The original fabric style pop filters are coming in layers. They are basically stacking two filters on top of each other. I suspect this is motivated by the razor companies who somehow manage to squeeze just one more blade into their design each and every year. (Just when you thought that the 3 blades of the Mach 3 would never be surpassed, in comes the Mach 4. How do they DOOOOO that? Talk about scientific marvels! The future IS here!)

Editor Keys sent me their pop filter rendition of the Mach 2 razor and I’ve had the chance to use it on quite a few sessions. Most importantly, I used it on my Killer Home Recording voiceover videos so I’ve gotten a chance to work with it on my own voice quite a bit as opposed merely using it from an engineers perspective….for whatever that’s worth.

If It Ain’t Broke……Sort Of
I have to say that if I had to list my top 85 problems in my recording studio, my conventional pop filters would not be on the list. (Get band to pay would be #1. Get band to show up would be #2. Get band to go away would be #3.)

The Editor Keys Dual Layer Pop Filter doesn’t help with getting bands to pay and I’d guess that if I were to beat them with it they may go away, but I never got that far. Drum sticks seem to be optimal for that. (Maybe a dual-layer drum stick is necessary?)

So, going into this review, I never felt there was a huge void in pop filter technology that just screamed for a solution. However, there are definitely times when pops have made their way through the old single layer filters.

The Sound
I have noticed that every once in a while when a singer is really doing their thing using the old 1-layer design, there can be pops that slip through. The pops are dramatically reduced with the conventional filter when compared to using no pop filter at all, but maybe there is some unwanted rumble that gets through every once in a while. Again, this isn’t a huge problem, but it does happen.

I found that the Editor Keys Dual Layer Pop Filter solved this little problem entirely. Not once in all my use with it did it let a single POOF through even when I tried to POOF through it on purpose.

In terms of the effect on the sound, I didn’t notice one. Between the single layer fabric, metal-style Stedman, and dual layer fabric design of the Editor Keys Dual Layer Pop Filter, I really didn’t notice a sound quality difference that was worth talking about. It seems the dual layer fabric design is just as transparent as the single layer fabric design.

Conclusion
Anyone who seems to suffer from excessive plosives getting through their traditional pop filter can solve the problem with the Editor Keys Dual Layer Pop Filter. I don’t feel that this filter is worth tossing my old filters in the trash. However, for anyone buying their first pop filter, I entirely recommend the Editor Keys double layer gadget. At a price of about $30 US, give or take, it seems like a fine deal.

I’ll be buying all my future pop filters from Editor Keys.

Weight
First off, I was surprised by the weight of the Editor Keys Portable Vocal Booth. I expected a light weight contraption that I could knock over without feeling bad about. This was certainly not the case. This thing is built way tougher than that. (So much for breaking it!)

When I opened the box there was quite a bit more assembly than I had expected. I suffer from mechanical engineering manic depression where I’m either pretty sharp or a complete idiot. In this case I must have been in idiot mode because it wasn’t overly intuitive how to put the thing together. After looking on the picture on the website, it all came together. Most likely, my review version had the instructions omitted. Not a big deal.

Boom Mic Stand
The unit comes with a boom to mount a mic. This can be handy for someone who only uses one mic for their vocals or voiceover work. However, I found swapping out mics required me to spin the mic repeatedly. That’s not too big of deal, but my big tube mics with bigger shockmounts made me nervous. It wouldn’t bother me at all with my more durable solid state mics.

Mics mount differently. A Shure SM7 mounts quite a bit differently than my Peluso 251 with large shockmount. The end result is the mic ends up in different places. The further from the portable vocal gadget, the less it’s effectiveness. This isn’t the end of the world either, but it needs to be noted. You don’t have the ability to position the mic like you would with a normal stand. Then again, with vocals crazy mic placements aren’t always needed.

Lastly, the boom didn’t inspire extreme confidence with me on my high end mics. The leverage working against it with my heavier mics made be a bit nervous. Mics run the gamut from super light to way heavier than you’d expect (Shure SM7b comes to mind). The stand for the portable vocal booth is not your usual mic stand. It’s sturdy but it has a bit of play in it. It’s more like a stand for lights or a volleyball net where you pull out a pin, raise to the desired position, and place the pin back in. The problem is this leaves the stand just a hair wobbly. It’s not a big deal, but it’s just wobbly enough to make me think twice about tossing my $2,600 Neumann M147 up there. It doesn’t inspire extreme confidence. If your mic doesn’t weigh more than a brick, it may not be an issue.

Is it a big deal? Not really. It is worth noting? I think so.

After discovering these factors, I ditched the boom mic stand idea and decided to use my own mic stand in conjunction with the portable vocal booth. If you are using a microphone that weights less than a 5lb bucket of water having the built in mic stand is a nice tough.

The Sound
The main reason for buying the Editor Keys Portable Vocal Booth Pro is to reduce ambiance getting into the mic. There are two basic ways we can reduce the amount of ambiance getting into a microphone. The first is to block the source from creating the ambiance in the first place. The second is the block the existing ambiance from getting into the mic.

The Editor Keys Portable Vocal Booth takes the first approach. When using a cardioid microphone (which is most common for vocals) the portion the Portable Vocal Booth covers is already rejected by the mic. So it’s not going to necessarily keep ambiance out of the microphone. These reflections come in from the front of the mic.

The Portable Vocal Booth does to an excellent job of keeping your voice from exciting the room in the first place. I think this is what was intended. I definitely noticed that the reflections in the room were diminished tremendously. This in itself makes the Portable Vocal Booth worth having a look at. For people who require a certain aesthetic in the typical unideal home studio environment, the Portable Vocal Booth is going to improve your vocal sound. No doubt about it. In fact, if some authoritarian government took away my Ninja Turtle blanket (and all other blankets) I’d absolutely require a Portable Vocal Booth.

Just keep in mind that it’s not going to keep other sounds in the room from bouncing all over the place. For example, the Editor Keys Portable Vocal Booth Pro offers little protection from a TV playing in the background or an air conditioning vent. That doesn’t appear to be what it was trying to do, but I’d guess some people would expect it to if they hadn’t put much thought into it. So just keep in mind that the Portable Vocal Booth is an acoustic treater gadget and not necessarily a breakthrough in soundproofing technology.

Comfort
Maybe I’m a bit claustrophobic, but I did find it a little strange burying myself into this concave surface. It wasn’t world ending, but I’d suspect that some vocalists are going to feel a little nervous doing this. I’m not sure if this would effect 50% of the singers of 1% of the singers. Then again, it seemed like other singers felt more comfortable hiding behind their shield. I can’t figure these people out!

I did find it to be troublesome when a paper was necessary for lyrics or voiceover work. I’d say 1/3 of the people I work with are making changes in mid-session and a paper is absolutely a must. When your face is buried into a portable vocal booth there isn’t much room for holding up a sheet of paper. A music stand is pretty much out of the question.

On Other Instruments
While it wasn’t intended to be used on other instruments, I was interested in how it would perform on acoustic guitar. The stand did allow me to lower Mr. Vocal booth a bit, but I never really got it down to where I wanted, unfortunately. I gave up on that idea right off the bat. Oh well. It would have been awesome to knock down the reflections of acoustic guitars and electric guitar amps. If only they could get this thing on standard mic stand.

Aesthetics
This thing looks really cool. The pics on the website are impressive. It’s the kind of thing that a dominating wife may even allow in her house. I could see this thing being the kind of thing that clients who don’t pay on time say “Wow! Neat!”. It definitely has the “wow factor” down. It seems like something that belongs on a battle star ship.

Opening Omni Doors
I tend to record vocals in omni mode more than the average guy. The benefits for this can be great, but the possibility of unwanted ambiance getting into the back of the mic is dramatically increased. I found the Portable Vocal Booth to be excellent for using mics in omni. It guards the back of the mic like a secret service agent.

For my buck, I’ve been happier with my trusty Ninja Turtles blanket on a mic stand. Some clients think this is cheesy or even unprofessional. I tend not to return their calls when they inevitably call back for a second session. I find my sewer swimming comrades provide better overall acoustical absorption of both vocal ambiance and misc noises in the room, don’t instill much anxiety from the claustrophobic, and are extremely flexible in terms of position on pretty much every instrument I’d ever record.

For some people this isn’t going to be an option.

Conclusion
As with most things in recording, you can go the guerrilla do-it-yourself method and save quite a bit of bucks and end up with a super effective, mega ugly device. You can also spend a fortune and have an upscale doctor’s office looking studio like you see in Mix Magazine. I think the Editor Keys Vocal Booth is a nice balance between function and aesthetic. I just happen to be brain dead in the aesthetics department. I understand most people are the opposite.

If you can’t treat your room and need a cool looking gadget to knock down acoustical ambiance from your voice the Editor Keys Portable Vocal Booth is excellent.

Check it out @ Musician’s Friend

I’m doing my Jeopardy version of gear reviews again. We’ll start with my conclusions.

The Recording Man’s Conclusion
I’m playing guitar quite a bit again, but I refuse to be a guitar player. I’m a recording guy and so that means I get to sit up on my perch and look down on the lowly world of people who refer themselves as guitar players. (Okay, like 2% of you can sit at the table with the big kids). The rest of you can stay at the diaper table.

Here are my conclusions:

• If you’ve had boxiness problems in your electric guitar recordings, tossing the Dynodrive in front of the amp is THE solution. I don’t think it gets better than this. In fact, this booster may be life changingly good! Seriously!
• If you’ve struggled with getting this harmonically dense tone without giga-gain (and all the boring fizz that comes with it) the Dynodrive is THE solution.
• The boxiness I’m referring to can happen on all amps. I’m talking high end amps like: Rivera Knucklehead, Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier, Hughes and Kettner Triamp, Peavey 5150, etc. This boxiness is not a flaw in a few amps I’m using. It’s more of an issue of the importance I place with boosting with the right pedal.
• Before buying new/fancy mics, preamps, etc try tossing the Dynodrive in front of the amp. God knows I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to get this from recording equipment.
• If you are a guitar player who frequently uses high gain sounds, the Modtone Dynodrive is absolutely required.
• If you are a recording engineer frequently recording high gain guitar sounds, the Modtone Dynodrive is absolutely required.

Let’s Begin
I’ve been using the my yellow Boss SD-1 as a boost in front of a high gain amp since Clinton was in office. I’ve always liked the Tube Screamer style pedal in front of the amp. Up until now I’ve always felt that a Tube Screamer rip off is a Tube Screamer rip off and the differences between them are what the little fairy prince guitar wienies do on guitar forums when they aren’t arguing about Star Trek or trying to guess what “warm apple pie” feels like.

I stand corrected and I did it with out a guitar forum. (Thank God!)

Today I discovered the Modtone DynoDrive. It also takes on the yellow overdrive pedal look. However, this thing is NOT a Boss SD-1. It’s not a Tubescreamer. It’s not a Maxon OD-9. For my money it’s 10,000 times better.

My Situation
I was playing my Fender Strat USA with a Duncan JB Jr in the bridge. While I’ve always loved boosters for studio work, I always go out of my way to avoid having to press 40 pedals in a live / jamming situation. It sucks the fun and life out of playing. I set my Rivera Knucklehead to sound about right without any boosting in front of it. This tone is no slouch. It’s a tone that people shell out the big bucks for.

However, it can also be a hair on the boxy side at times. It doesn’t have quite the sustain I want and there can be a blurred middle ground between too much gain causing fizz and not enough gain causing boredom.

The second I plugged into the Modtone DynoDrive I knew I had found a mate for life (at least the next decade). The Modtone DynoDrive adds some gain and solves all the sustain issues. My Boss SD-1 does what all the Tube Screamer knock-offs do. The DynoDrive does two other big things that I’ve not heard out of a booster pedal.

Good Bye Boxiness
The Dynodrive completely pulls out ALL the boxiness. When I turned on the Dynodrive, the sound was instantly what I had always wanted. It’s a sound I’ve been attempting to EQ out or use weird mic placements to overcome. I’ve spent thousands on preamps, EQ, and mics to solve this specific problem. I’d guess I’ve lied awake in bed maybe 400 times wondering what the hell is causing this problem over the past 8 years or so. This is BIG BIG BIG for me! It’s the difference between kinda cheap tone and “Holy Shit Tone!”.

In addition to all the boxiness being kicked to the curb, the harmonics get way way way richer without any of the fizziness that a gain boost requires. This is the sort of thing that people expect from the impractical world of cranking amps to 10. It’s the kind of thing I’ve been chasing since some of you reading this were still crapping your pants.

When I first stepped on the DynoDrive with my tone on my Rivera set to mostly work without it, it immediately screamed Breaking Benjamin style modern rock tone. For my tastes, that tone is a hair scooped, but I can’t count the times I’ve recorded the kids over the years where both of us knew the tone just wasn’t quite their yet. The tone wasn’t “finished” sounding. The DynoDrive finishes it. I adjusted my settings a bit on the amp to compensate for the scoopage and I was in heaven. This pedal makes playing more fun and it’s going to make it look like I’m a genius to the guitar players I record.

The Percussive G String
The thing I really hate about not using a booster on a high gain amp is the boring sounding G string. I always find that if the G string is boring I end up sounding more like the Almond Brothers or something. (Nothing against the Almond Brothers, they just ain’t Van Halen or Dragonforce.) With the DynoDrive, the G string string becomes percussive. Palm mutes on the G string jump out just like like the do on the lower strings. 16th note palm muted leads sounds go from useless to world dominating when I engage the Dynodrive.

I would have shelled out big bucks for that years ago. This is the kind of thing Cher sang about.

Clean Tones
Here’s where it gets interesting. I have a different take on clean sounds than most guitar players. I’m a recording guy and I’ve ACTUALLY LISTENED to a few recordings. I’ve come to the conclusion that clean sounds are always a little dirty. At least the clean sounds I like are always a little dirty. The illusion of a clean guitar sound that has less distortion than a Apogee converter is hog crap. It’s flat out inaccurate in my view and it’s almost unheard of to find this squeaky clean sound.

What makes a clean tone work is not necessarily the amount of distortion, but the harmonic structure of that distortion. That chimey sound requires a little bit grit to it, but that grit has to be in the right place. If you’ve got boxiness in it, you are done. Forget it. Guess what. I just happen to be reviewing a pedal that is badass for pulling out boxiness. So yup, you guessed it. I’ve finally found a booster pedal that I can leave on all the time in a live / jamming situation.

I’ve had to be careful with this one maybe getting a hair more distorted than I really wanted. However, when the harmonic stuff is right, I could have Dimebag level mega gain on my clean and not loose sleep over it. The Dynodrive has a way of getting that right.

In real recording situations, I’d definitely use the Dynodrive on my clean tones even if I pulled the gain way back.

An Overdrive Pedal
I guess I should at least mention what the Modtone does when you use it like it was actually designed to work. I have to say that I’ve always considered my Boss SD-1 completely useless as an overdrive pedal. Taking a clean amp and expecting to get anything that doesn’t make you feel similar to reading the latest sex offender story in the local newspaper is difficult. I have emulators that sound better without a doubt.

So my luck with overdrive pedals is limited.

Once again, the Modtone has made me a believer. Running the Modtone into a clean amp was more than usable. It was very, very pleasant. None of the boxiness of the SD-1 was there. None! With the gain all the way up, you end up with something that Toad The Wet Sprocket or Counting Crows could use and it sounds legitimately good. Is it as good as a mega tube amp gain? Hell, I don’t know. Maybe. Regardless, that “harmonic structure” thing is there. As a purist, I’d be more inclined to set the amp with just a bit of grit and go back to using this thing as a booster. However, the thing does work in “standalone” mode if you want to go there.

If you dig in you can do some really cool blues rock type stuff if that is your bag.

The drums sound outstanding right out of the box, the room sounds are incredible, and the system is so damn flexible that pretty much every genre is covered. One thing I love about Superior Drummer 2.0 is the fact that it’s extremely reliable. It doesn’t suffer near the hiccups of other sample drum libraries do. It loads RAM incredibly quickly and I’ve found the included MIDI loops to be way more useful than I had ever expected.

In fact, I really can’t think of anything negative to say about Superior Drummer 2.0. (Something I’m usually exceptionally skilled at.) The Toontrack guys got it right.

And now they are have Superior Drummer 2.0 on a ROBO sale. If you’ve been tempted to snag Superior Drummer in the past, it’s STUPID cheap right now. Check it out!

Who Is This Review For?
This review is NOT for robo serious bass players who were never quite happy with their Tobias or Musicman Stringray and therefor upgraded to some $4,000 exotic thingy. If you’ve played on more than 15 bass amps in your life, this review isn’t for you.

This review is for the genre of recording human that I’m defining as the “self-recorder”. The self-recorder is the guy who is doing more-or-less all the production duties himself. A self recorder is probably good at one instrument and just fiddles around with others. When I get the rare free time to record my own junk / noise I fit into this realm.

So if you are just a guitar guy, drum guy, or piano girl and you wouldn’t mind having a dumb bass around for occasional low end duty, you are a self-recorder and this review is for you.

Looks
The bass looks fine. I don’t get too wound up about the looks of instruments, so as long as they aren’t pink, I don’t care. The flame thingy does appear fancier than you’d expect on a bass that costs less than my yearly toilet paper investment.

Playability
My first impression was the bass was extremely light….maybe a bit too light. This one was made of alder, which I guess explains it’s tendency to want to float into space. As a dude who used to goof around on those old Peavey basses that were formally used as boat anchors back during the Spanish Armada days, I can say with confidence that I’d much rather play a show with a bass that was a bit too light than a bit too heavy. Then again, I don’t have a confidence problem, so you won’t catch me playing bass live at all.

(I don’t have a self-destructive need to drive my car off a cliff (drummers) and I don’t have a self-destructive need to die via razorblades due to my relationship with my mother (singers). So that only leaves guitar playing. You better keep your girlfriend on a leash!)

My immediate thought when playing was, “Damn! This action is LOW!” The bass dude said there was a buzz in the 6th fret, but I didn’t notice any issues when I was playing. I’ve devolved into keeping my fingers on the very right edge of the fret to avoid that same problem. Regardless, while I’m not a serious bass player by any stretch of the imagination, pentatonic runs flowed as easily as I can recall.

Bottom line: This thing plays extremely well.

Sound
This SX bass looked more or less like a Fender Jazz. I don’t know jack about what wood goes into a real Fender Jazz. However, this thing is clearly intended to be voiced like a Fender Jazz. As a dude who’s recorded probably a dozen Fender Jazz basses over the years, I’ve come to love it.

The Fender Jazz is to recording as McDonalds is to road trips. You can always count on it. They always have a bathroom that usually doesn’t have brown stuff dried on the wall. They are often open late. Even fat people who wish they were skinny can get salads. Your chances of getting mugged are seemingly smaller than some of the less-corporationey places to eat. There may be more interesting options out there, but when you’ve got 932 miles to go, you need to get back on the road. Basically, it’s hard to hate a Fender Jazz, even if eating it 30 straight days will kill you.

Note: I drifted from the metaphor quite a bit. Don’t over think that paragraph.

I had a dude who emailed me because his bass was dull and muddy and he wanted something more along the lines of Tool or Rage Against The Machine. Another honorable mention is the Butch Vig produced “Save The Sorrow” by AFI in 2003. The bass is THERE even on a laptop. There’s no telling what kind of expensive setup this help-needing dude had, but when I plugged $150 SX bass into my Sansamp, I immediately recognized that way-up-front clarity of a highly defined bass (aka Exactly What I Want!).

I’ve recorded Fender Jazz USA’s that did not sound this good. This could be do to a billion factors, but the simple fact is this thing immediately passed all my tests. In fact, I probably said 15 times during the day “Man! I love this bass sound!”.

Bottom line: I’m at a point in my music career where I can tell if an instrument is usable with 2 notes. It’s either exciting or it ain’t. This $150 SX is exciting. I’m bought one.

Price
I have tuners that cost more than this SX bass. I have microphone volume knobs (preamps) that cost 15x as much as this thing. It’s a no brainer.

Possible Concerns
I can’t say anything about quality control, reliability, or durability. I’m hoping that I don’t get a dud when I order mine. Even if it takes three of them to find a good one, it’s still cheaper than a Mexican Fender Jazz Bass.

Update: I did order mine. It’s identical to the one in the review. Quality control based on the enormous sample of two seems to be dead on.

For Real Bass Players
A bass buddy of mine (Sam Carmack, the idiot who played bass on a big ol’ chunk of the Killer Home Recording Bass Interrogator Sessions) sat down with it last night. His rig is retarded. He seriously has seven switches on his Warwick and is more anal about bass tones than the last priest you jammed with. I’m sure some of you have used cars that cost less than his bass cabinet.

When he unplugged his heavily modded Warwick which I’m just gonna guess would cost you about $4,000 (who knows!) it was clear that the SX bass was a few notches in the boxy direction. I wouldn’t call it boxy. I’d just say the Warwick had a natural mean ass scooped thing going on. Of course, we didn’t change the tone controls one bit. I’m sure we fix that if we actually touched the amp. Some people would prefer that.

Sam tells ms that with a few simple upgrades in the usual (pickups, bridge, tuners, etc) that this SX bass can be a serious contender in bass nerd land. For my needs I’m not entirely sure I need to do any of that crap.

Conclusion
I needed a bass for self-recorder duties as well as you-never-know studio bass. I’m 100% confident that this SX bass is going to fit the bill. For a person who spends almost as much on bass crap as I do on mics and preamps it may need some help, but if you are that retarded your opinion doesn’t matter much anyway. (har har)

I’ve decided that studio monitoring is the biggest problem in my life (yes both personal and recording) that I can solve with money. If only lack of sex could be solved with money. (Wait a minute!) After endless moments of hesitation, but only one loud “SCREW IT!” my wallet just got quite a bit lighter.

I ordered a pair of Focal Solo 6BE and the matching Focal Sub6.

Most hardcore upgrades I’ve done in audio land have been to answer questions just as much as they’ve been about higher audio quality. While I’ve certainly made big improvements in my monitoring, I’ve never been able to sit down to work and entirely trust my monitors. This “trust” is the single most important impact on sound quality on this side of the musician line. It’s time for my mixes to skyrocket!….I hope.

Studio Monitor Questions I Hope To Answer

• Will high end monitors put me in a position to automatically improve my mixes after I’ve gotten used to them? Will my results immediately improve?
• Is there a point of diminishing return with monitors? Would I be just as happy with something of equal price but just different from my Mackie HR824s. I know people who are entirely content with the KRK V8 monitors, for example. (Are they are anally crazed about studio monitoring as I am?) Is it really necessary to spend THIS much cash on monitors? Do the high end guys focus on the robo tiny details that maybe I wouldn’t notice anyway?
• I’ve never been happy with my HR824s. I always felt they were the girlfriend out banging other guys. (I don’t trust them). Will I automatically gain the trust of the Focal Solo 6BE in my current room?
• Is my unhappiness with the HR824s due to the design of the speaker or problems in my room. (I have reasons to believe both although I’m totally aware of the impact and importance of the room.)
• One reason I question my Mackies. In one test I used one Mackie HR824. I tossed my cheapo Behringer test mic about 4′ in front of it and ran a sweep. Then I took that speaker off my cinder block stand and grabbed the other HR824 to toss it on that same cinder block stand in same position. It had a radically different frequency response. It’s clear my HR824s were not matched and room acoustics weren’t a factor. (Room acoustics would have been a factor if both speakers would have had an identical – if flawed – frequency response regardless of the position in the room.)
• My room is treated with about 20 2′ x 4′ x 8” Helmholtz Resonator bass trips which I’m fairly positive I screwed up in designing and will be modifying to a more “safe” design. Additionally, I have nearly 30 “super chunk” unopened packages of 4lb Rockwool (2′ x 4′ x 16” roughly) in my room which some people tell me is the most effect bass trap around although it takes up a bunch of space. Some people tell me the packaging on the Rockwool renders it useless. Room modes are out of control (but probably more in control than they would be with nothing).
• While my walls are about as treated as you can get (although possibly in very flawed ways), my ceiling is a bit light on treatment. I have a 9′ ceiling which is little light in the acoustical loafers. It has a drop ceiling which does absorb stuff in 1K and up range it. Above the drop ceiling I managed to get a single sheet of 2′ x 4′ x 4” Rockwool to fit. It’s possible that I need more aggressive treatments in the ceiling.
• The corners of the room each contain a pair of unopened Rockwool packages. However, the point in which the walls meet the ceiling have zero treatment. In an ideal situation, I’d like to have some kind of corner treatment running along the entire edge.
• I’ve tried dozens of new monitor placement positions this month. In all of them there has been a dip at 2Khz at between 5-10dB. A 2Khz wave has a wavelength of about 6 in give or take. In lab conditions this means it could be canceled out with a 2Khz signal that had to travel 3 in longer thus being 180 degrees out of phase. Note: I dedicate an entire chapter of Killer Home Recording: Audio Engineering to explaining this in as plain of English possible. I can’t think of a single reflection that could have possibly caused this but moving the test mic subtly seems to do no good. I’ve wondered if the Mackies are out of phase with each other in certain frequencies.
• It’s entirely possible that my Mackies have actually been a mismatch or maybe one malfunctioned. Maybe in a pro environment I would have noticed this immediately. Maybe my environment is more pro than I think and I haven’t been putting the blame where it should.

Conclusion
I just wasted a bunch of cash and it’s very possible I’ll solve nothing. If nothing else, I get to pass my potential misfortunes on to you. Regardless, by saying goodbye to the Mackies, I think few people are going to say I made a mistake.

My Results
I should be receiving my monitors at the end of this week. I have all weekend to get used to them and I have to make final tweaks to an album I’m 95% finished with mixing. Then I add my results in the studio monitoring chapter of Killer Home Recording: Audio Engineering which can also be viewed in the Turbo Member Forum.

I had an exceptional experience with Pintech, makers of high end edrums (among other things). I had purchased a Pintech edrum kit used and it was clear that the triggers were a little bit more worn than I was lead to believe based on the Ebay ad.

I limped by on the old triggers for some time in the pre-Killer Home Recording phase. It was time to fix the triggers and get the edrum kit to work like I knew it was capable of. I hopped on the http://www.edrums.com/ website to order the new triggers. I had absolutely no idea what the hell I was doing so I just bought what I thought I needed. It cost me a little over $200.

Laurie from Pintech gave me a call and said it looked like I had ordered like an idiot. Okay, she worded it much nicer, but the point was it was clear that she had a ridiculous order on her hands. She had me tear into my current triggers to figure out what model I had so I could get the right replacement. She was super friendly on the phone and didn’t make me feel nearly as retarded as she probably should have.

She immediately tossed out half my order because these parts didn’t even apply to my drum kit.

She also signed me up for their warranty dohickey which cost $45 or so but made my order half price, which instantly saved me some cash. Anybody who purchased a used Pintech kit can by this warranty thing for half price fixes. There were some other perks too involving cymbal upgrades, but I don’t remember the details. (The point of this is to point out exceptional service, not sell you a warranty!)

I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE companies that will give me the secrets of saving some cash with that company. I wish more audio companies lived by this “free insider secrets” thing. This is the way I do business and what I feel is the ultimate path to long term success.

All in all I ended up getting exactly what I needed and saved well over $100. I’m impressed! I’ll be dealing with Pintech more often!

Brandon

See instructions below to enter!

First off, every Recording Review member gets $15 of the Karma K35 if they order before 10/25/09

On to business.

You may be asking yourself, “How do I win?”. The answer to that is easy. You simply have to fill in the “Karma K35 Contest Entry” form below. You enter your name, email, and the LAST DAY to buy Killer Home Recording at the mega special price as part of the Recording Review Rocks promotion.

Listen to this piece of audio magic (sarcasm) for the crucial clue.

Crucial Clue Giver

Make sure you enter it in the format shown. (MM-DD-YYYY)
So July 20, 1969 would be 07-20-1969.

Your email will be sent to Belinda at Karma Mics so she can contact you if you win.

About The K35
I’ve got a review on the way for this thing. For the money, it’s tough to beat. It’s a hair on the bright side, but it has real usable character. It’s not nearly as bright as many of the mics in this price range and it has a tighter low end. In terms of character, it’s leaning in the direction of an Audio Technica AT4050. I consider it be dramatically more flexible than an M-Audio Nova or Studio Projects B3, but a little more fun than an AT4040 (which tends to be fairly neutral).

Brandon

A few notes:

• Killer Home Recording will only be available for 4 and a half days.
• We’ll be offering a special, exclusive introductory sale to RR members only.

Find out more on Killer Home Recording Launch

I’m doing voiceover for my Killer Home Recording System and I thought it would be fun to use two mics and let you fight over which one is which.

One mic is a Neumann M147. The other mic is a Karma K58.

Which one do you think sounds better? Vote now! This is a member’s only thread. Register here.

Vote for your favorite!