best way to record your moogs

[Brian G]

Still have a 3440 laying around the studio at home. Nice recorder, purchased mine in 1980. Record at 15ips for best results. Keep the heads clean and demagnetized. I used mine quite a bit up until 1996 when I bought a Roland VS880, now I’m using a VS2480. Still fun to use the “old gear” from time to time though.
Brian

[The Unknown]

I wouldn't be without my Tascam MSR16. It is one of the early ones, with dbx noise reduction and still sounds superb, after twelve years.

Long live tape!!

[sir_dss]

hey do you all record you synths direct or use a microphone?

[The Unknown]

Not sure who you're asking, but I record direct, via my desk (Soundcraft Ghost 24).

[Boeing 737-400]

My recording involves connecting the Voyager and/or Pro-One directly into my soundcard input on PC. can't afford any fancy recording equipmemt at the moment.

[HowIMadeMyMillions]

I used to use an old Tascam analog track recorder and loved the vintage sound but I just can't live without Cubase SX now on my Apple PowerBook. Boeing, what are you using as a sound card? I would recommend an external card as most stock PC cards are crap and don't allow very nice quality....even if you pick up a little USB input mixer you'd be better off. My first one was a little cheap Roland UA-30, worked great but didn't support MIDI. Now I'm Tascam all the way....anyway just as recommendation. Also I ALWAYS record direct input with my moogs.

[MC]

I use a Tascam 246 cassette four track. Very good sounding deck, I've recorded live shows of my band and the cymbals from the drums are very crisp.

[TonyR]

2x Pulsar Cards here for computer recording into cubaseSX2 / nuendo 2 , I think you could record a voyager thru a tin can and piece of string and it would still sound huge.

[Boeing 737-400]

My soundcard is a Creative SB Live, which is not the best card in the world, but better than some other onboard cards.

[Brian G]

99% of the time all of the synths go into a Mackie 1604vlz Pro, from there they are sent to monitors and the recorders. Once in awhile I will send them to a amp and mic it, but I’ll also record a direct signal to another track, depends on the sound you’re going for .
Brian

[solar]

Analog is great if you can afford it and have a well maintained quality deck. Heck these days you can probably find some bitchin' Studder for like $5.34 on Ebay. I record digital these days with a metric halo interface, Nuendo and a Powerbook. Digital is great *if* you use very high quality A/D converters. And fortunately with the moog 1) direct is so rich you don’t have to amp it to get nice tone and 2) it puts out enough signal that you don’t need to touch the preamp. I keep a very pure path: adjust levels from the moog, stereo out of the moog, leave the preamp alone and shoot straight into some sweet converters.

One note about recording the moog I learned yesterday: if you’re working in the digital domain you’re mastering engineer will kill you if you don’t do something about the ultra-low end content these devices can put out. All the huge 40-60+ hz the moog puts out is killer, but it also puts out stuff you can’t hear WAY down there, and if you’re recording with high end digital gear it will pick all that up (analog won’t have this problem). Then you’ll get out of a 12 hour session with your $75/hour mastering engineer with sore ears, not from the music, but from listening to the man bitch about how it’s freaking out his Weiss limiter and his hi-pass can’t even contain the power, and bla bla bla!

My ears still hurt this morning.

[little doodler]

One note about recording the moog I learned yesterday: if you’re working in the digital domain you’re mastering engineer will kill you if you don’t do something about the ultra-low end content these devices can put out. All the huge 40-60+ hz the moog puts out is killer, but it also puts out stuff you can’t hear WAY down there, and if you’re recording with high end digital gear it will pick all that up (analog won’t have this problem). Then you’ll get out of a 12 hour session with your $75/hour mastering engineer with sore ears, not from the music, but from listening to the man bitch about how it’s freaking out his Weiss limiter and his hi-pass can’t even contain the power, and bla bla bla!

My ears still hurt this morning. [/quote]

Best to squash it a bit with compression...Distressors are good

[Tobor]

yes yes yes...take care of ultra low frequencyes..you better listen with very good monitors...

By the way I record my moog both with line and also with microphone techniques.
Bruce Botnick (Doors' Engineer) once writed about this, and I agree.
Like the Bass, synthesizers (especially analog ones) can get a lot of good sounds with mic'ing (and you can allways mix it up with the line)
So do not be shy and try..

Synthesizers mic'ing (especially moogs) was a common practice in the late 60s or early 70s especially when moogs were used with big orchestras (John Barry for example).

[Sunsinger]

I use a TLA Tube Preamp going into a PtoTools HD 192 Interface recording at 24 bit and a sample rate of 96 kHz. You get as much dynamic range as tape (including bass) and no noise, the tube preamp warms things up a tad.

This also preserves the transparency of your reverbs and other FX as the depth of a good reverb tail often hides out in the tape hiss. You can eliminate these artifacts from tape if you can afford a couple of channels of Dolby SR at $1200.00 a channel.

There is also the cost of tape factor, as well as having to constantly degauss and calibrate the tape deck.

Unless you hanker for the warm and fuzzy days of tape hiss and vinyl scratches and pops, the digital age is hear.

Forgive the pun.

Sunsinger

[GregAE]

(OT)

Tobor -

I recall seeing a message from you many months ago that said you were working on some software for the MMV- something about chaos theory. Did anything ever come out of your efforts?

- Greg