Manual

Section 1: Health and Safety

Health and Safety is hugely important, especially when working in small rooms with a lot of flammable materials and electrical equipment. So in this first section, I will take you through all the Health and Safety measures when working in the studios. Here is a birds-eye map of the studio area:

In this diagram you will see there are two doors marked in GREEN, these are the fire exits, one by each control room. The RED dot marks the place of a fire extinguisher. The DARK RED mark indicates a fire alarm as you can see by Control Room B.

Inside the studios on the ceilings there are flashing red beacons to alert you of a fire,

these are fitted into all of the studio rooms in case you dont hear the alarm while you are making loud music. They will look like this:

If you are in need of a first aid kit, there is one in Richs Office, the first door on the left after the entrance to the venue as you come out of the main doors shown in the diagram above (the doors in black). There is a strict no food and drink rule in the studios obviously because if any liquids or crumbs and such get into the equipment, you will not only put yourself in danger of electrocution or a possible fire, you will also cause irreparable damage to the equipment which in turn could cause further danger. Another issue relating to equipment is trip hazards, specifically meaning cables and wires. This basically means that you shouldnt leave or move any wires or cables in a place where people will be walking and may trip over them. Make sure they are out of the way and are kept in a safe place. All equipment in the studio must be PAT tested. PAT stands for Portable Appliance Testing and is, by law, done every year to test the safety of the equipment. You will be able to see if this has been done by a label wrapped around the cable or a sticker on the main plug showing the date of the last test. It looks like one of these:

And lastly, in case of a fire, the main assembly point for the Venue studios i s on the Cricket field which you will find if you walk in the opposite direction to the way you will exit through the fire doors. It is the large field opposite the canteen.

Equipment and Specifications

MAIN STUDIO

Equipment you will find in the studio includes: Computer - Mac monitor (+ tower optional) Monitors - KRK Rokit ex8 (G8) x2, Active studio monitor

Low frequency- 8 dual layer Kevlar/ rohacell woofer High frequency- 1 albemet (aluminium/ beryllium) inverted done tweeter Frequency response- 40 hz- 30khz (+/-2db) Power output- 240w High frequency- 120w Low frequency- 120w
Mixing Desk - Soundcraft Sapphire

 36 input plus 4 stereo channels with dual faders on each channel (80 input total) 4 band EQ with parametric lo and hi mids 6 auxs selectable pre/post 8 busses full meter bridge 352 point patch bay

Soundcards/Interfaces - MOTU 2408 x2, MOTU 1224

8 analog inputs/outputs with 24-bit, 96khz converters on balanced/ unbalanced trs connectors 108db s/n ratio (a weighted) 24 channels of adat optical input/ output 24 channels of tdif (Tascam digital) input/ output 2 channels of s/pdif in and 4 channels out 16, 20 and 24- bit recording at 44. 1, 48, 88.2 and 96 khz
MIDI Keyboard - Evolution MK 361

Keyboard 61 standard keys (velocity sensitive) Control: switches ( wheel, channel, program, memory, transpose, gm reset, vel curve, octave down, octave up, power on/off, numeric keys) Control sliders: (pitch bend wheel, modulation wheel, channel volume/data entry)

Outboard -

Also, a PCI card in the computer which can be used for graphics, sound card, firewire connectors etc.

LIVE ROOM

Stage Box - 12 inputs, Headphone box

Cables and Connectors

Speakers: XLR cables MIDI keyboard: USB Outboard Equipment/Patch bay: Bantam leads

Section 2: The Channel Strip

2 uses of a channel The two uses of a channel are to record and to mix. When recording you would use the top faders on the desk as they control the input level , when mixing you would use the bottom faders as these control the output level. Noise gate A noise gate may be inserted in the signal path by pressing (GATE)IN and this is normally placed in the monitor path. Pressing CH swaps the gate to the channel path. The sidechain is normally fed from the source feeding the gate. The (S/C)FLIP switch swaps the source for the sidechain to the other signal path (i.e. channel path if the gate is placed in the monitor path), which may then be used to provide external keying for the noise gate. The RNGE switch increases the attenuation range of the gate from 15dB (default) to60dB*. The THReshold control allows the opening point of the gate to be varied from -40dB to +10dB (referred to tape monitor input level). The (FIL)IN switch places a wide bandpass filter in the sidechain, with a centre frequency variable from 70Hz to 4kHz by the FIL knob*. The RELease control normally varies the recovery time after gating from 0.1 to 4 seconds. If HOLD is pressed the release time is fixed at 0.1 seconds and the REL control varies the HOLD time (the time delay between the trigger signal going away and the gate starting to close) for up to 2 seconds. Shelving EQ The HF section is a second order shelving design, giving 15dB cut or boost at a fixed turnover frequency of 12kHz. The LF section provides 15dB cut or boost at a fixed turnover frequency of 60Hz, but is asymmetric to avoid too much VLF being recorded by a digital system.* The entire EQ section, HF/LF and HMF/LMF, may be switched IN or OUT with EQ IN switch. The EQUALISER is a 3-band semi-parametric. (frequency, volume and bandwidth) Group outputs The panning pot at the top of the faders is also used for grouping outputs, you would group outputs for example, if you wanted more than one channel to go through a section of the outboard. You would choose an output (13-14) and pan to the left for

13 and to the right for 14, and the channels on output 13 would all go to the same section of the outboard and into logic.

Monitor fader The monitor fader controls the level of output through the monitors and usually there are two, left and right for stereo mixes and occasionally one for a general mono mix. Master mutes Four mute switches place the channel under the control of the selected master mute bus. These are really useful if you want to mute certain parts of a mix at certain times for example, you could put all of the guitar parts on mute 1 and all the drums on mute 2 etc. Auxiliaries Six Auxiliary Sends are provided, and are arranged in two sections. Aux 1 and 2 are intended primarily for foldback and are normally pre-fade and in the monitor path. Pressing CH sources them from the channel and POST makes them post-fade. Aux 1 is a stereo send and follows the channel or monitor panpot even when pre-fade. Aux 3 to 6 are intended mainly for effects sends. They are permanently in the monitor path and post fade. *= sourced from the user manual.

Section 3: Single Channel Recording

Live room The live room is a space located opposite the control room for recording drums and vocals mainly and normally includes a full drum kit, a stage box, a headphone unit and xlr cables. The xlr cables included are for use when mic'ing up a drum kit and plugging in the microphones to the stage box and the headphone unit is used with the talkback feature so the musicians can hear the technicians when they speak. Stage Box The stage box is made up of 16 xlr inputs and is connected to the mixing desk via the multicore. Routing signal to the computer.

First the signal from the vocals or drum kit goes into the microphones through the xlr's and into the stage box in the live room, then it is put through the multicore which connects the stage box to the mixing desk in the control room. Once the signal is in the mixing desk, find the channel on the desk that the signal is coming through and choose the group output you want (1-2 for example) and hard pan left or right to choose input 1 or input 2. Once you have done this, make a channel on Logic and select the correct input for the signal. Simple Recording. A simple recording is done purely by following what I have written above. Recording drums for example, would just mean mic'ing up the kit, plugging each mic into a different input on the stage box, which routes the signal through the multicore into the mixing desk. Then selecting the group output for each part of the kit by hard panning, and selecting the correct input for the channels on logic, you would be creating a simple recording. DI recording A DI recording is a recording made without using live instruments. This can be done using pre-amps. di boxes change the unbalanced output signal to a balanced line level signal to be used by the computer, bringing the pure signal of the instrument directly into the desk.

Section 4.
Outboard Equipment Delay unit dps db-7

Roland Dep-5 digital effects processor

Yamaha spx 90

Samson Ps 11 power strip/ Samson s.phone headphone mixer/ amp

Focusrite platinum twin trak pro

Alesis compressor

Joe Meek compressor vc5

TL Audio ivory series/ TL Audio- instrument compressor

MESA Rectifier - Recording Preamp

Routing to the Compressor whilst recording

We will need to send the signal to the outboard equipment and to do so we will need to use the patch bay. You will have to find the corresponding patch strip in the patch bay for the channel you are working on and use the bantam leads. Insert one end of the bantam lead into INS SND on the patch strip and the other end into the left input of the compressor (we will only use left as we are recording in mono). Once you have the sound you like, you will need to return the signal, so you take another bantam lead, insert one end into the compressors left output and into the patch strips INS RTN

Routing to the outboard equipment after recording This process is very similar to the one above; there are just a few minor changes. So to do this after recording, you will need to find all of the channels you are using and select the REV button. This will move the signal from the top faders to the bottom faders (the top faders are used for recording and the bottom for mixing). Once you have done this you need to route it through the patch bay, make a new channel on logic and re-record all the channels when you have the sound you want.

Spreading your recording across the desk

Once you are all done with recording, you can spread your mix across the desk. This can be very useful if you want a more precise mix. If you decide to do this, you will have to switch back to the bottom faders ready to mix and you will need to select a different output for all of the channels on logic. This is because we are using a different group output for each of the faders. For now, all of the channels are set to stereo, which means that the signal for all of these channels is coming through the monitors and controlled by the first two faders. If we take off the stereo from the channels, we can mix them all individually instead of just mixing the overall left and right monitor output. So for example, if we have 8 group outputs across 8 faders we will have to pan. This is because the outputs come in pairs, so you will see 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8. So for the first two faders you will pan hard left to get output 1 and hard right for output 2 etc. Once you have done this for all the channels you will be able to start mixing them on the desk. Bouncing your mix of the desk This is usually the final stage of this process and is a fairly simple one. All you need to do is select the bounce button on all of the channels you want to keep and move them to the top faders for recording. Now you will have to make a new channel on logic and re-record the finished mix and voila! Ready to bounce from logic.

Section 5: Selecting Mics

kick drum - Audix F14 dynamic top snare - Shure SM57 unidirectional dynamic bottom snare - Sennheiser dynamic omnidirectional rack tom - Audix F10 dynamic floor tom - Audix F10 dynamic hi hat - Audix F15 condenser overheads - Neumann condensers Mic placement kick The placement of the kick mic depends very much on the kind of sound you want to hear. If you would like to hear a more punchy sound with a lot of focus on the hit then you would place the mic inside the sound hole close to the drum skin. If you would like an average middle ground then I would place he mic just at the opening of the sound hole, and if you want a less prominent kick sound with more of the general room sound then I would place he mic

further away from the sound hole. top snare The mic for the top snare should be positioned very close to the drum skin but at the edge of the drum at an angle pointing to the centre for the best possible sound. bottom snare the mic for the bottom snare should always be positioned directly below the centre of the drum skin if possible pointing upwards. (signal must be reversed on he desk for his mic as it is pointing opposite another mic) rack tom the rack tom mic should be positioned identical to the floor tom mic, pointing to the centre using a lug clip. floor tom as I mentioned above, this mic should be positioned using a lug clip, as close to the centre as possible. hi hat the mic for the hi hat should be positioned roughly 6 inches above the risen centre part of the symbol. overheads The overheads are generally positioned above the kit, one at each side and equidistant from the snare for an equal and accurate sound. (pan left and right on logic) There is also another method called the XY position. This set up allows for more general room sound because each overhead is aimed away from the kit. The mic's are placed at the centre above the kit, as close together as possible and at a 90 degree angle to eachother. The left mic will point right and the right will point left so you must pan them opposite on logic. Setting Levels one you have your kit recorded and the signal is routed into the desk, you will need to fix the levels of each mic signal. You will want the main channels for each part to be the most prominent, around -6 is an ideal level (around the 0 point on the mixer) Routing multi channel signals Recording a drumkit is a prime example of multi channel recording . All you really need to do is fully mic up the drumkit, send the signal from the stagebox to the desk and into logic and then onto seperate channels. Then arm all of the channels you want to record and select record and the chosen channels

will record the signal from the kit. Recording Drums Just to summarise what I have explained above, to record a drumkit successfully you will need to mic up the kit correctly and connect each mic by xlr to the stagebox and send the signal from the stagebox to the multicore. the signal will them be sent from the multicore to the desk and you will use the top faders to record eah drum part into logic. once you have done this you will move the signal down to the bottom faders and eq and mix each part and fix the levels to your preferences. lastly you will brig the signal back to the top faders and bounce them all onto a final mix track on logic.