Should you be using a higher sample rate? | FAQ Friday - Warren Huart: Produce Like A Pro

hello everybody hope you're doing Marvis lee well we're big bad I'm in black and we're back with another FAQ Friday so please hit the like button share go to produce like a pro comm you can sign up for the email list there's a whole bunch of free goodies we also have the Academy where there is a couple of thousand really wonderful people in there all helping each other out really amazing community before we get going I am going to be at Music Expo this weekend that is in San Francisco at expressions college and I'm doing three different things there the firstly I'm going to be with mr. Matt Boudreau of working class audio you probably remember we did some video content with him he's got an amazing podcast called working class audio so check it out also I'm going to be moderating a little panel between two incredible people Piper Payne and Pete Lyman that's going to be a lot of fun we're going to talk about mastering you know for vinyl mastering for you know every different medium and format you can imagine so it's gonna be a lot of fun and last but no means least I am going to do my own talk where I'm gonna be talking about the phrase you found me about the recalling process I'm gonna play the multi tracks and we talked about all of my different experiences working with the band and different studios were in I think we were in Sausalito at the plant we were in my studio we were at Glenwood and where else do we end up it loads are different Oh the phrase studio in Denver so it's going to be a fun packed time it's music expo and expressions college so check it out there'll be links all over the place it's this weekend so if you are actually watching this on the Friday and you do happen to be in San Francisco this weekend go and check it out it is Music Expo 2019 do you think investing in a you ad system is a good idea there unizin technology looks fascinating but I'm having some doubts about the whole thing I'm sure they make excellent converters spec wise I don't know about jumping in that system I'm having doubts about the preamps and their plugins are they really worth the price I have pretty much every different kind of converter you can think of over on this rack over here we have Apogee we have Lavery which I mixed too we also have qes which we mix to the pad too which is amazing we also have avid and 99% of the time when I'm in this studio here I use Audient for all the in the Box stuff and all of my basic demos because I want to be able to use a piece of equipment and you can afford now I have harmony and over at Harmony I have a beautiful 8020 for audio console which is gorgeous all of the converters there are you ad we have all of the new Apollo rec stuff and it sounds phenomenal so yes you are right the converters are wonderful in new ad but better still they do have that almost zero latency while tracking through their plugins so all I can say is stay tuned we are going to do a full breakdown recording through those plugins so you're going to get to experience what it's like if you have any doubts at all we will put them to rest because you're going to get to hear what it's like tracking through the plugins using the interfaces and you're going to hear the sounds of the pries and the sounds of the plugins so stay tuned coming up soon I've done it I love it so now we're going to show it off I feel really fortunate that we support a lot of companies and we are like equal-opportunity we're looking for things that are unique about everything we love Audient because it's affordable and there might be sound wonderful and there are great great companies to deal with we have an amazing relationship with the thing we love about the UAD stuff down there and you'll notice Glenn from spectral Media Group's been using it Alex from Gear gods has been using that studio as well what we love about that it's great selling converters but you're right the plugins and the pries exceptional the fact that you can in real time track from them is pretty wonderful so it's finding what makes this equipment great and using it in the right situation I think the question you asked here is perfect because it shows off what is unique about you so stay tuned for that how often do you find yourself placing a microphone exactly the way that owner manual says - I don't think I've ever looked at an owner's manual mic placement I was just trying to think how to answer that question cleverly or fundly I don't think I've ever looked at an owner's manuals mic placement I know that all the music school stuff I've always seen them like with vocals they always go like you know put the vocal like 18 inches away and all this stuff and it you always see these pictures or you see videos of people that went to music school and they've got like the mic like seemingly like in the next room that's what it feels like right this far away and like you know and they talk about it and like experts talk about that I just I've never recorded a vocal like that so I am NOT an expert I you know people talk about the negativity of the proximity effect I like the warmth of a good microphone close up I end up with putting the pop screen about that close and the singers about here so that probably that far away from the microphone which is like you know eight inches what is that in centimeters like 15 centimeters is that something like that none of that has anything to do with owner's manuals none of that has to do with any of the experts experts that record vocals you're not gonna find anybody that agrees with me however every engineer I've ever worked with that's worth his salt it's pretty much what ends up happening singers get close to microphones I kind of like the sound of the extra warmth that the proximity effect gives especially when they're belting and they're like like this and they're up high and thin if they're if they're thin I won the extra warmth so yeah just to basically I've never looked at an owner's manual for four directions it's not saying that you shouldn't and there's probably great advice to be had inside of all of those things but at the end of the day you're not what you know what I'm gonna say you've got to use your ears if it sounds good in a certain position when what are there you know it's really that I mean some of the great guys they'll tell you these stories about putting on headphones and moving microphones around I mean that's great if you're a quiet enough instrument that the headphones are louder but if you're if you've got a 4-12 cab and the guy is playing death-metal cha-cha George you can move your 57 as much as you like and you can have the best headphones in the world but it's gonna be so freaking loud you're not really going to hear the differences because the low-end is gonna be hitting you so hard between moving at half an inch here and there so I'll put the mic in there I'll go into the control room I'll have a listen I'll move the mic I'll go back in and have a listen if I want I'll record lots of different positions and then choose the position I want and do it the point is is like all I'm doing by talking about those saying just listen you know put the microphone up where you think it should be have a listen move it to taste and you know you can watch my videos talking about great miking places you know with acoustic guitars we mic the bottom of the body I see everybody now does that god bless them I learned that from a BBC engineer you know a bazillion years ago and yeah there's great techniques try it out if you want to look at the owner's manual it has good advice try it if I can't really think of a time I've looked at the owner's manual oh I think you know why you know I've never looked at an owner's manual because I've never I didn't buy new things until I could afford them so make sense so I would buy like old used microphones and there's I sure as heck didn't even come with a case or a cover or anything by the time I could afford to buy brand new microphones I knew how to use them so there you go there's my answer couldn't afford to buy a brand new microphone so I've never seen an owner's manual and by the time I could afford to buy a brand new microphone I knew where I wanted to put it so but if you can afford to buy a brand new microphone I mean they're cheap of these days $300 microphones sound amazing and the owners manual give some advice try it out say try it so this question is just to add to a little bit of a conversation we had a week or two ago am i overthinking that going to a higher sample rate will be better should I go back to 48k as maybe it's all you really need I said we do a lot of stuff at 48k because Academy we want people to be able to download multi-tracks no matter whether they have the cheapest interface whether they don't even have an interface and they just have that laptop or something we want everybody to be able to get and use multi-tracks because they might not have the latest gear I might have something from 15 years ago to only went to 40 okay so that's the reason why we do it most equal playing field for everybody but I did recommend that people record at higher sample rates to future-proof and then a lot of people and I get what they were saying there was a lot of comments and it's totally understandable saying well everything's going to end up at 40 for one and you know and 16-bit most of the time and then lots of people saying well you know we can't hear that extra difference you know you can get into whole long conversations about that and I understand all the points of view the reason why I said future-proof was because film and TV are asking for this to be at a much much higher sample rate and before you know it everything will be 192 so when I say future-proof I mean recording something if you can as the highest rate that you can knowing that if somebody likes your song and they want to put it on a TV show you've recorded it at an at the sample rate and the bitrate that they want it to be at so that's what I mean by future proofing so I get it there's loads of arguments for can you hear the difference and all that kind of stuff and people can fight and argue about that the but the business reason for doing it the smart business reason for doing it is to make sure that you'll always be competitive and your music can always be used in every different format because as many of you know lots of people that you've never heard of make amazing livings by film getting music in film and TV so do not preclude yourself from that by recording it you know 8-bit alright hopefully that clears up - the question now that you mentioned self producing would you recommend to do it or find an external producer I actually answered this one this was a couple week or two ago I answered this one I can't remember the verbatim answer I gave but I want to bring it up against this a great great question if if I had the budget and more importantly or just as importantly the time to make a record that I wanted to make I would work with a handful of producers I mean John Leckie is a huge huge favor of mine Jack Douglas would be an amazing guy to make a record with and of course Michael by not Michael Ben Horne would probably be my personal favorite I think he and I would like get stuck in there and it would be absolutely amazing I think Michael is one of the one of the greatest producers that ever lived every album he did with the band was their biggest the most successful and best sounding record he pushes the artists and he he wants he's in there with the sounds he's in there with the parts he's in there with the lyrics he's in there with the arrangement you know and he is pulling everything apart and I think he probably drives the artists crazy in an amazing way and they get the best possible results because perfectionist is the wrong word he is a creative nut so I would want Michael to make my solo record however I don't have the budget all the time to be able to do that so like many of you I will self produce myself but it is difficult because I will overthink it and where maybe if you a tracking guitar I would listen to you or you were tracking drums or you're tracking keys I would listen to what you're playing and if you were behind or in front I might think wow that's really good groove I love that person's feel for me it's hard to be objective so I go home I'm out of time but maybe it feels good but I'm like I don't know feels like I'm a little on top but if Tim Pierce is slightly on top it sure as heck feels great it feels like it's pushing the music there's some urgency there so you know it's important it's important to be able to pull yourself away and unfortunately the only way to do that is to record and then leave it and come back to it fresheners because in the moment I can't really judge so my la la la how many times going to say long long answer is preferably with time and budget you get the best of the best you get the Michael bard once you get the john lackeys you get the Jack Douglass's you get the great great producers to produce your album but the reality is is I'll probably always end up doing it myself and just try not to be overly critical and allow myself the ability to stand back and listen to it as a whole and the only way I know how to do that is to work quickly not overdo it and over perfect everything I do and also give myself time away go and work on a different song and come back to the other song at a later time even if it's an hour or two so I have fresh ears and fresh perspective how would you mix a large choir with many mics and deal with the time alignment of the mics you know the mic in the middle is picking up a little of what the mic on the end is picking up but not in time and in phase and so on so forth going back to you ad I was in air studios with you ad and Olga Fitzroy masterful engineer just really amazing engineer so Olga was recording our so London Symphony Orchestra I was listening to you know the whole mix in the middle of the live room there was a Decca Torre those of you may know the configuration of a Decca tree but it's multiple mics pretty darn close together in the middle of a huge huge library and Olga had this amazing string so I came at her and asked you know how much of the Decca tree you're using and she's like a lot she solid it when we listened and ever think the only thing that maybe needed to come up was a little bit of the timpani because it was quite a long way away and just a little bit like a little touch the timpani and maybe one of the sync there was a singer an operatic singer in the very very end a whole Orchestra dropped so low and the singer was just beautiful over the top but essentially the point is is you get amazing musicians or acquire amazing singers you can really get away with using minimal mics so if you're going to be recording a choir and you're talking about you know having multiple mics on different sections I get it you know put put a mic on every section accent mic you know so put it so that if there's like three or four people on a section here your miking so you've got a general sort of feel of all of them something that's sort of in in the middle or and gets an even amount of each one of that group and to be honest that'll work wonders you're only going to have problems if you're like super-close miking sections and you know one is like blowing out too heavily the bottom line is is if they are a good choir they will all sing to each other they'll all be listening to each other they'll sing at a volume that complements all of the parts and if they have a really good choir master a really amazing arranger conductor working with them they will get an incredible performance that's the bottom line a really amazing performance it's easy to capture and the way to do that is to put it where the conductor is so get yourself like a balloon line let's take a balloon line like this in figure-of-eight set like this in front of the choir that in a good sounding room will be 90 percent of your sound just like Olga was using the Decca tree in the middle of air studios and blending in tiny little amounts just to bring some extra volume you should be able to get the same results now I'm not saying don't accent my course accent mic sections do it if you have a soloist give them a microphone don't have to be right up on it but give them a microphone that they can step towards all of these things are good but ultimately a good balanced choir with a really good arrangement and a great conductor in a decent sounding room is always going to be easy to record by putting the bloom line like here like if the conductors here put it here face down capture the performance okay it's been a wonderful week once again if you haven't already please go to produce Sega procom sign up for the email list get a whole bunch of free goodies and of course if you haven't please like and subscribe if you haven't already subscribed if you hit the little bell you'll be notified when we put a new video up so if you're in San Francisco this weekend please go to music Expo at expressions colleges can be wonderful there's a lot of great people speaking as I said I'm going to be with Matt Boudreau from working-class audio doing a panel with him and then I'm going to do I'm going to moderate with the amazing Piper Payne and the incredible Pete Lyman and then of course I have my own presentation where I'll be breaking down you found me by the Frey talking about the recording process and everything that went into making that song so have a marvelous time recording and mixing thank you ever so much for watching you all Rock please leave a bunch of comments and questions below remember this is where we pick up the FAK friday questions from down below on the fact Friday videos speech you also have a marvelous time [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 51,615

Rating: 4.7802486 out of 5

Keywords: Warren Huart, Produce Like A Pro, Home studio, Home recording, Recording Audio, Music Production, Record Producer, Recording Studio, FAQ

Id: SXzCt9VlRlY

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 08 2019