Well, gang, here we are. Part 3. Also known as Part Three for those who don’t care for the whole “numeral” thing. I’m sorry to say it but for the regular civilian you may want to jump ship now. This is gonna be for the techies. I’ll do my best to summarize the specific pieces of gear involved in the Huntsville sessions, uses of said gear, and maybe an explanation or brief anecdote along the way. I have to get this done tonight…Season Two of 30 Rock won’t watch itself ya know.
At the Brown Cat Office
First things first, at the Brown Cat offices I have 2 racks each containing 4 Tascam DA78s. These were the last digital multitrack tape machines we used on the road and now serve only as playback. Each machine is capable of playing and recording 8 tracks. Depending on the tour there could be as many as 8 tapes (64 tracks) or as few as 6 tapes (48 tracks) worth of recorded material per set. Huntsville was one of the few where there were just 6 machines being used. ***At the time of the Huntsville recordings the band owned DA88s, the 16-bit predecessor to the 24-bit 78*** Also on hand at Brown Cat is a Yamaha DM1000 console. It’s a relatively inexpensive digital console which can handle 48 inputs (16 analog ins and 32 digital ins). I’ll take the first 6 tape machines and route 4 of them digitally to the Yamaha via t/dif and I’ll take the next 2 tape machines and route them to the desk via d-sub to XLR analog connectors. If you’re following along you’ll note that I still have 2 tape machines (out of our 8 total) not accounted for. For those guys I’ll take the analog outs and patch them to a small 16 channel Allen & Heath analog mixer we have. Nothing fancy, but for simple reference the little things does what I need. Oh yeah, those connections are d-sub to TRS ¼”. From the Allen & Heath I’ll take the stereo output and dump it back into the Yamaha and there ya have it…all 64 tracks can effectively be monitored. For monitoring I have a pair of Event ASP8s. Again, nothing high end there but for what I need to accomplish it does the job just fine. I’ll also listen with headphones from time to time too. Either Ultrasone HFI-550s or Audio-Technica ATH-M50s. Connected to the Yamaha is also a Tascam DA 45HR DAT machine as well as a Tascam CD-RW750 which, by the way, I can’t stand (you have to have the remote to scan). I can play back or record from either of these. Makes checking 2-track recordings easy and makes it easy to burn a rough mix of something if I want to. We also have it set up so that Horace can play back cassettes and mini-discs on the Allen & Heath if he wants to. This is the general setup for playback of the older stuff. If I want to play back newer harddrive based recordings I simply connect the drives to my laptop, interface with a Digidesign 003, and output from that via s/pdif into the Yamaha.
So that’s what I use to evaluate the material we choose for potential release. Relatively straightforward. One of the cool features of the DM1000 is its ability to store basically everything. I have scenes set up for different tours. That way if Horace pulls some tapes from Spring 99 or Fall 97 or whatever the time period I can simply recall the set up for that tour. This saves a ton of time. The scenes recall input assignments, labeling, fader positions, effects, dynamics, panning, etc. Makes it mindlessly easy to pull up a quick mix. The best part for me, however, is that I don’t have to go through the inputs again for the shows that don’t have documentation. I did it once, stored it, and that’s that. I bought this console a couple years ago just for playing back our old archive material but you’ll see in a minute that I ended up using it in the studio at Chase Park as well. Turned out to be my secret weapon.
At Chase Park Transduction Studios
We transferred the tapes to a Pro Tools session via Digidesign 192s. Most of the tracks were able to remain in the digital domain for this process and were transferred using t/dif. However, we only had so many digital inputs on the 192s and in the interest of time I know at least one tape had to be transferred using the analog ins. We used the Digidesign SYNC HD to lock timecode between the machines and Pro Tools. Lacie Firewire 500 GB drives were used for the session (a main and a back up).
While Pro Tools served as our playback medium we still used an analog console for the mix. We bussed inputs, sometimes in groups and sometimes individually, to the console, a Sony MXP3036, again via the 192s. To the best of my recollection here’s how the console ended up laying out:
1.) Kick
2.) Snare
3.) Hat
4 & 5.) Toms Group
6. & 7.) Overhead Group
8. & 9.) Bass Group
10. & 11.) Congas
12. & 13.) Percussion Bus
14.) Piano Bus
15.) Leslie Bus
16.) Clavinet
17.) Wurlitzer
18.) Mike Gtr
19.) JB Gtr
20.) Mike Vocal
21.) JB Vocal
22.) Dave Vocal
23.) Jojo Vocal
24. & 25.) Misc. Bus
This project was very much a hybrid kind of affair. I’d do a good bit of processing in Pro Tools with plug ins and then route to the desk for summing and to make use of some of the analog hardware and outboard effects devices we had on hand. I’ll give you the scoop on all of that in a second. First, here are a few plug ins I know saw a good bit of use:
Cranesong Phoenix-I love this damn thing so much. I used it on everything from kick and snare to Jojo, Dave and Mike’s vocals to JB’s gtr…probably a few other things too. Does an excellent job of fattening things up. Super simple to use, very effective.
Waves RenComp-Nothing necessarily to stand up and cheer about but in the digital realm this guy gets the job done. I know it was used on all of the keyboard channels as well as Dave’s vocal.
Digidesign EQ3-Yes, the basic, comes-free-with-Pro Tools eq. I used it all over the place for hi pass filtering and basic eq. For all of the percussion and toms that were going to be summed to a stereo pair on the Sony desk I’d eq everything before hand with this. Basic, simple, works.
Waves C1-I used this as a dynamic equalizer on Mike’s guitar and I think maybe on JB’s guitar in one spot as well.
Waves C4-Really cool multiband compressor that I use live a lot. I used it for the first half of the second set on JB’s guitar.
***You may notice I’m talking about using different things at different times on JB’s guitar input. For the first half of the second set he very clearly was using his Chet Atkins “fake acoustic” (as we call it). It sounds a lot cleaner and reacts differently than his Washburn electrics so I used some different processing for the two different sounds***
PSP Vintage Warmer-Drew pulled this one out. I’d never used it. I believe we ended up using this on the conga bus and the toms bus. It imparts some very cool, but subtle, tube distortion emulation. Gives inputs some character. Kinda sorta but not really similar to the Phoenix above.
….and these were the ones that I know I used pretty heavily. There were some others here and there. Screw all this plug in stuff though, let’s get to the hardware!
The Sony console was fitted with several channels of API 550B eqs. These are classic equalizers for a reason. Just really thick and punchy. Kick, snare, both guitars plus the leslie bus got the API treatment. The rest of the console was fitted with the standard Sony eqs that came with the desk. I was surprised how much I really liked these. Not sure of the model number though.
For effects I used:
EMT 140 mono plate reverb-snare
Ursa Major Space Station reverb-guitars, keys, crowd, congas
Eventide Eclipse effects processor (used a stereo plate preset)-vocals, percussion bus
Lexicon PCM 41 delay-vocals
TC Electronic D-Two delay-vocals, crowd
For outboard dynamics inserts the following inputs got the following goodies:
Kick-Aphex 612 into Drawmer 1968
Snare-Aphex 612 into Gates Sta Level
Bass DI-Distressor
Mike Gtr-Distressor
JB Gtr-Drawmer 1968 for some parts, EL7 Fatso for others
Drum Parallel Group-EL7 Fatso
JB Vocal-BSS 901 into a Teletronix LA2A
Mike Vocal-DBX165A
Jojo Vocal-Distressor
Stereo Bus-API 2500
For monitoring we used:
Genelec 1030As
Tannoy DMT15s
The final piece of the puzzle came together with the Yamaha DM1000 that I mentioned fifty billion words ago. The Sony console did not have any sort of fader automation. I knew without ANY question that I’d want to…no, HAVE TO use automation for all the solos in order to do the project the way I wanted to. You can automate within Pro Tools easily but they didn’t have a controller of any sorts at Chase Park to interface with Pro Tools. That would mean that I’d have to mix all the guitars, keyboards, vocals, etc one at a time with a frickin’ mouse if I wanted to automate. Nuh uh, no thanks. Fortunately I remembered that the DM1000 can serve as a controller for a DAW like Pro Tools. I ran over to the office, threw little console in my back seat, drove back to the studio and greeted Drew with a big grin and a “let’s try somethin’!” It took no time at all to midi the console to the computer. It was one simple USB connection. I placed the Yamaha on top of one of our old cases and plopped it right next to me by the bigger, analog Sony board and thus reached analog/digital hybrid nirvana. Automation was a piece of cake from that point forward.
Okay, that’s it. I’m done. Honestly, I lost interest 30 minutes ago. I really can’t think of anything else gear-wise right now. Somethin’ will hit me later…
If you’ve read this far…seek help…but before you do that just let me say thanks for being some of the most attentive and involved fans in this whole big ol’ world! You guys really do care (sometimes more than you should!!!) and that doesn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated for one second in the Widespread Panic camp. Thanks for stickin’ around all these years.
Chris Rabold
Athens, GA
June 2009