New Release: Dreamer

dav | June 29, 2021, 3:50 a.m.

Hi all,

We've released a new single 'Dreamer'.  It'll be out on streaming services shortly. In the meantime you can have a pre-release listen here.

This one's about those vivid dreams you can have where you're in a fight or trying to run away from something. Your legs won't move fast enough and your punches are slow and totally ineffectual. Sometimes real life can feel a bit the same...

Hope you enjoy it!!!

Dav

Comment →

Living with GAS

dav | June 3, 2021, 4:23 a.m.

Gear Acquisition Syndrome, have you heard of it? It's a real thing that probably affects nearly all of us at some point. GAS is not just confined to the home/pro studio world but also to photographers, musicians, gamers and any other area you could imagine. So what is it exactly? According to Wiktionary, GAS is 'a tendency to purchase more equipment than justified by usage and/or price'. In other words, the desire to buy more and more gear that you probably don't really need. It's worn out many a bank balance and even a few relationships too.    

If you find yourself suddenly unimpressed by all the gear you currently own and scrolling through review after review of a plugin, hardware unit, microphone, new musical instrument or (name the gadget) you possibly have GAS. You feel "if only I owned this 'insert gear' I will be complete, my studio will suddenly be pro and I'll never need to buy another thing". So you buy it. The feeling when it arrives is unbelievable - except for the twinge of guilt as you look at the growing amount of junk you're accumulating (it's spilling out into other rooms and you're getting an ear full from your 'insert' (wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, housemate etc). Anyway, you're completely satisfied for a few weeks and confident your big spending ways are over. One Saturday morning you're flicking through your emails and there's one from your favourite gear shop. You hesitate but open the email - a quick look can't hurt.  There, right in front of you is the latest must have item. This truly is the holy grail and to not have it would be a serious disservice to your studio. Even though there's a few people out there saying it doesn't quite live up to the hype, you're convinced. And so the circle repeats...

If this sounds familiar, you're definitely not alone. I have linked some articles below that can help you explore GAS more and provide you with some helpful tips to fight your desires. Possibly the one that helps me most to put things into perspective is to assess 'need' vs 'want'.  Is there a serious problem that this gear will solve or is it something I can probably do without? For example, if you want to record full bands but only have a two channel interface, then buying an interface with more inputs is necessary. On the other hand, if you already own three Fender Stratocasters but want a new one in sunburst, perhaps this is something you could do without.

• 7 Stages of Gear Acquisition Syndrome
• How to cope with GAS
• 10 Practical Tips for Fighting GAS

 

Comment →

Analogue / Digital : the never ending debate

dav | April 26, 2021, 3:05 a.m.

One debate that seems to come up time and time again over the last two decades in particular is the one about which sounds better: analogue or digital recordings? I'm so confused about it all that I really can't pick a winner. Perhaps I need a lot more exposure to the art of sound engineering to really know what the heck people are talking about in the first place. It was the same for me with the debate about which sounded better: vinyl or compact disk? Some felt CD's cleaned up the sound too much for some styles of music so they preferred listening to artists like Jimi Hendrix on vinyl. There is also a debate about analogue hardware vs software emulations of the hardware. How close do these emulations really get to the hardware and is it simply better to 'get the real thing' (i.e. hardware) rather than spend your money on emulations? Further, there's the debate about analogue summing, virtual amps and the list goes on.

My take on it at this time and with the experience I currently have is that while I can't make an educated call either way, there are a few things I feel I can say. I have realised through hard experience that the best chance you have to end up with a recording, mix and master you're happy with is to 'get it right at the source'. As cliched as this sounds, spending some extra time getting mic placements right and working on your guitar and amp settings is really worth it - whether you're using virtual or real equipment. 

Recently I got myself a hardware channel strip so that I could begin to understand this debate a little better. While it is a lot of fun to play with the knobs and controls on analogue gear, I found there were other benefits too. Firstly, I liked being able to control dynamics going into the DAW through the channel strip compressor. While you can do this to some extent through plugins it's a lot easier and takes up far less computer processing power to do this on the channel strip. Secondly, I appreciate being able to put some EQ shaping on the sound going into the DAW. By using compression and EQ in this way it can help you get a better sound at the source because you're focusing on exactly that - getting the best sound you can at recording time. Other features of channel strips such as saturation or colouring the sound by pushing the gain on the preamp, using the outboard de-essers and gates etc all go towards achieving this objective. Some outboard channel strips are modelled on consoles such as Neve, API and SSL (and even use many of the same components) which allow you to get something of the original analogue sound. Also, remember you can often use channel strips and their components (EQ, Compressor, Gate etc) as hardware plugins in your DAW too. 

While it is true that you can simply record clean and use plugins to achieve similar results, I feel there's some merit to using hardware in the way I outline above.   

Below is some further information that might be useful for you on this topic:

• The Infinite Studio Rack Concept 
• 6 Reasons Why Having An Outboard Channel Strip In Your Studio Could Help You To Improve Your Recordings
• Plugins vs Analog Console Which Is Better?

Comment →