The Null Device Blog

I am paralyzed by choice.

I am in the market for new firewire audio interface.  I’ve been rocking the 828 (mark 1) for about, uh, 7 years now.  I have other uses for it.  It’s time for something new in the studio.

My original plan was to go Metric Halo.  Sadly, they raised their prices.  A lot.  Far beyond my means.  They now are at a price point alongside the Apogee Ensemble and Fireface800, both of which I’d love but just can’t justify buying.

So I’m looking in the sub-grand range.  My 828 has kind of lousy mic pres, which I’d like to improve.  I need SPDIF to continue to bridge in my dbx preamp.

I’m looking at the 828 Mk3 – one thing I’ll say about the 828 is that the drivers have been rock solid through 3 computers and a bunch of different OSes.  But I’m not sure if they’ve improved the sound much, other than tacking on a mess of DSP effects.   I’m also considering the Focusrite Saffire Pro 26io, because I used to own a Focusrite pre that I loved the sound of – I’m just not sure how the drivers hold up on the mac.  A salesguy at Sweetwater recommended the Presonus Firestudio, but I’ve always heard mixed things about presonus stuff.

So in short, I have no freaking idea what to do.

Little help?

*EDIT* Dammit, The TC Konnekt 48 looks pretty awesome too.

This guy did more with chord voicings and a tremelo pedal than I can do with banks of synthesizers.

This sunday, I made what turned out to be a pretty respectable set of attempts at recording some dhols. Not perfect, but it was certainly a step in the right direction. There’s scant little information on dealing with what is, to most western engineers, a fairly esoteric instrument, and what info there is is mostly british kids making forum posts of varying accuracy in a mix of panjabi, south london slang and 1337-speke. There are one or two sites that have great information about micing a dhol for live use – a few major instrument retailers will go so far as to mount an SM-57 inside the drum – although that strikes me as a method that wouldn’t apply well to studio situations.

Attempt 1:
Mics: 2 SM57′s
Setting them up on two stands, I recorded a stereo track with an SM-57 on each end. I set the bass side a bit further away than the treble, to allow the bass waveform to build.
Result: Decent levels, but a bit of muddiness on the treble head. Also, while I caught the initial attack of the bass head, the level dropped off quickly enough that it fell through the 57′s noise floor at the distance. It was more of a thump than a boom.

Attempt 2:
Mics: SM57, Rode NT2
Pulling out my trusty and well-loved NT2 large diaphragm condensor, I used that on the treble head instead of the 57.
Result: The sound was clean and ringy – the NT2 has a bit of a “hyped” high midrange, specifically for vocals, but given the tonal characteristics of the treble side, I figured it’d work. The NT2 is a MUCH hotter mic than the 57, though, and required an awful lot of gain adjustment. It’s also sensitive enough that it picked up a fair chunk of crosstalk from the bass head. I would imagine any decent “vocal” condenser mic would work well for this – something like an SM-78 might be better, in fact, given it has a tighter cardioid pattern than a large-diaphragm mic, and would likely be less susceptable to crosstalk.

Attempt 3:
Mics: SM57, Rode NT2
For giggles, I swapped configurations from attempt 2.
Result: nice resonant bass boom, muddy treble side, and a lot of crosstalk on the bass side from the treble side. The bass boom was actually quite resonant and fairly impressive, but was so strong that it became clear quickly that I would never get this to sit in a mix.

So, attempt 2 was the clear winner. I may try this experiment again with cleaner preamps at some point – my 828′s pres are workable but not great, and the dbx pre I’ve got has great, transparent sound (unless I crank the tube up) but is only a single channel and thus doesn’t work so well for stereo recording.

Recording was done in a pretty dry room (namely, my studio) so I had very little room sound. This I consider to be entirely acceptable, as I don’t have a good room for recording room sound anyway, and prefer to go with a decent external reverb. I mixed down the stereo width (having recorded this as a stereo pair) to something a little more realistic – the dhol heads are not split that far apart, after all – then applied a little light compression. The overall effect was pretty solid, and quite usable, although it still wasn’t quite right. My next trick was to split the stereo pair into individual mono tracks and process the EQ separately. This allowed me to control some of the boxiness on the bass side and pull out the low-end crosstalk on the treble side, and with a little gating, control some of the ringy tail of the treble head for purposes of mixing.

Of course, after doing this a few times, I came to the conclusion that the wall-of-dhols didn’t realy work especially well in this track, so it was essentially all-for-nought from a musical standpoint. It did give me some good insight into recording dual-headed drums, though.

It also proved that I’m a pretty lousy dholi at this point. I had maybe 4 salvageable measures of various beats in each take, despite recording about 32 bars at a pass. I also discovered that even with headphones on, the dhol tends to drown out my click track rather impressively.

I just got one of these bad boys off of eBay yesterday.  Of course, the version I have doesn’t quite look like the one to the left – the one to the left is a modified, fixed version.  What I’ve got is this bulky, unmodded version with an ugly capsule basket, that looks like it was built from soviet tank parts.   Which it very well may have been.

Soon, I will send it in for electronics modifications and some structural fixes.  (this may wait a paycheck or two).  But hey, I got it dirt cheap.  Russian hardware FTW!

Because of this, I am in the process of building an actual mic locker to keep my various microphones.  I intend to have a few by the time I’m done.  The locker is currently a 1950′s-era ammunition box, a big wooden military-grade thing used for transporting 81mm mortar shells.  I picked it up about 10 years ago at an antique store for about $5.  I’ve been using up until now to store cables.  A few quick passes with a screwdriver, and I’ve put in a shelf, some foam padding, and a black velvet lining (the velvet cost more than the box).

Now I need to fill it up with mics.  I really need a second 57.   And maybe a ribbon mic or two.  Oh, I think I’m going down a dark path…

Anyway.

In other new gear news, my macbook Pro finally arrived.  It’s a last-generation model, which I bought at a deep discount after they announced the new models.  I could’ve gone for brand-spanking new tech, but I figure this will not be my primary studio machine, and I tend to be hard on laptops, so the cheaper option was preferable.  I’ll probably hook it up to my 828 (mk 1 !) and replace the interface in the studio with something a little more modern (currently leaning towards the Saffire 26io, as I like the focusrite mic pres and I can’t afford a Metric Halo or Apogee).  I’ve got Ableton Live up and running, and this weekend I hope to get Logic Studio installed.  I don’t plan to do a *lot* of music on this bad boy, but it’d be nice for live/DJing to have the option.

Fun fun fun!  I love gear!

Whew.

Saturday night was definitely A Thing. 

Loadin was hampered only by the fact that we couldn’t find a parking spot.  And the fact that we seemed to have left a few cables at home. 

Setup and soundcheck was nearly painless.  There was a separate monitor mixing console!  A fancy digital FOH soundboard!  And the club was…it was clean!  There was an actual green room!  Which was blue! I’m going to get spoiled by all this.

Dinner was gastropub-goodness across the street at The Local.  Chuck watched his cholesterol, from afar, over an elaborate piece of strawberry cheesecake.

(one thing I will rarely be able to say about my band – “We ate poorly before the show.”)

We returned to the majestic and hung out in the green room for a while, and then I wandered about looking for people I knew.  Wendy arrived, Dan and Mercy showed up, William was there, Dr. Parks and Birke, Mr. Berger, Sega and Laurie…in short, a bunch of people we knew.  I galavanted about playing social butterfly.  Jill’s parents showed up, and that was pretty cool.  I saw a number of other familiar faces come through the doors – the SE folks, the Glass Ghosts duo, and numerous others. 

A crowd slowly trickled in.  A number of faces I didn’t recognize showed up, and that really made me gleeful.  Rekha showed up shortly before we went on, and we got to chat for a little bit.  She’s friendly.  We briefly talked about turkish food, and she regaled me with tales of some of the openers she’s had to deal with (like guys who just play her album before she goes on, thereby ruining about half her set) which explained why her manager sent me a list of requests beforehand.  she told me to pretty much not worry about it because it applied to DJs – she didn’t usually have opening bands.

We went on about 10:20, to a decent crowd.  As we played, more and more people showed up, obviously expecting DJ Rekha to go on at any minute.  We played our full 45minute set – from an onstage standpoint, it was probably one of our better shows.  I didn’t forget the words to anything and I only dropped a few really obvious vocal or violin intonation clams.  A few mixing issues – elizabeth’s drums were all mixed stunningly loud.  When I grabbed the dumbek for “Under the Gun” the first tek I played drowned out EVERYTHING.  I resolved to play quieter.  FOH sound was okay, I guess, although as usual backing wasmixed too low and keys too high.  Indie rock soundguys always make that mistake. At least he was trying – we’ve played with soundguys that pretty much abandon the board to go drink when the opener goes on.

As part of the preshow arrangements with DJ Rekha and her management, we were expected to do a quick transition – we finish, get the hell offstage, and she comes on.  However, because the crowd was not yet at peak capacity, they held off for about andother 20 minutes before starting.  The pause seemed pretty interminable, and I kinda wished I used the time to move our gear offstage.

Rekha came on at around 11:30 and the place just blew up.  Complete crazy party vibe.  The dancefloor was immediately packed to capacity, and a coupla guys were getting some serious bhangra moves going (and they did not stop all night).  It was kind of fabulously insane.  Even Andrew Sega danced.  I bopped around in the pit for a while and then, sweaty and just too tired to keep up, retired to the back of the club to watch.  DJ Rekha gave us a shoutout later on during the night, which was cool, although she called us “Null Void” instead of “Null Device.” Oh well.

Later on I went back down to the dancefloor to see what was going on, and I probably couldn’t've picked a worse time.  As I get into the crowd and she yells “I need two people to dance onstage here!” and immediately I’m pinned in a crush as people swarm onto the stage…and start moving our gear around.  I’m panicking and trying to swim through a wall of bhangra fans to rescue our fragile and expensive gear, and failing utterly at making any forward progress.  Luckily Elizabeth was outside the throng and managed to get onstage to move our stuff out of the way.  She does good work. 

The lights came up at around 1:45am, after a pretty banging set.  We tore down, packed up, and I got my fanboy-photo moment with Ms. Rekha.   

It was a damn good night, overall.  I really want to play more gigs like this.