The Mark Linett Thread

[aeijtzsche]

Adobe Audition is the DAW I use to record.

And it's true, the samples of Gold Star's echo chamber isn't really a true sample of it.  What I'm doing right now is trying to use Hal's snare/tom hit from the Wouldn't it be Nice intro as the impulse.  Keep in mind I just learned of this a few minutes ago so I'm still trying to get how to use this plug-in.

The problem is, the aforementioned hit has way too much room in it to really work that well.  It's really interesting to play around with.  I don't know if there are any exposed, 100% echo chamber "impulses" that you could grab for use in the beach boys catalog.  King of A, what handclap and drum click did you use?

[king of anglia]

I used a talk-back mic "pop" from a Good Vibrations sessions. Had a bit of tape echo on it as well as chamber. Also a couple of stick count-ins from GV again. Not long enough reverb tails on them but still good.
I haven't searched around for a good, long, clean click yet, but I'm sure they're somewhere.

I use Acoustic Mirror which comes bundled with Sony Soundforge. It's a bit more user friendly than the Convolution plug-in on Audition and has envelopes, filters etc...

I find that equalising (remove bottom end) and some hard-compressing is necessary for getting decent impulses.

[aeijtzsche]

Talkback mic pops certainly are good sources in terms of having a nice percussive element to them...It's interesting that sometimes they had reverb on the talkback and sometimes they didn't.

[king of anglia]

Hmmm. Perhaps they just outputted the whole mixing board out to the chamber.

[yrplace]

I used a talk-back mic "pop" from a Good Vibrations sessions. Had a bit of tape echo on it as well as chamber. Also a couple of stick count-ins from GV again. Not long enough reverb tails on them but still good.
I haven't searched around for a good, long, clean click yet, but I'm sure they're somewhere.

I use Acoustic Mirror which comes bundled with Sony Soundforge. It's a bit more user friendly than the Convolution plug-in on Audition and has envelopes, filters etc...

I find that equalising (remove bottom end) and some hard-compressing is necessary for getting decent impulses.

Interesting idea which will produce some sort of reverb pattern although I doubt it will be what the chamber actually sounded like. Normally the impulse is either a frequency sweep or a starter pistol which is considerably louder than the talkback "pop". Also in the case of a chamber a sweep through the speaker would be much more accurate than a popI will give it a try and see what it sounds like. BTW Altiverb comes with three of the Western chambers which are all good. EMT plates were also used a lot at Western and Sunset, but not at Goldstar.

Mark

[Toby]

Interesting thread. I've had Waves' IR-1 Convolution Reverb for awhile without using it, so I'm trying it out now as I'm typing this message and it sounds wonderful. A great function is that you can have any reverb sound reversed by the push of a button. I've never used a reverb unit with this impulse response function that King of Anglia brought up, so this is all really exciting.

[yrplace]

Interesting thread. I've had Waves' IR-1 Convolution Reverb for awhile without using it, so I'm trying it out now as I'm typing this message and it sounds wonderful. A great function is that you can have any reverb sound reversed by the push of a button. I've never used a reverb unit with this impulse response function that King of Anglia brought up, so this is all really exciting.

Yeah I have that one as well. Really great sounding although the interface isn't as good as Altiverb. I bought the new Waves APA unit so I could run more plugins at higher samplerates and they were offering the IR1 for free. Sadly when I upgraded to Pro-tools 7 the APA stopped working and I am still waiting for Waves to come up with a software fix.

Mark

[Toby]

Shame about the software bug. Prior to that, have you been using the IR-1 a lot? My main reverbs have been the other ones from Waves (True Reverb and Renaissance Verb) but they truly don't stand a chance to the IR-1! I haven't used the IR-1 so much before because it consumed too much RAM but that's sorted out now. Just for the sake of it, I took our well-known LA studio Cello's Echo Chamber reverb and put that over some of my tracks and the sound is HUGE! Huge and clean.

And to think I used the Boss RV-3 as my main reverb 10 years ago...

[JRauch]

I guess you missed the question, so I post it again. It´s kind of important to me to know that:

In the SMiLE-booklet, Brian is credited with "music, vocals, keyboards". On which parts did he play the keys?

[yrplace]

I guess you missed the question, so I post it again. It´s kind of important to me to know that:

In the SMiLE-booklet, Brian is credited with "music, vocals, keyboards". On which parts did he play the keys?

I don't recall.......but several sections throughout.

[king of anglia]

1966 tape echo and echo chamber courtesy of a computer:

http://s50.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1R6ISB9WU3N810INHJ4S4O12WE

[aeijtzsche]

The bass in particular sounds really spectacular.

[guitarfool2002]

Interesting discussion, and some cool innovative ideas on capturing the room sound through something like a talkback mic click.

But has anyone done an A/B comparison sending a track through any average rackmount studio reverb unit set to the "large room" or similar setting and compared the quality of that sound to one of these convolution reverbs?

Or is a basic convolution reverb doing essentially the same thing as your average digital reverb would do, only giving you specific parameters to match some specific rooms that have gained a legendary reputation?

I may be a skeptic until I hear more evidence, but I almost see signs of salesmanship in some of the claims, like those guitar salesmen who might crank a lesser-quality guitar through a really nice tube amp, hit an open A chord,  and watch as the buyer's eyes get really big...

I'm not saying the convolution reverb isn't a great tool, but I'm not convinced you couldn't get the same effect with a decent rackmount reverb. Convince me, please!

[yrplace]

Interesting discussion, and some cool innovative ideas on capturing the room sound through something like a talkback mic click.

But has anyone done an A/B comparison sending a track through any average rackmount studio reverb unit set to the "large room" or similar setting and compared the quality of that sound to one of these convolution reverbs?

Or is a basic convolution reverb doing essentially the same thing as your average digital reverb would do, only giving you specific parameters to match some specific rooms that have gained a legendary reputation?

I may be a skeptic until I hear more evidence, but I almost see signs of salesmanship in some of the claims, like those guitar salesmen who might crank a lesser-quality guitar through a really nice tube amp, hit an open A chord,  and watch as the buyer's eyes get really big...

I'm not saying the convolution reverb isn't a great tool, but I'm not convinced you couldn't get the same effect with a decent rackmount reverb. Convince me, please!

Conventional digital reverbs use algorithms to simulate the sound of a real acoustic space. Some do it better than others but none sound exactly the same as a real acoustic space. Convolution reverb programs are capable of sampling an acoustic space (or a digital or analog reverb) and then recreating it.

I bought Altiverb soon after it came out and I now also own the Waves IR-1 convolution reverb and frankly I almost never use anything else. Having real chambers and acoustic spaces available just sounds better to my ears (for whatever that's worth!) And they aren't all that expensive to boot...

Mark

[king of anglia]

I think the basic principle as I understand it is that convolution reverbs multiply the dry sound by the impulse sound. Digital reverb merely repeats the sound in various ways.

[Andreas]

In case you missed my question....please let me repost it.

Mark,

the song Soulful Old Man Sunshine (on the Endless Harmomny soundtrack) alternates between stereo in the chorus and fake stereo during the verses.  Could you explain why this is the case?
More generally, could you explain what tapes and tracks of this song exist, and how you came up with the finished mix?  Were some sections already mixed in 1969? If no original mix or test mix existed, how was the strucutre of the song decided? Do all the instrumental sections exist on multitracks, i.e. would a true stereo instrumental mix have been possible?

Thank you in advance.

[yrplace]

In case you missed my question....please let me repost it.

Mark,

the song Soulful Old Man Sunshine (on the Endless Harmomny soundtrack) alternates between stereo in the chorus and fake stereo during the verses.  Could you explain why this is the case?
More generally, could you explain what tapes and tracks of this song exist, and how you came up with the finished mix?  Were some sections already mixed in 1969? If no original mix or test mix existed, how was the strucutre of the song decided? Do all the instrumental sections exist on multitracks, i.e. would a true stereo instrumental mix have been possible?

Thank you in advance.

The tape was a two-track that came from Rick Henn and was something he put together from old ruff mixes. Only the original tracking date with some overdubs exists on multi-track. The tape with the vocals is missing.

Mark

[Andreas]

The tape was a two-track that came from Rick Henn and was something he put together from old ruff mixes. Only the original tracking date with some overdubs exists on multi-track. The tape with the vocals is missing.

Mark

Thanks for the answer. Did I understand that right: Those old rough mixes were duophonic for the verses, and that's all that survived with vocals? Who mixed those rough mixes? Rick?

[brother john]

For aeijtzsche  and K.o.A. -

Have a look at this site for an example of someone who's really into IRs. Lots to download:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~fokkie/IR.htm

I haven't tried them myself yet, but they look pretty interesting...

BJ

[guitarfool2002]

I'd be more confident in something like the Waves IR-1. My issue is perhaps with the sampling - if the sample was made using a starter pistol to excite a room such as the Putnam chambers at United/Western, and those results were recorded and sampled directly from that room then shaped by the end user, that would be perfect. I'd expect great results, and obviously great results have been created using those samples. But I'm not as sold on sampling an echo or reverb from, say, a vintage recording and applying that to a track, suggesting that that is a simulation of the original room. If you take it from any commercial CD, even one stage away from the raw master tapes, wouldn't you have certain parts of the mastering/transfer process coloring the sound of that room? If I take a reverb from a Beach Boys outtake, I'm not getting the pure sound of that room...rather I'd think I'd be getting the sound of my own track as heard through whatever processing the Beach Boys track has received in the process of putting it onto CD. It's not the same as applying the sampled sound of the actual live reverb room.

Maybe I'm stuck in the past, but I still need to be convinced that a properly-applied rackmount reverb wouldn't be a more pure sound than a sample from a recording, in the way the track interacts with that reverb.