Dan Richards & The Listening Sessions

So you've saved up your pennies and now you're ready to add to your mic collection. Or maybe you've had your eye on some preamp recommended by that one guy at the local music retailer. Maybe you're even out in the middle of nowhere, and all you have access to is the Internet, with no chance to really see the gear of your dreams and test it out before dropping all that cash on it. Sure, most places give you a money back guarantee for a certain period of time, but wouldn't it be nice to actually hear that mic or that preamp in action before you get it in your studio and realize it's not what you were looking for?

That's exactly the service Dan Richards hopes The Listening Sessions will provide (but don't forget Lynn Fuston's series of comparison CDs at www.3daudioinc.com). TLS grew out of Dan's work as a reviewer for DigitalProSound.com, and his relationship with South Carolina's Sea Note Recording, and involves taking a single sound source and putting it through as comprehensive a selection as possible of a certain type of gear (which so far has included small and large diaphragm condenser mics and high end and low end mic pres). He posts the results on the Listening Sessions web site (www.thelisteningsessions.com), has started to release CD versions of TLS and even plans to begin putting them out on DVD-A for greater clarity and detail. We talked for a few hours about TLS, project studios, web forums and the art of listening.

First of all, how would you describe TLS? Who is it intended for and what is the process?

Well, so far The Listening Sessions allows people to listen to audio clips of mics and mic pres. We have free MP3s available on the web and are soon releasing CDs and DVD-As. The audience is anyone who is in my position, in that they're not near any major gear store or don't have a chance to try out all of the gear available. Even when I lived in New York City and could audition a lot of gear in the studio, it still didn't even scratch the surface. I do agree, ultimately, with the people who say that you have to try the gear in your studio for your applications — there's no substitute for doing that. But the fact of the matter is there is a majority of the audio gear-buying market that simply can't do that. Sure, you can order a couple of pieces from some of the retailers, try them out and return the one you don't want, but even before you do that you have to figure out which ones you want to audition. Who can round up a collection of over 30 budget large condenser mics or over 40 pairs of small condenser mics or 50 mic preamps, and listen to all of them? TLS is not any kind of final word. It's intended for someone who just wants to get a general idea of the particular sonic character gear might have, and it's for the person actively looking to make a purchase. Jeff Costa and I have been handling the engineering and Brian McKenzie has been there for most of the sessions — either playing, cheerleading or just listening. Working on TLS is a completely different beast than regular music recording sessions. Setting up 30+ mics or a bunch of preamps, and tracking a 30 or 40-second "piece" has more involved with it than you'd think. We learn as we go, and we're now quite a few sessions into TLS. I think we're up to about 15 sessions so far.

How did the idea for TLS come about?

It wasn't really an idea, more of an extension of a need. I started out as a contributing editor at Digital Pro Sound, reviewing gear and writing articles. I ran into a new local studio, Sea Note Recording, and asked owner Rob Gainer if he'd be up for trying out some new gear. A bunch of people showed up: engineers, other studio owners, singers, musicians — and what happened got recorded and burned to CD. I ripped the tracks to MP3 and posted them at an undeveloped web site. Two weeks after that page had been up I checked the stats and there were over 20,000 hits. So, I came up with the name for The Listening Sessions, and started the TLS web site in late December of 2002.

Twenty-thousand hits in the first two weeks is an awful lot of traffic for a brand new site.

I'm fairly active on a lot of the online-recording forums, posting as "Dot". After I put up the first MP3 page I just went around to some of the forums and posted a topic about it with a link. Things took off from there, so I decided to make a dedicated web site. Everybody is downloading from the curious novice to the pros.

What would you say are your skills as an engineer/producer, and how do they relate to TLS?

I think the producer in me is getting more of a workout than the engineer, in that I'm working with players and singers who have to do sometimes over 50 takes of the same 30-second piece. I need to coach the talent and make sure they're "up for it" and are delivering good performances. And I don't care how good of a player you are, trying to nail 50 takes with a consistent performance each time is taxing. I'm also dealing with lots of scheduling and windows of opportunity that open and close. The Small Condenser Mic CD 1, which was recorded a few weeks ago, literally had a three-day window on the availability of all the mics in the collection. The studio was only available for two of those days, and then I had to schedule in players who could actually be there. The engineer in me is having a blast for the most part. I mean, it's one thing to audition gear like this in a store or maybe in your studio for a few days, but we have most of this stuff in here for months.

Do you see yourself mainly as an engineer, a reviewer or an educator?

I'm definitely a musician first. Everything else stems from that. I've always viewed the studio as one big instrument. Reviewing gear is just a byproduct of my own interest in audio gear and music. As far as being an educator, that's just an extension of my wanting to continue to learn.

What kind of gear are you using at your own studio right now?

Right now I'm just getting to the point that I have a project studio again, and it's an ever-revolving door of gear. I decided to at least put a stake in the ground and base it around a Mac G4. I'm keeping things simple but powerful. I'm auditioning a few recording programs, and so far Nuendo is looking pretty sweet. I want to play around with 96 K and 5.1 more, so I'm setting up for that. Right now I've got KRK V8s as monitors. Mic pres by Millennia, ELBERG, Phoenix Audio, Focusrite, A Designs and John Hardy and whatever else is around. I've got a rack full of MIDI stuff that's partly mine and partly Sea Note Recording's, with an Akai S-1100, Roland Super Jupiter with MPG-80 programmer, Oberheim Matrix 6R. You know, good, solid '80s stuff. I've been using a Korg Trinity as my main keyboard for several years. I've got a bunch of guitars, basses and drums as well. The idea of my "studio" is that the heart of it is essentially two racks and the computer, so I can work at home or pack it up and work wherever.

Talk a little bit about your relationship with Sea Note Recording.

The engineers, Rob Gainer, Seth Funderburk, Bruce Bailey and Jeff Costa all use the evaluation gear in real-world recording sessions and we compare notes. My own investigations show up in my reviews for Digital Pro Sound and my opinions and recommendations I make in the online-recording forums. Brian McKenzie, owner of The Lazy I, has been with TLS since it got started and he's played on a lot of the recordings for MP3s and the CDs. He's a real talent and turning into quite an engineer and producer. The Lazy I is a smaller project studio that Brian runs in a commercial space — recording a lot of the young and upcoming bands and artists in the area.

What was your intention in creating the Studio Forum message board? Again, who did you see it appealing to?

www.studioforums.com got started just because I wanted to have an interactive forum for TLS. I knew Steve Langer from mojopie.com, which is a great new e-zine for recording musicians. Both the Mojo Pie and TLS websites get a ton of traffic, so I called Steve and asked him if he'd like to join forces. Studio Forums is intended for project/home studio owners at any level. The amount of actual posts is modest but we get a lot of traffic reading and lurking.

I believe you are working on a book as well. What information do you plan to include? Who will get the most out of your book?

The Project Studio Handbook is being written for people building and recording in their own studio, often in their homes or in a small shared facility. The book is geared towards the beginner to intermediate recordist. There'll also be a companion CD as well as a web site for more time-sensitive material, such as gear recommendations.

In testing the gear for TLS, has the sound quality of something cheap blown you away? Or the sound quality of something very expensive really disappointed?

One of things that's surprising is how well some of the inexpensive microphones perform. Perhaps many people who are using some of the cheaper mics don't really get to hear them like we do. We run the mics through the Millennia HV-3D mic pre into RADAR. Plus, we're currently monitoring through Dynaudio AIR 15s. So, we've got a really great signal path. On the more expensive gear, no, none of it has really disappointed. Of course, we have our personal favorites, and some of the gear is better for certain applications, but it's all pretty excellent at that level — just different.