer in business. The rest of the inquiring people
just want to record and produce their projects.
My hourly rate seems to be the major deciding factor... to
the point I often ask: "does it matter if the person who records
your sound has any experience or knowledge that would make
your recording good enough to actually SELL & MAKE money?"

This is a repost to correct some really dumb typos!

[geezer]

....Yeah, back in the days when I had my truck up and running with the 600B, 2 inch and Dolby SR (early 90s), my famous younger brother (Paul R. Smith) had been invited by a major studio musician to record his band at a newly renovated studio on music row in Nashville......He brought the tapes up to the truck for a listen and quick mix kind of thing......Classic Neve console, well constructed rooms in the current design mode, etc.

I have to say that the tracks, although they had a certain kind of big time flavor, were not particularly good sounding to my ears at the time, and several had some pretty good hum on them. What was that all about? I think it was probably: a)maintenance issues on the big board b)doing things the "way they were done" instead of the way they sounded best c)low attention paid to essentially a non-paying client inside of that very busy atmosphere d)recording with a very particular set of effects and eqs planned for use later at mix time.

When I built my truck, I made it multitrack only as an afterthought. I had come up in the live sound and NPR school of mixing to 2 track, and all of the truck was designed that way.....Perhaps it was a little arrogant and foolhardy, but the idea was to get it right the first time. I printed any eq and compression (didn't use much then) I used live right to the multitrack, and I did not have a way to mix back from the tape live. The original notion was that the tracks were only going to be usable if I could get a decent live mix.......The multitrack tape was so expensive at that point that most of my public radio client base couldn't have afforded to pay for it anyway.

Even though this put me in the pretty precarious position of not really knowing how my tracks sounded until after the fact, I tended to get praise for the sound of the tracks when they went out to other studios, even though recorded through a mid-level Soundcraft......I think my sort of classical use of eq made up for the less dynamic and bandwidth capabilities of the Soundcraft compared to the Neves, etc......Plus, I had spent some money and time having one of the old school NPR design engineers build me a balanced, carefully level matched set of direct out amps for the board.

I had not really done any serious multitrack work when I started that series of Blues Alley albums (other than 8 track work at a couple of friends studios). It was a pretty big shocker when I tried to get the mix of the first set of tapes to sound as good as my live mix....with the obvious goal of sounding better in the end, of course. It was not only an issue of hearing the alterred sound off of tape, but also me being removed from the live situation....A real eye opener. It probably took me a week to get to that point with the first tune on the first of those 5 or 6 albums.. ...Over time, I have always added the things I learned in the multitrack mixing back into the live mix, however, so some of it was certainly just gaining new skills on my part.

The other thing going on here, though, is probably the slightly mid-level state of the Soundcraft as a summing mixer.....In other words, the direct out amps I had built were really tweaked, and all happened before anything entered the stereo buss....so when the tracks hit the tape, they were pretty darn optimized sonically....when they came back though all the gain stages and the stereo buss, they were probably slightly degraded compared to the world of API and Neve.....who knows, but it was all a major learning experience for me.

Even in that relatively simple set-up with that relatively simple console, I did have maintenance issues with the 600B which nearly put me out of business a couple of times, and definitely degraded one of the albums in that Blues Alley series. My operation did not have a lot of financial headroom, so this was a very big deal indeed.......My general impression has been that the maintenance issues tend to become more frequent and more expensive as the complexity and retail price of the console goes up. The brand new 8000GB SSL we had at BET (a broadcast version of the 4000) had constant little issues, and SSL wanted $12,000 a year to maintain it. I always though that was a good deal for BET, but they did not go for it, and paid the price in console down time.....When I have gone into lower budget studios that have picked up vintage consoles inexpensively, there is almost always a relatively serious maintenance issue that crops up.

I have since gone to monitoring and mixing off tape, etc., for all the obvious reasons.....This really did not work so well with the 02R, but the 02R was fabulous for mixing the tracks I recorded (digitally, starting with DA88s) on the Soundcraft. The first day I had the 02R, my multitrack mixes suddenly sounded bigger and more pro.....I am sure most of this was 1)The fabulous automation, and 2)suddenly having 50 compressors available......

The DM2000 works really well in "big time" mode for mixing off tape, and has a lot of the same kind of analogue depth as the big time analogue consoles, so I guess, after swallowing the credit card debt, I'm in a pretty good place now. It is certainly a more powerful console in most ways than the big, bad analogue boys, and requires virtually no maintenance. With all that power comes some complexity that doesn't always make things easier, though, and I guess that is what started me down this whole path of thought.....

I'm not really nostalgic for the analogue days, just trying to figure out logically if I have lost anything since then, and if so, how I can get it back without losing the new stuff I have......I'm an old man, and I get a little confused about this stuff from time to time......Just mining memories to see if I can clear my head a bit.

[Gary Boggess]

I had a younger guy in hear one day who said the reason I may think my modified mixer was quieter was because I'm old (55) and I can't hear anymore!!!!

Of course, he wasn't right and he's not a client either!

We're all older. And I say thank God for it. We've seen a lot and we know where it all came from.

As for analog recording... I don't miss spending hours tweaking head zenith and the 50 million combos to alignment. I did it often enough to KNOW that nothing under 40hz was really there, and that anything above 14kHz was a blessing. I used DBX type I NR and it worked very well... even flawlessly to the point where I could abuse the medium a little. And I did.

But miss analog? No way. However... I miss being able to do something the average Joe Bag o' Donuts can't do. I sit here at my COMPUTER and click and peck way... missing the days when I worked with a console all lit up and the multi-track spinning around with meters and lights flashing. It was something unique.

Now, in a certain way, I'm just another warm body with a TV screen and a Windows based computer that doesn't work. And I can attest... I spend 10 times the time troubleshooting WINDOWS, as I did in tape machine alignment. Microsoft is the WORST part of this new technology. I resent their monopoly, and I resent being forced to essentially be a subsidiary of MicroSoft Inc. Without them, I and most of us HAVE NO BUSINESS. And yeah... it might be worse if there WERE 4 other OS systems. But at least there would be competition to produce the BEST OS and one that is reliable. The way it is now... Bill could care less... put up and shut up. He's a philanthropist now and more concerned that he leaves a legacy about how he tried to save the world.

So what have we lost? IDENTITY. CONTROL. FUN... and the sense that we were doing something unique that few others were doing. Now anybody with $450 bucks and a computer can record and mix and process with effects and basically, achieve a semblance of audio quality WITHOUT US. It's similar to what I'm seeing in the film world... they buy a digital video camcorder, a Mac G5 with Final Cut Pro and they're a filmmaker/director/producer. Don't laugh... it's happening!

And don't dare question them about what frame rate their film edit is at because they'll get real mad! Honest. It happened last week. According to this "filmmaker" ... SMPTE wasn't important. And when I told him differently, he was insulted.