These are some things that tons of producers and engineers do, but nobody really talks about why.
LAVA LAMP: amzn.to/49GKW1P
If you have any fun theories or traditions I could cover for part 2, let me know! I'd love to figure out more fun topics like this for the channel.
Sources:
www.sweetwater.com/insync/han...
platinumgoldstudios.wordpress...
www.harmonycentral.com/forums...
usa.yamaha.com/files/download...
Check out my website at makethatlouder.com for gear reviews and more!
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My recording studio equipment:
Interface - amzn.to/3liQDyY
8 channel preamp - amzn.to/3HGlJYM
Favorite vocal mic - amzn.to/3x1dEJd
Favorite general purpose mic - amzn.to/3RG32sU
Favorite instrument mic - amzn.to/3HHoKrN
My video equipment:
Camera - amzn.to/3jwNXgD
Lens - amzn.to/3Yd9I4a
Lights - amzn.to/3RG22VG
Background Lights - amzn.to/3I40d1e
Microphone - amzn.to/3Yd9I4a
Interface - amzn.to/3HBNbqp
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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.
Facts of life!!!
Are you guys being serious?
No lol
Seriously, it's the very first thing I fire-up in the studio every day. 😁 It's studio juju. @@Nobodyimportant696
@@Nobodyimportant696 100% serious, lava lamps are key to making great sounding music.
The lava lamp is for the less gifted musicians who want to help. You have them monitor the lamp.
Genius. 📌
ACHTUNG! ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENSPEEPERS! DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKEN. IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS. ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.
...says the big ego
It's to entertain the weed carriers
😂
I'm currently looking at 1) a lava lamp 2) horizontal monitors 3) an upside down mic and I just rewound my DAW.
You must be a producer
Instructions unclear. Hung my lava-lamp upside down, and now the floor is a mess.
Hell, I don't even have proper monitors, and my speaker are sideways
@@unduloid finally a good version of that joke
Remember, the save icon is still a floppy disk.
are floppy disks really floopy?
@@maxonmendel5757 The kind of floppy disk on most save icons (3 1/2") was hard on the outside and floppy on the inside. Previous versions of floppy disks (the 5 1/4" floppy for example, and especially the 8") were in fact floppy.
According to my Bible-bashing parents, the „Save“ icon is - Apparently - Some chap by the name of J. Christ... ✝😋
@@TehAwesomer wow thanks for the information! I was born in 98, and I remember playing brick breaker on my grandmas pc running windows 98. I have very vague memories of floppy disks or hard disks. but since windows xp it was all CD Roms. I remember Stuart little and finding nemo for pc. then after that... I dont ever remember any disk drives until my graphic imaging teacher showed me his external hard drive in high school. he was showing the difference between disk drives and solid state. everything is solid state now of course. and history gallops along.
@@maxonmendel5757Floppy disks were originally 8 inches wide, and only consisted of magnetic tape and a paper cover. 5 1/4 disks were just scaled down, and replaced tape when they hit the home market. 3 1/2 inch disks hit the market, they were called "microfloppies" and we're used alongside 5 1/4 disks. Eventually 5 1/4 disks were phased out as 3 1/2 disks got bigger and bigger in capacity. Then cd-rom for common for software distribution, then USB drives got super cheap, thus eliminating the 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 ...
It's a random sink. Instead of materializing as shenanigans, the universe's need to tend towards disorder is locally focused into the lava lamp where the unpredictable energies are not able to shenan.
It might just be because it's a British invention. Like all British inventions it draws on extreme levels of the purest chaos...Which in the case of a lava lamp is *exactly* what the product is _supposed_ to do. 💡🇬🇧😋 Just don't look into what the _UKCA_ standard means for product safety against fire, and you'll be fine... 🇬🇧🔥😉
It's just like the FTB (fluffy teddy bear) protocol for printers and servers.
Actually, it's a remnant of them being popular decor in the '60s and '70s. They are an entertaining decor item that's small enough not to interfere with equipment placement.
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".
You know what’s funny, I had a pair I wasn’t using for a while and I ended up hooking them into my home theater. They didn’t sound pretty but I could always hear the dialogue!
I would dare say this is a misconception. The popular Bob Clearmountain quote that they're "the worst he could find" is a misquote. In fact, they had excellent time-domain and distortion characteristics. Timbre was unbalanced though. Undoubtedly they sounded much less nice than the far more expensive main monitors in any studio. But they were always a middle-of-the-road option that revealed a lot of detail, and it excelled in that role at the time. EDIT: to clarify, they were not amazing speakers. First and foremost a cheap and portable way to hear what a consumer might hear, as remarked by many others in this thread.
Sort of how the true test of music is to play it on the car stereo lol
The other thing is that mixers could transport their own NS10s to studios easily so that they had a consistent reference source no matter what studio they were in. The lack of bass meant poorly treated rooms were not too much of an issue. And once they became popular and started appearing everywhere, they had the speakers in place already to provide that “familiar“ sound to record and mix on.
@@MorzakEV I do the same thing with BX8a's in cases. They provide a consistent baffle (rear ported reflex) to reduce room variables in LF, and RTA in a consistent manner then check reference tracks... Consistent monitoring anywhere and easy to replace at a great value. Not the best monitor ever, but very usable and detailed with good imaging, when used this way.
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
Absolutely, try putting a large bodied mic in its suspension mount onto an acoustic guitar with the capsule on the top. You'd be banging the player in the knee. In the vocal booth you'd be adding to the reflections with the mic body that close to the singer's mouth.
Who's to say it's upside down anyway? Maybe the capsule is supposed to be at the bottom.
It also looks easier for someone to play an instrument while singing because the arm is completely out of the way
Actually, tilting the head Up doesn't open the airway more, but even closes it slightly
I once saw an OBU with a boom mic about to interview Mr. Johnson 🍆. The sound engineer - Evidently the decent sort - Had the mic the opposite way up to the usual, and „accidentally“ poked it right up the Prime Ministers' backside. 🙃 Rumour is that it's still up there somewhere. CONservatives are renowned for not letting *anything* go... 😉
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.
3) pretty colors
@@AdamSliger See 1 and 2.
it makes crazy vibes
4) it doesn't throw off beep-beep noises that will creep into your gear like your phone might do.
When I'm working in the DAW, I put "4k walk" videos on my second monitor, they occupy the visual part of my brain just enough to help me focus on the sound.
"there are kids out there who have never touched a tape" At this point there are adults too
Oh no
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.
I usually do too unless the mic is of the “slip from the shockmount” variety!
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.
Smart!
Yuck 🤮
@@crazyprayingmantis5596 if you think that's gross you should see a trumpet player empty their spit valve at the end of a session
@@amoureux6502 Don't remind me, my son plays saxophone so I know all about spit
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.
It's also the only mic whose silhouette doesn't look like a dildo lmao
😂😂😂
Such a good point, an outline of an sm58 can look quite, well, phallic so wouldn't be as easy to make simpler logos
Johny Cash and others were seen with it too.
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.
That’s pretty sweet!!!
Yamaha NS10s are legendary Just run out and buy a pair of Yamaha NS10s, whether you like it or not that's not the point... Anyway the trick to making it sound like flat rate response is to cover the tweeter with toilet paper, however there's a huge debate to what brand of toilet paper to cover it
The early versions of the NS10 had the tweeter that needed some TP to tame the screech. By the time I got mine they had fixed the tweeter. There are several stories about the history of all the NS10 variants to be found on the net, and not all agree, but most say that the NS-10M Studio monitors that I have don't need TP. I went to all of the South Florida music stores with tapes and CD's in hand and listened to a lot of monitors before buying the NS-10M Studios. Yes, there were some better sounding monitors, but none of them were compatible with my budget. I think the pair cost me about $300. @@pihermoso11
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.
It does feel wrong for sure
I have a couple small lamps that I put 7.5w night light bulbs in(tiny lil bulb with a fullsize screw base, funny lookin lol) that I have around just for that reason - hardcore night owl, pretty sure it's some -itis or whatever that's kept my circadian rhythm screwed up my whole life so I've just always worked my best at like 1am(3rd shift best shift), but I can't stand having lots of artificial lighting at night. So very low output, warm incandescents it is. That said, I definitely need to add a lava lamp to the arsenal...
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.
That was my first thought as well!
The old Oasis mic position!!
I don't know about oasis, but if you watch any Motörhead live footage, you will see that Lemmy has his mic positioned quite high.
In addition, I've heard that this move, when angled correctly, exposes your chest to the mic, which delivers more low frequencies to the recording.
I’ve seen people do a second mic on the chest for rappers to get more of that sound blended in. Never tried it myself but seems like a cool idea.
Talking about rewind, yet everyone clicks a floppy disk to save
Facts lol I barely remember floppies
Floppy disk are like Jesus: they died to become the icon of saving
Lmao
8-track just entered the chat
I've seen a post where an adult shows his daughter a 3" floppy discs and she says, 'Oh, that's smart. You've 3D printed the Save logo."
"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
See what you can learn on KZhead?
that's why we call it edu-tainment lol
The tobacconist's Native American statue (also known as the "Cigar store Indian" historically despite the obvious lack of said Native Americans ever having been to India, because of a lack of maps of North America) is always associated with a tobacconist in the US. However, as old as that cue for the illiterate is and despite the fact that it was more of a billboard than anything, if you ever see a wooden Native American statue that's actual size in a store, it's either an antique shop or a tobacconist.
Same for me. My nearest tex-mex fast food has a round bomb as logo. Tobacconist have a big whit e T with the license number.
@@kdawson020279 *"...despite the obvious lack of said Native Americans ever having been to India..."* They are called Indians because the Americas were long known as the West Indies after being originally mistaken for the Indies.
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.
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.
Thank you!! My main inspiration for these segments is stuff like The Daily Show (even though they’re way funnier) so that’s awesome to hear.
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.
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
Luckily I was pretty young when we made the jump to CDs so I didn’t deal with that much 💿
That was why we always kept a BIC pen or #2 pencil to enable tape reloading into the cassette
I had, and still have, around 300 cassettes, that I used more than most people did. I don't recall ever having that happen, except where I purposely unwound a tape.
@@KC9UDXyou never had a player, one in a boombox or old school car cassette player eat a tape where it got hung up when you ejected and yanked out when you tried to get it out? That crap happened to me all the time growing up lol
@@travislee9662 Nope. 8-tracks, yes. Cassettes, no. Not that I can recall. I've seen it happen to other people a few times.
Things every music youtuber does, but nobody knows why: Having some little succulent plants on their desk. 😁
Gotta bring a little nature inside if we’re gonna be mixing all day 🏜️
Reference for spiking?
Divkid's video '9 Ways to Use Filters Creatively' @ 1m48s ;) Also handy as a modulation source, if you have a Garden Listener or Instruō SCION to wire them up to.
Can you even KZhead without RBG LED lighting?
PLAMP LIFE
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.
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.
Facts!! But also I find they sing better if they have them memorized 🧠
Yep. As a roadie who sometimes helps out in studios, I look out more for practical things than the techies. Upside down gives you more room where you need it. Like guitar necks, note stands and effect boards. Also, keeps some singers from the stage habits of grabbing the mike stand.
@@viandengalacticspaceyards5135 for sure. Any instrument the talent is playing or other thing they have to interact with other than the microphone pretty much means you're going to be hanging that sucker upside down and 95 times out of 100 you're miking things that require you reach over rather than reaching under something.
Also, if you're doing a lot of recording, you have your mics set up and ready to go. If a high percentage of people that want to sing also want lyrics, an instrument, or other device, you're going to keep it hanging upside down, even when it's not needed. IE the singer has the lyrics memorized and ISN'T likely to grab the mic stand.
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.
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 😂
Oooo this makes me want one of those magnetic train tables lol
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.
I gotta say, I’m not jealous of all that calibrating!
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.
Phantom powered Lava Lamps.... I'm on it!
I’ll be the first customer
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.
that's awesome! and i missed the rotary phones by a few years
It's all about atmospheres, creating a space you feel creative in.
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.
Oh for sure! It is def convenient.
A monologue that no one is listening to. Total producer move.
if this ain't the truth lmao
2:15 when you said you wanted to talk about tubes heating up I was mentally so ready for a manscape Ad read 😂
💀
hahaha
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.
Thank you Joe!!
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 dont even have a recording studio but this video has convinced me that i need a lavalamp
you definitely do
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.
that's a great thought!!!
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.
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
The window thing does make sense, I like that!
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'! 🤪
I agree. I spilled a candle wax melt lamp thingy one time and it was gone after that.
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.
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 lava lamp adds warmth to the recording, duh!
Facts
No way a tube takes as long to warm up as a Lava Lamp. Personal experience, I'm old enough to remember.
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!
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.
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.
Somehow, they’ll find a way
cool & fun video. also instructive
Thank you! Glad you liked it 💪
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.
makes sense!
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.
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.
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.
Wow what a nice thing to say, thank you so much!!! I just changed the thumbnail - while I have you here, I was also considering making the title something like “why does every studio have a lava lamp?” or something similar to that…any thoughts? Appreciate the advice 🫶
Bro that's not how it works, only red arrows bring you views!
😂😂
@@AdamSliger Test it out, I'd watch the video just for that answer. It's one of those things I never thought was a thing until I saw this video, but most studios I've been in have at least one fired up at all times. Even if it's just a bedroom studio 😅
Maybe I’ll let it run out of steam and then try it out. Kinda scared to touch it rn lol
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.
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.
Haha it’s definitely a thing. People love giving producers lava lamps
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.
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.
Really enjoyed the pacing of your video!
Awesome, thank you!
Best video you've done yet 🙌
Appreciate you 😘
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.
similar to that, the calibration instructions for my (1980's, solid state) Cathode Ray Oscilloscope state that the scope has to be allowed to warm up for half an hour before doing any calibration
@@Elizabeth2445A makes sense. It's probably functional enough to tell logic low from logic high the sec the screen starts glowing, but if you want any precise measurements, you gotta wait till the screen is fully warmed up. :-)
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.
So the studio isn’t owned by RCA anymore…I couldn’t find the exact date of the current logo, so I didn’t bring it up in the video, but I’m 99.9% sure it was made way after RCA sold the studio. But yeah it is still a bit weird!
Gonna make a logo with an sm7b on it 👍
Solid idea lmao
You will get more clients if you put the sm7b between two lava lamps... or ditch the mic, and just leave the lamps.
That’s what I call branding
This was dope, thanks for sharing and have a follow!
Appreciate ya!!
fantastic presentation
Thank you!
Rewind. Similar to the action of dialing a phone, there's no physical dial anymore, but the term remains unchanged.
I think that's why some of the manuals I've seen call them backtrack buttons sometimes
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
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.
me either!
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.
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.
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 wouldn’t rule it out but I’ve def talked to people that just prefer it sideways lol
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).
How about a link to the R2D2 figure? I need one of those for my recording desk!
Unfortunately that’s not my footage, some of the B roll is stock footage. But I want one too!
I had one. It was remote controlled. Primitive but so cool.
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.
They still find a way
0:24 - Fun fact: My music is also on Tidal, I did not upload the master versions as I plan to remix and remaster them first. Not just remaster. Not adding or removing anything, just altering the levels here and there on individual stems which will not work well in mastering on its own.
Interesting stuff. Subscribed.
Appreciate ya!!
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.
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.
To get laid! And they hella work.
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).
That’s amazing
@@AdamSliger Upon reflection I think I may have drawn both a 55-style and a 77DX-style mic. Memory fades. I probably have the files on a (floppy) drive somewhere.
Yes on using Tidal! I even do it through Third Man Records to get their Vault package every 3 months.
That’s awesome
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.
Using the side-address condenser upside down cuts reflections from the ceiling a little.
Then we can get more music stand instead 🤘🤘
Shure S55 are just beautiful.
That’s a fact
FYI, it was a Unidyne 55, not a Super 55. The Super 55 didn't exist back then. The modern equivalent is a Classic 55. The Super 55 is actually a Beta 58A capsule in a 55 basket.
the mic style for logos might also simply be an aesthetic thing. In silhouette, it's probably the most visually appealing design. Also the basis of just about any clipart design. I even integrated it in my karaoke vids logo
Hi, the image quality is perfect, what camera and lens did you use
Sony A7iii and it’s the kit lens I believe
@@AdamSliger Thanks for the reply
No prob!! The lighting is honestly just as big of a factor so I’d focus on nailing that with whatever you have first.
Rarely comment but I just gotta say I’m glad you got recommended by KZhead. I’m a fellow studio geek but I learned a lot of interesting stuff from your vid. Instant sub.
That's so kind of you, thank you! Hope you like this week's video just as much :)
I was really thinking "If the lava lamp starts moving while not plugged in, it's getting too hot in the studio."
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.
true lol
Love everything about this video other than the fast you never actually had the answer to the question in the title!
It’s a mystery 🛸🛸🛸
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.
I’d believe it
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! 😎
So true
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.
The NS10s.. I'm old and have used them. They don't sound bad like people are claiming.. what the deal is.. Is that they sound accurate for a mix that you want to sound good on every stereo in the world.. car stereo .. home stereo high end or junk... don't matter if you get the mix to where you can hear everything on the NS10s then you can feel confident that the mix will translate correctly to any regular listener will here the same mix that you intended for them to hear. It's that simple. People claiming that they are a bad sounding speaker is less than accurate.
I think it's just because a lava lamp provides soothing ambient lighting.
Elvis' 55 is on display at Sun Studios and was used to record his voice. I have an original sitting on my desk although it doesn't work any longer.
Seems like a lot of them don’t work anymore 😅
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.
True!
chief statue tells me im about to get hate crimed
I have a TEAC reel-to-reel that is the same model the Beatles used to record their earliest albums.