A few recent projects are up there, I’ve posted them before, but sure what the hell….

Bouts

Popical Island

Sunburnt Jets

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I was bored on Friday night so I went into the studio and  spent a few hours comparing different digital eq’s, as you do.

I used this to match up the freq/gain/Q shape etc. I chose just one frequency boost to keep things simple.

I tested about 3 vst pluggins and 3 Nebula ones (commercial libraries). Very interesting results, will post some samples soon, I want to try some other ideas out. At the moment, two of the Nebula eq’s are definitely sounding much better than the standard digital ones. I’m just testing minimum phase eq’s as the Nebula analog counterparts are this type. Sonoris just launched two new eq’s today, so interested to hear them.

The main test subjects so far are:

DMG EQuality (in Minimum phase and Analog phase mode)

Abbey Road TG12412

Nebula based  GML8200

Nebula based Massive Passive

I’ll do more tests and post samples/thoughts later in the week.

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Unfortunately it hasn’t stopped me obsessing on how to fund a Buzz REQ 2.2.

“Stephen…where’s the car gone?”

“oh we don’t need that thing, I bought us bikes, we’re going green!”

“What’s in the big box?”

“eh….books?…”

I was having trouble getting some decent ‘clean’ level on the last track, ended up using Slate’s new FGX that I’ve been demoing. Worked really well on that track, but it’s pretty hit and miss. Not sure I’d shell out for it. I was getting better results using my normal tools about 95% of the time. A useful tool no doubt, but it’s definitely not the only limiter you’d want in your tool box. Also, all the talk from the Slate team on the Gear ejits forum has kind of put me off it.

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Squarehead 7″ I mastered is released this week, details:

http://thumped.com/latest/headline/squarehead-7-launch.html

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Mastered an album for Colin Boylan’s new Sunburnt Jets project-

http://www.myspace.com/sunburntjets

A really nice album.

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Still mixing Richer Than Astronauts, working on it in small bursts as time permits. Should be finished soon.

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So much work went into it. Thread Pulls are awesome. I had the best time. I hope people will like it as much as we do.

I’m off on holidays for 10 days.

xx

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Mastering a really nice 7″ for Squarehead.  Perfect soundtrack to the summer……when it comes.

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Recorded some vocal overdubs for the Richer Than Astronauts album. We really wanted to be able to use all the takes from the original sessions with everyone in the room, but the drum bleed on some of the tracks was just too much.

The recordings are done in about 3 hours, about 2 takes of each song with everyone playing at the same time in a small low ceiling room. Sounding good so far though!

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Thread Pulls album-

Should be wrapped up very soon. Been such a positive experience, very excited about it coming out.

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Nerd out-

Bought the Mammoth eq from analoginthebox.com. Really good eq I think, still in the honeymoon period, but I really like it so far. For the price it’s nuts. Does make me want a real Massive Passive though.

DMG EQuality- Not sure if I posted this before, but it’s a really great sounding, amazingly well featured, digital eq. I could easily have it as my only digital eq. (Not counting the Nebula eq’s though.) I particularly like the analog phase mode.

In testing  it was a little buggy though, but updates seem frequent at present.

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I love the Epos M12 speakers, exceptional value for money for music listening imho.

I came across this pretty amazing offer the other day on their flagship M series speaker: M22i

Haven’t heard the M22i’s, but I’m really tempted!

Steve Fanagan and myself mastered some tracks for the Road Records Record Store Day compilation. Some really great tracks on it!

Very limited amount only available in store on April 17th.

More details here.

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Just finished mastering a poptastic compilation for a new label called Popical Island.

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The BabyBeef album turned out great, really looking forward to that one coming out.

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Mastered a 7″ for Crumb.

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Wolf005 7″ is out soon, will also be on sale on Record Store Day.

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Some minor mix tweaks to do on the Thread Pulls album then on to  mastering.

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Nice Yakuza video featuring a track from their album I mastered a while back- LINK

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You Look Colder is being released this week also- Link

I did some work on the Thread Pulls track.

Work continues on the Thread Pulls album, almost everything recorded now. The venerable SM58 did the closing duties on the last vocal. A 58 was the first mic I ever owned and 18 years later it still gets the odd look in.

4 songs mixed to close to finish, 6 songs in various states of completion.  I would imagine we’ll have it wrapped up soon though.

It’s marvellous.

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I’ve  a trial of Softube’s Trident plugin awaiting download to the ilok, thinking about breaking it out for some TP mixes. I fear it’ll sound great and the CC will take a bashing!!

Not that I’m one to buy the latest and greatest. The last purchase was Nebula and some 3rd party libraries. For EQ, nothing beats Nebula for ITB sound imho. Pain in the hole to set up and a tad flakey…..plus a serious cpu hog. The default GUI is nasty….but apart from that!

I did come across some excellent GUI skins, which I’ve installed they look and work really well. (info-here)

The whole Nebula community is at times like some secret society, you have to dig around and really put some effort in to getting things going the way you want.

But as far as I know, they’ve now working on a wrapper type application with a GUI render, so 3rd party developers with be able to release standalone versions with their own GUI.

That should really open it up to those that get lost just trying to download the installer! (the site can be a mare to navigate).

Best libraries imho:

http://www.analoginthebox.com/

http://www.alessandroboschi.eu/html/en/alexbprograms.htm

http://cdsoundmaster.com/site/software.html

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Mastered an album by the late Derrick Dalton, his Aeromodeller solo project. The tracks needed a lot of work, there had been a lot of compression applied during the recording and mixing stage, audio and data type compression. I did my best, spent a lot of time trying  to get them sounding as good as possible. I was happy with how it all turned out.

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Mastered a great 7″ for Skinny Wolves records.

WOLF005 : PATRICK KELLEHER & HIS COLD DEAD HANDS – 7″ : “CONTACT SPORTS” B/W RMX by ALALAL

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DIY you say.

Current DIY tyre kicking projects:

3-way ATC speaker based on the SCM50, developed by ATC and Wilmslow Audio. Going to try and get this later in the year. Looking at ways to improve the performance of the stock kit. Certainly upgrading the capacitors in the crossover, better internal wiring and dampening material would go a long way for starters.

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Igor Kapelevich’s Sontec Clone on- prodigy pro. (Based on the 250′s afaik.)

Would be great to do a version with switches,  a long term project for sure.

But I’ll get the pcb’s while they’re available. Not for the faint of heart, need to brush up on my electronics first.

Igor’s Neve 33609 / 2254 combo looks great also. Would love to hear it.

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Next up this month Rainfear and Babybeef albums to master.

Really looking forward to working on the them.

Long delayed Richer Than Astronauts mixing to be done.

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Still working on the Thread Pulls album.
Almost finished all the recording, 3 songs 90% mixed.
Nearly there…..really excited about this album!
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Another Skinny Wolves release almost finished mastering. Sounds great.
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Should be working on some tracks of Derrick Daltons Aeromodeller project soon. Looking forward to that.

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Rainfear album possibly coming in soon also. Exciting!

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Still getting to grips with Nebula, as an alternative to an analog eq.

With some 3rd party libraries it’s quite a cut above digital pluggins. Not exactly 100% stable though.

Also recorded and now mixing some tracks for Richer Than Astronauts.
10 songs recorded in one day, live, in the same room.
Like they did in the 20′s….

Some great mastering projects coming down the line soon also.

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Work to resume on the Thread Pulls album shortly. Very much looking forward to that.

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Some interesting developments in the digital world-

Flux release Syrah compressor. (And a nice discount for current Flux users!).

Brainworx are working on a digital version of elysia’s mpressor.

English version of Samp 11 out.

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Some very exciting projects coming up in the next few months! Details to come.

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Changed to valves in my comp to NOS Mullards, much happier with the sound now. Bought a few various valves to test, the Mullards won. The old valves (Svetlana) had almost a 4db high shelf at 10khz! Which was sometimes useful, but often way too much.

The Mullards are much more transparent, but sound more……’high class’ I think would be the best way to describe it.