EQ Magazine - March 2009 - (Page 22)

Victorian Arts to keep noise in and noise out. The room had a tile floor, and we took it down to the concrete, and left it pretty hard so that it would reflect bright sounds. Some walls had to be sheared, some had to be rebuilt, and then we built a classic “w”-shaped rear wall to offset reflections and act as a bass trap. How many rooms did you end up with? Jenkins: We closed off one section to make it a small live room. We originally laid down some carpet, but we pulled it out, and put in a slate floor to make the area a little more live. We do rehearsals with the band in here, and even though it’s really tight, it’s bigger than the room the Beach Boys made Pet Sounds in. The piano sounds really nice in there. I don’t use it for drums— except for rehearsing—but it’s great for guitars. All the amps are set up and good to go, so it’s kind of like having a [Line 6] Pod, but with real amps. If there’s a guitar sound you’re looking for, you can just go in there and grab it. What about the main house and that massive ballroom? Jenkins: The main house has not been messed with at all. Before I bought the place it was a popular bed and breakfast, and it’s still completely decked out with Victorian-era furnishings and trim. The three-story ballroom is acoustically flawless— there wasn’t anything we could have done to improve it. The only thing we had to do was have the wiring done, and that took a lot of time to test everything to make sure it all worked. Beresford: We were really concerned about running 200 feet of cable. I think it’s supposed to be around 150 feet where a twisted-pair maxes out, and by the time we got the snake running halfway across the floor, we were somewhere around 230 feet. I kept thinking, “Is this going to be horrible? Are we going to degrade our signals to the point of no return?” Did you look into digital snakes? Beresford: At one point, I was convinced that would be the way to go. We tried these $25,000 systems with beams and all this crazy stuff, but none of them seemed to work. Jenkins: Although, we were totally stoked about the prospect of laser beams flying around. Beresford: Yeah, it sounded really Third Eye Blind (left to right)—Stephan Jenkins, Tony Fredianelli, and Brad Hargreaves. cool, but when push came to shove, we ended up running a cable of 48 tie lines—or 24 pairs—up to the main house. The second we got the console in, we put up some microphones, and started testing. We did some classical recordings with the grand piano up there, and there was only one- or twopercent signal degradation after running through all that copper. Most of our microphones didn’t react too badly by taking them at mic level, and powering them from the console. But we’ve kept some Millenia HV-3D preamps up there, because if we do any serious string or classical recording, we’ll run the microphones straight into the preamps, and then route the signals to the cable run. How did you decide on what gear to purchase? Jenkins: We acquire a lot of gear after listening to it. Beresford: And stealing it. Jenkins: Yeah, we just go down to a lot of studios and take their stuff. Isn’t that what everybody does? But really, we tend to do a lot of gear shootouts and blind taste tests. We have Helios Olympic Studio preamps, a rack of Neve 1073s and 1081s, and a bunch of other stuff, such as Brent Avril API knockoffs. I really like the Brent Avril API because it has this terrific presence and crispness. The Mercury Audio Grand Pre also tended to win a lot of our listening tests, and we used it on Vanessa Carlton’s last album because you actually felt you were in a better mood when you listened to it. But ever since the Wunder Audio Wunderbar console arrived, we practically don’t need our mass of mic preamps anymore, because everything on that console is so good. Beresford: We really messed around with recording media, too. For a while, I was convinced the iZ Technology RADAR V Nyquist was the bestsounding thing, and we did almost all of Vanessa’s albums on the system. It was really painful to edit on, but it just sounded so good compared to everything else. We borrowed the RADAR for like three months because we just had to discover which medium was better—analog, RADAR, or Pro Tools? And what did you find? Jenkins: I think certain things sound better recorded in different ways. Drum sets and bass guitars are more pleasing to me in analog. In the digital realm, a lot of it is in the converters. A mediocre converter versus a really good converter is a much bigger difference than a good converter versus analog tape. Beresford: So we use a Studer A827 analog 24-track for some stuff, and everything else runs through a Lynx Aurora converter and an Apogee Big Ben Master Digital Clock into Pro Tools at 24/96. What do you like to use for monitoring? Beresford: Chris Pelonis built us these great speakers that are recessed into the wall. We use those a lot for 22 EQ MARCH 2009 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - March 2009

EQ Magazine - March 2009 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Mr. Scruff Apollo Sunshine Al Schmitt Toolbox Third Eye Blind Kind of Blue Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Ableton Live Vocal Tools Gadgets & Goodies Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - March 2009

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