IR for Apple Space Designer, AGAIN!

Da crew!

Ok, let's go outside the Molen Lab for a while, guys!

Due to the success gained yesterday with the Vermona experiment, today my Conservatory mates, the producer Fabrizio Barale and me decided to play with our school's rooms and environments in order to record other impulse responses and create other custom Space Designer presets.
Our classrooms have the great disadvantage of being huge, quite empty and located in an attic with concrete walls and floor tiles, then extremely reverberant. Terrible when you work and record, but great for the reverberations! The results were astonishing.

Gear: Apple iMac, KRK VXT8, RME Fireface800, a pair of Schoeps condenser microphones (Colette series with cardioid and omni capsules). We used a mono source (one VXT8) to play the sweep and the stereo pair of Schoeps to record it.

We ended with the 6 different presets I'll describe here below.

CAVE CLOSE. AB miking with microphones about 3 meters far from the source and 5 meters far from each other. 1 meter high from the ground.

CAVE FAR. Source and microphones at opposite ends of the room along its longest side, mikes quite higher from the ground than in the previous set (about 2 meters). Distance between mikes: unchanged.

CAVE FURTHER BOTTOM. As the previous one but with the mikes pointing to the ground and really close to it (low frequencies boost).

Metal Furniture.

METAL FURNITURE APOCALYPSE. We took an empty metal wardrobe, put it in front of the speaker (4 meters far from it) and put the mikes into it, one in the upper left and the other in the lower right.

METAL FURNITURE APOCALYPSE EXTREME. The same as the previous one but with glass doors closed. (Surprising result!)

THE ROOF IS ON FIRE - WIDE VERB. We recorded this one in the corridor with speaker in the middle and microphpones at opposite ends, about 15 meters far from the source. This time we used omni capsules. Great wide reverb this one, but unfortunately louder on the right side.

YOU WANNA STUFF? I GIVE YOU STUFF!

You can download all the presets from this link, for free:
www.sergiobertani.com/molen/conservatorio_cuneo_SDIR.zip

Hope you like it! Remember: if you use these reverbs in your productions, please don't forget to put our name in the credits list!

VERMONA Spring Reverb IR for Apple Space Designer

One month ago I purchased the awesome Vermona Retroverb Lancet, a rich analog spring reverb ...and much more.
Today I decided to make three presets for the Apple Space Designer convolution reverb to recreate perfectly the sound of the vintage reverb into the well known Logic Pro plug-in .
I used the Impulse Response Utility to record a sweep passing through the Retroverb and I did that three times using three different positions of the "spring tone" knob: dark, mid and bright.
It's been easy and quick to do the deconvolution and load the result into Space Designer.

The three presets can be downloaded for free from this link: www.sergiobertani.com/molen/vermona_retroverb_SDIR.zip
You'll get a zip file including all the files you need and a text file with instructions to install the presets correctly.

Enjoy!
(and if you REALLY enjoy, please make a PayPal donation at sergio[at]sergiobertani[dot]com)

Studio setup

Ok, guys, let me introduce you my studio.

There are two main configurations: the mobile studio and the resident one.

Mobile setup

The mobile is quite simple: MacBook Pro + MOTU Ultralite MK3 (HD 192 converters) powered through FireWire connection, so that I could even record with no power supply. Listening system: the reliable KRK kns8400, wonderful headphones, flat and precise.

The studio setup is based on a powerful iMac (i7 3,4GhZ quadcore, 16GB RAM, SSD disk + 1TB SATA, graphic card Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB) plus a MOTU 828 MK3 (HD 192 converters).

The control room is entrusted to the quite good Mackie Big Knob, which also works as a phono preamp for the turntable (Pioneer-something) and sometimes as a preamp for other sources as mp3 players, etc. I often use it as headphones amp too, when I don't need more than 2 outputs. When I need more I can use the Behringer Powerplay, but sincerely it's more like "huh, every studio's got one, so... if needed..."

Equator D5

The Big Knob manages two systems of monitors: KRK VXT8 + subwoofer 10s (f***in wow) and the surprising Equator D5, coaxial, amazing on acoustic music, voices, reverbs, etc.

Outboard: TL Audio Ebony A2 (routed on 3-4 828 out and 9-10 in). I find it really useful and I like pretty much its sound, especially referring to its price range. I use it often just to warm the sound, by simply passing the signal through the tube, with no comp or eq. I also love the eq when used in gain mode and the compressor, but often used bypassing the tube stage (it keeps the transients more clear and precise when used in class A mode).

Ebony A2

Audient ASP008

An Audient ASP008 provides me with 8 pre-amped channels. Love this machine, handy and transparent.

The rack

I don't have many microphones, since, when I need to record "big" things I refer to my mate Mattia Garimanno, owner and manager of Ænima Recordings (Cavagnolo - TO), very nice studio and indie label I work with. Anyway I use proudly a stereo couple of Se4 and the amazing Z5600a (tube microphone) by Se Electronics. I also have a couple of Shure SM57 and a Sennheiser e845s.

Everything in the studio is cabled with Klotz cables.

Yamaha MOTIF ES8: the arrangement area

I use a Behringer UMX250 as little keyboard and controller and the Korg Nano Kontrol.

Instruments: Yamaha MOTIF ES8 is the main keyboard, but I mostly use it as a master keyboard rather than as a synth. I also play a custom Squier Stratocaster (tuned in drop C with strings 12/60 and humbucker Seymour Duncan Hot Rails), a custom Squier Jazz Bass (tuned C-F-Bb-Eb with 110 strings), a Korg Monotron and a Moog Theremin.

Instruments and... MUSIC!

Sometimes I use a Geloso tape recorder to process mono signals, but since it has an awful sound, an awful time reliability and awful gain/output control... I can use it only for experimental reasons.

A HP Elitebook is used as media center (it manages all my digital music and video database and the backup system and it's wired to the router, so that every mac or pc connected via wifi or LAN can easily enter it.

Come and have a coffee with me, guys.