New Recording Computer Day!

[nightflameauto]

This one's been a long time coming. I've been using a 2007 iMac Core 2 Duo (2 Ghz), 4 GB RAM, 500 GB internal drive as my recording rig since early 2008. It was really strong for a good long time, but here over the last year or so it's started to get a little touch-and-go with overruns during recording and playback if I start stacking the plugins too high. I'd been kicking around the idea of a new computer for a while and with my bonus check I decided to splurge and bump to a new one.

So, grabbed a 21.5" iMac, Quad Core i5 (2.7 Ghz), 8 GB RAM, 1 TB internal drive on sale today. Haven't got it set up yet but I'm PUMPED to get home and start in on it. I honestly felt like I was held back on anything but my simpler mixes for a while, and that had been slowing me down from even feeling like recording. The memory and the multiple cores should give me a lot more breathing room.

I'm thinking tonight will probably be set up time, migrating settings and programs, and maybe tomorrow or over the weekend I'll get to throw together some clips.

[Sizzler]

Sweet! Should be a nice rig. Congrats

[Ostinato Rubato]

I'm jelly. I need a better machine, now that I'm actually using my software. Reaper ran a lot smoother on my wife's macbook when I was recording the jams at the studio vs. how Reaper runs on my PC at home. Just smoother performance on the mac machine... which is a weaker machine than my PC on paper.

[nightflameauto]

I'm jelly. I need a better machine, now that I'm actually using my software. Reaper ran a lot smoother on my wife's macbook when I was recording the jams at the studio vs. how Reaper runs on my PC at home. Just smoother performance on the mac machine... which is a weaker machine than my PC on paper.

Yeah, I had a Sony and an HP with recording setups before I moved to a Mac Mini in 2006/2007. I wasn't much of a fan of the way my windows machines handled recording.

It's funny how fast you can eat up resources on even a fairly good machine once you start delving into mixing. I'm big on lots of small, subtle touches track-by-track type mixes, and it adds up fast.

I'm hoping this puts me back on track with my recording. I need to finish one of the two albums I've been working on for forever sooner or later.

[Ostinato Rubato]

I'm in the same boat, only I haven't quite delved into the mixing yet. I'm still in fairly early stages of initial track laying, for my 1-2 albums I've been working on forever too. Interestingly enough, losing my band mates has totally refocused me. I've gotten more work done on my own personal music project in the last week than I had gotten done in the last 6 months.

[Telephant]

Damn my buddy just bought a refurbished iMac (i7) today and was rubbing it in my face. You bastards.

[nightflameauto]

Damn my buddy just bought a refurbished iMac (i7) today and was rubbing it in my face. You bastards.

My last one was a refurb and it's treated me well for years. Best Buy had a sale going on that made a new one almost the same as a refurb of the same model so I just jumped on it.

And. . . the wife made plans for us tonight. Always on days I have new toys.

[clipless bumper]

......... the wife made plans for us tonight. Always on days I have new toys.

that's on purpose - just to reaffirm that she is more important than your other toys.

[nightflameauto]

......... the wife made plans for us tonight. Always on days I have new toys.

that's on purpose - just to reaffirm that she is more important than your other toys.

You know, some of the best, dirtiest, nastiest sex ever comes on new guitar days before I even get to take them out of the case. I remember at first thinking, "man, guitars really get her going." After the third time I realized she barely notices the guitars. It's more about, "look, don't forget I'm here to play with too."

And I got no problem with that at all.

Maybe I shoulda bought a guitar today instead.

[RustyMetal]

It sounds like a nice rig, have fun with it!

Remember, she can sit on your lap and all kinds of naughty stuff while you're playing with your new computer.

[BlackWolf]

That's cool!

Let's hear them mixes now!!

[nightflameauto]

It sounds like a nice rig, have fun with it!

Remember, she can sit on your lap and all kinds of naughty stuff while you're playing with your new computer.

Oh, that's happened.

Multi-level failtactular:
1. Got done with our plans late enough I just crashed out and didn't get the computer out until this morning.
2. Got everything set up, went to plug in the interface: no go. I bought a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter, not realizing it's a Firewire 800 adapter and I have no 800->400 adapters to hook up the old interface.

Ah well, it's still got a couple hours of restoring my Time Machine backup before I can use it anyway. Excited to do up an all-in-the-box thick mix.

[RustyMetal]

Tell her to operate the controls while you do some, ahem, desk diving.

[nightflameauto]

Tell her to operate the controls while you do some, ahem, desk diving.

We'll take turns. It is Valentine's Day after all.

Found a converter. IT'S ALIVE!

I need to figure out how to reinstall a couple plugins that failed in the migration, but outside of that everything appears to be functional. That migration wizard is pretty handy. Got my old setup on the new system with nothing more than a few hour wait for the backup to finish pulling.

Tonight or tomorrow it's AWN. And clips will be a commin'.

[RustyMetal]

[nightflameauto]

https://soundcloud.com/nightflameauto/new-recording-computer-test

First clip.

This is pretty much just me throwing together riffs and trying to beat up the processors. Everything is direct.

Shots of the mixer:



If you look at one guitar group (second window, Guitar1 or Guitar2 labels) each guitar gets sent to two aux strips, run through a tubescreamer emulation, a preamp simulation, an amp simulation, and Recabinet. Those two aux strips then come back together into another aux where they get set in the mix and EQed. For reference, on my old computer doing this once resulted in nothing but noise as the processors peaked out on record. Here? Hits about 1/4th processor use during recording, quite a bit less during playback with both guitars and all the bass processing going.

Now when I get around to actually doing what I normally do I'll have all sorts of breathing room instead of worrying about hitting the wall during the mixing process.

Looks like soundcloud is being a bitch about it, but the tonefinder link is working.

[nakedzen]

Where are your peaks hitting on the master bus? Just by looking at the faders it looks like you're running everything really loud, I could be wrong though without seeing the actual tracks. (Master bus peaks should be below -12dB).

[rear naked]

im waiting on the new mac mini to drop in a couple of weeks

[nightflameauto]

Where are your peaks hitting on the master bus? Just by looking at the faders it looks like you're running everything really loud, I could be wrong though without seeing the actual tracks. (Master bus peaks should be below -12dB).

I think we've chatted about this before. I try to keep individual tracks set up so that with the fader at zero the peaks are below -20. Like, the bass where it's currently set all mixed together is hitting around -23. Guitars around -21. Master bus peak without any processing on it is hitting -10 at the absolute top. Mostly stays around -13 to -12.

There's a new mac mini coming? Seems like that line gets neglected a lot. I really liked the one mini I had before I moved on to iMacs. Sweet little space savers.

[Loins of Fire]

Not sure why any mastering engineer would need -12db of headroom. I think the general consensus is that -6db is more than enough.

[nakedzen]

Not sure why any mastering engineer would need -12db of headroom. I think the general consensus is that -6db is more than enough.

It's not for mastering, but your plugins and overall headroom.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Enhcve9Lblc[/video]

[Loins of Fire]

I'm familiar with Grahams videos. In that video he's just making the point that it's better to keep conservative volumes than to risk any clipping.

[nakedzen]

I'm familiar with Grahams videos. In that video he's just making the point that it's better to keep conservative volumes than to risk any clipping.

Yup. If you want to run your master at -6dB it's your preference. There's absolutely nothing to gain from that though. But you might possibly introduce noise/clipping/hiss in your plugins that you don't necessarily notice, which will eventually eat your headroom and clog up your mix if it's going on in enough of your tracks.

[Loins of Fire]

I'm familiar with Grahams videos. In that video he's just making the point that it's better to keep conservative volumes than to risk any clipping.

Yup. If you want to run your master at -6dB it's your preference. There's absolutely nothing to gain from that though.

I agree and I keep my levels pretty low myself but you made it sound like there will be problems or it would sound worse if it goes above -12db. There is no benefit of setting levels hot but there is also very little risk as long as you keep a couple db of headroom for post processing.