Things every studio does but no one knows why 

legend has it bros lamp is still heating up to this day

I am 65, and I have always had a lava lamp in my studio. Without it, things just plain 'ol don't work as well. Vocals sound worse after being recorded and wierd crap will happen for no apparent rerason. So... save yourself a lot of problems. Get a lava lamp.

The lava lamp is for the less gifted musicians who want to help. You have them monitor the lamp.

I'm currently looking at 1) a lava lamp 2) horizontal monitors 3) an upside down mic and I just rewound my DAW.

Remember, the save icon is still a floppy disk.

I think the Lava Lamp is popular because the motion is so amorphous and smooth that it appears to 'sync' with any music. You mind can see one blob or another as always 'in time' to the song. This is of course in addition to its magical powers. When you forget to turn on the Lava Lamp , things start going wrong. Equipment craps out, musicians are late, strings break in the middle of a solo. Turn on the Lava Lamp and the session settles down. I am not superstitious, but ...

The reason NS 10s became so ubiquitous in studios around the world is because they weren't very good as stereo speakers. They became the default near filed monitor for so many record producers and engineers simply because they were so lackluster, not in spite of it. The saying goes, "If a mix sounds good on the NS 10s it will sound better on anything else".

The upside down mic is actually still useful with recording vocals, as it allows you to more easily put the mic in a position that forces the vocalist to tilt their head up, opening their airway more

The lava lamp is actually quite useful for a couple of reasons: 1) It lowers stress. The smooth, nearly “slow-motion” movement is calming. 2) It provides a focal point when trying to think through an issue. Personally, I’ll stare at it when I’m trying to come up with new ideas, or troubleshoot something in the mix or the arrangement. It’s visually engaging without dominating the internal thought process, so it allows you to focus the extra processing power inward.

"there are kids out there who have never touched a tape" At this point there are adults too

We had a lava lamp by the mixing table in a local radio station. The reason for this I believe was that many shows were broadcast late at night and there were no windows in the room, so if there were no sources of light no one would find their way. Having the ceiling lamp on permanently felt wrong.

I think the Super 55 gets used in logos so much because it's such a distinctive shape. You can strip the depiction back to a very simple one-color silhouette and it's still immediately recognizable, which is very useful in a logo.

I 100% of the time hang a mic upside down for vocalists just because it gets the stand out of teh way for a music stand or a little table with water on it or something.

Another reason to hang a microphone upside down on vocals is moisture. Even just speaking moisture escapes our mouth and can build up on things in-front of us. To keep that moisture from getting into the microphone and damaging the components inside , you hang it upside down to let it dry or drip off away the the internal components.

The story I have heard from a couple of mastering guys is that if you can make a track sound good on NS-10s, it will sound good on anything. I did some "Mr. Fixit" and setup work for a couple of third rate studios in the Miami area in the early 70's. I got to visit Criteria twice, both while some renovations were going on to pick up some of their old junk they sold us. I got to see an old mix down and mastering (if they called it that in 1972) room as it was being torn apart. I asked a guy who was there why the engineer had a big piece of plywood with a couple 6 X 9 inch speakers in it behind the chair. The guy replied, "I make two different mixes of most of what comes in here, each for a different distribution medium." Both get mixed on the same setup, but the final product gets tweaked for the medium and likely use case. LP's and R to R tape get carefully auditioned on some nice speakers as the NS10M's did not exist, nor did the CD or any other digital delivery medium at the time. Anything delivered on cassette tape or the then popular 8 track tape gets tweaked to sound through a set of nice car stereo speakers behind me because that's how it will be heard in someone's car. He turned out to be the engineer that sat in that chair. I got my pair of NS10M Studio monitors at Sam Ash Margate in the late 80's. I use them for design and development of vacuum tube HiFi amps for the same reason many studios use them. They are NOT flat but accentuate the upper midrange frequencies that are the hardest to get right, and the most objectionable when not right.

Talking about rewind, yet everyone clicks a floppy disk to save

"Chief statue = tobacco shop & red pepper = tacos" is an association I would have NEVER made as a non-american. This is the first time I'm hearing about this

The word rewind is still in use because it is a perfect metaphor for the concept of going back to the beginning even though there is no “spool” involved. You are obviously an engineer.

Mystery #1.There is a reason to mount a vocal mic in a hanging position, that is rarely mentioned. A hanging mic tend to end up a bit higher, than one that's mounted directly on a stand. This will make the singer (unitentianally) raise his/her head and open up the wind pipe. Try it yourself. If you raise your head, it's easier to get a clear, clean tone. If you lower your head, the tone becomes a bit more muffled. Of cause, you could raise the stand mounted mic. But having the body of a largeformat vocal mic fill up you field of view, right in front of your face, feels weird and distracting for most people. As a conveient bonus, you get free space under the mic for sheet music stands, etc. with a hanging mic.

I have to say I like your editing style. This video felt like watching one of those late night short educational programs you'd see on TV. Such a change from the anger and frantic pace of modern youtube.

The thing with the lava lamp taking so long is because the modern-style lamps use wax instead of oil. It’s not as “active” and it takes much longer to get going, buuuut they don’t explode if you leave them on too long, which old-style lava lamps are known to do.

Fun video. 🙂 For those that don't know, many of us would drape toilet paper over the tweeters on the NS-10 to help balance them a bit as we mixed because although they were nice and "revealing" and actually pretty accurate for their size and what they were, they sounded a bit harsh (because of the crossover section). The NS-10's were originally hi-fi speakers for your home. Never intended for studio use. But they were a nice size and sat on the top of mixing consoles pretty well. (side note: laying them down on their side reduced the stereo sweep spot in the room to ZERO. Standing up you can move left and right without much issue, but laying them down KILLED the stereo image. In that orientation you completely skew their time alignment between the tweeter and woofer. Looked cool and ducked out of the way of the main wall monitors, but a really BAD decision so they were meant for just a quick check and reference now and then. Tannoy speaker company solved that time delay problem by producing dual-concentric speakers, so the tweeter lives in the middle of the woofer. Pretty amazing engineering! At the time remember that TV's were huge and actually had some pretty nice built in speakers, and we had big boom boxes and cabinet radio systems (car systems were trash though for the most part unless you paid a bunch to upgrade). So many studios started mixing on them that Yamaha actually responded with a new model called the NS-10m (m for monitor, meaning studio grade). The only difference though was a few changes cosmetically to the cabinet and they "fixed" the crossover section to eliminate the harsh sound of the original NS-10. What's funny is now they are all discontinued and the Auratone which in the normal version doesn't even have a separate tweeter, is the trendy one now. But it's nice because they are self powered which simplifies things. It's just a speaker that was basically the size of most TV speakers of the time. Nowadays, I just run my mixes via optical into my TV in the studio because those horrible wafer flat style speakers are just gross and the TV is so thin there's no option for any decent resonance support from the cabinet. If your mix sounds good on your studio headphones, your small studio monitors, as well as on a flat screen TV, or your laptop or one of those stereo bedside iHome type docks etc, chances are fairly good your mix will translate to a lot of things.

The real reason for using NS-10s is *The Disco Smile* - there's a slight roll off on both the lows & the highs. Sort of like a frown shape, but relatively subtle. (Think the Mona Lisa, in reverse.) So the idea of being you will naturally compensate for this in your mix. Thus in the club or on your stereo you get that signature Disco Smile sound - treble and bass boosted *just* enough.

The worst was when the tape got pulled out of your cassettes and you had to be super careful taking all day to wind it back in with a pencil without the tape getting twisted or ripped lol

I always had a lava lamp because it was a pretty mesmerising thing for client to watch. It meant that client would have something to look at when I was editing, which could take forever. Phones have changed now but due to the poor shielding back then, you typically needed to turn them off anyway unless you wanted digital noise filtering through to the speakers. And there werent any real great games on them either. So you would have books and magazines on the coffee table, lava lamps etc to keep people occupied. I always wanted a Lego table but I got the sense that would be too much 😂

I see people wondering why you would want to turn the mic upside down. The answer is always the same. If you turn the mic upside down, the singer can have their lyrics in front of them. Also if the shock mount is not quite parallel to the floor, a vertical mic in a shock mount will compound this angle and tilt even further. Whereas an inverted mic will level itself out since the center of gravity is below the elastic bands.

Things every music youtuber does, but nobody knows why: Having some little succulent plants on their desk. 😁

I don't remember ever having a lava lamp in a studio. Maybe people brought one in a the live room along with candles and incense. I never used mood lighting in the control room, full work lights. I did always have an oscilloscope running back when you had the calibrate the tape machines at least daily, preferably on every reel. I would also use it to maximize my phase response and it kept musicians endlessly entertained. I have rewound more tape than I care to remember. I figure I have spent over a year of my life rewinding taping, for that matter thousands of hours calibrating tape machines. Analog was not fun. Hanging mic's upside down was mostly in shock mounts. Many shock mounts don't work right with microphone up and will lean in the mount. Neumann mounts are know for this, and worse as the elastic ages. Shock mounts are only in the way when mic'ing speakers and drums a good studio always had the standard mount as well as shock mounts. I aways hated the NS10 in the NS10 heyday a piece tissue paper was tapped in front it tweeter the reduce the wire brush in the ears sound of the tweeter. People mixed pop music on NS10 because they knew when it distorted a certain way that was about the limits of how far you could push a mix. Then the Finalizer came along and we have been compressing music down to pink noise ever since. But it is really loud on the radio that no one listens to any more.

Phantom powered Lava Lamps.... I'm on it!

2:15 when you said you wanted to talk about tubes heating up I was mentally so ready for a manscape Ad read 😂

I need my lava lamps. They calm me down and add some vibe and gentle light to the room. I also position my large diaphragm condensers upside-down, not for heat, but because it’s easier to position for 1. Better sibilance control and 2. It gets the mic and stand out of the musician’s way so they can read their lyrics and charts without having to move out of the sweet spot of the mic.

I dont even have a recording studio but this video has convinced me that i need a lavalamp

I have a lava lamp in my studio. It sits between my video monitor and on of my audio monitors. I have a few funky lights in the studio but that's just because I like them.For me, it's all about creating a nice warm and inviting artistic environment. Even though I'm the only one who records here. You're only old if you know how to actually dial a phone! I always felt that NS-10s sounded horrible, but if you could get them to sound good, your mix would sound good anywhere.

I have a lava lamp in my homerecording room,and some other lights.But i was suprised,how many people have it too.LOL.Nice video.

We had one cos we were in a room with curtains over the windows for hours on end and it's nice to have something moving to look at when active listening to a mix. Plus we happened to have one come to us from a friend or my colleagues old bedroom or something.

A monologue that no one is listening to. Total producer move.

A chonky tube ldc with a thicc xlr cable hanging off of it can also be just plain bottom-heavy. If you're trying to tilt the diaphragm up or down toward a source, inverting the microphone makes the guts a less unwieldy counterweight while you're making adjustments. Extra helpful if you're cranking the stand down for someone 3 inches tall like me, but you still want to aim the capsule slightly upward for a brighter vocal.

As I was watching the “rewind” story, I thought that “rewind” probably hadn’t been common slang (for the process of going backwards to an earlier point in audio or video) for too long to start with. Tape and film existed in 1940, but most people didn’t have them at home. The more common word would have been whatever was used for phonographs, probably. A search indicates it was in common use for audio/video by 1964.

I've heard the NS10's were put on their sides so they didn't obstruct the window behind the desk - so you can see what's going on. Also having the same speaker in many studio's meant you know exactly what to expect from your monitors, and if a particular studio does not have them then NS10's are small enough to easily bring along

As far as turning mics upside down, I still do this with vocalists. I have had a few that "chase the mic", causing plosives. So, I turn it upside down, raise it a little above their mouth level, and place the pop filter a little below the mic, and the vocalists will sing into the pop filter, and I don't have the issues with sibilence and plosives.... or at least not quite as much.

I used a lava lamp for soft lighting and ambiance. Personally, I never understood the use of candles or incents in the studio! They cover everything with a sticky dust collecting film, that is bad for studio equipment. Today we do have digital lights, but the lava lamp still brings back fond memories, of those 'good old days'! 🤪

The lava lamp adds warmth to the recording, duh!

No way a tube takes as long to warm up as a Lava Lamp. Personal experience, I'm old enough to remember.

You've been coming up a bit for me in the last few months, you've got a great informative channel, and what ever you did in this video that was different before all the ones leading up to this one, keep doing it. Great ingredient what ever it was. PS, make the arrow on your thumbnail a bit thicker/bolder. And because you've already got a bit of red going on in your thumbnail, try a bright green arrow to see if the contrast helps bring more attention to what the arrow is pointing at. And because the lava lamp is actually a legit part of the video, I reckon it would be alright to exaggerate the size of it a bit so it's more prominent. Moving forward, all my creative friends are getting lava lamps for birthdays and special occasions.

Energy saving bulbs can add unwanted intereferences to the recording. Lava lamps use regular bulbs which operate with the same frequence as the equipment (50 Hz in Europe or 60 Hz in Japan and North America), so they are the better light source.

Re-rewind. When the crowd say Bo Selecta!

The upside-down mic also helps keep the stand further away from the musician who might otherwise run into it.

The strength of NS-10s lies in low harmonic distortion and precise response (a.k.a., their membranes stop vibrating faster than other speakers when cutting the signal). Their frequency response is _known_ to be quite awful, but worth getting used to and compensating for because nothing can compensate for flabby response times.

The upside down microphone mounting comes from a couple of different practices. The first is that when recording a performance where the performer is use a podium or music stand, having a mic on a boom to reach over the stand to the singer and not be in the way means the upside down method is really one of the only ways to mount a mic that won't affect the performance. The other comes from leaning a ribbon mic at a 45 degree angle in order have gravity work against the ribbon and color the sound. Cheers!

The super 55 type mic is also used by the singer in German group Scooter. You always see him use this type live, saw a interview vith him and he say he like how it lay in his hand and the sound of it.

We still see level crossing signs with a steam locomotive in many countries, and the icon for saving in many software is... a floppy disk. I guess some things get a life of their own even when they go away.

Remember that in the 70's, there were no Computers, TVs, or Smartphones, etc to visually stimulate you during downtime. The Lava Lamp was easy & trippy entertainment. I'm sure it's even better when you're high, but I wouldn't know anything about that.

cool & fun video. also instructive

Really enjoyed the pacing of your video!

As many have pointed out there is no “upside down” on most mics. There are many reasons why you would use them either direction or even what you might call “sideways”. Very few tube mic capsules had the heat issue you described. Nobody who worked in a studio in the seventies thought NS10s were flat. NOBODY. Because they aren’t even close. They are an approximation of an “average” home stereo speaker and were nothing more than a very popular fad. They were cheap and so there was no reason for studios NOT to have them. I personally found they caused me a lot of ear fatigue because they were overly bright. Many placed tissue paper over the tweeters which I found hilarious.

The reason I heard about the origin of the lava lamp was heat in a studio. Essentially if the globs wax/ plastic or whatever started staying at the top it was an easy visual indication that the temperature inside was getting significantly higher than what was safe. Most studios prior to a certain time period had zero way of cooling down the studio in any significant way or even to circulating air.

Valves warm up quick, fast & in a hurry. It's all the passive components around them that need time to get to equilibrium. It's because they all drift with temperature, so the equipment gets aligned once everything is nice and hot. That way you can record all week without worrying that something silly is going to start happening 45 minutes in.

It's peculiar that RCA used a shure microphone as their logo, instead of a RCA microphone. It's just like if Ford made visual with a Corvette instead of a Mustang.

I've got one in my music room that I just kind of put there because it was given to me as a gift and I wasn't really sure if I liked it. I didn't know this was a thing.

With the lave lamp, it could be both. Partially for the subtle entertainment, and partly for timing tubes warning up. Though, judging from the tube tv I have in the other room, and by tube I'm not just referring to the CRT, it's from the 50s, tubes don't take but several seconds to begin functioning. However, I'm imagining mere functioning isn't the desire in sound recording, but a consistent functioning. And for that, a tube can take several minutes to fully stabilize. My TV shows a pic and sound in several seconds, but as it warms up over several minutes the picture more fully and evenly fills the screen and becomes clearer, even though not profoundly. Those last few percent trickle in over several minutes. I can expect tube driven studio equipment might warm up similarly. Though not likely to take the full time the lava lamp does. It will take much longer, which means if it's going than even the slowest tube in your system is probably more than ready by then. It's not perfect timing, but a bit of overkill timing to be damn sure everything's solid. Just a guess.

I’ve found that mic placement being obviously critical, hanging mics upside down often leads me to experimenting with phase reversing during mixdown. Sometimes even during live mixes using any overheads.

Best video you've done yet 🙌

Gonna make a logo with an sm7b on it 👍

This was dope, thanks for sharing and have a follow!

Love everything about this video other than the fast you never actually had the answer to the question in the title!

The term "album" originally refers to a multi-disc "album" of bakelite 78's. It was an obselete term by the time the world switched to vinyl. Terminology endures.

Wait a tick. “Why does every recording studio have a lava lamp? “I don’t know” I feel like I’ve been click baited.

Rarely comment but I just gotta say I’m glad you got recommended by RU-vid. I’m a fellow studio geek but I learned a lot of interesting stuff from your vid. Instant sub.

I edit film and sound in my studio and have always had a lava lamp, as well as a plasma lamp both going 24/7! Because I work in low lighting they really create a surreal mood and actually help me get in my groove of creativity! It just would not be the same without one! 😎

I was really thinking "If the lava lamp starts moving while not plugged in, it's getting too hot in the studio."

Yes on using Tidal! I even do it through Third Man Records to get their Vault package every 3 months.

Ha! Nice video. 👍🏻 About that lava lamp, Put that on the same plank as the speaker. Or put it on the speaker. And watch how different volumes and tones affect the wax flowing inside.

The lava lamp was used because In the old amps when driven hard the capacitors were the first thing to fail. The early caps were made with wax. So the wax in the lava lamp would warn you about the wax in the capacitors being melted by the tubes. But also when troubleshooting vacuum tube devices workers would often put a lightbulb in series with the device to limit the current going into the device. Lava lamps made an easy current limiting device to connect to the amps in series

“Rewind” makes sense for us because we professionally digitize reel-to-reel tapes for customers. And that's why I still rewind digital copies in my head today.

chief statue tells me im about to get hate crimed

Reel to reel. I had one. So, of course I had 8 track, and cassette, and one of those big honkin' wooden cabinet buffet sized entertainment centers with a record player. God, moving was such an ordeal. Dating myself again, remember every rapper in the 90s, with the exception of Flavor Flav's clock, wore a Mercedes emblem? The Shure 55 was, and arguably is still, one of the finest microphones for decades. It's a status thing. Not to mention dynamic mics look... suggestive, as logos, particularly silhouettes. So, yeah.

6:56 they aren't explicitly designed for this operation. The HF and LF drivers are both conical, which means no trade-off for 90deg rotation. It does provide a unified horizontal axis preventing bias based on monitor vs ear height. One can observe this with vertical monitors by changing chair or standing vs sitting height. There's a noticable difference, not in dispersion, but ear canal proximity to the source. The other difference, for those that arent doing it for spatial organization or aesthetics, is that you end up creating less of a potential for comb filtering and standing wave reflections by having the HF drivers futher apart and toed in. This prevents the drivers from firing at the adjacent walls unnecessarily.... Can also be applied to vertical, but helps with control even moreso in horizontal.

I think that's why some of the manuals I've seen call them backtrack buttons sometimes

Rewind. Similar to the action of dialing a phone, there's no physical dial anymore, but the term remains unchanged.

I do wonder why every recording studio has a lava lamp, especially when I've never been in a recording studio that had a lava lamp.

You can unscrew the yamaha hs membrane and change their direction to make them face however you want. So maybe those studios you see on youtube that have them sideways did that because it fits their studio better?

I always thought that lavalamps were a thing in order to keep high girlfriends/boyfriends occupied in the 60's and 70's during a recording session.

NS-10s are definitely not flat. They have really excellent phase response due to the paper cones. Even mine, one of which has a cone that punch in in the center, have really excellent phase response and can deliver really accurate transients, which will save your ass when you've accidentally included some discontinuity that will not normally click and pop on other speakers, but will sound like crap on studio monitors. Sound on Sound did a really excellent analysis of the NS-10 and why they are useful.

In 1996, at Fanshawe College's _Music Industry Arts_ program, a random assignment for one of my classes was to design a logo for a recording studio. I guess they figured they'd better prepare us with a Plan B. Little did they know I had a background in graphic design. Naturally, my logo incorporated a Shure 55-style mic (that I drew in Illustrator 6).

Tall boom arm stands of the kind used by large recording studios with high ceiling clearances keep the floor clear and lend themselves to miking vocalists as people are taller than equipment. Large condenser mics are easiest to mount inverted on a boom arm for a vocalist. It also stops the issue of the vocalists foot hitting the mic stand during performance. Inverted condenser mics were used that way for this practical reason.

I think it's just because a lava lamp provides soothing ambient lighting.

fantastic presentation

I always hang them upside down because my engineering mentors always did. I didn't know there was a reason never thought to ask because that is how you did it. Don't have a lava lamp in the studios but now that you mention it I might get one for my shop. I don't work on a lot of tube gear though my transmitters are still tube finals. But again may be a hangover from ye olden days but you are supposed to let the test equipment "warm up" and stabilize before expecting valid measurements. Some of my test equipment for example while all solid state has an oscillator inside a small oven that has to warm up to a constant temp. About 15 or 20 minutes which if memory serves is about how long a lava lamp takes to do it's thing. I have also always wanted the white driver yamahas for my office because every studio you see on tv or in a movie has them.

Before RCA bought Elvis' contract from Sam Philips (Sun Studio) and if you tour that studio today, they have an SM55 in the studio. IIRC it is the one he used there but part of me wants to say, I was told it is one similar to the one he used.

Lava lamps take like 2-3 hours to start moving. It's the reason a lot of kids from my era used to leave them plugged in all the time, something the manufacturer still doesn't recommend (likely because they get very hot, and will burn the hell out of your hands if you touch them while they're running).

there's a movie that used the phrase "your ship has come in" or something thereabouts. There's hearsay whether this was accidental or on purpose but the Director commented that it was on purpose. You see the civilization in this movie has been underground for at least 100 years so nobody knew what a ship was and yet they were still using the phrase without knowing the meaning. the movie "City of Ember" (2008) it was very interesting I would recommend it. Interesting about the lava lamps didn't know that, never seen them either now I'm gonna spot them everywhere.

There is still a very good reason to turn a mic upside down for vocals: the breath contains vapor which condensates inside the screen...along with whatever spit gets in there. This moisture won't rise up into the electronics, but it can, over time, seep down. Over the course of long sessions, it can be a considerable amount of moisture. So when recording vocals, regardless of the type of mic, upside down is just good for preserving the mic itself.

Old man shouts at... Kids rewinding?

In the RU-vid sphere, you are to audio production what Linus Boman is to fonts. Keep up the great videos!

Hi, the image quality is perfect, what camera and lens did you use

1. Lava lamps were great for band members to stare at while enjoying their favorite substance of choice. 2. Upside down mics are typically out of the way of artists that might want to move around a little. 3. A classic mic is a meme the same as a barber pole.

I feel like with most things the lava lamp was for something specific but it became tradition and the meaning has since been lost as to why it first was used.

I have a TEAC reel-to-reel that is the same model the Beatles used to record their earliest albums.

I watched this video while staring at my lava lamp.

Oooooh...What a *pretty* Lava Lamp that is! 😁 * _Takes screenshot and uploads to Google Lens_ * Product: *Lava Lamp.* Brand: *Mathmos.* Manufactured in: *UK.* Product certification: *UKCA.* 📜 Oh bugger...Hope to goodness your studio has a *very* reliable sprinkler system... 💡🇬🇧🔥⚠😳 ...On the bright side, at least the slow starting at 07:10 can be explained by the above. Chances are it's designed for 240v, so will take _twice as long_ to come to temperature and start lava-ing on a 110v NEMA outlet... 😇