Bulb Guitar Recording Tutorial

[Vice//Versa]

Bulb just released a short guitar recording tutorial. Wrong gain staging but so what

I didn't have much time but when I skimmed it I didn't see anything ground breaking but it seems like a nice effort for entry level and it seems like his optimistic about making more.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Yep, just saw this. Basic stuff but probably great for beginners.

 

[The-Zeronaut]

cool focusrite infomercial....

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

All I could think is "hey look I'm using a cheap interface."

Then

"Ok bros take your expensive guitar and plug it into your overpriced modeler and viola! That's how you record guitar."

 

[TRUIE]

The part about gain staging was painfull to watch and totally unprofessional from a technical point of view.
Unfortunately the "record as hot as possible in order to have a great S/N ratio" myth from the old 16bit recording times is not going to disappear if he spread such a noob mistake.

It's 2014, everybody records at 24bits quantification now and can use some significant headroom by setting recording levels close to the analog OdbVU = something like -18dbFS depending on the converters calibration.
Your S/N ratio will be all good.
If you're close to 0dB FS you're basically driving your cheap integrated audio interface preamps +18dB too hot, that's insane !

It's also totally irresponsible to tell people to do this when you're that famous, clients around the world will keep on sending clipped DI to studios just because they "tracked like Misha, he's a pro, he knows what he's doing ¯\(°_o)/¯ :zombie:"

 

[AudioGeekZine]

There was a comment on YouTube that running it through a preamp will make it sound cleaner. Also wrong.

I just edited my blog post with a note about the gain staging and signal to noise part.

Maybe his records wouldn't sound so fucking clipped if he started with some headroom.

 

[mva801]

Yeah I watched this from seeing it on metalsucks. He should really correct the part about gain staging. Other than that, no real information besides "Take this sweet guitar with a sick tone and track it twice. Sometimes four times."

Thanks for wasting 16 minutes of my life.

 

[TRUIE]

There was a comment on YouTube that running it through a preamp will make it sound cleaner.

Yeah I had some fun reading the youtube comments !
Lots of nice technical explanations

 

[FrankTheSmith]

"it's called mixing bro. they do it in studio's when putting songs on album in order to make them not sound live. "

 

[Flow Of Time]

Priceless

 

[rapucore]

"it's called mixing bro. they do it in studio's when putting songs on album in order to make them not sound live. "

Hahaha lol

 

[drew_drummer]

Um... where are teh microphonez?

 

[MartijnPaauwe]

¯\(°_o)/¯ How do djent?

I'm wondering why he's not even using that ISA he has, couldn't if that was an preamp or not.

 

[Skaldir]

With the screen so high he should be careful. He could get problems with his cervical spine

 

[Vice//Versa]

The tragedy of modern comment sections is that there's so much bullshit and randomness that legitimate advice or criticism gets drowned out. A guy in metalsucks commented on the gain staging issue and Misha said something like "interesting" which could mean anything. Hopefully he corrects that because of his high profile like mentioned before.

 

[Lucas D'Angelo]

Video is really basic / beginner stuff , but hopefully it will be usefull to some people ! appart from the gain staging part , but that again proves that technical knowledge isn't everything since this mistake doesn't seem to prevent him from producing great sounding records

But guys .... can we talk about HOW FUCKING SWEET that guitar tone is ?

 

[Plendakor]

Axe FXed.

 

[userchanged1]

yeah he put 2 of them in SLI.

Off course he's got a good tone.

 

[SwambA]

Makes me really gas for that Jackson! Sweet Guitar!

 

[Alphanumeric]

I think you guys are being a little hard on him. I bet he would readily admit he doesn't have any uber tech knowledge about setting level and gain staging, vu, full scale, rms, -18db, NOL, digital vs analog clipping etc etc. The tutorial told beginners that clipping your low end interface is BAD and have it go over 0 when tracking guitars is BAD so that's fair enough right? Its not like he's told outright beginners to start limiting and soft clipping their guitars for a phat master lelel.

I bet some people start off and see the red lights and think it looks cooler/sounds heavier so they carry on hahaha