What GEAR (This Year) are you THANKFUL For? :)

I'm thankful for all of my gear. Bought this year is the Lauten Atlantis, and maybe something cool with good financing as an end of the year treat.

Well I did buy too much SW that I mostly havent really fully explored.

So I will go with Iron Age eq. Awesome bit of kit.

Cheers,
Geoff

Retro Powerstrip….it just made a mix I’m working on so enjoyable & easy. Used it all over the place 👍🏻

thankful for 32 channels of I/O (that is, so far, stable... and I hope it continues to be!).  So far only 22 channels of preamps though so I guess I've got somewhere to go?

I added some cool stuff this year. The only thing that is a bit depressive is that it starts to look more and more like a museum collection since I don't have that much time to use it.

* Wurlitzer 200a - like new, couldn't help myself
* Neumann M49b - couldn't help myself
*Neumann CmV563 - good price - had to buy
*Neumann Km54 - dead mint, great price

Sold some stuff to since I really don't like to collect gear. I buy, use it and if it doesn't get used I'll usually sell it.



Oh also, I had the chance to try out the current expensive Neumann tube range. I actually enjoyed the U67re the most. Sounded beefy, and had a nice presence. Maybe the early production was uneven but this one sounded fantastic.

Gear: Very thankful for better room treatment, a CAPI Sumbus & a pair of Olympic Mic Pre EQs.

Not gear but way better: mostly thankful for a handful of friends who helped me out this year. I'd say they had a bigger effect on my work, music, and output than anything else.

Something old, something new...


-Old: Otari MTR-12 Tape Machine
It's been really fun having a tape machine that's actually "mine". I've gotten to work on tape a fair bit in some nice studios and spaces, they all had dedicated tech's that did upkeep and stuff on them. Never got the chance to learn as much about tape as I've wanted in those other environments, but got to use it a lot. It's been a nice learning experience figuring out how to calibrate and upkeep it, mess around with different parameters and see what happens when you mess around with bias, EQ settings pre/post tape heads during calibration, and ultimately settling on calibrating it "not so flat", but in a way where everything just comes out of it sounding better to me. It's been a lot of fun and a good learning experience.

-New: Soyuz 013A Ambisonic Mic
Soyuz let me help out with the rollout on the mic and while they were still designing it. Another really educational experience, as ambisonics was something I knew hardly anything about a year ago. It was fascinating to realize how ingenious the people were that figured all of this out in the 70's, completely analog... We take for granted how easy it is to process an idea like this with computers now. The digital age has definitely opened more doors with what you can do with ambisonics and how it can be manipulated. It's a cool technology and completely speaker agnostic. I think it's going to get a nice resurgence now that "spatial" audio is starting to be more mainstream. More and more companies (I've got my eyes and ears on you google...) are going to start spitting out competing ethos's and designs to go along with Atmos. Ambisonics as a format doesn't care about any of that, and will work for any of them. It's past and future proof. Lots of fun..


I'm thankful for some "fun" things like those that are making recording feel fresh and interesting again. I almost shut down the studio two years ago and was going to quit music for a while. Having things like the tape machine and the ambisonic mic forced me to jump back on the horse and push myself to learn some new things. That slowly made me start doing studio and music stuff again, and I'm more excited than ever about the future. It's easy to feel stagnant after doing this over and over for a while. I realized I need to find more ways not only to stay on top of how music and technology is changing, but better understand where it started from. I need to keep learning every chance I get...

the fet and the trident a range makeup circuit.

Modern producers use compressors for distortion and stupid envelopes rather than volume control.

Ya, that's a solid one!

Adam Audio Sub8... biggest improvement in mix translation of any one piece. But mostly grateful for the smart people here (ericn and a few others) who explained the benefit of adding a sub to my room and walked me through how to do it without making things worse.

Also I got a great deal on it on Craigslist. Always makes things sound better!

Also... it's not gear but Auto Align 2 continues to make me seem like a good engineer.

I am thankful for my first Neumann - a BCM104. Nothing sexy, but it does the job extremely well for the used price point.


Oh, and my two Ashley CLX-52 compressors. Again, nothing sexy, but it opened up my eyes and ears to the wonderment of a hybrid setup.