I had originally posted this in the music lounge forum. This is a track from a project I’m working on now with a rock band from Provo Ut.
I’d appreciate any feedback.
All the best,
Karl
yes nice tune reminds me of crowded house or crosby stills nash type thing ,on first listening i thought the melody on the verse repeated its self too much but on second listening i dont know… i like the sparse drums ,excellent lead voice nice tone and good range ,some of the vocal harmonies get a bit clashy at the end of the line round about 2.27 (i m commenting like you now)and the harmonies are a bit uot of tune on the outro but im sure youll sort that out no problem,ive wrote a couple of tune s with similar chord progressions in the past, like it.overall it`s a good tune.
I thought I had commented on this in another thread
But now I must ask for acoustic guitar recording “secret” --signal chain, etc
No real secret to it. Recorded in my finished basement… carpeted floor, normal drywall etc…nothing unusual, ceiling is about 7.5 ft high. As a recording space for acoustic guitar, it’s probably no different from a normal bedroom home studio.
I used 2 mic’s, an AKG C414 XL2 on the body of the guitar, about 12" away, and a Sennheiser e914 small diaphram condensor pointed at the neck/13’th fret, also at about 12" away. The sound you hear is a mix of the two with a bias towards the Sennheiser (the neck mic will give you more of the sharp/percussive “string” sound but will also be a bit thin).
Both mic’s ran through a Steinberg MR816 mic pre (which I use solely as a mic pre/converter because it’s performance as a firewire audio interface doesn’t come close to my RME interfaces).
Very light compression on the track (just used a Steinberg Cubase standard compressor plugin) and a reverb send to a Waves Rennaisance Verb plugin (dont recall the preset i used but i did minor tweaking…mostly on the pre-delay and diffusion settings).
Dont recall what brand guitar it was, a pretty nice one but nothing spectacular.
I’ve heard this before as well, but I’m not sure I commented on it. I LOVE the percussion and guitar on this, very nice.
This is probably a stupid question, but: what else should a firewire audio interface do apart from offering mic pre’s and a/d converting? (I know there’s d/a for your outputs but I don’t think that’s where the mr816 lets you down?)
No such thing as a stupid question…
As a firewire interface the MR816 provides both mic pre’s, analog to digital conversion and connects to a pc, via firewire, and “talks” to the audio driver (Asio, full duplex, etc…) to transfer the digital audio stream into whatever DAW you’re working with. This is different than an analog/digital converter that does the conversion and provide something like ADAT output. While ADAT is a digital stream, you cant just plug it directly into a PC to transfer it to your DAW. Generally, some sort of box is needed (RME Digiface, M-Audio Firewire lightpipe etc…) that will accept inbound ADAT streams and talk to the PC’s audio driver to transfer the stream into the PC.
In this sense, the MR816 does the same thing the RME Fireface 800/400 does, The various Presonus interfaces, the Focusrite Sapphire series etc…Essentially a one stop box that doe mic pre, a/d conversion and interfaces with the PC’s audio driver to get the data into the DAW software.
Forgive me if you already know some or all of this. I went into detail for those who may not be entirely familiar with it all.
All the best,
Karl
Nice.
Very enjoyable. No nits from me.
Cheers 
thats a beautiful song. just a melting vocal, especially the harmonizing parts.
using the brushes for the drumtrack is perfect, exceptional work!
Thanks! I’ll pass it along to the band. They did a nice job on it!
As strictly an acoustic guy myself, I can get into this. Yes, it’s got that west coast vibe. Well written,performed, recorded and mixed. What else? 
Nice. Funny…the cymbal washes was one of the things that grabbed my attention… they sound great…what did you use? I did notice a few things in the vocal… some pitch issues mostly, more so on the female vocal perhaps - certainly in a few spots anyway. And I notice your voice cracks right at the end of the last “home” (4:03)… I guess you could call that ‘character’ ?? 
Cool. 
Wow, very nice Karl!
Nice vocals, I love harmonies like this.
The guitar and sparse drum track are great.
Tasteful playing on the Rhodes as well.
I can hear a few tuning issues in the vocals, but it doesn’t bother me much, it adds to the live feel of the song.
Very enjoyable, thanks for sharing.
Cheers,
Wim
Thanks guys. Glad you liked it.
We set up the drum’s in my basement. It’s a finished basement, carpeted floor, drywall. Originally designed to be a home theater, it’s reasonably tuned as far as resonance points are concerned but not very live. The cymbal washes are essentially the overhead mic’s (a pair of AT 4033’s) running through Steinberg MR816 pre amp’s.
Vocals, yes, some pitch issues on the harmonies but we talked about it and the band didn’t want to get into lot’s of auto-tuning, felt the vocals worked to their ears. Same with the “crack” at the end. We almost re-did this but the lead vocalist really liked the sound. The more I listened to it, the more I did as well.
I like it, it has a nice live performance sound to it. Same observations on pitch, but actually, it sounds realer than a lot because of it. What’s the problem with your MR816 as a firewire interface? Just curious; mine’s working great.
Good work Karl. Very relaxing listen
Cheers
Phil
It works but…
Latencies aren’t great on it…cant really push it down to extremely low buffers without getting intermittant pop’s/ clicks (and I’ve done all the usual stuff…legacy firewire driver in win 7, latest Steinberg drivers etc…).
The MR editor routing capabilities dont even come close to what I can do with RME’s total mix.
I like the MIc Pre’s and converters of the MR but it works much better if I use it in that capacity and use the RME Multiface as the PC audio interface.
Additionally, I already had an RME Multiface (which works absolutely brilliantly…all the time, every time) and the way I work is I use an ADK audio laptop for mobile recording work. It uses an RME digiface that provides ADAT connections to 2 Focusrite Octopre Mk2’s and the MR816. The analog outs on the octopre’s and the MR are fed to the analog in’s of an Alesis HD24XR 24 chan hard disk recorder as a backup.
The RME digiface and multiface connect to the host PC via the same cable (a firewire cable but it doesn’t use the firewire protocol…it’s much faster). Using this system, I can roll to a mobile recording, hook up the laptop to the digiface and get 24 chan’s of very zero latency monitoring, up to 14 zero latency individual headphone mixes from the RME total mix software (though I usualy use the Cubase control room for headphone mixes) and it’s rock solid.
I can roll the same rack into the studio, pull the cable from the studio rig to the Multiface and plug it into the Digiface instead and instantly have 24 chans of mic pre’s in the studio if I need it. makes the whole system very flexible modular and fast to setup ( I can roll in with the mic pre/digiface rack, a 4 space rack for the HD24, the laptop and an external SATA drive and have everything connected (24 ADAT chans to the laptop, 24 analog chan’s to the HD24, wordclock from the RME Digiface driving everything…all connected, powered up and ready to go in 13 minutes…yes I’ve timed it.
Still leaves mic cables and mics to set up but the system itself goes together very quickly.
Maybe went a bit beyond what you were asking. Sorry, 
Karl
Really nice. I love the sound of this and the way it makes me feel. It’s honest.
The brush hit kit is a very nice touch.
My only nits, and they’re just my preferences, really, is the pause at :34 - I wish the drums
would’ve paused there as well.
Also, the backup vox are as loud if not louder than the lead vocal in spots. My attention goes right to the female
voice when it comes in - so perhaps it should be pulled back a bit, so it’s audible, but let the lead
voice be the lead voice.
Nice work, Karl.
No, I’m interested in what others are doing, thanks for explaining. I don’t have a latency problem with mine on either my XP laptop or my W7 desktop machine, but you’re doing much more sophisticated field recording than I am. However you get it to work, it’s doing a great job!
Cheers for that writeup Karl, that was what I was really after with my earlier question as well, looking back I didn’t quite put it down right
Hope it helps…if you’re interested in the techie geek side of it, if you go to my web site, there’s a page out there called “Session bLog’s”. look in there and I have a pretty extensive writeup on the design/setup of the system. I’m now working on a new monitoring rack for the system (Behringer ADA8000 A/D/A convertor, ART HeadampPro6 headphone amp, Crown D75a power amp). It’ll take an ADAT out from my Digiface, convert it 2 8 audio tracks to use for headphone or speaker monitoring and/or I can take along an old pair of Tannoy PPBM 6.5’s as recording monitors (if f I happen to be able to set up a monitoring rig in a seperate room).
Basically, the system becomes…1 rack for the mic pre’s and Digiface, 1 rack for the HD24 backjup recorder, 1 rack for expanded monitoring (multi headphones and/or nearfields). Can bring any or all of them so it makes the system very flexible.