Recording gear: What I use

[Bill Mecca]

I keep it simple. I do freelance voiceover and video work (as well as full time video production). I recently moved, a much smaller space which increases the chances of comb filtering (that boxy sound) since the sound waves don’t have enough room to dissappate.

I have several panels of 2 inch thick rigid insulation covered with tie dyed muslin. It has another covering, as it was made for a theater but was the wrong color so I got a hunk of it free and cut it up smaller. I put furring strips on the back using fender washers. This keeps it off the wall a bit, so sound has to go thru the insulation, the air, bounce back off the wall thru the insulation again to return to the microphone. This worked great in my former space, but this room is smaller and it’s not working as well with my condenser mic.

I have a Rode NT2 condensor mic that will pick up the sound of your toenails growing, but I usually use an Electro Voice RE20 dynamic which is great at rejecting off axis sound, works well with my voice and sax. This also helps reduce any comb filtering.

I record into my PC which has an M-Audio 2496 card. Older tech but it still works great. it does NOT have midi sounds in it so if I use midi I have to use the TTS-1 soft synth built into my older version of Sonar. It works ok but sometimes freaks a bit. Sorry got ahead of myself… sound chain is RE20>Behringer MX802a>M-Audio card I have an Aphex 105 Tubessence mic pre amp but the power connector needs to be repaired and I haven’t had time.

As for software, for a long time I used Sonar 4 Producer edition, but under Win7 it started acting up, giving me an echo on the soft synth sounds. I use Audacity sometimes, I tried Reaper, and I have, for my video work, Adobe Creative Cloud so lately I have been using Adobe Audition. I had a nice reverb set up in Sonar, but Audition doesn’t have any pre-sets and I am still playing around with settings.

I bought a CAD Acoustic enclosure, it was a deal of the day, but haven’t really used it yet.

Just thought I would put this out there so maybe it would help anyone looking for a set up.

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