Rode NT2-A

Good evening from a rain soaked Pennsylvania

Today I spent some time working on a project that has been in process for over 6 years now. Yep, and you thought the new Guns n Roses album was taking forever...oh wait, that's taking 10 years. Never mind.
Anyway, it's the debut album from my talented and bi-lingual brother, Josh Blakesley. It's going to be a great album. He writes great songs, has an excellent voice, and an ear for beautiful harmony. We're hoping to finish in time for a Christmas release.
So anyway, we were just about to lay down some vocals when I hear a loud thump on my doorstep and off I ran to see if it was what I hoped it was. It was!! My new Rode (or RØDE depending on how you want to type) NT2-A large diaphragm condenser microphone was just outside my front door. I love getting new gear and getting a new mic is just about as exciting as it gets. No time to waste, I ripped open the box and had the NT2-A set up in no time and ready for a trial by fire.
The first thing I noticed was how big and heavy this thing is. I've spent too much time recently working with Chinese manufactured mics; I almost forgot what real quality feels like. These mics are made in Australia and the NT2-A is an update on the tremendously popular NT2 (which coincidentally I think was made in China). After I figured out the funny mic clip and made a change to the only mic stand I have that has one of those really tiny screw connectors, I fired up the phantom power, put the mic in cardiod mode and let 'er rip.
What a transparent sounding mic! No EQ, just a bit of compression, and viola! Great sounding vocals. The mic is very quiet and has an even frequency response across the board.
As for specs, I won't bore you with the typically stuff like 20-20k freq response. You can get that from the Rode website. The features are very nice and include three polar patterns: omni, cardiod, and figure 8. Hi-pass filter selectable at 40, 80, or off, and a pad selectable at 0, -5db, or -10db. All in easy to use FINGER SWITCHABLE switches on the front of the mic. You heard me right, you don't need to stick a pen anywhere to make these switches. Just use a normal human finger and you're fine. Score 1 for Rode. It amazes me sometimes that the most obvious things are the most overlooked by companies. So thank you Rode for being Captain Obvious.
After recording that lead track we worked on a part that required both of us singing together in close harmony. What better opportunity to try out the figure 8 setting? This was the first experience for either of us singing in this fashion and we found it a bit uncomfortable being that close face to face while singing. We have a problem of laughing whenever we look at each other. But we made it though and found the recording to sound very natural and we were able to blend our voices nicely by being so close. Plus we felt like George Harrison and Paul McCartney while doing it. :-)
Next I was tracking my brother and his wife singing together for a song of my own where there will be a large group of people (about 22 different voices) singing together although they are all recorded separately. For this I thought I'd try out the omni pattern and get a bit of room sound. As expected this opened up the sound quite a bit and gave a little boost at around 10kHz for a pleasant and airy effect.
That's all the time I had to work with the NT2-A today, but I have to say, I love it so far. My only complaints are with the stand adapter as it's cumbersome to set up and to change positions, but I suppose going forward I'll just use a shock mount instead.
Worth every bit of the $399 price tag and probably quite a bit more.

Listening to Greg Brown Slant 6 Mind. A very cool, chill kind of album. I hope to make a record like this soon. Far enough to the folk side of blues that it works for a white guy to make it.

Rock on

Ben
www.javboyrecords.com

UPDATE: I just used the NT2-A as a room mic for drums and it sounds fantastic all by itself! If I was going for mono drums I wouldn't use any of the other tracks I recorded. I set it up about 5 feet from the kit and 3 feet off the ground. It was in omni mode with the -10dB pad engaged. From there I went into the Joemeek ThreeQ (see previous post) with the compression set to 3, attack at 5, and release at .3. The EQ was not active. I love it when new gear sounds good.

Joemeek ThreeQ

Howdy studio rats

Day before yesterday I got a new piece I've been eying up for some time, the Joemeek ThreeQ. This unit is pretty much a stand-alone version of a single channel strip of a console. Meaning that you've got a preamp, optical compressor, and parametric EQ. All your initial processing needs in a half-rack space.
One of my clients gave me an unexpected bonus so I thought I'd treat myself to a little fun. I read some reviews and most of the reviewers that I respect gave it great marks while the 'no namers' said it sounded weird.
So I pulled it out of the box and looked it over. It's got a cool green metal casing with nice metal knobs and looks really sharp. Finger tested the buttons and was disappointed that they felt cheap and plastic with shaky springs. I can easily see one of these going bad with a lot of use (the buttons are for mic/line selection, compressor active, EQ active, phantom power, and +4/-10). Another pet peeve is that it didn't come with those little rubber feet that you attach to most gear that sits on a desktop. So it slides around if I'm not careful. Bummer.
But anyway...Gave the manual a quick check before hooking it up as the 8th input of my Digi 002R and took note that the compressor is set to a ratio of 5:1. Had to pull the plug on a MIDI keyboard I liked to keep hooked up because the Meek comes with the dreaded wall wart. Another bummer, but at least one I'm used to.
To be honest with you, I haven't even used this on a project yet. I've only done the initial tests to see what it sounds like and how it works. The test I put together for this one involved taking two Nady SCM900 large diaphragm condensers (I've never heard two mics sound so much alike, including some matched pairs) and running one through my default audio chain of the ART TubeMP, this vintage graphic EQ (I have no idea who made it, I got it at a garage sale), the Behringer Autocom Pro MDX1400 compressor, into PTLE, and the other through the ThreeQ into ProTools. I then got the levels as close to equal as I possibly could and bypassed the compressor and EQ in both chains to test out just the preamps against each other. I know, I know, one's a tube and one is solid state like comparing apples and apple pie, but what I'm trying to determine is if my new default will be the ThreeQ or if I'll stick with what I got. This first test was important because I had heard that the Meek had a noisy noise floor. Whoever I read that from was wrong. I heard no problems at all even at a high gain. So, I had the mics right next to each other and the preamps set pretty equal and gave it a speaking/singing test to hear the difference. There wasn't much. Besides the warmth acheived by overdriving the MP at a high volume, they were very clean and clear with little coloration.
Next test, the EQ. The Meek has fixed high and low frequencies (12kHz and 80Hz, respectively) so I gave a little boost at 80 and did the same on my graphic EQ. I'll be honest with you by saying I'm not really great at comparing EQs so suffice to say they both sounded 'fine' to me. No really noticeable phase shifting problems or anything. Just an increase in the low end, as expected.
Now on to the compressors. I dialed in an equal threshold, attack, and release, and set the Autocom to 5:1. It was tough to get them to have nearly the same gain reduction but when I got it close, I went for it. Listening to playback I was shocked at how hard the Meek hits. Behringer stuff always gets a bad rap, and I'll admit that I have my issues with this compressor, but the Autocom was so much smoother than the Meek. The ThreeQ just hammered the sound and held it. Like it's a hard knee or something. Not that it's unusable, you just have to know going into it that when the compressor kicks in, you ain't goin nowhere.
So that's it, that's my test. I'm sure I'll have more things to say about it as I get used to it in action, but I'm glad to have it in my arsenal. Used as simply a preamp, it holds it's own just fine and doesn't have a wacky signature sound (as I read elsewhere), and adding the compression can tame even the wildest vocalist. Looking beyond the little things I don't like about it (why the hell do companies keep insisting upon putting phantom power switches on the back of units? ahhhh!), I'm pretty pleased with this unit.
And my patience paid off in that I was able to pick this bad boy up for a mere $229. Almost half the price it was originally released at.
I'm expecting to receive a new mic at the end of the month, the Rode NT2-A, so keep an eye out for that review.

I'm listening to The Band The Last Waltz. Everything a concert movie/recording should be.

Rock on

Ben
www.javboyrecords.com


Update (12-13-08):

I just got a comment asking if I had any updates on this (thank Anonymous!)...
I do.
I've now been using this unit for a couple of years and I find that my initial review is close to my overall experience, though not spot on by any means.
This is definitely NOT my go-to preamp.
It behaves quite differently than the other single unit preamps I've got (mostly all tube stuff) so I usually end up using this unit when I want a different flavor. It's pretty straight forward on the preamp side of things and I've used the EQ to great effect, mostly on voices that normally sound too muddy. I shelf the lows and give the high end some lift to clear it up.
Probably the biggest surprise to me about this unit is that I don't use the compressor. Ever really.
It just hits too hard for my taste. Its fixed ratio of 5:1 without any kind of soft knee or gradual reduction is just too much for me. One second you're rolling along fine, then you cross that threshold and you're squashed to hell. I'm sure some people like this sound and are adept at making it work for them, but I prefer to keep my compression to multiple stages of light reduction to get that smooth sound.
If you've got other preamps and are looking to add something new, this is a nice unit.
If you're looking to save some bucks by getting your pre, comp, and EQ in one box as your only channel...keep looking.

Rock on.

Ben

Wizoo Wizooverb W2

Hey gearnuts,

I know that I've been promising a talk about the Wizoo W2 reverb plugin for a while now, but the problem is that not only does it take a long time to get used to a product like this, but because it's so feature rich it takes a long time to write about it too! But here it is...
I've been reticent to jump on the 'new' reverb train because a) reverbs are notorious for being expensive, b) they are notorious for being CPU hungry beasts (in the software versions), and c) while reverb can be important, it does not alone make for a great song. Give me a Radio Shack mic into a cassette recorder with a great song and great singer and I'll be much happier than a full studio full of gear with a tone deaf singer and horrible song. I once worked on a children's version of the "Electric Slide" at world-class Sigma Sound with two tone deaf kids, and two adults pretending to be kids. Nightmare. But I digress...
So, reverb. I made the jump into modern reverb with the Wizoo Wizooverb W2 room emulating reverb. It's made by Wizoo which is now a part of the Digidesign family. Honestly, I had never heard of Wizoo before but I did a bit of digging and read some good things about it although I found no in-depth reviews of this product.
I've had it for about a month and a half now so I don't really remember how the install went. But I guess that's a good thing; must've been easy! I of course am using it with my ProTools LE system as an RTAS plugin. So I opened it up for the first time in a session of minimal complexity to just give it a run through and really 'hear' it for the first time. Inserted it as an Aux send (as is my habit with reverb) and CRASH! Out of CPU power. Bummer! There's nothing I hate more than getting a new piece of equipment, getting really excited about it, only to have a huge problem with it right away. But read on, Javboy does endure.
So after a few mumbling words under my breath, it was off to read the manual to figure out what was wrong. Luckily, the W2 comes with a great manual with excellent and easy to understand directions and explanations.
Bonus #1: Customizable settings to tailor the W2 for working with YOUR computer.
Clicked on the Setup button at the top of the window and changed a couple of the processing settings (much like the hardware profile menu in PTLE). Voila! It works. Not perfectly, mind you, but it works. The problem is that the W2 defaults to start on one of the most CPU intensive presets. So as soon as you open it, you've got a problem. Once you get off that preset, you're ok. Additionally, after I decided to keep and use the W2, I made a CPU/mobo upgrade I was considering anyway (see previous post). Now the preset thing is really no problem and I could change the Setup settings again.
Enough techie stuff, how does this thing sound?! I'm a big preset user as a starting point because in the studio, time is money. I start with a preset and tweak to taste. So I proceeded to try all the presets just to see what sounds this thing is capable of.
Bonus #2: It comes with no less than 100 presets.
All presets are categorized by type to make it really easy to navigate. Plus, depending on where you click, it's one click to switch between them. Ambience, Chamber, Hall, Plate, Church & Cathedral, Non-linear, Post Production, Studio, Room, it's got it all covered. I tried them all and they all have a 'similar' sound. It's funny because most reverb units I've used have a completely different sound for each type. The W2 was very...um...cohesive. I still haven't decided if this is a good thing or not. Not to say that calling up a Cathedral setting will give you the same effect as reverse reverb, but there is just something about the characteristics of all the presets in the W2 that give off the same vibe. Maybe this is a function of all IR (impulse response) reverbs, I don't have a lot of experience with them. But I was able to find a few that I could tell would be my 'go to' effects (love the short vocal reverse).
Ok, beyond the presets you can really get down to the nitty gritty with all of the control Wizoo packed into this unit. You can adjust EQ, frequency response time, early reflections, tail, and more. Here's where it gets really cool. Wizoo built the W2 around what they call HDIR which stands for High Definition Impulse Response. In theory, it's supposed to be what HDTV is but in the IR world. And it does a good job. I didn't hear any artifacts even on long reverb tails. The problem is that HDIR is very CPU intensive because it requires so much more information to be hi-def. So Wizoo in their infinite wisdom also includes AIR which is a traditional algorithmic type reverb. Brilliant! And I really like the AIR function. It sounds good and it's got that sound that I'm used to with traditional reverb units. But wait, it gets better. Let's say you need to save on CPU but you love the reverb tail you're getting with an HDIR preset.
Bonus #3: The W2 lets you mix and match your early reflections and tails. So you can have an HDIR tail and AIR early reflections. Genius!
So with all these tweaking capabilities your options are endless. And then you can do even more! You've got the Width knob. This controls the stereo image being input and output (separate controls) of the unit. One more thing. You can import your own room emulations to really customize your sound. Just think, you could sample the live room of your studio and use it in your mix! Oh wait...Ok, so I will never use this feature. But maybe someone would. It sounds cool in theory. (And for the record, I realize what people would actually use this function for).
All this in a unit that costs less than most others in its class. MSRP $249.95 for RTAS, VST 2.0, and AU. But you can pick it up at any time for $199. Or if you're as cool as me, you can happen to find it on sale at AudioMidi.com for only $99! But not everyone can be that cool.

Watching the indie doc Rock School right now about Philly's own Paul Green School of Rock.

Rock on

Ben
www.javboyrecords.com