New stage technology working great!

Last night was the tryout run of our new stage gear (purchased in time for the aborted 'PulpCon' show but not deployed until now.)  It all worked great!  Our new lighting truss means my never having to climb up into a venue's rafters again.  Fantastic!  The new laser go-go platforms worked pretty well too; if anything, I need to program them more carefully but the effect was very nice.  Ditto for the new 4-color laser - underutilized, it added some nice color to the proceedings (I need to use it more and the two green lasers adjoining the projector screen less.)

Just enough time remains to program this stuff more carefully for next Sunday's gig in New Orleans.  Pictures soon!

We also brought the new Presonus 16.0.2 digital mixer but didn't get to try it at all.  I'll be installing it into my studio system in the next day or so.  Progress marches on...

Virtual Mixing II

My testing continues on the 'Virtual Mixing' project, and I've pretty much figured out three avenues for getting this done, each with its own features and foibles, and all using excellent sounding Presonus equipment, which I already like and have been wanting to invest in.  In each case I have to add my laptop, a 50Mhz router, and an iPad.

Option 'A' - 1818VSL + Digimax D8 - I have already purchased the equipment for this option, and am trying to figure out if it'll behave itself enough to be useful.  The kit already works for live recording, but adds full remote mixing with hi-pass, 3 band parametric EQ, compression, gate, reverb and delay on all 16 channels plus outputs.  The rub is that these DSP processes all run on the host computer and NOT in the hardware, so if the computer goes down, so does the mix.  That is simply not permissible in a live show.

Advantages: tiny size, unobtrusive footprint for live recording, scalable from 8 to 16 channels depending on whether I bring out just the 1818VSL or both boxes, excellent power for the price.
Disadvantages: No physical controls except for master volume.  Reliant on host computer for mixing.  Current software is incompatible with my laptop's USB chipset, causing breakup in the sound output - again, not permissible in actual use.  No graphic EQ on main outputs.  Preamps in 1818VSL don't have direct outputs for monitoring - you have to use the built in mixer (though preamps in Digimax D8 do.)
Price: $700

Option 'B' - Studiolive 16.0.2 - This tiny mixer is powerful and positively adorable.  It's just big enough to accomodate the full band (with clever routing) and small enough to tuck in my backpack.  Firewire interface is reportedly compatible with my laptop.

Advantages: Very compact size, not much bigger than my laptop footprint (15" wide x 16" high!)  Full FX palette.  Graphic EQ with Room EQ Wizard to ring out speakers in a given venue.  All processing inboard unit, but can record all inputs when hooked to laptop.  Practical size to mix a small scale show or function as just an interface in a larger venue.  Midi I/O means my live show computer could drive this mixer and control vocal FX - I could maybe get rid of my old ART processor!

Disadvantages: Not as many inputs or outputs as the bigger boards means I'd have to be creative with studio routing if I try to use this to replace my studio analog board.  Only 3 band EQ on each channel with mid sweep.  No output meters or subgroups.
Price: $1000

Option 'C' - Studiolive 16.4.2 - This mixer is still smaller than my analog studio mixer and much, much more powerful (and half the cost I paid for my 16 channel 8 bus analog board.)  Generous inputs and outputs for everything I could need, but a third more expensive than the small Presonus board and no midi.

Advantages: Powerful & becoming an industry standard (at least among people I know and respect!) this board would easily replace what's in my studio right now. 4 band parametric EQ with Q control (which I have on my analog mixer and almost never use.)

Disadvantages: A third pricier than the small Presonus board, for no greater quantity of recordable channels.  Too big to carry around easily (17" x 22").  Unneeded and unwanted in the larger venues, it would be difficult to maneuver in those places just to make a live recording, and those are precisely the most important places I would want to record.  No midi, and only 1 headphone jack means I would still need to add a headphone distro system for studio tracking work with bands.
Price: $1500


Decisions, decisions... currently I'm leaning toward selling the 1818VSL, returning the Digimax D8 without even opening it, and just buying the small 16.0.2... but I could probably pivot on that notion, given a good nudge! (any of you out there have any experience with any of these mixers?)

Virtual Mixing

Well, after a slow start to the year, C.O.G. now has two nice sized shows lined up - Covington on the 29th, and New Orleans on April 7th.  Meanwhile, in the studio, lots of work is being done on new C.O.G. music, and even recording projects with other bands (yeah, been padding my production credit list - the studio's occupied almost every night!)

My old equipment (seen at left) has been getting rather fragile in its advanced age (20 years!), and I've been keeping the soldering iron hot just staying abreast of the seemingly continuous stream of circuit problems... treating my venerable analog mixer to some new capacitors and a bunch of new ribbon cable headers.  It's usable in the studio, but I don't know if I could possibly trust if in a live situation ever again.  And I know I could do much better than its built in preamps for recording.  And the 17 year old ADAT XT that I've been using as an A/D converter for full band tracking sessions is finally starting to fail as well, except I really have no idea how to fix something like that, with so much surface mount componentry (at least I can somewhat work on the mixer; it's all through-hole double sided etch boards.)

My initial reaction was to spend a couple hundred on 16 channels of interface.  You can get Firewire or USB interfaces for just a few hundred dollars that incorporate 8 microphone preamps and a variety of outputs, even headphone monitoring.  Some of the new ones even incorporate mixing capabilities and signal processing.  Hmmm....

After looking at several brands, I narrowed the scope of my search down to a Presonus product.  Presonus is a Baton Rouge based company that makes really affordable and great sounding audio equipment... I've used one of their tube preamps for several years now (with the cheap Chinese tube swapped with a vintage '63 Telefunken 12AX7!)  While Presonus's big digital mixing boards always had my respect, I never seriously considered plunking the money down until now... for at this point, I'm in need of a rig that can travel, and my aging Mackie 16-8-2 mixer is just becoming too unreliable to risk taking out on a gig (oxidation in the ribbon connectors and failing electrolytic capacitors are getting too finicky for me to keep up with replacing them, and the monolithic circuit boards in the thing are really a lot of trouble to extract and work on.)  But I've grown really accustomed to the old 8 bus board's amazing routing matrix - I've got a LOT of outputs in my studio to feed: 5.1 surround monitoring, a PA, two additional monitor channels, and two sets of headphones for me and whatever band I'm dealing with.


The Presonus boards are capable of live mixing while multitrack recording - a real boon for what I need to do.  But I didn't really want to replace   But  I also need a good studio interface as well, and like I said, am still loathe to completely ditch the old analog board - it's fast to operate and handy during a mixing session or rehearsal.  Over the last few weeks, I'd gotten it into my head that Presonus's 1818VSL (with the addition of another 8 channel A/D converter) would do everything I potentially needed in a live situation, and perhaps could serve me well in a studio recording session.  This small box is basically a mixer without a control surface.  It has 8 mic inputs and, interfaced to a laptop via USB, is able to provide gate, compression, EQ and reverbs for each channel via the processing power of its host computer.  Its 8 outputs could presumably drive a pair of main speakers plus 4 monitors and a pair of headphones - and all that while discretely recording all its inputs.  I bought one of these things from ebay and have started messing with it...

First impressions weren't great.  The audio's round trip from the preamps to the computer for processing and back to the outputs imposed a noticeable delay that would mess anybody up when tracking or rehearsing.   Also, the thing doesn't even give me analog outputs when the USB interface is disconnected from its host, so it'd be useless as just an A/D converter without a computer; I couldn't monitor from its preamps.  Frustrated, I put it back in its box for the moment and went back to my old rig to complete a bluegrass band session on Thursday night.  Tonight I'm gonna try to bring this thing and my laptop computer out to CoastCon and try to tape a friend's band playing there (Suzaku 7, an anime cover band)... let's see how it holds up in a live situation.  Fingers crossed.

Announcing: the digital version of our first CD

Debuting today, we're pleased to announce the digital version of our venerable 2000 album 'Free Brains & Dead Bodies'. Sure, it's been on iTunes for a while, but this is the SPECIAL EDITION of the album, with 4 remixes, 3 demo tracks, and a couple singles thrown in there for evil measure. This includes the infamous origin of 'Android Woman', never before heard outside the Secret Lab.

CLICK HERE TO BUY IT!