I was really bummed when my 20-Space Raxxess mobile rack disintegrated on me with all of my most expensive gear in it.  The bottom collapsed and then the whole thing twisted breaking the sides as well.  I was not at all impressed with Raxxess’ design after looking at it closely.  The entire weight of both sides of the rack is held up by 6 metal pins in 3/4 inch particle board.  Not a good design.  So I called Raxxess and they agreed to send me the broken parts after they grilled me about how heavy my equipment was and what I was using it for.  It’s a rack and I put audio gear in it and it broke because the design is bad.  The guys on the phone were pretty snotty, but they did agree to send me the replacement parts and they did it pretty quickly.  Then I thought, “Do you want to put your favorite rack gear in a rack that previously disintegrated?”

The broken pin holes on the bottom plate of the Raxxess rack

A detail of the broken particle board

So I decided to build a replacement instead.  The new version is MUCH stronger, better designed, has bigger casters and it is generally awesome.  I DIY.  It would have been faster and maybe cheaper just to buy a new crappy rack, but I wouldn’t be very proud of it!

Top Corner of New Rack

Big Fucking Wheels (For Off-Road Recordin')

Side View of New Rack

Cable Tie Mounts

Cable Tied Power Cables Down the Right Rear

Fully Wired Rack with Optional Squirrel's Nest

I would love to see other people homemade audio equipment racks!  This one is probably only going to be loved by me and the family of squirrels that made their home in the back!

The Faderport by Presonus

This week I purchased the Presonus Faderport for use with my DAW, Sonar Producer Edition 8.31.  I have been finding that I really like the immediate control and hand/ear coordination that a real fader provides because I have been working a lot on the API Vision at U. Mass Lowell.  I read a zillion comparisons between the Faderport and Frontier Design’s Alphatrack, a similar single fader automation encoding device. Here’s a very interesting video that compared the speed of the faders on both units.

As you can see from the video, the Faderport’s reaction time is significantly faster than the Alphatrack.  It should be noted that fades as fast as the ones in the video are pretty rare.  For something this fast, most of us would do a mute automation and not a super fast fader move.  The fader on the Faderport is very nice feeling.  It’s quite smooth and although it is a little noisy, it is clearly the highlight of the unit.

The pan knob frankly sucks.  It is a detented pot, so it clicks as you turn it.  There is no specific center detent and in Sonar after you move the pan control the closest you can get to center is +/- 1%.  You also need to rotate the knob completely several times before you get a hard pan left or right.  The pan control is actually more cumbersome than doing fade automation with a mouse.

The instructions for install are really poor.  For individual DAWs you can’t use the included CD-ROM for the installation.  Rather you need to go to the PreSonus website and download a specific driver/plugin for your DAW, but they don’t tell you this in the instructions.  The Sonar driver doesn’t include the feature of being able to program the single user-assigned button with a task and the PROJ button (which is supposed to open the track/edit view in Sonar) doesn’t work at all.  You can open the Mix window and the Transport control, but not the Edit window which is the most commonly used window in Sonar.

It also isn’t clear if you can assign the fader or the pan control to anything other than volume or pan, so you are REALLY limited as to what you can control and automate from the device.  All in all I found the Faderport pretty disappointing and I plan on returning it and getting an Alphatrack.

Here’s the video overview of the PreSonus:

Daking Audio Gear: Mic Pre IV and 3 FET II Compressors

I currently have three of these units in my studio right now and I have had a chance to really put them through their paces.

First, I should say that the sound quality on these units is pristine. There is very little coloration of the sound even when using heavy compression. Many compressors seem to roll off high end when they attenuate heavily, but this is not the case with the FET II. The FET II uses Jensen transformers both in and out of the unit and the pc board is extremely clean and well designed. The FET is in a socket so if it were ever to go bad, it is easy to replace.

The FET II excels at transparent compression and is easily used on bus or program material where lesser compressors really start to sound yucky. The attack times vary between 250 micro seconds to 64 milliseconds and it’s fast enough to be used effectively as a brickwall limiter if desired. The release characteristics are I think what really set the compressor apart though. You have some standard settings of .5 – 1.5 seconds, but also some really nice dual time constant releases designed to mimic some of the nicest compressors in history. The idea behind dual time constant release is this: the compressor releases a little fast at the beginning and then slows down. This effectively eliminates the “pumping and breathing” sounds associated with more abrupt release times.

I have also been able to get some really nice vocal distortion (think Flood’s production techniques) out of it by using the fastest attack and release times and a very high ratio (20:1). Then I drive a very hot signal (over +20) and get a very pretty sounding harmonic distortion very appropriate for alternative rock vocals like NIN, PJ Harvey or Smashing Pumpkins.

I recommend using only XLR cables in and out of the unit, you can use a 1/4″ input but it boosts the signal 14 dB to make up for the -10/+4 difference in operating levels between consumer and pro gear. Another odd thing is the power supply (external, but not a wall wart) uses a DB25 connector which looks pretty weird, but works perfectly well. Just make sure your intern doesn’t try to run the power supply into the DB25 input on an audio interface or multitrack….Bad intern! Bad intern!

You can link two units together to work in stereo with a 1/4″ guitar cable. The sidechaining connection uses DC summing to tell the linked unit when to compress and does not send audio. The FET III does audio summing, but it’s in stereo and is geared more towards working in stereo anyway.

All of the knobs on the unit are switches so you can set two or more compressors exactly the same way and repeat your settings later on. The knobs are really heavy and feel like you’re really working with pro gear.

All in all this is a great compressor with excellent transparent compression that doesn’t color the sounds you are working with. You can use it to chase the waveform to create harmonic distortion with the fastest attack settings to add a little crunch to vocals, bass or drums.

I can’t recommend it more highly.

I am a PC guy.  I think that it is the best platform that gives the most options for hardware and software.  I think Mac’s a great, but they’re way more expensive and they have always felt like toys to me.  They are the Nerf brand of computer.  Unfortunately most pro studios have Mac’s and I find that I need to use my external disks both in other people’s studios and in my own.  The only decent format that works in both is FAT32, but on both platforms FAT32 is NOT the file system of choice.

Windows machines really prefer NTFS, the NT File System which has many fewer limitations.  Mac has their own file system as well.  An important problem with the FAT32 file system is that the maximum size of a file is 4 GB. Windows won’t let you format a hard drive with FAT32 if the drive is a big modern drive.  In fact Windows XP will not format a drive bigger than 32 GB with FAT32.  This is a good example of a Windows-Style Suck-a-doodle-doo.  You need to format to Fat32 with a Mac, Linux or use a third-party tool to format on a Windows machine.  Windows will read and write to a larger FAT32 drive, but won’t allow you to create one.

For Windows, the easiest tool to download is Acronis’ True Image Home.  (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/) They offer a free 15 day trial that will allow you to format large disks as FAT32.  Just go through the process for “Adding a drive…”

Acronis is a great back up software tool as well.  It allows you to create images of your system disk and incremental or differential backups as well.  I find that it better than Norton’s Ghost, but have found that it doesn’t handle hard disk failure on the destination drive very well.  Their support offerings are pretty good, but not fast.

Alesis HD24 Hard Drive Caddy

Most of my audio students at the NEIA (the New England Institute of Art) want to know the cheapest way to get an Alesis HD24 caddy for their Recording 1 and Recording 2 classes. Unfortunately you pay for convenience when you shop at the school store, but you can get it cheaper off the web. As per usual you can find the best deal at Amazon right here. At the time of this post, Amazon has it listed at $22.95 via Musician’s Friend. After you order this, you will also need a IDE/PATA drive to stick in it. You won’t need a very big disk for your classes at the Art Institute. Anything more than 80 GB will be fine.

Current Great Deal on Amazon:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 – Hard drive – 160 GB – internal – 3.5 (currently $47.41)

Make sure to NOT buy anything that says SATA on it, or anything that says 2.5″.  What you want is a 3.5″ 7200 RPM (Revolutions Per Minute) (IDE or PATA or Ultra ATA) Hard Drive.  You can get one that is boxed or OEM, which is cheaper. Here’s a few inexpensive options:

If you are mobile or adventurous you can always go to Microcenter in Cambridge on Memorial Drive to buy your hard drive.  They have great deals and a convenient order-on-the-web and then pick-up at store feature. I really hope that this helps!

HDG XIX

When I start working with a new studio client at Indecent Music, one of the things that I ask is that each client bring their own high-speed external hard disk.  This allows the artist to keep their own files with them, which gives them the security of a back-up copy should anything happen to their data at the recording studio.  Hard disk failure doesn’t happen very often, but discs are wear-items.  Drives can only keep spinning for so long before they’re going to wear out. The majority of the disk failures happen when a hard drive is spinning up from stationary or spinning down.  If a computer gets hit hard while the drive is spinning the platter (the part of the drive that spins with the data on it) can crash against the stationary parts of the drive. After this happens, the only people that can retrieve your data are pro’s that have a clean-room to work in.  It’s incredibly expensive to get your data at that point and sometimes it’s still impossible.

There are a bunch of manufacturers out there that make external drives, but most of them are not designed to deal with the kind of data transfer that audio (and video!) production requires.  The industries first big manufacturer is Glyph [http://www.glyphtech.com/], which makes hard drive especially for the audio and video industries.  There is no question that Glyph does make some of the best gear out there and they do have a great warranty which is for 3-years with a 1-year overnight replacement clause.  They also have a fantastic basic data recovery service for FREE for the first two years that you own your drive.  There are no guaranties that they will recover your data, of course, but this is better than what the competition offers by far.  Many Glyph hard drives have also been certified to work with Digidesign software which includes ProTools. The downside is that the drives sell for about double the cost of other comparable drives.  You are paying for the name and for the data recovery service.  The best versions of the Glyph drives are as follows:

Glyph PortaGig 320 GB External Hard Drive

Glyph Technology 500GB Quad Desktop Hard Drive

All Glyph Technology Products

Glyph was the original for-audio drive manufacturer, but they are not the only game in town.  The major advantage to the Glyph systems is the Oxford chip which is the brains of the hard-drive enclosure.  Oxford is pretty much thought to be the best company for many chips that interface an external SATA hard disk to a computer via eSATA, Firewire 400/800 and USB 2.0.

Another company call Icy Dock also makes a fantastic hard drive enclosure line that allows you to put your own hard drives into the enclosure.  This means that you can buy the same drives that Glyph uses (Seagate Barracuda’s) and utilize an Oxford chip without paying a lot of extra dough.  To get a complete package, you simply buy an enclosure (like a Icy Dock MB559US-1S External Enclosure or a Icy Dock MB664US-1SB Screwless External Enclosure) and then you just buy a hard disk.

Icy Dock External Hard Disk Enclosure (MB559US-1S)

Icy Dock Screwless Hard drive enclosure (MB664US-1SB)

Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 500GB SATA Internal Hard Drive

These Seagate Barracuda drives are extremely quiet at 28 dB idle and 35 dB writing and they have fantastic shock resistance of 63 Gs while in operation. These are the same discs that Glyph uses, so they’re A-O.K.

If you have any questions about other types of drives, leave a comment and let me know!

As many of you already know, I am now teaching at two colleges: University of Massachusetts Lowell and the New England Institute of Art.  At both schools I teach in the Audio Production departments, but at UML, it is called SRT or Sound Recording Technology. I can recommend both of the text books.  They have different perspectives and both are well established texts in the field.

The first book that is required reading for UML’s  class 78.305 “Survey of Music Technology” is Experiencing Music Technology by David Williams and Peter Webster.  The book is quite expensive in stores, but is a little cheaper at Amazon as usual. A new edition of the book has just become available to update the content with internet technologies, contro surfaces and other innovations from the last 10 years.

Experiencing Music Technology

The second book is also expensive unfortunately. Audio in Mediais in its 8th edition and is one of the most updated books on the subject. This text covers everything from acoustics to post-production. It’s fantastic overview of music technology from mics and loudspeakers to control surfaces and signal processors.

Audio in Media

Panavise Model 350 Electronics Vise

One of the the most important tools on your workbench is your vise.  Without a strong, stable support for your work you will spend hours knocking over junior size vises or “helping-hands” alligator-clip toys. My personal favorite vise is the Panavise 350 [Panavise.com] shown to the left.

The 350 is actually 3 products shipped as a single product. First you get the heavy-duty base, the Panavise 312.  It weighs 2 pounds by itself and at 8 ½ inches wide you won’t be able to tip this baby over. It comes with nice rubber feet to help keep it from sliding and you can mount all of the Pro (300 and series) mounts as well as the Jr. (201) mounts.

Next is the standard 300 base which can hold all of the vise jaws that you could possibly want. It weighs in at 1 ½ lbs, which adds a good deal of stability in itself.

The 350 also comes with the Model 376 self-centering extra-wide jaws!  These jaws have a number of really convenient features.  First the vise is opened and closed with a rotating handle with ball bearings.  You can open or close very quickly without having to take your hand off the handle.  The jaws are reversible so you can hold small items or PCB as big as 9 inches across.  The neoprene jaw pads are grooved to hold your boards and they are replaceable if they should ever wear out.  The Panavise 350 comes with a lifetime warranty also, so no worries about quality here.

Amazon.com has the best deal on the PanaVise 350 Multi-Purpose Work Center which is $69.50 at the time of this posting.