Confessions of a Gear Hoarder (my electronic music studio and home gym)
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- čas přidán 1. 07. 2024
- the video nobody asked for :D
0:00 iteration one teardown
4:55 'studio' highlights
10:15 eurorack modular cases
12:14 rogue squat rack
12:58 gear closet + stowed gear
17:57 power cabling
18:19 Sir Greybeard "Nunu" Fuzzynuts
pics from May 2018, before I put up acoustic treatment - imgur.com/a/yNR4vTr
my acoustic panels consist mainly of edge-hardened Rockboard 80 4'x2'x2" panels wrapped in microsuede, and they are freestanding. The small amount of panels I have mounted are 2" thick wooden frames that are filled with a recycled fabric absorbent material
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Max, You were one of the most inspirational and insightful channels I found at the beginning of my music journey and one that I miss the most since your departure. I hope you’ve found peace and joy in whatever road you’ve taken.
There is something so wonderfully zen about this video. Hearing a musician / producer talk about freeing themselves of clutter and focusing on the things that give them what they want is fantastic and refreshing.
I hope you're doing well out there, Max Marco.
sir greybeard nunu fuzzy nuts... what a great studio dog
he's awesome! kinda needy for attention a lot of the time though :D
@@maxmarco Finally, a studio dog smaller than Ricky Tinez's studio dog!
Very interesting and personal studio tour, I hope you‘re doing well Max!
thank you, was nice to see and hear your thought 's
Loads of interesting thoughts and insight into your journey. Thank you!
loved the video and your little friend at the end
Great video! I always appreciate a good studio tour, as it gives me so many organizational ideas. Thanks! Nice Fuzzy Nuts too.
Really enjoyed this video. What a smart way to tell a story.
I started out with an M Audio delta 1010, it was a nice piece of gear that I never heard anybody else mention before. This is a cool video
You are very special for making really neat videos that keep you watching till the end (cute mouse btw ! ) . So agree with you about multitrack recording. Hoping you are doing well !
Thanks for the tour, Max! It was super interesting to hear about your setup's evolution. Also, beautiful background track!
glad you enjoyed! I used excerpts of a couple different modular recordings for the background music
I am going through this journey as well and my Access Virus TI2 and Elektron Octatrack can do 90% of what I need for techno, trance, house, darkwave, EDM, and synthwave music production.
Loved this. I've had a similar journey with my studio, and I can totally relate, especially on the multitrack hybrid subject.
multitrack hybrid is awesome, on paper at least... haha! thanks a lot!
Love the background music!
So much good stuff. More importantly, you are making some good tunes and tutorials with it. Keep it up.
thanks a lot! many of my videos are essentially just about capturing the same kinds of electronic music demos and lectures I often force upon unsuspecting visitors :D
I'm amazed at your ability to inform and stay engaging while
A) never taking a breather
B) talking about a bunch of random stuff laying around your place
If I was at a friends house and they started doing this, I'd start looking for an exit route.However, you managed to get me to stick around throughout the whole video. Came for some Elektron tips, stayed for the tour. Consider me subscribed.
This is so interesting... I'm a couple years into gear and I recognized terrifying similarities. So far, i could avoid getting into modular, but the urge is growing... Not sure how long I'll be able to resist, anymore.
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for your review as always, you are great man.
My story almost similar but right now I know for sure ( of course this is subjective ), I am focuse on simplicity itself, in gear, in musick, in arrangements too.
Keep well, greetings from Wrocław
So satisfying watching you de patch and clean all the dust up from underneath, something I do religiously, and then throw mandala cloth's over everything when not home to prevent more, dust and heat are the enemy of the home producer.
big part of my studio reorganization/simplification over the last handful of years has been to minimize dust collection and making cleaning as easy as possible - I do my best work in a fairly clean and organized space, being surrounded by dusty gear really bums me out!
The background music is very interesting! I like it.
Beautiful video...
Thank you.
very very cool.. alot of good info in this video.
This was actually very nice to watch and hear..!!! Cool with your laid back voice and the atmospheric sound in the background, well done man..!!! I´m in a similar situation - had many different peaces of gear, sold most of it because I startet with modular. Also have my weight bench in the same room (just with a little less modules haha) Greetings from Austria
thanks a lot! the modules definitely have a way of taking things over...
Great tale. 👍
Love this
hey I appreciate you. thanks for this. as always
You remind me so much of Benn and Gear - I almost thought I was listening to his modular synth commentary when I first had this on. doppelgänger ;) You both are from Chicago, so that might explain it.
Nice channel man, subbed. Nice to see another fellow passionate about music and fitness. I too, have a squat rack in my studio :)
thanks a lot! for better or worse I don't have anywhere else to put it :D
Sympathic & interesting !
nice video!
I've done two synth sellouts in the past and about ready for a third... I do miss some of the the moogs, arps, yamahas, and rolands I had. Stupid for selling some of them. Prices now are 10x some of what I sold for.
jeeks.. I'm heading the same way..but what am doing is to keep the small portable synths that I like the most and modules that are skiff friendly
wah, what a cool video and crazy how I can see my history in it. also have a bunch of wooden blocks to get the angle right, same DT770, used ableton (with push1 and 2), focused on eurorack, sold most of the synths, now rediscovered the electron machines recently and I am rethinking the need of the eurorack modules and what I try to achieve with it. Maybe I should just focue on the electrons and the Eeasel. Keep on with the videos. highly appreciated content.
thank you! I think it's just about whatever gives you the most fun and inspiration - eurorack for me has always just been about the pure joy of creative patching and playing with sound so as long as I still love firing it up and patching away it's serving a purpose quite excellently 👍👍👍 still planning to sell some modules though :D
just great.
I liked this video, but I loved it when sir greybeard made an appearance.
I've been on a similar journey with my studio set up, but since I acquired an octatrack, I've pared it down significantly.
Now I just need a studio 'dog'.
♥️
haha! thank you! Greybeard is awesome, but it's certainly not an everyday thing to let him walk on an Elektron... 💩💩💩 :D
love to see your approach on the Launch Codes
hey thanks man! one or two of my older modular info videos covers how I patched it up in my 'iteration one' setup - czcams.com/video/dcWIBRRL2mo/video.html and czcams.com/video/6-E3_QaxyN8/video.html might be helpful - mostly I have used it for generating medium term control signals, for modulating things like Tyme Sefari record state or Plog logic type
Perhaps modular systems are just steps on the road to make us think about what is our art, what do we really want, a school showing that making the "good" choices is just an illusion and can be true only during a given duration, a given situation, learning how to have no regret and simply a way to grow and become mature...
The rat is very cool, love it !
accumulating a bunch of modular and getting into electronics DIY has definitely been a hugely educational experience, both technically and philosophically! Greybeard is a mouse actually, I think they are cuter than rats (and lower maintenance), although rats can sort of be litter trained which would be nice...
@@maxmarco Greybeard is a big (and beautiful) mouse! I had a white rat and he was very clever, and learnt the litter. Mouses are perhaps less receptive to our bourgeois comfort :-)
I think our brain is done for practice, pure ideas seem to teach us far less than practicing. They are more volatile, even the better. When you do something real with your passion, you always capture some pieces of truth. Pure ideas can be wrong from start to end... A Modular never lies :-)
Nice to see another "headphone warrior". :) I also mainly work with headphones and also own the same DT-770 Pros and can higly recommend them. I also personally think one can really benefit for having at least one other pair of good headphones, as a reference pair. I at the moment own 4 pairs of headphones I'd consider being good/great headphones. They all have a different sound, some being semi-open, some closed and so on. This gives me a wide spectrum for monitoring, especially when mixing. There's a lot of talk about "using headphones is bad", but I truly think it's just something you need to get used to. And you need to have good headphones, and like said, preferably more than one pair.
Great video and really interesting journey. I spotted a lot of similarities with my own journey to where I now am with my music making. :)
thanks a lot! very glad you enjoyed 👍👍👍 I think mixing (and mastering) with headphones is something a lot of people do, but might not always admit to :D Personally I find I don't like bouncing between too many different listening environments while working on projects and for some time now I purposefully only use my 770s and nearfields - what I find most important is to be intimately familiar with the listening environment(s). The nearfields are important (but not always necessary) for checking the stereo image and for potential phase issues, but the frequency balance even with all my acoustic treatment is still so-so at best, and that's where the headphones are much more consistent. I'd actually like to spend more time using my nearfields though, particularly as they are less fatiguing than headphones, but my environment tends to be noisy, and unless I'm 'mastering' something I'm almost never in the nearfields' sweet spot. I've also found that because I now have a decent amount of acoustic treatment I can hear much more easily that my monitors could use an upgrade - before the treatment everything was just mush anyway so their quality was kind of irrelevant
the esteemed Andrew Scheps is somewhat well-known for mostly mixing in headphones these days, here's what he said in a GS Q+A thread last year (I also feel the same way he does about frequency response correction) -
"I do mix in headphones quite a lot. It started because I was travelling a lot and needed to keep working. Then when we first moved to the UK I didn't have an ideal place to set up my speakers so I mixed a lot on headphones and then checked everything on speakers before sending it out. The more time I've spent on headphones, the fewer changes there are when I switch to the speakers. I use Sony MDR-7506 headphones, but I think it's because I'm just used to them and they also sound like the Tannoy SRM-10B speakers I mix on. They are bright but relatively flat.
I wouldn't recommend mixing on headphones for everyone, but it is a great way to take control of your acoustic environment . You're basically wearing your studio on your head and it sounds exactly the same no matter where you go!
I never use frequency response correction software or any crosstalk functions. I think for me I just hear the extra processing, even though it might make it more like an acoustic environment. But remember, there are no right answers to things like this, and the whole point is to have a listening environment where you can be creative and your mixes translate to whatever system somebody might listen to your mix in."
I also remember seeing another quote from him regarding headphone usage, where he said something along the lines of 'if you are working on a mix in headphones, and then you check on monitors and you hear something that wasn't in the headphones, go back to the headphones - if you still can't hear the thing on headphones that showed up when checking with monitors you need to use a better set of headphones'
just discovered your channel and there is pretty a lot of interesting content, i like especially octatrack related stuff (cause i recently bought octa :-)) but other vids are nice too and also your music is very good .. it’s a pity you stopped making videos 2 years ago…
Nice… I should have watched this years ago… I’ll be borrowing some ideas here, so, let me just mention that if you want a real nice but inexpensive mic preamp, the old Shure FP32 field mixer is the most adaptable and smooth sounding box I’ve tried. Analog, small, 3 inputs that can be individually adjusted for dynamic or condenser mics, limiter, and 2 independent outputs. I have one mic for voice going to a VoiceLive, and 2 mics for acoustic instruments mixed down going straight to an RC202 just before the main mixer. Main thing is that a cheap mic sounds great through it! More cash for boxes…
Wow very interesting, thank you for sharing! I see a lot of similarities to my own development, albeit I am at a much smaller scale. Thank you for sharing!
I definitely recommend to stay efficient :) I've been reducing things a bit lately and scaling up is much easier than scaling down! :D
Amazing channel, you'd hit 10k subs in no time
Nice delts, my dude
Sir Greybeard "Nunu" Fuzzynuts PEACE LOVE AND UNITY
Well done, Mr Spock
Great video. Great studio. For real. Thank s
thank you! is very good to see people are enjoying this kind of video
@@maxmarco Wondering your recommendations for entry into Modular? Also, any benefit of buying MK2 Octatrack? And can you tell me when selling Elec gear?
Thanks. OH...your rat....I have a Savanah Monitor..........no play dates....LOL
haha! he's a mouse actually, an adult rat would weigh 10x what he does. Rats actually seem like better pets in some ways but need a lot more space and maintenance, and a male rat can't be kept alone like a male mouse
re: modular I think getting a quality semi-modular to start is a good way to go. There are lots of great options these days but I don't have any specific recommendations. Then buy a small case, either one or two rows of 84-126hp and slowly add modules in order to augment your semi-modular. Eventually as the case starts to fill up you may decide to sell the semi-modular as it starts to become less necessary - or you may realize you quite like having a semi-modular around and keep it as a convenience. Always try to force yourself to buy used if at all possible, both cases and modules. It will slow down your purchases and make your money go much further.
re mk2 OT I don't have too much to say, I'm perhaps a bit too familiar with the mk1 and didn't like the look/feel of mk2. the higher headroom on the audio i/o would be nice though
Thanks for sharing mate, always appreciate a studio tour, especially when studio dogs are involved. It's interesting that Elektron stealth changed the Octatrack's faceplate, I wonder why? Naturally I had to double check mine to see if it was textured or smooth.
All the best.
my pleasure, thanks for watching! the switch-up on the OT faceplate tripped me out a bit. I kind of like the feel of the textured one better, but I think the smooth one looks cooler
oh yeah, just remembered - probably the reason they stopped using the textured finish is that it can chip easily, mine has one or two little nicks and I've heard about some pretty battle-scarred ones
max marco yeah mine is textured and I agree that the smooth one looks more aesthetic. Perhaps in another universe (or simulation) I have the smooth black one and wish I had the textured. I’m curious what are your thoughts on the mk2 OT? Also, I have to bring attention to a brilliant quote in your video ‘once I had a taste of the slim phatty my bank account began to take a beating’ 😂
hahaha! re: mk2 OT it is nice in some ways but maybe I am just too familiar with mk1 OT - I much prefer the look/feel of mk1. Main/only thing I want from mk2 is the higher headroom on the audio i/o
@@maxmarco That's what I think. The OT powder coating can chip, so this is a better paint job.
I can't emphasize enough how much I appreciate this kind of video. I always wonder about the behind-the-scenes nuances of what people use in their studios mainly since I've been working on music for almost 2 years and still have trouble with the basics of the audio engineering part of it. I just wanna buy eurorack modules and plug them in for God's sake! Also I do have issues with organization as well so this is another reason I'm thankful you point out little things like how you manage your storage space. One question: Do you have any recommendations for modules that can do decent compression/EQ? I record the main output of my eurorack into a Zoom recorder, and even though I can generally mix everything pretty well while I'm recording, there's obviously some polishing that needs done afterwards. I've tried to avoid working with a DAW, but should I just bite the bullet and do it, or can I do some decent mastering within my case?
I do my mastering in the box - to me 'mastering' doesn't necessarily have to do with altering the sonics of the audio, it's more about preparing an audio file for a particular delivery format - particular sample rates, bit depths, true peak levels, etc. What a lot of people call 'mastering' these days is just master bus processing, which in electronic music I would generally say is a fundamental component of the mixing stage. Dedicated mastering hardware would be nice but it's completely unnecessary and very expensive (much like eurorack, hah!!). If there needs to be massive amounts of sonic alteration at the mastering stage then that implies the hardware stereo mix probably just wasn't that good and it probably should be re-mixed and re-recorded. I like having a bit of compression available in my eurorack, but they're either used for fairly light mix bus processing, submix processing (like a drum bus), typical compression sound design on individual sounds, or as part of more experimental patches (compressing a feedback loop for example).
max marco that is helpful thank you. That lines up with some of the information I've read online. I have found that I can generally get a song to meet my standards just by doing simple performance-based mixing so I'm probably overthinking things. When you hear lots of your peers talking about mastering and EQ and all these things, the tendency is to feel a bit insecure like "oh crap, should I be doing that?"
just setting everything to a proper level is 99% of getting a good mix - EQ and compression in a mixing context is more about helping to achieve proper levels than something that's always necessary, especially in electronic music where we are often working mainly with relatively static sound sources. It all depends on context - if I'm recording a live vocalist for a track I'm definitely busting out a compressor for mixing purposes (might even track with a compressor), and if some frequencies are harsh I'm going to tame them with EQ. I would generally always advise to use only what processing you know is absolutely necessary to achieve what you perceive as a satisfying result - and that knowledge is always developing and changing as you spend time and gain experience
My room also doubles as a gym and studio. I also keep boxes of gear i don't use as much (even a mandolin, though not in a box). I don't have the attention span you do to make these videos, or to learn the gear as thoroughly as you do (i watched your octatrack video. I own one as well) so thank you very much for your video work.
Also, great fucking tip on that Weber attenuator. I definitely have been needing a piece of gear like this, and I never realized that they were even made.
thank you, glad you've enjoyed! I've never opened it up but it seems the Weber attenuator is basically just a couple rheostats wired up to jacks so probably would not be hard to DIY one with a bit less features. Definitely super useful if you have a guitar amp you want to milk for some distortion without blowing up your ears :) :) :)
“if it’s not connected you will never play it “
I believe Vince Clarke said that
a long time ago I felt I had to have everything out all the time, hooked up and ready to go, but eventually I started to hate it. These days I can have a piece of gear plugged in and turned on right in front of me, doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to favor using it over something that's on the shelf at the moment, that's why with my current setup I've made it very easy for me to change things around. If something sits in the closet and is truly neglected though I eventually sell it.
great! hahha love dat mouse
Was wondering about impedance mismatches and gain as well. I have a few quality stereo power amplifiers for home audio that I would like to use to drive guitar cabs from an input of a modeler. Is this a reasonable idea? I recognize that gain voltage levels are different, etc. Is this a reasonable idea with perhaps some add on boxes from Radial or some such? Thanks for any feedback you can provide..
I'm not sure you need/want any sort of direct box or re-amp box - what do you mean by 'modeler' - can you point me towards a specific unit you are planning to use? do you mean a preamp? the output of a preamp will generally be an acceptable impedance to plug into the majority of power amplifiers, part of the job of a guitar pre-amp is to account for the necessary impedance conversion. Whether or not driving your guitar cabs with your standard power amplifiers makes sense you will have to check the specs - what's the output impedance of your amplifier(s)? what is the input impedance of the guitar cabs? usually these are within a range where it will work without issue but depending on your needs your amp may not be able to deliver enough power to the guitar cab depending on the impedance relationship.
I miss having a Monomachine sooooo much. Someone stole mine 4-5 years ago and I just haven't been able to afford to replace it since.
oof, sorry to hear that! mine has been acting up a little bit recently unfortunately - I found a pretty good deal but it clearly had taken a beating. Haven't had problems before though and has been doing fine the last week so I'm hoping it was just a fluke
About that Deoxit stuff (10:12), do you just spray that in the jacks of your Eurorack system? and also, what purpose does it serve exactly? Very interested in it for my small system but not sure of why I must have it exactly! lol
yeah it's extremely useful for maintenance/restoration of jacks, cables, and (some) pots - improves electrical contact by helping to remove oxidation - not something that's absolutely necessary to have right away but in the long term it's essential
@@maxmarco Man, that stuff has been around a LONG TIME! kind of made me chuckle when you mentioned it... Seems like that, and a can of compressed air quickly follow from an electronics kit, soldering iron, solder, multimeter, and flux.
I love everything about this video.
thank you! very glad people have enjoyed this one, was surprisingly challenging to put together
@@maxmarco its really well made, good work.
I’ve been flirting with the idea of getting into eurorack, beyond the Behringer semi-modulars I already own.. as appealing as these massive collections look, it’s also what I fear - a giant black hole /money sink ;).
Interesting take on I/O capacity for electronic music; Makes sense to keep it minimal and project-focused. My HW synth/groovebox collection is starting to pile up - been working out whether I need a massive mixer like Soundcraft 22 mtk , or just go the patchbay route with reasonable I/o (currently Motu Ultralite Mk4 here) .
mixers are fun and cool but I moved away from using them other than inside my eurorack systems. Even a relatively small mixer has a lot of parts that can fail, channels get noisy over time, they need maintenance, etc.
You may have said it and I just missed it, but where did you get those cable-hangers? Love your setup!
thank you! those are standard pomona cable hangers, the orange ones are meant for thinner cables (I use them mainly for eurorack cables) and the black ones are for thicker cables (1/4" and MIDI, also work with stackcables)
I bought no new gear this year and plan to sell off a bunch next year. My Virus TI2 and Elektrons get me what I need and the rest can be done with software plugins.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of camera/lights/software do you use to shoot your videos? I understand you have two cameras. Just being curious, i am working on making my video skill a little more on the decent side of things héhé ;)
I use an old version of Sony Vegas for editing, my main camera is a Panasonic Lumix G7, and my secondary camera is an old Sony point and shoot. The only video lights I have so far are a couple basic LED floods
Imagine we we would spend this time doing research into making music
Is the case DIY? If not, do you have a link?
yes, I built/designed my own eurorack cases
@@maxmarco Sorry, it's in the video, of course
What eurorack case are you using?
I designed and built my own cases
very interesting to learn about Ed Kemper's musical journey
What size Intellijel case is that.
I designed/built my own cases
Selling anything now?
I sell a unit if I do not get a real feeling and use of it in my work flow. No unsed devices and for me no way into modular cabinets
Bay area rents?
not quite that bad fortunately, I'm in Chicago in a pretty nice neighborhood and my rent has increased nearly 50% since I first moved into this apartment 8 or 9 years ago - most of that increase has been in the last handful of years
Never part with a Monomachine or Machinedrum - sell everything else but those golden eggs
If I went that far I'd make sure to keep an Octatrack also :D I'm still keeping a lot of stuff, although have shifted some things and am continuing to de-clutter
Eurocrack
*cues up Pringles jingle*
One more knob and this video would look ridiculous :)
The mice is the best!
Do you make any money from your music, or is it just an expensive hobby?!
It has always been much easier for me to make (more) money doing just about anything other than music as the most straightforward way to make money from music is to do work-for-hire, whereas I've generally only been interested in producing my own original music in whatever way I find most satisfying
Holy moley that's shit is controlling....
Wait... is he a mouse or a rat?
Fuzznuts is most definitely a mouse
This was the most boring video I've seen in a long time, nice background music tho