The Wishing Well

Tom Greenlee · **Voice Talent** Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 945

I thought it would be cool to have a thread where everyone could post their "Gear wish list". I was thinking more along the lines of realistically speaking rather than wishing you had a full blown recording studio setup with consoles etc. More along the lines of when you have the funds to afford it, you want to purchase (or be given Laughing

).........

Scott Nilsen · **Voice Talent** Joined: 27 Apr 2006 Posts: 231

Right now, I think it would be a separate computer dedicated only to recording.

After that, a really nice mic

Lynne Alston · **Voice Talent** Joined: 20 Oct 2006 Posts: 743

Well, I have to say Tom the largest ticket item on my wish list is a whisper room, and to be honest it would be really useful about now, someone is outside cutting grass!

Lynne

Tom Greenlee · **Voice Talent** Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 945

Lynne....I'm right there with ya.....I don't have a problem with outside noise so much...actually none....but I want a Whisper room (or another brand of prefab iso booth)....with ventilation etc. It would make editing so much easier. I have a low noise floor now, but man I just don't like hearing anything at all during silence areas....I always de amplify during pauses in speech. I don't want to do that anymore. I also need a new audio interface and am looking at the MOTU Traveler. 876 dollars at Guitar Center and other places. My current Edirol UA-1000 has this stupid -6db clip thing going on.....I hate it.....When adjusting your input you start clipping at -6db so you have to adjust your input to less than -6db. Then the output displays in AA 2 peaking around -15 to -18db. To get it to go into AA 2 at a higher peak, you have to adjust the UA-1000 input higher which puts you into the clipping range. sucks.

Colin Campbell · Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007, 17:56 (GMT) Post subject:

Lexicon MX-200 reverb unit with hardware plugin interface.
M-audio ProjectMix I/O with Pro Tools M-powered.
A rack mountable line mixer. (Anyone have any experience with the Behringer RX-1602?)

I just traded my Presonus TubePRE for a rack, can you tell?

J.S. Gilbert

Tom,
If you're looking at the Motu Traveler, let me receommend instead the Apogee Mini-Me with either USB or Firewire Interface. The travelere has 20 channels of input and 4 mic pre's, but unless you're rolling with the Mormon Tabernacal Choir, I'm not sure why you need all of that.

The mini-me has 2 channels, really, really nice features and in my opinion the best digital convertors you can get. I have one for my travel rig and I pair it with the Heil PR-40, but when I had work being done in the studio, I set it up upstairs with the U87 and I worked out of my closet. It sounded just fine.

(No cracks about my being in or out of the closet. Thank You.)

So use it at home, or on the go at work, school or play. The mini-me is another fine product from the quality family of audio products at Apogee. You can find it wherever high quality audio gear is sold.

I swear that Heil and Apogee should be paying me. I probably sell moreof their crap than their sale managers do.

If I could get everyone to send emails to Heil and Apogee telling them what a good job I'm doing of promoting their garbage, I would appreciate it.

Tom Greenlee · **Voice Talent** Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 945

J.S. Yeah, I know the Traveler is overkill...it's just that I didn't know there was something much smaller that packed the same kind of quality. Are the Pre's good....quiet, so that I can just use the mini me instead of using another pre and then going into the mini me? And does the Mini Me have that stupid -6 db clip feature built into it? I HATE that.

Allen Scofield · **Voice Talent** Joined: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 181

Here's my current wish list....

$$ I love the Lawson mics, so a Lawson L251 tube mic. I have an L47FET already.

$$ A John Hardy M-1 mic pre.

$$ Whisper room or other pre-fab VO booth.

Chuck Douglas · **Voice Talent** Joined: 07 Jul 2006 Posts: 50

I have a whisper room, disassembled, standing in storage.

No you can't buy it, but I am not all that impressed with them. I mean, they are OK, but for the price, you can do better building one yourself. I think MUCH better. All it is made of is particle board with some insulation inbetween, mitred together with felt wrapped around it. The big thing about them is that you can take them apart and move them around on wheels, and yea, the ventilation is kinda cool I guess but nothing you can't build with a little patience and a few hundred dollars.

And they kind of work in the wrong direction. If you stand inside, you can totally hear what is happening outside the booth, but if you scream, the people outside can't hear you at all. That is probably some kind of physiological thing, but it really bothered my when I was using it.

And it is useless if your floor is vibrate-ey, like if you have a studio next to a big computer room or something. The rumble comes right in through the floor.

J.S. Gilbert · Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007, 21:38 (GMT) Post subject: mini me

Yes, the mini-me has incredible pres. It is about 1/2 the price they roginally came out at 3 years ago or so. the -6db issue is a problem with settings. recording to mono in a stereo environment. It seems to be fixable pretty much with everyone, although most people seem to forget what they did to fix it.

It won a slew of awards and is considered a very droolable item by most pro audio engineers. Same price range as the Motu

Brian Hart · **Voice Talent** Joined: 07 Jan 2006 Posts: 326

Tom Greenlee · **Voice Talent** Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 945

Thanks so much for turning me onto this piece of gear J.S. That will be my next purchase. and actually, I know some people have the -6db problem and it's correctable, but the manual for the Edirol UA-1000 specifically says that it has this built into the circuitry....I forget what the reasoning is (they had a reason), but man.....I hate it.

J.S. Gilbert · Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007, 00:08 (GMT) Post subject: broan fans?

I built an actual 6 X 9 room for my sundbooth. Currently I have a 4X4 prefab sound booth inside of it to provide extra noise protection, but I am hopingto dump the littler booth soon, just becuase I am big and it is small. I have heard of a company called Broan
http://www.broan.com/display/router.asp?CategoryID=100223

This is a link to a place that sells some of their products. Apparently they make an ultra quiet fan that can be hooked up with a switch. The idea is you run the fan between takes or perhaps can position the fan so that it is well away from the sound path to the microphone.

The bottom line is that professional ventilation systems are $4,000 and up (emphasis on the words and up). It's possible that a $149 fan and a $30 worth of parts might help and I'm goingto take a chance. Worse case scenario is that I turn the recording booth into another bathroom and I already have a fan in there.

Here's a link to a site that has "pre-built" ventilation systmes for booths for $525. I suppose I will look into this too, but the Broan at $149 seem more atttractive.

http://www.soundsuckers.com/vents.htm

Also, I work in top studios in S.F. and L.A. that have millions of dollars worth of acoustical treatment and if you yell loud enough you can hear the voice on the other side of the door.

If you're planning on putting yoour sound booth on the tarmak at JFK, then nothing will help - otherwise those prefab booths aint bad.

Getting it to sound good is a lot easier than trying to get a "hack" no-talent with great equipment to put in a usable performance.

Starkist still wants tunas that taste good. And without pointing the fingers at anyone in particular, I have listened to some demos from folks who have a lot more to worry about than a slightly high noise floor.