The Aardvark Direct Pro Q10 is a 10-input / 10-output 24 bit PCI combination preamp and soundcard for Windows and Mac. The system features 8 balanced audio inputs and outputs, MIDI I/O, and S/PDIF I/O on RCA jacks. Supported sample rates include 44.1KHz and 48KHz, and an upcoming driver update will give the soundcard 88.2 and 96 KHz capability. In addition, the Q10 ships with a free copy of Cakewalk Pro Audio v.9.

What's in the Box

Aardvark Direct Pro Q10 (front and back)

Okay, so you know that I have just got the new studio to the point where I can start to put gear into it. I'm chomping at the bit (heh heh, bit…. What, you aren't going to byte on that one?) to get some recording done. But I have other issues. First I need to put in the speakers, run some tests, take some measurements, and properly treat the room.

I have done much of this work myself, and with the help of my friends and particularly with the help of my brother Bob. I'm just not up to tackling another DIY project for the studio right now. In the past I have either built all of the studio furniture myself, or contracted out to have it custom built. The new layout requires new racks and a new desk. I did have one custom rack shopped out. Built from all birch, it is a dual 12-space rack with a birch tabletop, on 4-inch wheels. Still, I need a new main desk, and a couple of more rack spaces wouldn't hurt.

So I look at the pre-fab offerings. I'm not too excited about any of th ... Read More »

I was asked last year to review the new 3.0 version of Waves Native Gold Bundle. Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am a vehement advocate of Waves' products, and have used Waves tools on virtually every project I have ever done for the last five years. Of course I offered to do the review, and I figured it'd be easy. After all, how hard is it to review a product you love?

Waves Native Gold bundle offers a huge host of great processors, including EQ, compression, reverb, chorus, flange, dithering, and the highly acclaimed L1+ Ultramaximizer limiter. These plugins run the gamut from the practical - such as the surgical Q10 EQ - to the utterly zany - such as the totally wacked-out Enigma.

The new version 3 processors sport a pretty new user interface, which gives them a nice, 3D look as opposed to the tired, flat, sterile look and feel of the previous versions of plug-ins. Many of the processors have been optimized to offer superior perf ... Read More »

Although Sonar supports DXi software samplers, many musicians still prefer using a SoundBlaster Live or Audigy sound card for SoundFonts. Playing SoundFonts through a sound card's hardware has several advantages over using a software synthesizer: There's no burden on the computer's CPU, the response time (latency) is immediate, and it's one less plug-in to fiddle with. When I bought my current computer I loaded it with 512 MB of memory just so I could use multiple large SoundFonts all at once. (See my ProRec article Striving for New Lows for the details.)

I have many SoundFont files, but three of them serve as my main sound set and contain all of the instruments I use on a regular basis. Where a standard General MIDI bank has one grand piano, one finger bass, and one trombone, my SoundFonts have many variations in separate banks. For example, I have four different c ... Read More »

I sold off my pair of Yamaha DSP Factory soundcards earlier this year and was looking for a simple, reliable soundcard with rock solid Win2K drivers - preferrably with WDM drivers for use with SONAR. I wanted decent sounding stereo analog in and out, Lightpipe in and out, S/PDIF in and out, and MIDI in and out.

I couldn't find anything that exactly fit my needs, so I decided to give the RME Digi 96/8 PST a try. RME soundcards had been getting lots of good reviews from users, so I contacted Tom Sailor (North American distributor for RME products, http://www.xvisionaudio.com ) about getting a Digi 96/8 PST for a test drive. The PST provides everything I was looking for except MIDI and WDM drivers. The RME MME drivers were supposed to be pretty fast, and my Yamaha SW1000XG has MIDI in/out, so on to the test drive.

What It Is

Gantt Kushner is owner and recording engineer of Gizmo Recording Company in Silver Spring MD. For the past 14 years Gizmo has recorded many artists local to the Washington DC area, among them Al Williams, Junior Cline and the Recliners, Dan Reynolds, O.A.R., Quintango and many more. Before recording full time, he played guitar professionally for about 30 years in genres ranging from Rock'n'Roll, Country & Western, R&B, to lounge gigs, show bands, and society gigs. He has also worked as an electronics tech in both music and non music related settings. I met Gantt on line when I sent him questions on gear issues. He is one of those terribly smart, terribly nice guys that you just feel glad to know. His unassuming, laid back demeanor and expertise have made him a favorite with those who have worked with him.

TN:

If you have ever recorded a vocalist who plays acoustic guitar, you know the scenario. Vocals leaking into the guitar mic, guitar leaking into the vocal mic and both of these problems compromise the options you would have had if you could have recorded each of them isolated. The EQ that makes the guitar sound wonderful puts an edge on the vocalist that makes Darth Vader sound pleasant. And, when you try to compress the vocals or add reverb, the guitar bleed becomes a 300 pound gorilla. The solution: a hyper-cardioid mic on the vocal (some folks call them super-cardioid), and a mic you can put very close to the acoustic without turning it into a monster.

I had run into this problem so often, I had planned to buy a condenser with a hyper-cardioid pattern. I had considered either a Neumann KMS 105 or if business is really good, the Neumann M149. Since I have plenty of good expensive vintage tube mics for vocals (Neumann U67s and AKG C12), I decided to save some bucks and try the Alesis GT AM6 ... Read More »

The Tune

All of the production decisions for this song flowed from the song itself. It was written about a man close to us who is an extremely talented actor, writer and artist. Yet he is completely lost and has made a mess of his life. He's 65 years old living alone in an RV on the streets of LA digging ditches by day so he can try to land a role on a soap opera.

So, emotionally, this song comes from the frustration, anger and compassion that arises from seeing someone like that, someone you love, just throw it all away and not want any help. You just want to shake them and say "Wake Up!"

Production-wise, we knew we wanted the song to be noisy, loud, aggressive and musical. We were going for a sort of Sergeant Pepper-meets-Tori Amos vibe, which is kind of what the song sounds like. It's got Beatles-influenced 7th chords, vocal harmonies and a piano that follows the bass line. ... Read More »

The Guitars

The main guitar riff was played on a 1969 Les Paul through a Marshall Valvestate ½ stack. However, in order to get an extra level of overdrive it went through a Roland GP-100 before it got to the Marshall. This guitar was doubled mic'd in an 9'x6' iso booth with an SM58 on the cabinet and an E-200 in the room about 7' away.

The big dirty 7th chords on the outro of the song were tripled to really make them huge in the stereo spectrum.

To add a new and complimentary layer to the chorus a clean guitar was added here (and on the bridge). This was a Carvin DC-135 played through an Ampeg Superjet combo amp and using a Sovtek Small Stone (phaser) stomp box. One SM58 right up on the grille.

The third guitar plays a triplet figure on the choruses. It's really just one big distorted chord strummed and I played the volume knob so it would sort of "swell" rhythmical ... Read More »

A few years ago Shure made a grand entrance into the studio condenser microphone world with the KSM32. The cardioid only KSM32 quickly became a standard studio tool and was soon followed by the multi-patterned flagship, the KSM44. Now their little brother has arrived! I use the term little brother lightly, as this microphone rivals the rest of the family in both quality and character.

The KSM27 is a side-address, large diaphragm cardioid condenser mic with Class A, transformerless electronics. This is not an electret condenser but a true condenser whose one-inch diaphragm is made of ultra-thin mylar that has been sputtered with 24-Karat gold. The cosmetics of the 27 match the rest of the KSM line in shape, size and color, with the 27 being slightly smaller than both the 32 and 44.

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Comments (0)

Adam Kagan

A Learning Experience

Mixing a CD remotely was a true learning experience. Usually, when tracking a CD, either I am producing the CD or I've been working with a producer since the outset, so I am either setting the artistic vision for the project, or I'm in constant contact with the person in charge of the vision. On this project, I simply took my best shot and won the gig. Now I've got 13 CDs of raw, unmixed tracks in my hand, and I'm really hoping that I'm not about to really piss someone off.

In the end, I had to assume that if I won the gig, then the producer and artist must be vibing with my work, and so I had to trust that my mixing decisions would be in line with their artistic vision. I had to go on faith that if I was their choice, then my gut would lead me in the right direction.

Turns out I was wrong.

When I heard the tracks for Everlasting, my mind said, "DISTORTION. LOTS O ... Read More »

Mixing the Drums

On this song I was presented with some unusual and creative drum tracks to mix. As Rob explained, the drum kit was made to sound very trashy. No mics were used on toms, as they were not played. Instead we had mics on the kick, snare, hats, and overheads. We also had a very crappy sounding mic under the snare, and another ugly sounding mic in the room.

Presented with these choices, I decided to take a reasonably straightforward mix on the kit using the 5 main mics on the kit, and leave the ugly snare and rooms mics out of the drum submix. That way, I could use those colorful mics later in the mix.

The drummer had used an undamped kick drum with quarters taped to the head and beater. The mic was placed very close to the head, giving the drum a strange, empty, clicky sound. I rather liked it as it was - raw, boomy, round, and thumpy - but it had too much "roar". That roar can step all o ... Read More »

A Little Piano

Listening through the rough mix that Rob had provided me, it was apparent that there was a piano part that doubled the bass line. Since I had decided to base the verse around the bass part, this doubled line was very important. I knew that if those parts were going to work together, then I had better pay close attention to the piano and get it sounding right early on.

Soloed, I though that piano was rather muddy and mono. It was recorded as a stereo track, but the sound was very up-the-middle. EQ could fix the muddiness. I didn't need any more bass down there, but I definitely saw room for the piano's nice overtones. They would really help the bass line stand out. With some radical EQ - a -18 dB low shelf @ 50 Hz combined with a +7 dB boost @ 2500 Hz, the piano lost its tubbiness and became meaner.

Guitars

Most of the guitars on this track were cut with one mic on the guitar cab, and one mic in the room. Usually this is done to provide some mixing options - close and distant. However on this song I was able to use both tracks effectively.

For example, on the "tapping" guitar part that starts the song I could have only used one track, and panned it. However by using both tracks, I can get the sound to be a little larger. And due to either careful planning or sheer luck, the sounds are nicely out-of-phase - not too much, but enough to push the sounds out to the edges of the stereo image. So the effect is that the part is balanced, but not mono.

The sound from this guitar was pretty muddly, mainly from the close-miked amp cabinet. I used a bass cut on that track @ 160 Hz and a treble boost out around 2600 Hz ... Read More »

Vocals

The vocals on this song were recorded as several distinct chunks:

1. A single track of lead vocals on the verses and the bridge
2. Doubled lead vocals on the choruses backed with a single track sung an octave up
3. Eight tracks of background vocals
4. One extra track singing the "what's your plan" line in the choruses

The unprocessed lead vocal track was designed to be distorted. As with the bass track, if the Amp Sim is fed too much bass content, then it bottoms out on bass. So the lead vocal was radically EQed to remove bass and boost treble. I used a Waves Q4 with a -10 dB low shelf @ 273 Hz and a +5 high shelf @ 9000 Hz. I also used a +7 dB boost @ 2300 Hz to bring out all the snarl in the vocal.

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Comments (1)

Rip Rowan

Once a year I write an article about a recording project, picking out one song and exposing the entire recording process from start to finish. The first Point to Point article covered an alt-country band called Four Mile Mule and their amazing niche hit, "Black and White Movie." It was released in 1999 and became the most popular article on ProRec. Last year I followed up with the second Point to Point article, featuring a local Dallas rock band called The Happiness Factor, and that article went on to be the most popular article on ProRec. This year's installment is sure to please.

Debra Soule is an Adult Alternative artist with a killer voice and a knack for writing catchy, memorable songs. Her debut CD, "Vapor", features 12 songs that sprawl over a large range of material both stylistically and sonically. Stylistically she covers a range of ground from Streisand to No D ... Read More »

When we speak of art, and in particular the art of music, we are always relating to how the music has affected each of us on a personal level. Few musical artists have so broadly affected not just the music, but also the culture of the western world as the Beatles. That's an undeniable fact. Their impact on the recording world was equally strong. Love them or hate them, the face of pop music, how it is written and recorded, and how artists are treated, changed radically because of the Beatles and George Martin.

Many of you are too young to have been affected by Beatlemania. I happen to be just barely old enough to have experienced it. But this was not where the Beatles came to the forefront and made the changes that I spoke of above. That came later. At first, the Beatles were just a pop group. Another, of many others, they were disposable entertainment for the masses like any other here-today-gone-tomorrow pop group of the time.

But this is where fans are born and where young li ... Read More »

Yamaha has been a leader in digital audio mixers since the mid 1980's, beginning with the revolutionary DMP mixers that led to the O2R digital console in the mid 1990s. This year, Yamaha has introduced the AW4416 Professional Audio Workstation. This product is called a workstation because not only is the AW4416 an automated digital mixer with moving faders and built-in effects, but it also contains a hard disk recorder, editor and sampler and has the ability to burn CD-Rs from it's hard disk to an internal CD-R. All these features are packed under a good looking, compact mixing surface that measures only 18 inches deep and 22 inches wide.

The last three years have been exceptionally good for powered loudspeakers. This is go