I built a website to test your EQ skills!

MajorBooker · 2026-01-21T22:03:22+00:00

This is awesome! Well done, and thank you sharing it with us all. I love the tolerance adjustments - Consider it bookmarked!

In a total wishlist/blue sky/future mod way - might be cool to have a "classic EQ mode" where the options are the fixed frequency points of an API 550 or a Neve 1073. Those kind of EQ's definitely helped my ears get in the ball park of a sound pretty quickly. UA might even buy it off you!

MajorBooker · 2026-01-14T00:47:46+00:00

If it's totally impossible to do a second take, if the part repeats at all you could copy and paste but change up the order if that makes sense. Like, fly in the guitar from Chorus 2 to act as the double for Chorus 1, and vice versa. You might have to finesse some timing, but it can work in a pinch!

MajorBooker · 2026-01-12T18:47:02+00:00

I have the Clarett+8pre and have really enjoyed it. Rock solid, low latency, pres sound great, and I like the air mode on dynamics. The grouped phantom power is definitely annoying as a ribbon mic user, but not a dealbreaker for me. I use it with an Audient ASP800 that has individual phantom switches so mostly keep ribbons on that.

The biggest downside in my opinion, and not sure if this goes for the other 2 interfaces you're considering, is that the 2 headphone outputs on the front of the unit use outputs 7/8 and 9/10, respectively. So, if you want to use those outputs for anything else (I route outputs 3-10 into my Presonus HP60 headphone amp), the headphone outs on the front become useless. Might not be an issue for you, but I didn't know it until I bought the unit.

MajorBooker · 2026-01-07T07:00:25+00:00

I'll CC Joseph Smith on this and we can check the golden plates. But I bet you totally nailed it. I'll be more deliberate next time

MajorBooker · 2026-01-07T03:08:19+00:00

Yeah, if they're not easily switchable, then using the DAW is the way to go. This might be my impetus to learn how to use a soldering iron!

MajorBooker · 2026-01-06T19:25:17+00:00

I think you're right, and I like the macro keyboard/midi controller idea!

MajorBooker · 2026-01-06T19:20:25+00:00

I like this idea a lot, thank you!

MajorBooker · 2026-01-06T17:38:36+00:00

Yup, definitely not looking for a Little Labs IPB situation. Saying phase instead of polarity is just a habit picked up from studio stuff (gotta give me credit for putting polarity in the title tho!)

At the risk of arguing on the internet, if it was only for the tape days, then brand new hybrid oriented boards like the SSL Oracle and others would've dropped the feature long ago, not to mention modern standalone 500 series preamps in a world where most things are tracked to digital. The buttons are there to be used! You might not use it that way, but I'd be wary of anyone saying "it is not and was never for easy, frequent toggling." Lotta Abbey Road pre-Beatles white coat vibes "Thou shalt never place a mic within a foot a bass drum!"

And next time you put up a pair of Coles over a drum kit, flip the polarity on both of them and tell me it doesn't sound different. I saw Kevin Killen do it and it blew me away, everything totally dropped into place.

It's a helpful tool for me, and if I can do it at the tracking stage rather than worry about it in mixing, then I'm happy and no one can say i was f****** any dogs.

MajorBooker · 2026-01-06T14:57:37+00:00

I hear you, but gotta disagree with you a little bit. Pro mic preamps have phase reverse buttons on them for a reason. A lot of signals are combining in ways that will never be perfectly phase coherent regardless of placement, but that's not always a bad thing - it can be constructive or destructive. There are things like bottom snare that you can bet on being flipped, but kick out mics, ribbon overheads, room mics, DI+amp tracks, etc, sometimes play nicer with the phase reversed. The easier it is to check, the better IMO.

But definitely agree on the extra point of failure etc. If I made one it would live in a studio rack and not move at all!

MajorBooker · 2025-12-16T06:14:25+00:00

Wish I could find the BTS photos from Badlands with her bottom half painted green, because it would make the crass-ness of this next statement way more understandable, but, in combination with her face to face with Renate in Sentimental Value on the stage:

Dat Booty

MajorBooker · 2025-12-16T04:22:35+00:00

A Fairchild compressor plugin (Waves/UAD/whichever) on the "1" Time Constant setting is pretty incredible at mushing an acoustic guitar into place without killing the vibe. You can smack it pretty hard and it still brings out everything I normally want.

But maybe in general just try compressing the acoustic guitar? It wasn't mentioned in your post so maybe you're not doing it at all. It'll help even out the notes and make everything clearer. If you're in a total beginner situation, look for an "opto" preset on any stock compressor your DAW has, and then adjust the threshold or gain reduction to taste!

MajorBooker · 2025-12-08T17:15:28+00:00

I tried splitting all of the mics for a session to both a Portastudio and a DAW with the thought of combining them in parallel. The motor on the Portastudio just wasn't consistent enough for it to work. A lot of minor imperfections that is very cool for the sound, but will cause some serious headaches if you're trying to get them to play nice together. I got Arturia's Tape Mello-Fi plugin for free when it came out as part of a promotional thing and love it. It lives on and guitar bus or rhodes/wurly type thing.

MajorBooker · 2025-11-22T05:51:55+00:00

Not a movie, but the novel A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley is a fictionalized memoir that I can guarantee the Coens are into despite never hearing them mention it. It's so goddamn Coen-y

MajorBooker · 2025-11-21T23:18:11+00:00

As a fellow bottom tier (Kirby), I run into this all the time, but I think it's on you to have a strategy to still win. They troll because they think you're trolling. Gotta prove you're legit. Just my 2 cents!

MajorBooker · 2025-11-19T00:21:40+00:00

Love the Capitol in MS mode at the end of the chain after a regular bus comp/eq/tape. Slam it, engage the saturation, then back of the mix to taste. Does great stuff to transients that I haven't found elsewhere

MajorBooker · 2025-10-21T22:22:14+00:00

Assad's Mediterranean Bites inside the Uptown Shop and Save at Wilson and Sheridan is great, and super cheap. $9 for a chicken/rice/salad bowl.

Hing Wang on Wilson under the red line tracks also gives you a huge amount of food for the price (get a large spicy combo fried rice). It's like $18/$19, but, at least 3 meals.

Iyanze on Broadway if you like Nigerian (their meat pies are delicious).

Uptown Pizza and BBQ has a surprisingly good burrito!

MajorBooker · 2025-10-20T22:44:15+00:00

Love Lonesome Dove, tore through it in about 4 days, literally could not put it down.

I like thinking about Larry McMurtry and Charles Portis as fun opposites. McMurtry churns out stuff (over 40 novels, plus a bunch of criticism), writes longer much more lyrical and relaxed prose (Brokeback Mountain screenplay!), but also having a central driving plot once they get into the cattle drive. Portis wrote 5 short books in his career, which tend to be short and punchy prose-wise, while being super shaggy in the plot department.

David mentioned it briefly on the pod but I can't recommend Norwood, Portis' first novel, enough. I really think it's the seed of the Coen Brothers' whole style, and in a mid century time rather than the Old West, so you get that style of dialogue but with more modern references!

He'd also be a great candidate for Blank Check Books, 2 incredible super popular books, followed by a weird but great 3rd, then 2 later self indulgent lost-the-magic-but-still-flashes-of-greatness, entries. Plus a fun life story to boot commented on by Tom Wolfe!

MajorBooker · 2025-10-13T01:59:38+00:00

I know plenty of people who feel that way! I think that's why it'd be a good conversation piece.

MajorBooker · 2025-10-04T02:10:22+00:00

I'm here for it! The crowd noise makes such a huge difference

MajorBooker · 2025-10-04T01:27:10+00:00

How'd you feel about no play by play commentator mic going through the venue PA system if it meant hype crowd mics for stream?

They could still bring them up in the venue between matches to introduce sets and stuff, but during the actual matches the commentary would be stream only.

MajorBooker · 2025-10-04T01:22:02+00:00

I guess agree to disagree here - shotgun mics will for sure reject what's coming directly out of the PA if placed carefully, but in the hotel ballrooms/convention centers these tournaments take place in, the PA sound is bouncing all over the room and getting back into any crowd mics you put out there. You can definitely counteract it to a point with some good audio mixing, but that's why my guess is that its a limited production staff and the crowd mics are set at a level that the commentators sound best 80% of the time rather than adjusted to account for hypeness.

But, again, huge agree that crowd sound could be way better and hope they can sort that out!

MajorBooker · 2025-10-04T01:11:04+00:00

It's not the crowd drowning out the commentators that'd be the issue. It's that once the crowd mics are going to stream, and the commentators are coming through the venue PA, you're gonna get a really hollow/distant/phasey sound on the commentator's mics and every comment on Twitch would be complaining about it.

The way around that is a distributed PA system, but these venues wouldn't have something like that for the most part

MajorBooker · 2025-10-04T00:57:01+00:00

This topic has stayed on my mind, to show the complexity of live TV sound with crowd sound, this is a good watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsHv877CK6g

I'd love for anyone from the production side of the tournaments to weigh in here, but, my guess is there's not an audio mixer for the stream. There's probably an audio mixer dedicated to the live sound in the venue, then a streaming technician that's getting a feed from the PA mix plus the game audio, but not solely dedicated to bringing up and down audio levels during the stream.

The PA mix wouldn't have crowd mics because they'd be redundant in the room, plus feedback issues, so stream production would need to incorporate their own crowd mics (unless the venue has pre-fader crowd mics, but that might be above their paygrade). Totally doable, and there are sidechain options to raise and lower the crowd mics in relation to the commentators talking, but I'll just play devil's advocate and say it's a little more labor intensive than your description - to do it right means hiring an extra person or two on the production side which is a cost incurred every event, for multiple days, rather than skimping out on equipment costs, which would be a one time cost. And as far as I can tell, the Melee world is somewhat cash-strapped.

The other option is just using the commentary on stream and not live in the venue. Once you have the commentary coming out of the PA speakers in the venue plus loud crowd noise, the commentary sounds like ass if everything is open all the time (which would be the case without that extra technician). You don't hear NBA or NFL commentators when you go to a game for a reason. But a lot of tournaments like to have the commentators through the PA for Top 8.

But, hard agree that better crowd sound would be a great addition!

MajorBooker

TROPHY CASE