Official Channel for Australian guitarist, singer-songwriter Jamie Durrant. Focusing on gear reviews, recording tips, funny stories, gear performance tests and of course, new music releases. A community for those that love songwriting and recording.
Jamie Durrant began his music career performing in the Melbourne band Degenerates Jamie Durrant (guitar, vocals), Julien Chick (bass) and David Klenjans (drums). Their 1991 EMI/Chrysalis EP release Out Of My Head saw them nominated for the 1992 ARIA Award for Best New Talent. His latest solo recording “Endless Circle”, a post-punk/electronic work is due for release October 10, 2020, through Bent Records.
The mix sounds phenomenal. Gives me Fleetwood Mac vibes. The tape monitor gives much more separation and the instrumentas sound great. Are you running the master buss out your converters to the reel and back to the converters? Or is it going thru the console? What's your chain here for the reel?
In this case, routing was all done via the console. This does add another layer of warmth but nothing like what tape can do for achieving that silky top end and mix glue effect!
So chain was REM converters out > Chilton 2 channels line in, no EQ > direct Chilton channels out > Teac Tape Machine inputs > Teac Monitor outputs > another set of Chilton 2 channels line in, no EQ. So effectively, what we hear difference wise is ONLY the tape.
@@henryafterall Yes, if running 24bit 48k conversion - or higher, the tape effect and smoothness is captured as an effect. As I mentioned in the video, in the 90s mastering engineer Don Bartley at EMI Studios 301 would run mixes through the EMI console, then via GML mastering EQ and Compressor, and then to an Ampex mastering tape machine. The output of this was then captured via and Apogee AD-500, which was 44.1khz for CD mastering, but even this device was smooth enough to represent the analog effect in digital form. Now days any modern Apogee (including the first generation Quartet that I'm using), or Lynx or RME 24bit converters can do the job well.
About vintage D12, D20, D25, there are vocal mics too :) If You buing one, ensure if they are fully functional. Due to age, they can degrade a lot. I have D25 which is beautiful, but unusable.
@@jamiedurrantmusician In fact, D20 and D25, almost the same misc, (i don't know, if D12 too) was designed for broadcast purposes. There are lot of pics with them made in TV studios.
Please….these were a very ordinary desk in the day, complete with cheap short throw faders. The Soundcraft 200b ate them in every possible way and you can’t give them away now. “Analogue” is being bit overplayed on very ordinary 40 year old consoles.
@@MrStubat I appreciate your view, and there are points I agree with, however based on the brilliant record tone, which will be highlighted in my next video I strongly believe this Studiomaster model should not be disregarded! I’ve heard many others stating that later models were terrible. While this is not a Neve, far from it, it’s also far from being rubbish. We achieved killer 80s drum sounds with this desk, and the tones really impressed us! Forget faders, forget noise floor and all the tech talk - it can be a wonderful production tool. It worked for New Order in the 80s too!
@@jamiedurrantmusician yeh I get it,but I used a lot of these type of desks back in the day, and the 200b and 400-800b even more were just so far in front of the pack in every way and they’re basically doorstops now. Some of those other cheap desks like the MM evenhad unbalanced inputs and the Soundtraks preamp was straight into the inputs of a 5534. We had our own Aussie made Jands JM5 and JM6. I can’t get nostalgic about any of them TBH, the Soundcraft really tried to be a high standard of quality, and easy maintainence with its modular approach and the last one of those I owned I couldn’t get $100 for. They’re not Neves, they’re not studio quality preamps or eq.
@@MrStubat I hear you but honestly I recorded and produced several tracks at Sing Sing in the late 80s on a sound craft console and I found the preamps and EQ thin and hard… I just hated the sound. I know the 5534s are more Hifi and faster as others have commented and were also used in SSLs but I also dislike SSLs for tracking. I’m just chasing a different sound.
@@MrStubat tell me pls, with the Soundcraft consoles, what sort of work were you doing? We’re you a live engineer? I think reliability and functions in certain situations matter a great deal.
Hi! I hear a quite high noise floor from my headphones when you are plugged in the studio masters, more so when you're boosting with the EQ. Is it going to be a problem when many signals are running through the console?
Facebook, Spotify, Tiktok etc are all crooks. They all give you bot views and not genuine people for a lot of advertisers. This along with meta restricting your fans from seeing your content is evil through and through.
The used 741 opamps in the Studiomaster might have lower dissipative heat, however they have higher distortion, noise, and lower slew rate than the NE5532. But I'm glad that the sound is cool!
Neve moved into IC circuit topology after Rupert sold the company. The ICs used in those consoles had questionable sonic qualities, however, the use of ICs (along with the elimination of transformers) reduced manufacturing costs by quite a lot. This, along with each channel strip being fully on one main circuit board also reduced labor costs. Some console manufacturers (i.e. MCI in the US) continued to use transformers for their isolation qualities, but soon abandoned them because of several factors, mainly cost and audio fidelity). Once the 5534/5532 ICs came into being, console fidelity improved tremendously. Then it was merely the poor implementation of interstate coupling capacitors that continued to degrade the performance of cheaper consoles. The SSL 9000J is a servo coupled console… no interstate coupling capacitors… that sounds incredible in part, because the smearing phase distortion of those capacitors was eliminated. The NEVE 8108 and 8128 had a sound of their own, but were not really hi fidelity in their sonic signature. However, some cheaper consoles of that same era had a very lovable sonic footprint… Soundcraft being one of several.
2 famous Neve consoles that are an example of a vintage Neve classic and modern Neve classic are the 8078 ic version, and the Neve 88r also an ic based console In reality tho and I’m sure everyone that’s had a Neve and looked into all of it knows well, repairs happen all the time on the vintage non ic modules, heat and other issues were far more common in terms of repairs, especially because of the Class A topology current requirements. Rupert would gage the truth of pre-amp circuit via holding his hand over the unit for a few minutes, and could tell if it was class a, as he said, tho half joking he had a point. I’ve had an IC Neve from 1978 for 15 years and the channels over their 40 year life have only been recapped, no other repairs, that absolutely wouldn’t be the case if it was the older transistors modules.
My first desk, not a rackmount mixer, in the mid 80's, was a Studiomaster 16-4, same as this one. In no way, shape or form could it be compared to a Neve. Pretty sure my friend I gave it to still has it stashed in his loft, because he's a packrat like that.
@@niallmacdonald2710 ha! As I said in this video - it’s NOT a Neve, but my comparison is about heat generated by ICs and which one cooks the capacitors
the statement about heat is kinda wrong i think. i own a neve 8014 (class a), it does get a little bit warm. but the chip console like neve VR THESE get HOT!
Martin Hannett producer of Joy Division among others had one of these in his home studio, and they very much are of that era. He modded his EQ somehow, his board came up for sale including his personal notes on the mods, but the seller demanded I buy the whole lot to find out what he did. I'm guessing he narrowed the Q by upping the resistors in a couple spots, but he may also have gone from 741's to TL071's as Studiomaster themselves did around 1981. The 071s are a bit cleaner and faster which in the tape era was a good idea but nowadays probably not a good idea. The Jim Williams contingent will laugh at these old opamps but they don't know what we are trying to do with music so ignore them. 5534s are the SSL opamp and so very clean and fast, recapping isn't hard as much as it is tedious and the bigger issue is workflow and paying for HVAC to make the control room livable with a big old board burning a lot of heat. My 1979 Studiomaster 12 into 2 is of this 741 era. I should note for the crowd that all Studiomasters and Recording Studio Design from the 70's and 80's had a "thin script logo" and Slipperman slipped up years ago suggesting the logo was an indicator of quality, better is the presence of big VU meters to know you got an original rather than a later one built by Rolls. My 1979 did need some recapping, had already been clumsily modded for direct outs and was in poor enough shape I decided to not view it as a museum piece but instead to mod the daylights out of it. I put in optional transformers galore, polarity switches, separate switchable line ins on DB25s, TRS switched direct outs and insert points, pulled the EQ off the master and made a couple more stereo pairs of line inputs...not to mention a completely new power supply. And I socketed the summing opamps so I can use LM6172 or something else the fast opamp people would approve of. There is plenty of room inside these, and they are built to be extended, so a modder's delight if you know your way about. The worst thing in them for modding and maintenance are the bus bars linking all the cards together shown in your video, I replaced those with a eurorack ribbon which also allowed me to have stereo FX sends on alternating channels. Stock and in good shape these are certainly worthy boards, modded well they can be something truly special, although still looking up at a PM1000 or a Neve of course.
Hi Peter, thank you for the detail - such an amazing comment. And I love New Order !! So where are you based? That sounds like a serious mod but cool. Huge effort. And yes them bus bars are ridiculous - what were they thinking? FFS
@@jamiedurrantmusician I am stateside...The bus bars do provide some structural stability to the cards, which can protect the pots from failing on these primitive PCBs with their weak traces. The pots can and will fail anyway, but worse, the bars will fail, and in researching what people had done to these some didn't realize the bars had failed, or worse, that solder drooled down from them onto other traces, and so they found that star grounding the setup helped, but it almost certainly was just the bus bars weren't in good contact across the entire assembly and they didn't realize that. If you do have to do maintenance these things are the primary challenge, you will be best served perhaps clamping the board upright as you work...really a design disaster, and ribbon cables and molex connectors already existed at that time. Tedious to do a retrofit but certainly worth it overall. As were the rest of the mods, I'm just having fun with electronics and music more than making wise investments in time and money!
I like the Yamaha but I love the Chilton. Definitely greater headroom and dynamic range, the top end is much more open, mid definition, and extended, tighter lows. Much better stereo imaging, depth, and width. Is the sound worth the money? Absolutely. Great performance and recording! Thank you for sharing 🍻
Yes you're exactly right, but it costs $1000+ USD for that amount of preamp clarity, if you can find a Chilton! I was lucky. Yamaha's offer a good option, they're not perfect but lots of fun too
I have a couple of Studio Master desks and an RSD predecessor and a few friends introduced me to them with their lovely units a few years ago, the earlier the generation, the better. They're sleepers and keepers.
@@Beatledave7 Hi Dave! I’ve not long had that reel, it’s a full track mono record model - MX5050 BiiF - I’ve only just had it serviced - the transport was almost locked up and pots and switches were noisy, running well now, I’m waiting on a replacement heads cover splicing plate. My plan was using it for tape saturation effects and tape delay… but something amazing happened - I met a local guy with 2 stereo MX5050s, one needing an erase head and a service, the other in as new condition - I’m buying both from him… so I’ll sell for a low price this full track mono, and won’t be using it much other than some test bounces. There stereo machine will get a work out once I get some new formula tape from the tech / retailer in Brisbane.
Thank you so much for talking about it! Spotify is the worst thing happened to music 100%. All the numbers are fake, actually the story about the Swedish composer with those billions of streams should be enough to understand that it's a criminal organization.
@@jamiedurrantmusician I think they're doing it) I mean why not, they already showed us they only care about moneymaking🤷♂️ AI music will help them to make even more money haha
It's legalized gambling. Most ads don't actually go to actual viewers. You can tell by looking at ad click through rates which by some miracle was 10% across numerous sites. Did viewers come over the long term? Nope. It was fake subscribers, etc. What made it obvious was how long people would listen which averaged 6 seconds. Businesses will always give you an easy path to take. In reality. it's hard work which pays off over time. What mary did was not nice. She suckered people into buying something she ended up releasing for free. Her autograph has no current value.
@@johannborchersfriends interesting notes on your music marketing - did you run ads yourself and was that Facebook also? I personally disagree Re Mary, as hard copy music replication costs a packet, as does postage these days. I feel there’s greater value in such physical objects. But I get where you’re coming from!
@MarySpender @RickBeato @tedgioia @TheTranspacificBand - big ups to you guys this week - felt such good vibes from your combined music, words and thoughts I just had to respond - you're all amazing! Thank you.
Same here : Cubase 5 + Rme multiface (pci card) + win 7-64 bit (no internet) + some old fashioned harware (Klark Teknik eqp, Tascam m-50 mixing desk, a real spring reverb (stolen from an old lowrey organ) and digital echo. Agree with you : the source is everything
@@jamiedurrantmusician yes, it suits well with my dub mixing. Mono spring reverbs add color, punch and kinda space "behind" the sound. For a more spacious and large reverb effect, better add a second spring (tank+ separate preamp). This is not only for the stereo : 2 spring reverbs coupled together produce the most beautiful sound i've ever heard. ... but that kind of reverb suits better to churches or gospels than to root dub 😄
Very interesting method! I just recorded vocals yesterday (after many years, yep!) with a new pair of really tight headphones, and I heard very loudly and somewhat organically the very-low-end... and predominantly... which was distracting me from concentrating on delivering the right pitch (we don't hear the pitch very well in the lower-end)... I thought I needed to use the EQ to correct that, until I discovered it was physically resonating in my chest or in my upper-torso bones and it was heard mostly "bio-internally"... because of the tight headphones! So I searched YT today to find a confirmation of that problem and a solution. Your video confirmed the importance of hearing the actual direct room environment, and that is exactly what I have discovered yesterday! I'll first try with my cheap in-ear headphones that came with my old Samsung cellphone (so I can hear my voice more directly in/from the room), but if it's still not good, I'll try your "no-headphones" method! Thanks so much!
Well that’s one of the very first comments on this channel that I disagree with. Sure there are mic modelling plugins however and the concept of what you’re taking about sounds logical however a vintage mic like a Neumann KM54 has many components that together react to incoming sound waves and then tubes that process the voltages. All this before it goes to the DAW. Tell me what totally flat wise response mic and what software we could use to mimic a KM54a and I’ll make a video about it. Prove me wrong!!!!!
@@jamiedurrantmusician ive been at it since the 70s, in chicago ive worked on many things youve heard, back in the day we would only use certain things on an api, or different things on tha neve, today, there is no need for the drama. if you believe you hear what you think you hear then god bless, but the temple of sound days are over. we are dying a slow death and now with ai, it has sped up exponentially. tech has learned and will continue to learn how to mimic the flow of electrons thru circuits or the wrappings of a transformer. ive worked on it, i know. god bless you for keeping the lore of the sonic temple alive, but it is in fact either over or will soon be over. hell, you can throw a scratch track of a acoustic guitar into a computer and ask ai to make a soung out of it for a certain genre, target market, song length, etc etc etc, then they can do the lyrics they wrote in the voice you choose. ive seen it. i didnt mean to be offensive, i just know i can go to an ai bot and have them take my vocal and have them render it on any mic i want and with any other voice they can download enuf vocal samples of to recreate. we are a dying breed my friend. i guess im just too aware of how far gone we are.
This mic if now up for sale on my new Reverb store, if that's of interest, thank you Jamie reverb.com/au/item/83144089-rode-nt1-1993-opr-custom-u87-clone
I do love the 421 for my lead vox and I'll contrast that with a condenser for back-up vox. Not to push my work on anyone, but just to demonstrate that idea...ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0hjOiorcbFo.html
Tout dépend aussi du préampli utilisé, quand je rentre un Shure SM58 ou SM57 dans une tranche de ma Neve 5465, ça sonne super ;) J'ai aussi un KM54a avec la fameuse lampe AC701k, dans la Neve c'est fabuleux, quel son. Dans la vidéo, l'AKG est moins précis dans les fréquences basses, c'est plus brouillon à l'écoute, mais pour la différence de prix, c'est quand même bluffant.
Correct me if I’m wrong in your translation, but I think you’re saying it all depends upon the preamp used. In my case both mics were recorded through a class A style Neve preamp with minimal EQ and just a hint of Urei 1176 compression.
@@jamiedurrantmusician Yes, I imagine you used the same preamp for comparison. What I meant was that if you use a low-end preamp, the difference in sound between the AKG and the Neumann will be more accentuated.
Great vid, great tones! Can you ask Dave what models of cymbals he's using here? I see a Sabain ride, but which model? The hats and crash look to possibly be Sabian Legacy series?
The cymbals were all by Sabian. They were 18 inch legacy crash cymbal which I used as high hats. And the ride cymbal is a Sabian 22 inch artisan light ride.
If life deals you a raw hand, just hold on and focus on the special tiny elements - look for the little rays of sunshine - they’re always with us. This is a song about Hope, fortunately hope is a big part of the human spirit. If you’re having a rough time, this song is for you!
I’m sorry to say that the newer MC desks have cheaper IC only based mic preamps - they are noisy, are know to have RF issues (picking up radio frequency interference) and also have cheap op amps in the master section. It is cheaper to find an older console than to rebuild an MC desk. I’ve used these in rehearsal spaces and feel the MC series is about the worst product Yamaha have ever made. A pile of crap. Sorry to say it, but I completely hate them!
@@jamiedurrantmusician Right to the point! Sonics. I have always loved the word. From growing up in Seattle and being a Supersonics fan but one who loves working with sonics as a profession and hobby. 🍻
Interestingly I felt the vintage Neumanns were pretty dull and boring here, just IMO, whether it’s just those particular ones, or perhaps the 251 just suits you more Jamie? The 251 while sounding nice in the mix when in solo had a less pleasing thing in the top end that I don’t hear in my OPR 251, but I know Mark has voiced them darker in the revision I’ve got so maybe it’s that. Fun content as usual Jamie 🎉
You know there are a lot of people that jump to the U48 immediately without considering what’s best for my voice. I loved the 251. And for the price $2.5k AUD vs say approx $50k USD it’s amazing value and a bloody good reality check! Glad you enjoyed the fun side of this! Let me know if you have any other ideas for more videos, thank you Jamie
@@jamiedurrantmusician for sure, it’s all about what suits the voice being recorded. Also, while vintage Neumanns are absolutely wonderful, they’re all likely in wildly different conditions, and aren’t necessarily great just because they’re Neumanns.. I think what I love about your videos Jamie is you make accessible content for those of us who have more modest setups, I’d like to see some more content around using tape ✌️
@@andrewwhitehouse1878 Fair comments! Regarding tape, yeah that would be good, even a chat about my vintage Tascam Porta One mini studio from my early teens!
Fantastic video I'm so happy I found this . !! I was wondering when you do the face flip bleed track do ident bounce the main vocal down with the phase flipped track into one stem?
No don’t bounce them down to one track, keep them separated so you can control the blend amount of the out of phase information, sometimes 50% phase cancellation sounds better and a little more natural - play wit it, experiment! Also try singing with a dynamic with a tight pickup pattern and just accept song bleed and see how it sounds!
@@jamiedurrantmusician yes believe it or not I actually bounced both of them down and it turned out fine to be honest. The reason I needed to do it was for melodyne as there was a lot of bleed in from speakers
Picking just one I'd take the Plan-12 but man, that EV 666 was a revelation on kick-out! All the low end "poof" you want in a great kick-out mic but with some added, quite fat thump/punch. I'm quite shocked actually!
