Tascam DR-680 for music

There are a number of good reviews out there on the Tascam DR-680. I kind of like Bob Haas's review because he's gone and charted the EQ curves and the pan and mix levels.
One complaint he has with the Tascam that I did not have a problem with is the way the meters bounce. The meters -- I don't understand them -- but I get them. They seem to be very RMS-ish. And to my eye they work great for music and for voice.
There are two four things which the Tascam does, or doesn't do, which seem odd and for which there is no solution to be found either in the manual or the Internet.

• Folder names are whatever Tascam has decided to name them. These are things like "PROJECT_0000". Yes, you can make new folders like "PROJECT_0001" but you can't rename those folders to anything practical. There's some evidence that maybe you can rename the folders on an SD card in a computer and then have the Tascam "rebuild" those directories but you know what? Life's too short.
• You cannot reset take names without resetting the whole device. So your take names will always ascend as long as you want to keep the rest of your settings. So there. 
• You can't set it to send a little "boop" into the headphones when you hit record (and have it go "boop boop" when you pull out of record.
• You can't set it to monitor even with pause off. This is, as I recall, how all Tascam and Fostex recorders work. 

Otherwise, for six hundred bucks you're getting way more than you paid for in a portable recorder. And, so far, my favorite live band recordings have been done on the Tascam.

I have not used the preamps in the Tascam yet. I mean other than with tests here in my studio where I'm saying "Test 1 2 test 1 2" into a wireless mic. For the City Samanas recording I was using all Neve and Lindell microphone preamps and fed the Tascam line level. 

In a couple days I'll probably put something on blog.pandoramachine.com about how well the Tascam works for recording dialog in a dramatic feature setting.

Tenth of April, 2013

Samanas recording April 10.
First big thing we did was record using the Tascam DR-680. As I pointed out the Tascam behaved exactly the way I'd expected. The direct outputs worked. The line level inputs had good and appropriate headroom. And the unit just recorded the way one would want it to.
We used our standard input list of three mics on drums. We had the pair of Edwina mics by Ear Trumpet Labs on overheads.

David Wolfe at the drums with a pair of Edwinas overhead. It's probably difficult to understand the mics overhead unless you already know what they look like.

The overheads are in an X/Y-ish pattern which is mostly because the microphone bar would slip and make the mics touch. So, okay, fine, more phase coherence. Those mics fed a pair of Neve 1272 preamps.
The Rode NT1 was on the kick backed off about a foot and went through one of the Lindell preamps with a bit of EQ. I don't remember what I did -- I just boosted, flipped through some frequencies, found a frequency I liked, and then reduced the boost until it sound better than no boost but not so much that it was stinkin' up the joint.

The rack of Avalons is not ours. Don't get any ideas.

The real trick is what we did with bass guitar. Lily played directly into the high impedance input of a Neve 1272. As I expected, I needed to roll off a bit of low end (I did a very low frequency high pass filter plus a bit of a scoop at about 500 Hz. There's also a tiny bit of compression followed by a larger bit of compression on many of the tracks.
Note that, for instance, "Eyes of the Vole" is by no means a finished performance. The point of these things is a proof of concept of recording. That being said, some of the finished jams are very album-able. Like for instance "In Apprehension How Like A God. This was just a jam Lily and I did before Dave got there. There may be a bit of Greg in that track. And eventually there may be some voices or some Hammond organ on that track. Otherwise I think it to be very groovy and usable as a final and actual song on a record. That's me. Thinking.
Now, the guitars. My guitar went through an SM58 and into a Neve. But Greg's guitar went through an SM58 and a Lindell. Again, at some point in the evening I fiddled with the EQ on the Lindell to make whatever I thought was "better" to be, you know, better.
The short answer here is that I feel confident we can record and get a groovy sound which I'd be proud to put on an album. Moving the kick drum mic back a bit gives us a nice "poof" on the kick. Plugging the bass into the world's most expensive direct box sounds great. As far as I'm concerned, recording guitars is easy and a no-brainer. If the guitar sounds good and you get a microphone near the speaker, you're in good shape. Your mileage on that advice, as always, may vary.

So click on through to the recording.

There are two recordings here which I think will eventually be for public consumption once edited and possibly massaged a bit in the mix and then mastered. "In Apprehension How Like A God" and "Thus Slept the Drunken Gods" (I'm on a "god" kick apparently, I blame Game of Thrones) are both improvised songs which I think are going to end up on some album somewhere. The rest of the tunes are strictly for band use -- listening to rehearsals that is.

Greg Bartus with the Rock and Roll.

Oh. And I did a real test of cymbals and bells with Dave playing and I recorded at 48kHz and at 96kHz. I seriously cannot tell the difference on playback. So I do not care about 96kHz any more.

Dig It

Ato Essandoh in Elementary.

Thievery

So some jerky-turkey broke into my car.

And they stole the GPS which, although a jerky turkey move, is at least understandable. But they also stole costume pieces which have zero value to them but are very hard to replace. Like, for instance, this women's armored jacket.
They also took a face mask and a couple hats which have sentimental value.
Little do they know all the costumes were laced with Polonium 210 by a cabal of former FSB agents who tried to assassinate me in '03.

La Roux

I'm not 100% sure that Red Giant's "Bulletproof" will really do the thing for us. It may be that it's a better tool for making ProRes files from the ridiculous .mts files we're shooting right now.
I think that one thingy about Bulletproof is that the philosophy behind it is that you want to save all your decisions about color correction until the very end of the post process.
I'm a big fan of making decisions early. If I could set the color of highlights and shadows right there on the floor while we're shooting, I would totally do that.
Bulletproof lets you import a LUT and do a bunch of things with your original footage. I can imagine there's a world where working with that kind of workflow makes sense, but that's not how we do things in our shop. I expect this is partly/mostly because I am lazy we have a fairly short period of time to get movies completed and we have no money or time to re-think details of color-correction which haven't basically been made when we were shooting.
In other words, we don't shoot "flat". I try to have some 100% video and some 0% in every shot. We try to go ahead and make the picture look like something and do minimal CC in post.
If we were shooting commercials or even movies with budgets exceeding $250K, we might think about staving off our color decisions to post. But maybe not.

There's a whole thing about mixing in the audio world where you keep telling your new recordists not to EQ things, not to compress or add reverb, because you'll deal with all that in the mix. It's hard to "un"-EQ things and virtually impossible to un-compress and un-reverb sounds. So dry, dynamic, and unmodified is the go-to wisdom on the subject.
And a journeyman sound person won't EQ recorded signals (except perhaps some high-pass to get out some rumble). But as my old buddy Alan Douches says "commit!" Alan is no journeyman. And up there in the lofty heights of the master level yes, you want to make some decisions about sounds and commit them to tape. No waiting. Make decisions now. As long as they're the correct decisions everything will go faster and the mix will be easier.
I'm not a master in audio. And I'm certainly less a master as a DP. Yet still recklessly I'd rather go in and get close to being finished at the acquisition stage.

DR-680 under stress conditions

So the Tascam DR-680 performed swimmingly with City Samanas.
Swimmingly, I say.

The Tascam DR-680 sits atop a pair of Neve 1272 preamps.

We fed it line level from the Neve and Lindell preamps. The direct outputs of each channel fed the JamHub. You know, I'd never even tested the Tascam's direct outs. I just presumed they'd work. And luckily they did.
Whew.
We did an experiment recording some cymbals at 96kHz and at 48kHz. Results of that test should be available tomorrow.

Battery Power

I would love to use rechargable batteries for everything. You know, being all green and whatnot. But 9v batteries just haven't been there yet.
The Energizer Advanced Lithium 9v has somewhere between 750 and 1200 milli-Ampere hours (they actually say both on their website and the data sheet itself implies 1000 milli-Amp hours.
Now actually Lectro says that in some very high load situations the iPower out-performs regular lithiums. This is one of the reasons that just using the specification of "mAh" isn't always that helpful. You really have to see how a given battery works with a particular piece of gear.
The Amazon reviews for these 9v rechargeables are actually pretty good. And you'll note that most of the reviewers are using them for wireless.
So I'm getting three Energizers and a pair of the rechargables.
+++++

It costs less than $30 each way to take the bus to/from Allentown Pennsylvania from New York City. The secret is knowing that "Allentown" is called "Wescosville" on the Bieber Tours schedule.
And yes, they've already heard every joke you have about "Bieber Tours" so please. No. Just don't.
+++++
Today we had a read-through of the rebel team of our Android Masquerade. This is going to be a whole bunch of fun. Our first day of shooting will have us putting out 5 wireless mics for a big ensemble scene. Who doesn't love that?

Dig it

Anthony Jones, our helmet maker and a great special effects guy, will be on SyFy (the "Walking Monster").

Tascam DR-680

When I blog about audio gear for movies do I put that in the blog.pandoramachine.com blog or the blog.tyrannosaurusmouse.com blog? What if it's used for both film and music? Do I split the difference and put it in the blog.pleasurefortheempire.com blog? Who knows?
In any case, here's the Tascam DR-680. I started a page on the Pandora Machine Wiki for it.
Here's a review on the Tascam DR-680 from the B&H website.

The Tascam DR-680 parties with the best of 'em.

Now the other thing we want to do is to use the Tascam to record music. And that, obviously, has been a big adventure. But there's six analog inputs on the Tascam and we should be able to plug into it. Right?
Last recording we did we'd plugged the bass directly into the M-Audio 2626's instrument-level input. I realize that's a bit of a cheat, using the M-Audio rather than more fancy-pants preamps. But it worked okay actually.
So now we have to figure: will that work? What do we use as a direct box? Or do we make (Greg's) guitar go through the Lindell preamps and use the DI input on a Neve for bass? Or do we put the overheads through the Lindell preamps and... who knows?

Three for Today

Wow the translation of Jo Nesbø's "The Redbreast" has... issues. I get the feeling that the word "revolver" in Swedish can be used for both semi-automatics and revolvers. Since tracking what guns are held by whom in this detective story is what is kind of important.
Now I almost wonder if the American Secret Service agent actually had an MP5 rather than an UZI. It's kind of a downer when you can't have faith in the translation. Dang.
Are we supposed to presume that the Glock the cop used was then switched out for a revolver later? Or what? I guess I'll find out.
Otherwise I'm enjoying my Scandinavian mystery jaunt.

Via.
+++++
Oof. I have an ensemble scene with 5 characters in it and I have zero idea how to block it. As always, if we're shooting at the metal shop in 'Jersey we have the secondary problem that we have no idea what the "set" will look like when we show up. But there's a ping-pong table, maybe some weights. I dunno. I can't even see the scene in my head.
Hopefully we'll just get the scene on its feet and find something so it isn't static. 
+++++
Dang nab it. My car got broken into again. They seemingly only took the GPS. They didn't take any of the preamp rack in the trunk, or any of the microphones. So I'm counting my blessings on that one. But it makes me feel very jumpy, knowing that somebody opened the car and took something.

"The Writing on the Wall Might Be More Important Than The Actual Facts In Front of Us"

Oh, right, because a metaphor is more important than actual facts.
See this interview with Jeremy deVine.

One of the hot things to complain about right now is "how badly Spotify treats artists." Artists love to complain how the Man is putting them down.
Now in this particular case the subject is how indy record labels don't earn as much as... well, actually, it's not even that.
Honestly this sort of thing absolutely drives me insane. The complete lack of science involved in the "experiment" and the lack of real equivalence drives. me. nuts.

"Recently, distressed by his labels’ returns from Spotify (about $30,000 for around 18 million plays) deVine sent a well-considered letter to the bands on his roster, asking for their permission to remove the label’s entire catalog from Spotify. His goal: to compare a year’s returns with Spotify, to one without. "

In short, Jeremy deVine feels that his label is not losing money with Spotify right now. And he would like to conduct an experiment where he pulls all his artists off of Spotify for a year to see if there's any change in revenue from Rhapsody and eMusic. That's it. Nothing more.

That's about 1.7 cents per 10 plays. Now, the question is how much were the other revenue streams (Rhapsody, eMusic (?) paying? Nobody knows. But wait, in this interview he says it's 1/3 of a cent per play, which does not line up with his other numbers.

He says that the $35,000 from Spotify is less than 10% of what they make off of iTunes. So really the Spotify issue is that $35K this way or that in the Temporary Residence Records world is completely statistically irrelevant and possibly un-measurable.

Also 20% of record sales are in the first week of release.  By about 6 months you're at 40% of total sales. Those are very interesting facts.

We're looking at the macro hitting the ground running with an X-Factor looking at the bottom line!

How much do/does/did radio pay "per stream" of a song? You'd have to look at what they pay BMI/ASCAP etc. per year and divide that by their listenership and how many songs they play. It's way not an apples-to-oranges comparison.

In short, this whole thing about how Spotify is bad for artists has no basis in either finances or reality (the two seldom meet). 

Diatomaceous Earth

I feel like we hit some kind of high point here.

Tell me how this isn't the perfect band photograph.

The interesting thing between me and Greg is that he and I come from very different approaches toward the guitar and music. What I've been saying is that Greg tends to play "harmonically" whereas I tend to play "melodically". That's not really true of course, but it's an interesting way to think about it.
This is the first band I've been in where I wasn't the only guitar player. So we've had to learn how to play inside one another's styles.
And here, with the jams Diatomaceous Earth Part I and the last part of Illustrious Motorcar, I think we've really achieved something. My feeling is that we've found a place where the unique flavor of each member of the band does the "thing they do" and it meshes the most organically.
So, you realize, that these recordings are really just for us in the band to listen to. They don't make any sense for public consumption. But Diatomaceous Earth is relatively close to something we could actually release on a record. Heck, if that's not City Samanas then it'll be Pleasure for the Empire 'cause, you know, it sort of sounds like a song a band called "Pleasure for the Empire" would play, right?

Bat-try

You can, of course, get the Tascam DR680 modified. Busman audio does modifications -- 6 channels for $300.

The Tascam DR680 is fairly small and light.

I need a decent way to remotely power the thing. One could buy these Chinese 12v batteries (apparently the charge time on them is long though).
Or if one wanted to go rechargable and AA there are these Eneloop XX batteries.


Or you could go crazy and get a 12-pack of Energizer Lithiums for the whole shoot. Lessee, if, and only if, you could do an 8-day shoot on only 4 12-packs, that's about eighty some odd bucks.
 
So the conclusion is: ah. Erm.
There's also the option of getting one of these high capacity batteries for DVD players. That's $200. Word on the street is that it works.

Rethinking a Recording Path

So my recording path. I'm rethinking it.
Months ago, when I was starting to figure this out I was convinced that the quality of the A/D converters out in the wild were widely variable. I have since come to the conclusion that this is incorrect. The difference between the most expensive Millennia converters and whatever converters are on the back of a random piece of Tascam gear is relatively small.

Added a power supply output. Shouldn't Brent Averill have used females for the hot side of the supply? Well, he didn't.

What my mis-thinking led to was the consideration that I needed a new outboard A/D converter. I don't. I just don't. But I did. So I had this absurd signal path where the audio came out of preamps and into the M-Audio 2626 mic inputs (because there's actually more headroom on those inputs than in the line inputs -- go figure) and then to a Focusrite Scarlett A/D converter (which has substantially less headroom than it even vaguely occurred to me was possible) via TOSLink so that my laptop could be fed the signal through USB.
This, as you can imagine, is a pain in the tuchus.
But wholly unrelatedly I also needed to get a multitrack portable recorder. The Tascam DR-680 pretty much fits our needs for multichannel production audio for movies (I, er, blogged about this on one of the other blogs). The DR-680 has six analog inputs.
Which, by coincidence, is exactly as many as I need for recording City Samanas.

1. Bass
2. Kick
3. Drums L
4. Drums R
5. Guitar Greg
6. Guitar Drew

See? Perfect.
But now my whole path of trying to plug things into the back of the SKB rack case is just not going to work. So all those XLR's? They do... not a whole heck of a lot. Or, rather, they won't very soon. Basically the SKB will have four preamps — two Neve and two Lindell — and power conditioning and XLR males and females on the front panel.
As far as I can guess the only thing which has to/wants to be on the back panel is the 5-pin XLR for the power for the second set of Neve preamps. And after months of trying to get it I finally did. There's a big arrow pointing to it in the picture above so you can't miss it.
All the other stuff, the FireWire, the TOSLink, and the XLR's are about to become meaningless because of the Tascam DR-680. The Tascam will eliminate my need to carry two freakin' A/D converter boxes. And because it's just going to sit atop the rack in rehearsals, I'll just pull the feeds in and out of it via XLR's in a cheap single-rack XLR patchbay. See how easy things are?