rosespappy
02-10-2001, 09:46 PM
Fed-Ex called and asked if I'd be taking anything in today to ship.Nope .Why? "Well the ice storm delayed our two day frieght and I've got three big boxes for you." Yee-ha! I didn't really feel like "working" today anyway.I've been pestering the poor folks who sold me the stuff since the day after I ordered.Mama was out of the house with all the kids when I carried the stuff that every Christmas since I was 12 was made of in. "Plug it in! Plug it in!" the voices said. "No, let it acclimate fool, it's been in a semi for 48 hours." the old man inside me said. Ans for the first time in my life I listened. I spent the next three hours pouring over the mics' the monitors, power conditioner,tube pre-amps,etc, finally settling on the Fostex owners manual.That's something else I rarely do. I'm glad I did.
Lots of thing I would have done wrong right off the bat.First of all power up everything external first, then bring the Fostex on-line. Next, Phantom power switching, on or off? There is an LED indicator on the left side of the display, but I would'nt have looked prior to plugging in one of the unpowered mikes if I hadn't seen the warning.I said it two days ago, I'm daft when it comes to gear like this.The Rose and I played around with a guitar/vocal pair, and then decided to get a little serious. We started a new program,edited the title, set the parameters(blindly for the most part), and went to work. set the clicker, laid the 12 string part in a single take. No, it was not that great, but it'll give me a chance to learn the editing tools. Next, Rose put down a viola line using the units phantom power with a single AKG 3000 and our first attempt at effects. The playing was plenty sweet on the second pass, the effects were not really what we're after. Probubly my lack of knowledge and not the unit, again, a chance to work the edit. Then Rose put down the violin with the same set-up. Then the vocals, same set-up.We're still laughing about not doing the vocals before the middle and upper strings. Again it'll give us a chance to learn the auto punch and clip and copy features. All in all, we are pumped at the sensitivity and percieved warmth of the strings and vocals, without running a tube pre-amp.I'm certain to a trained ear, the sound would be a bit bright.But compared to some of the other stuff we've done outside of analog it's downright thick and rich.I do wish the manual was in a more pedigogical orientation. But I'll learn which side to flip to soon enough. Tomorrow we test in the cello on a pair of sm57s', and I suspect that the mics' characteristics will prevail. We'll play with the effects and placement and see what we get. So far it appears as tho if the phantom power is on, it's on both (all four) balanced ips. This would disable our ability to track simutaniously with powered and unpowered mics were it not for an external tube pre-amp at our disposal.And I do wish the phantom power could be activated or disabled via an external switch, rather than having to scroll thru the set-up menu. For a forgetfull old dude that could get troublesome when you forget to switch it off as your setting up the SM57s' after running the AKG. Well we'll see what tomorrow brings and report what we've learned...when we've learned.
Later and God Bless......rp
Lots of thing I would have done wrong right off the bat.First of all power up everything external first, then bring the Fostex on-line. Next, Phantom power switching, on or off? There is an LED indicator on the left side of the display, but I would'nt have looked prior to plugging in one of the unpowered mikes if I hadn't seen the warning.I said it two days ago, I'm daft when it comes to gear like this.The Rose and I played around with a guitar/vocal pair, and then decided to get a little serious. We started a new program,edited the title, set the parameters(blindly for the most part), and went to work. set the clicker, laid the 12 string part in a single take. No, it was not that great, but it'll give me a chance to learn the editing tools. Next, Rose put down a viola line using the units phantom power with a single AKG 3000 and our first attempt at effects. The playing was plenty sweet on the second pass, the effects were not really what we're after. Probubly my lack of knowledge and not the unit, again, a chance to work the edit. Then Rose put down the violin with the same set-up. Then the vocals, same set-up.We're still laughing about not doing the vocals before the middle and upper strings. Again it'll give us a chance to learn the auto punch and clip and copy features. All in all, we are pumped at the sensitivity and percieved warmth of the strings and vocals, without running a tube pre-amp.I'm certain to a trained ear, the sound would be a bit bright.But compared to some of the other stuff we've done outside of analog it's downright thick and rich.I do wish the manual was in a more pedigogical orientation. But I'll learn which side to flip to soon enough. Tomorrow we test in the cello on a pair of sm57s', and I suspect that the mics' characteristics will prevail. We'll play with the effects and placement and see what we get. So far it appears as tho if the phantom power is on, it's on both (all four) balanced ips. This would disable our ability to track simutaniously with powered and unpowered mics were it not for an external tube pre-amp at our disposal.And I do wish the phantom power could be activated or disabled via an external switch, rather than having to scroll thru the set-up menu. For a forgetfull old dude that could get troublesome when you forget to switch it off as your setting up the SM57s' after running the AKG. Well we'll see what tomorrow brings and report what we've learned...when we've learned.
Later and God Bless......rp