179 – Handheld Recorder Shootout & Gear Obsession Roundtable

Continued From previous page.

Tim Nielsen 2:12
Yeah, it’s it’s basically a Pro Tool session, all of the audio files are organized so that somebody can say Reaper or any other DAW also pull in the files. And it’s 11 Different handheld recorders and about maybe 15 or 20 different recordings with each of the basically recorders. So a little bit of sound effects, mostly ambiences, some really quiet stuff, some some public places, cities and things like that. And it was really just an attempt to, I realized that I had all these recorders myself, most of them, I ended up borrowing a few to fill it out, but and I realized I want to get rid of some of them because I don’t need to own this many recorders. And this was the kind of impetus for this project. I thought why don’t we put them all head to head and see which ones I really like which ones I think sound the best. And I should keep those regardless of the price. And I thought other people might be interested in this. I mean, people in the audio community have done this for years doing little shootouts here and there and David Farmer, and I’ve done a few over the years. And sometimes we do them just for ourselves. And sometimes we’ve shared them and things but I decided to try to expand it a little bit and make something that would be hopefully a little bit useful for people who are certainly who were just starting out and kind of considering their maybe their first recorders to buy something like that, because these are all, you know, they range in price, but they’re all relatively inexpensive, except for maybe a couple of the Sony models, which are a little bit high. But otherwise, you know, we’re talking about $100 to $300 recorders for most of these.

René Coronado 3:29
Did you have a winner?

Tim Nielsen 3:31
I don’t have a single winner myself. I mean, I you know, and the funny thing is, of course, you the risk is that the recorders that I thought that I already was going to like, you know, I know what they all are. And the other thing I should point out is that if you download this, the recorders are all sort of anonymous, when you started listening to them, there’s a guide, which will tell you which they are but the goal of this is really is a listening test. This isn’t a scientific test, not a technical test. I’m not comparing noise floors against, you know, Max SPL and specs and these kind of things is really just to listen to them. They’re all in perfect sync. So you can kind of just, you know, solo between them and just listen to the different recorders. Yeah, I mean, I have I have a couple that I prefer and but for me, they were the ones that I sort of expected to prefer. So I can’t say for sure that I was really a good judge of my own test in a way because, you know, I ended up acquiring some other recorders just for this test. And I didn’t love them as much. But some of these other recorders I’ve used for six years, so I know them really intimately. So, you know, that’s the challenge as some of the people I know some of the people who listen to this and give me their opinion. They’ve usually chosen the recorder that they own, which is not surprising, right? I mean, this is the recorder that they’ve come to learn to use and are used to that sound. But I was surprised I think mostly for me how well the really inexpensive recorders do hold up against the more expensive recorders. I mean, I think that for me the most interesting thing is that to me any of these recorders are usable. Some of them are less usable than others in certain situations. Some of them are a little noisier some of them have a different image which in some types of files. I did Record the ocean, which I always find one of the hardest things to record. Waves are just that hard. So much Phasy-ness going on. And some of the recordings just to me don’t sound very pleasant at all. Some of them did. Okay, none of them were brilliant. I think it’s almost impossible to record the ocean really well. But yeah, I think to me was just interesting that you know, even the cheapest recorder, which would be the Zoom h1N, I love that little recorder. I mean, it sounds great to me, you know, considering what, 30 years ago, you could have bought for $100, you can buy anything. And the fact that you can buy a recorder that can record completely professional sound effects that I could drop into any $200 million movie, without even batting an eyelash is quite fascinating to me,

Timothy Muirhead 5:37
I fell into the category of the person who picked this recorder they already owned. So I went through and listen to them all and I’m soloing up each one and really fell in love with I think it was nine but I can’t remember now and then looked up the the answer key and was like, oh, that’s the one I’ve already owned and had for seven years. So. So there I don’t know if that’s confirmation bias or just, you know, you’re just used to that sound. But the main thing I took from it was what you just mentioned that all of them are usable. Like there wasn’t anything that I heard that I was just like, that’s just complete garbage or anything like that.

Tim Nielsen 6:14
Yeah.

Timothy Muirhead 6:15
The episode, the day that we’re recording this, I’m not sure when this will be released. But the the previous episode of Tonebendors that we released was a talk about free guy. And they talked about how they use a lot of iPhone recordings, then they’ve just because of COVID they ended up having to do a lot of ADR that way and that it all worked, you know,

Tim Nielsen 6:33
yeah.

Timothy Muirhead 6:34
And just the fact that like you said, $100 recorder, the phone that’s in your pocket all the time, that we’re living in a world where those recordings you know, they’re not obviously as great as an amazing DMS rig or something like that, but in a pinch, you can make them work.

Tim Nielsen 6:49
Yeah, I mean, I think you know, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of trash talking of certain brands, especially Zoom gets a really bad rap. Some of their early recorders were not all that great. They’ve really stepped up their game, their customer service is fantastic. And I’m surprised at how well their recorders hold up. And to me that recorder I just purchased before I decided to do this was a D 100, a Sony, which are now discontinued they’re getting quite difficult to find. And some part of me thought I need to own a D 100. I have a Sony M 10. I have a Sony A 10. I need to D100. So I tracked one down in the UK from Amazon UK got it shipped here. It was expensive. And I did some recordings. And I thought Yeah, it’s fine. But It’s not like blowing me away. And I thought how does this really compare to my h1 n say, or the Sony A 10 It’s really simple. And again, confirmation bias certainly probably plays a part in this but like, to me in a lot of the recordings the little Sony A10 which is this tiny little pocketable recorder to me sounds better than the D100.

René Coronado 7:48
Wow.

Tim Nielsen 7:49
And again, that might be completely biased. I can’t say but I’m just again shocked at you know that this wide range of prices from you know, that was about a $900 recorder to $100 recorder and all of them are usable and you know, and in different recordings some sound better than others. So it’s not like one always outperform the other ones. It was like depending on the thing, but all of them with some mastering some proper mastering, which people should be doing anyway, you know, all would have made great sound files and any of them were usable to me.

René Coronado 8:18
What kind of source material were you testing?

Tim Nielsen 8:21
I mean, I tested mostly ambiences because m ostly what I’m using handheld recorders for is ambience work when I’m out gathering things. But we did, I went down to Dave Farmer’s house and we recorded quite a bit of chimes, different types of chimes to try and test high frequency things. And we did I recorded my garage door with all of them running. I mean, there are there’s a small spattering of effects but not a ton of effects work because this is not primarily what I’m using them for. And you know, selfishly this is kind of why I was doing the test was for me to decide. You know, mostly I’m carrying this thing with me when I’m traveling and recording ambiences of cities and different things. I did try to record some very quiet things just like room tones in the garage. And you know, because of COVID as well a lot of stuff around my house, my backyard, my city street at nights and crickets and things like some early morning birds at five in the morning. You know, various things like that. Some city here I live in the small town of 60,000 people north of the bay a bit and just you know, taking it around the town a bit here, this big ridiculous rig on this huge tripod and people staring at me like what the hell is he doing?

Timothy Muirhead 9:20
Yeah, we’ll include a picture of the rig on the website as well where you can get the download.

Tim Nielsen 9:24
Yeah, I would say it’s mostly ambiences. But there are some effects in there, some some board creeks and some things like that. But mostly ambiences.

René Coronado 9:33
So before we get into kind of a wider discussion about gear, just before we move on from that the one thing you’re not gonna be able to tell from a listening test are things like ergonomics. Were there any that stood out for you ergonomically as either, like exceptionally good or exceptionally poor

Timothy Muirhead 9:49
usability?

René Coronado 9:50
Yeah,

Tim Nielsen 9:51
yeah. And I should have you know, my goal was to do to write up some more notes and different things. Absolutely. Some of them were kind of finicky and annoying to me. And one thing thing that annoys me is that almost all of the recordings actually require you to press two buttons to get start recording, you know, very few of them actually go into record with one button press and the Sony’s in fact require you to hit record and then pause to unpause the paused recording. And so there were several false starts where I recorded for 10 minutes and realize one of the recorders had never started because I didn’t see the the light it was bright outside or whatever. That’s the main thing that sort of frustrates me again, I had mounted all of these in a sort of an array, so I wasn’t hand holding most of these. But yeah, I mean, they’re all small enough to be thrown in a bag maybe three or four of them are actually pocketable. I would say, the h1n, the Sony a 10. And the little Olympus that I bought from Dave Farmer. But no, I mean, I think that all of them could be usable. And again, you know, had I had I had more time, you know, a handheld test to see which one’s transmitted the most handling noise but the truth is, all of them transmit handling noise, you know, you’re trying to handheld recorder, your fingers are too and just from the microphones, and you just can’t expect to be able to handheld, I turned off the the bass roll off on all of these, I turned off all the limiters. So you know, I wanted to hear how much wind Rumble was coming through. But I had varying windscreens on them as well. So that’s probably not a completely fair test some of the head just thinner, they all had fuzzy windscreens with some weren’t as good as the other ones and stuff. So this is really just a listening test and not a super scientific or technical comparison. I mean, that’s the one thing if you’re going to download this, just know that it’s just to get a sense of what they sound like out in the real world. And, and you know, heck, there’s a bunch of sounds in there, feel free to take all the sounds as well, I you know, go ahead and you know, bunch of ambiences around my town and birds and crickets and stuff. So

René Coronado 11:35
cool.

Timothy Muirhead 11:36
For someone like myself, I’ve already bought a handheld recorder. So it was more of a out of interest for me to go through and kind of hear the stuff. But if I’m someone that doesn’t have a handheld recorder, if I’m someone just graduating school or something like that, this test would be a really interesting thing to really dive into, and figure out what you like best before you kind of you know, put your credit card down to order something or buy it. So thank you very much for doing that Tim will put pictures, and we’ll put the link to pull it down. It’s about 40 gigs. So you need a little little bit of time to pull it down. But it’s a really interesting test to wade through, I found the chimes really fascinating the way the different ones held up to the chimes. So let’s kind of transition now to a broader conversation about gear acquisition, and how sound people there tends to be amongst some sound people kind of gear obsession, a need to have the latest, the greatest, the newest of everything. And that goes from field recorders and microphones, to plugins to everything that we use to create stuff for our jobs. And to bring in Mark and Kristina, back into the conversation. Mark, you recently did a plugin fast throughout the beginning of 2020. Right. Do you want to just tell us a bit about that?

Mark Kilborn 12:50
Yeah, I it actually was kind of a joke. Initially, people latched on to it, I jokingly tweeted out something about how I’m not going to buy a plugin for the entirety of 2020. And then so many people responded to it. And I suddenly felt accountable. And so I actually tried to do it. And it it worked. I mean, I made it partway through the year, I think I made it like six, seven months. I don’t remember exactly, because it’s been a weird couple of years. But it was a really good exercise because it made me it made me realize that I was buying a lot of plugins and tools because I thought they were neat. And maybe I was looking for inspiration and tools at times, and maybe a little bit of fear of missing out and a little bit of wanting to talk to people about whatever was new. So what I started doing instead of going to grab a new plugin was I would start pulling out old plugins that I haven’t really used that much. And I have way too many plugins. But yeah, I like I said I made it six or seven months. But the result has been it’s had an impact on me. I just went and looked through before we started recording tonight I look through my list. If I’m accurate here, I think I’ve only bought six plugins this entire year so far. So I’m not I’m not buying nothing, but I’m buying a lot less than I normally would.

René Coronado 14:08
What’s your typical buying clip? Like how much of a deviation is that?

Mark Kilborn 14:11
One or two a month was typical. So you know, 20 to 24. I have also got a bad habit with libraries because I just like having lots of source material. But yeah, now it’s a lot less and it’s good. I’m, I feel like I’m getting more out of what I own and spending less money which is always a good thing, right?

Timothy Muirhead 14:32
For sure.

René Coronado 14:33
What was the hardest part about it? Realizing

Mark Kilborn 14:35
that I had tweeted that out and put myself on the hook and had to actually do it. Actually, you know the other hardest part of it that’s kind of funny is I’ve got a I’ve got a friend named Alex who is a sound designer mixer. He used to work at Blizzard and he just torments me endlessly because he wants to break me of this habit. He’s like buy this plugin. Check it out. So like once a week he’s sending me some trailer video or link or something. He’s like Mark- You need to buy this. He’s, he’s the funny devil on my shoulder.

Tim Nielsen 15:03
I know Alex, he torments me too. It is just his nature..

Mark Kilborn 15:06
Yeah, it kind of is. It’s just his personality. So I’m, I’m glad I’m not alone. He does this to you too. Excellent.

René Coronado 15:12
And Christina, you had a Twitter thread recently, kind of about the headspace of people as the breaking in and what? How they should approach gear acquisition, you want to fill us in on where you’re at with that?

Kristina Morss 15:24
Um, well, I still consider myself pretty new. Because I was like a set audio mixer before moving over to sound design, like full time. But I’ve just noticed that if I talk to sound students, or just film students, or people who reach out to me, they’re always like, Oh, cool. I saw your timeline Tuesday. How many plugins do you have? And which one should I buy? And I’ve even had people reach out to me to go, Hey, I saw you posted something, and I bought the same stuff. So it’s like that’s, that doesn’t make you as good as somebody else. And I thought, I’m really tired of hearing about I guess, like, what plugins do you have? Because it reminds me of when I was a first AC, back when I was first started in the industry. And everybody always asked, What camera do you have? Is it a red, that’s all we want to hear? And it doesn’t really matter. Like what gear what plugin you have, you can make anything work. And for my own personal thing, I posted the post about like not caring too much about how many plugins and gear you have, because I like starting off and trying out having nothing and see where I can go from there. Because like working with them minimal amount of stuff that you have, you could probably do a lot. And you don’t always need every single plugin just for every little thing. That’s where I think I tweeted that in the morning someday.

Timothy Muirhead 16:46
Well, you’re right, because now Pro Tools and Reaper all these DAWs come with so many stock plugins that you can get by with those for a long time before you need to start purchasing stuff. Tim, what’s your take? I think you’ve changed recently, your kind of relationship to gear and such.

Tim Nielsen 17:04
Yeah, I mean, as my career is now in the decline winding down these years, I I’m trying to get rid of things and not just in my technological life. But otherwise, you know, I’m decluttering. And it like Christina said, you know, I’ve had so many students asked me, you know, what, what reverbs should I buy and I’m like, you know, just pick one doesn’t matter which one, pick one and then learn to use it properly. Instead of buying a second one and the third one and a fourth one before you’ve learned even use the first one. You know, I’m still a big believer that you need four plugins. Basically, you need an EQ, you need a compressor, you need a reverb and you need a pitching plugin. And that’s basically it. Those are the pick one of the 5000 myriad reverbs available. If you need to surround reverb pick a surround reverb, if you you know, if you love convolution, go with Altiverb, if you don’t look at you know, there’s lots of options, right? So I rarely will give any specific recommendations anymore. But just talk about maybe classes of you know, plugins, but yeah, I mean, I, I’m a bit of a microphone addict. So over the years, I’ve accumulated I don’t know, I probably got 70 microphones now in my collection. And you know, some of them very expensive, some of them very inexpensive. And the vast majority of them just don’t get used really, to be honest, you know, I, I use three or four microphones 95% of the time, probably, and there’s maybe five more that I want to keep, because they have some real esoteric use, and I want them available when I really want to get into that. But, you know, I’ve got I think at this point four m/s rigs, and, you know, six shotguns or something ridiculous. I don’t know, you know, and some of them haven’t been used in seven or eight years, to be honest. And with handheld recorders, I have, you know, I owned 11 of them, you know, and I thought I need two of them, maybe, you know, I’d like to have a really pocketable one. And I’d like to have maybe a slightly bigger one. And yeah, I don’t know, for me what it was, it wasn’t really bragging rights. I mean, I’m fascinated by the technology. And it is a little bit of fear of missing out, I always think that there’s something better available and I want don’t want to you know, and so for a large part of my career, I kept thinking that, you know, the quality of my gear was going to dictate the quality of my sound design. And it’s, of course, completely not true, you know, it’s just not true. And so I think anybody starting out in this industry, I would say, you know, don’t fall into that trap of letting your friends sort of show off their latest shiny convolution reverb. And then as Mark would tell you, you know, it probably gets used for a week, and then you forget, you even own it. And five years later, you’re like, becomes your iLok assets. And you’re like, God, I forgot, I bought that stupid $600 plugin, which has never been used since

Mark Kilborn 19:30
I have occasionally tried to buy a plug in I already owned and found out when I got it in my Check out basket.

Tim Nielsen 19:35
I’ve done that, too. So yeah, that’s why I thought this would be interesting, you know, talk because I really feel like you know, the amount of money that I’ve wasted over the years on MIDI controllers that have been just been basically given away because I hated them, or whatever, you know, it’s not just plugins and it’s not just microphones, but all the peripheral gear that we use, you know, MIDI keyboard controllers, I probably bought 50 of them over the course of my lifetime. I need one you know, Just picked one and it would have been fine. And how much money has been wasted? That would have been, you know, so much better use for other things?

René Coronado 20:08
I think it’s, it’s worth asking the question like, what is the utility of any gear acquisition in the first place? Right? What are you actually trying to do? Like what what force in the world is causing this need, right. And in a lot of cases, I’ve done the same thing, where wasted most of my money, Tim is with middling stuff, right. And through hard lessons, I’ve developed a philosophy of when I want to try something new, I’ll go bottom of the barrel and just get in the game. So for example, like if I don’t own any figure eight microphones, and I want to and I want to get into an MS rig, I’m going to find the cheapest one that I can. And I’ll get into it. And I’ll just kind of get used to what that style of recording is. And once I’ve decided that I that I have a specific use and specific need for that, then I will save up my pennies for as long as it needs to go. And I’ll go top of the line. And so where I’ve wasted most of my money is when I’ve tried to cheat that, right when I’ve tried to find like super high value, right? But by going kind of like off brand or like middling whatever, right? Like and I’m kind of a contrarian by nature anyway. So, you know, like, when everyone’s out there getting the Sanken, you know, super high frequency, Mike, I’m over there getting the Sony C 100. Because I just want something different than what everyone else has, right. And so so I’ll make mistakes that way too. But in a broader sense, the the purchases that I’ve been most happy with that I can look back on and be like this, this one I did right was one I branched out into something I didn’t understand and bought something bottom of the barrel to figure it out. And then when like this, this specific microphone I’m talking into right now it’s a Microtech Gefell M930. And I had my eye on it for years. I mean years, and I sat there and I was I was you know, I have a certain amount of my income that I just chop off and set aside and its own bank account every single month, just specifically for so I have cash available for me to get whatever I need to get. And I had my eye on this Mic for years and years and years and years and years. And then finally one of them a pair of them showed up on eBay at like 50% off of what they’re worth. And this was like a special pair that somebody else had like recorded the piano for this amazing album. I just sent me the album he recorded the piano was too. But because I knew that that was what I wanted, and I had the cash available to me. I was able to buy this microphone, and it’s it’s brother there. And it is I’m done. I don’t need any more large diaphragm condensers. Like this. This is this is my favorite mic in the world. It sounds amazing.

Tim Nielsen 22:26
Yeah. But but have you heard about this other mic, I could tell you about that you need even more.

René Coronado 22:30
I don’t care. I don’t care. I’ve got the one that I want. Right. And it’s like and I’m using and abusing these things, right. I’m taking them and I’m putting them in a war TF and recording ambiences and I’m just doing doing stuff you don’t usually do with large diaphragm condensers, because I’ve absolutely loved the tone and texture of this specific mic. And so the places where I’ve wasted money is what I’ve been trying to cut corners. And the places where I’ve been happy with what I’ve got. And were actually feel like I’m at the end of the road is when I go find the thing that I know that I’m going to love and cherish and that I would pass on to my children and I go get that.

Tim Nielsen 23:00
Yeah, I mean, I love Schoep’s microphones. I love the sound of them. They’re ridiculous, expensive, and I own lots and lots of them. And 20 years ago, there weren’t a lot of microphones that would probably be good replacements for some of these. But nowadays, there are some really fascinating companies making really affordable and really high quality microphones. So that’s one thing that’s changed too. You know, I’ve been doing this now 22 years since I first arrived at the ranch, I think something like that. And it was a very different game back then if you wanted to get into portable recording you were buying a dat machine. There were only two or three available right there weren’t 500.

René Coronado 23:32
Yeah

Tim Nielsen 23:33
Now there are so many handled recorders and so many different things. But Kristina, I’m curious because you because I haven’t done any production. But you you sort of started out in that. I would imagine that gear acquisition for that is a little bit different. Because I mean, there are some expectations, I think for production sound recordist certainly, you know, when you’re charging money that people you know, want to see certain gear or, you know, maybe you’re thinking more about reliability. I mean, there’s some different considerations when thinking about gear for that. And you know, I know some people probably starting out would have to rent gear because some of that stuff gets you know, wireless systems get really expensive and things and I don’t deal with any of that. I don’t have a need for that. But I’d be curious, your take on the difference between sort of that gear in production versus post production world like seems like more necessity in production and sort of bragging rights in post production,

Kristina Morss 24:17
I guess was sets. For myself. I think it’s just like, necessity, whatever worked, because like the first films I worked on, I didn’t have any lavs. It was just boom, everything. And I was like, Wow, I did a pretty good job better than if I did with a lav because I don’t know how to use it because every time I tried to tape it down on someone, I’m like, I don’t know how to do that. But then as I got further in and on to like bigger, like commercials or anything, the people would be like, Oh, you have a Sennheiser G3. That’s all you have. Where’s the Lectrosonics, where’s your like they the higher the production or certain types of productions, especially LA. They will constantly like it they want certain gear but in post I don’t seem to see it as much like with like people, like, oh, what gear Do you have? That’s what we want. But I think yeah, for set, you accumulate way more gear, you just have like a huge cart, you have all this stuff, and also why I left because I was like, I’m going to use that money and put it into Plugins. That sounds like a better idea. That’s why I changed Partially, because I didn’t want to spend all that money on all that stuff.

René Coronado 25:26
How do you approach your gear acquisition? Christina? Are you systematic about it at all? Or like how? what’s your what’s your framework for post?

Kristina Morss 25:33
In the beginning since I went to school, kind of like a generic film degree, there wasn’t really much about sound. So I just kind of used whatever we had, which was broken microphones, and my dad, actually, he wanted to be a sound designer. And he didn’t tell me until I said, Hey, I kind of want to be like Gary Rydstrom. And he’s like, Oh, crap, that’s so cool. Let me tell you some stuff. And he, like he bought me my first NTG, two or something. And he kind of kept me on those as like Test these out, see how those work. But in the beginning, it was mainly just him telling me like, hey, maybe the MK 8 or 416 would be good, because that’s a powerhouse from back in my day. I was like, Yeah, that sounds cool. And now I just learned a lot more from like, Twitter. And if like, I’ll listen to people’s tests or something, or I’ll have somebody else tested. And I don’t typically buy a lot of stuff, because I don’t really need it, I will rent it mainly, if needed. But for gear like sensors, what the 32 bit float and all of that that’s new, that’s cool. Especially when I have to deal with a lot of people screaming, that’s always a really good thing. So I look at that and go, Okay, that’s something that I do need, I’ll probably buy that. And try that out. And that’s usually how I go about it. I don’t really buy too much, I just kind of see if I need it. And that includes plugins, if I go, Oh, man, I am having trouble with this. And someone will say, hey, cedar might be good. I’m like, okay, because it’s a problem that I’m constantly having. So that’s what requires me to buy something.

Tim Nielsen 27:12
It’s interesting, I’m very impulsive. So I buy a lot of things without thinking about it. And years ago, I bought a Soundfield Ambisonics microphone, which is probably the most expensive microphone I own and one of my colleagues at the ranch, who has to think about things for a long, long time, it has to do all the math and compare everything because he’s convinced there’s something else that could be better. You know, and, and I bought my microphone probably six years ago, and this person is you know, has still never bought one even though he wants one or he wanted one. And just because he just couldn’t bring himself to commit that much money, which I totally get. And so but it’s fun of the sort of different ends I mean, I do some research I do different things, but I just go well that’s cool. Put in the cart buy it , you know, and this is why I own a mix pre 3 II and a mix pre 6 II and a mix pre 10 II. I h ave no need for these three recorders. I mean, I you know, I should pick the middle one or something but I you know, I’d said there’s a few things I want to do at the higher channel count. So I’m better buy that mix pre 10 II, and it’s more or less never been used still. And so I’m very impulsive and all the bad ways of you know, just kind of that has stopped now. I swear I’m over it. I go to my I go to my meetings, I stand in front of the group, and I tell them that I’m an addict. And but yeah, I mean, plugins are the worst, because it’s, um, and nowadays, of course, you can get demos of most plugins, right. I mean, at least you know, that wasn’t always the case. You know, a lot of the things were bought on blind faith before you didn’t really have the choice to try it out and test it out. But you know, if you live in a major city as well, you can go rent a lot of these microphones you might be considering, have you ever posts out a production sound house?

René Coronado 28:41
I mean, I think if you’re in New York and LA or Toronto, that might be true. But here in Dallas, that is not the case.

Tim Nielsen 28:46
Is that true? There’s no I guess it’s straight and probably dwindling.

René Coronado 28:48
The rental houses us. Yeah. we are the rental house

Tim Nielsen 28:52
Renee will rent you his mission, Mitchell, Guffin, six, whatever you said that thing was right.

René Coronado 28:57
No, no.

Timothy Muirhead 29:00
That’s an interesting question, though. An angle that maybe we can discuss the difference between someone who’s working freelance and their point of view of gear acquisition versus someone who’s working for a studio. Because I, for the first six or seven years of my career, I worked at a studio and I basically didn’t buy any gear, I went to the studio and use their gear. And then I went freelance and I basically bought all the gear I was used to working at that studio with. And then after a few years, when that stuff starts going out of date, you have to start updating and figuring out and and then that’s when that gear obsession really kicked in for me. I like Kristina earlier mentioned about how people contact her and ask her what they’re using and then someone you find out that they bought exactly what you said. I essentially did that in 2009 with Tim Prebble. He did a blog post about a big recording session that he did and I went out and bought the main microphone used for it and I still have it to this day but it’s not one I use very much anymore. So it’s a one I would probably not have done in the past. But, Renee, how do you manage that relationship between you know what the studio owns and what you owed.

René Coronado 30:08
I mean, initially, I was very similar. So I’m on staff at Dallas audio post, and I have been for the last 20 something years. And so I’ve always had all the equipment that I’ve ever needed to do my job professionally, they’re at work. And you know, probably for the first, I don’t know, five or eight years, I really didn’t buy a whole lot. But then after that, I started really wanting to go out and do my own things. And even like this podcast, I mean, like this, if I had to bring a mic home from the office to record the podcast, that would end up being problematic. And if I want to, on the spur of the moment, just grab a rig and go record things. Like if I get a Google alert that there’s a building implosion happening on Saturday, then I need to have a rig that I can put together at my house the night before that I’m not gonna have to roll to the studio and deal with and so that ended up kind of being the impetus for a lot of that is a lot of my own personal I don’t know, just need and desire to make certain recordings, the way that I wanted to make them ended up driving a certain amount of gear acquisition. And then right before COVID hit, we were actually pushing a lot to build up our own studio rigs at the house. So you know, just editing and mixing and that type of stuff at the house, which I didn’t have it all before, because I have big beautiful studio to go work in. But I ended up needing to start being able to take some work home and continue to push work forward, you know, nights, evenings, weekends, whatever. And then fortunately, I had really kicked that up. And I got it all in place, like, I don’t know, right at the beginning of 2020. So it was like all up and flying and then COVID hit. And so I kind of didn’t have to miss a beat, I could actually just work from home for a lot of stuff. And it ended up being just hyper useful for that to be the case. But I’m I’m at the place now. I think we had this conversation with with Kai Paquin at some point. Maybe not in the podcast, but maybe in the Slack channel or something like that, where it was, like, if you had your dream rig if you had everything, you you know, what your dream rig look like, like, what does your final final gear acquisition list look like? And a lot of us were able to look around and be like, You know what, I’m there or I’m like, 85% there. And that’s, that’s an important realization to, to be able to make some times is when you’re there, like as far as microphones are concerned, I need one more crown. PZM and that’s it. And I think I’m done. And that’s amazing. You know what I mean? I have large diaphragm. condensers I have small diaphragm condensers I have shotguns I have I have most of the PZM that I like, I have contact mics

Timothy Muirhead 32:29
but you’re 20 years into your career.

René Coronado 32:31
I’m 20 years in right. Yeah. And, you know, but you know, and I’m probably 1015 years into just buying my own gear. But you know careers last longer than 20 years.

Timothy Muirhead 32:41
Exactly. Yeah.

Tim Nielsen 32:42
Well, I mean, my first microphones were actually from one of my teachers at USC and he was a production sound recordist and he knew that I was interested in some microphones so he basically one day brought in a box full of Schoeps, like just a box full of ….

Timothy Muirhead 32:57
Wow!

Tim Nielsen 32:57
capsules and bodies

René Coronado 32:59
as you do

Tim Nielsen 32:59
and we settled on a price of $2,000 for the entire box of gear which was probably worth about $12,000 And then when I went to pay him he said just make it 1000 and call it that and and that was my first gear and I’ve owned I owned that rig for was a show I was able to build an MS Sheps rigs out of that way back when that’s been passed on to another sound designer Nia Hanson at Skywalker, she bought it for me now probably a decade ago after I owned it for 20 years or so. And it’s still going strong and you know, a lot of it’s the thing with microphones is the tech doesn’t change that much. I mean, the Schoeps microphone you’d buy today is more or less the Schoeps microphone you could have bought 40 years ago with some some mild changes and things but you know, so investing in gear that will last is definitely something to consider but really like you’re saying, you know I’ve got certain types of categories right that’s the thing with think about the utility of all these things like what microphones Do I really need like I own three or four hydrophones? I almost never use hydrophones because I don’t like them. I don’t think they sound good.

René Coronado 33:58
Same

Tim Nielsen 34:00
I own a very expensive DPA hydrophone that cost me 1000s of dollars. And it’s you know, and then I bought some other ones not thinking they were better, but thinking I maybe wanted to try some of the multiple hydrophones I’d be okay. Not owning a hydrophone to be perfectly honest with you now, you know, I mean, it’s or at least, you know, one of the much cheaper ones that I own. But it’s important to think like what kind of things am I going to record what what is the utility that I need, you know, and I bought some really esoteric microphones just because I thought they might be cool and then realize I just nothing I’m gonna not a kind of recording that I do, and I don’t need that.

René Coronado 34:33
One other note is as people are exploring, like, what they do need or what they even like, a great resources, a lot of the crowdsource field recordings, because so many, so many microphones, get put into use everything from you know, H1s all the way up to Schoeps, rigs and whatever else. And it’s really I found it to be a really good resource for you know, the crowdsource recordings that go on in the field recording slacks and in lots of other places. It’s just a thing. Now that happens But for people that participate in those I mean you come back you get all these sounds back and you can just listen to the all these mic comparisons of very similar source material

Timothy Muirhead 35:07
and the metadata of what the mic is there

René Coronado 35:10
Yeah,

Tim Nielsen 35:10
yeah, but can I I would put one caveat out there which is a really good recorders with a really cheap recorder could probably outperform a really bad Recordist with a $10,000 microphone. I’ve heard so many people with really high end microphones produce just terrible recordings and terribly mastered. And as I agree with you, in theory, I’m just saying, you know, keep that in mind that, you know, yeah, you might I never look at the recorder when I’m listening to sounds never I’m not interested in the least I don’t keep track of that amount library at all. I only care what it sounds like I don’t want to dupe myself into thinking that a recorder might not be worthy. Because I’ve heard somebody else bad mouth it or something else like

René Coronado 35:46
right,

Tim Nielsen 35:46
I don’t care was recorded on on a cassette tape if it’s a great sound, and I have sounds in my library that were recorded on a cassette tape. This still sound better than anything. I’ve heard anybody else recorded anything else for that sound? You know? And if it’s the right sound, it’s the right sound. So, but I do agree, you know that that’s the thing. These crowd sources have such a wide range of people. Some people have been doing this for 30 years. And some people who are just starting out when we did this my home crowdsource, the greatest email I got was from a guy who was like 76 years old, wrote me and said, I’ve never recorded anything in my life. But this project has inspired me to go buy recorder and try to record and you know, how awesome is that this guy went out and bought a zoom h4 N or something. I don’t remember what it was now, and contributed to the crowdsource and made some great recordings.

René Coronado 36:28
I think, though that I mean, a lot of those crowd sources, there are a lot of like, good recordings and good recordings. And I guess what I’m talking about is there are times when you’ll get recording, you’ll you’ll be going through the crowd source and going through recordings and be like, Man, that sounds really good. And you look at the mic and be like, Wow, that’s the Lewitt right? Is this the $130 Lewitt, you know, large diaphragm condensers. Those sound awesome. If I didn’t have large diaphragm condensers, I would roll with those Lewitt in a heartbeat and have never held one of my hand. Like I know what those can do with this.

Tim Nielsen 36:57
That’s true

René Coronado 36:57
stuff like that ends up being useful.

Tim Nielsen 36:59
I bought a pair of Swedish microphones called line line audio.

René Coronado 37:02
Yeah. I’ve got those.

Tim Nielsen 37:02
Which are some very in-expensive. Yeah, I mean, they’re fine. And because I heard some other people’s recordings, you’re right. I mean, I don’t mean to disagree with you. I’m just saying, you know, I’ve heard some really great recordings to then you look at the microphone, and it’s like, you know, Schoep’s M/S. And I’m like, wow, that just you know, and some of it comes down to mastering and some of it comes down to just bad environment and bad luck, and different things like that, too. So I would just say, you know, can’t take it all with a grain of salt to to some degree. But it is true, you know, when you hear a great recording and realize it was recorded on a really inexpensive recorder that’s empowering to, to, you know, get over I’ve had so many people, you know, just bash really inexpensive recorders, and I would never buy that. I’m like, well, that’s your loss, then, you know, not mine. Because I’ve gotten some of my favorite recordings off of $100 recorder.

René Coronado 37:45
One of the things I’ll say about microphones too, and something that I’ve learned through experience is that I’ve really, I can’t form an opinion on any specific microphone. Until I’ve been banging that thing for a number of months. I mean, it’s really really hard. It’s shootouts are one thing, but to really get a sense of what a mic is gonna do in any given situation, you have to run it just a lot. Like I had a really problematic relationship with the 416 For a long time, until I it’s like a wrap my head around what that Mike was doing, you know what I mean? And once I kind of really really just had to just sit and just record and record and record with that thing. And so and then I was like, Okay, I know what I’m doing with the 416 because I was just screwing up fundamentally for months you know what me just trying to make it be something that it wasn’t Yeah, you know, and and I found that to be true of a lot of mics

Tim Nielsen 38:33
I owned a microphone that now Mark Kilborn actually owns But, and this was a microphone that I had heard some recordings from, and I thought they sounded great. And I think it was a microphone that Ren Klyce owned and who doesn’t want to be like Ren and so I bought this microphone and, and I used it for a while, but I didn’t use it enough probably. And I didn’t love the recordings that I got from it. And and then it ended up getting sold to Mark, this was probably more than 10 years ago now. But like I’d be curious, like, you know, you were in the market for that. And they were very hard to find I should apply as a microphone Crown SASS, which had been long, long discontinued, so it was really hard to find a good one. I had mine refurbished by Crown, it was in really good shape. So you know, have you used it constantly Mark, I mean, has it gone in the closet ?

Mark Kilborn 39:14
I have not used it constantly. Honestly, I I still have it in the closet. I I bought it because earlier in my career, I kind of made this decision that I wanted to go freelance at some point. And I guess to speak to a previous point about you know, whether you own your gear or not, I’ve had a front row seat to way too many layoffs in the game industry. So that makes me really, really antsy about not having my own equipment. And I usually encourage other game sound people do the same thing. But I kind of put together a dream list a long time ago of if I’m going to keep working on Triple A, first person shooter games. What microphones do I want to have in my arsenal? Because I was looking at this based on microphones I was hearing in libraries that I liked and this is before The crowd sources were really a big deal. So I was cribbing off the notes of people like, you know, the Recordist and Tim Preble and reading articles that you had written. In fact, I bought my Sheps ms rig because of your article about that. And I love that thing. And that gets used all the time, right. But now the Crown has mostly sat in the closet, it’s been pulled out a few times, it’s going to get pulled out as soon as my co workers and I are safe to get together again, because we’re going to go do a gun shoot for a project we’re working on.

René Coronado 40:28
That’s secret weapon

Mark Kilborn 40:30
That’s that’s honestly the reason I bought it was because I have I’ve worked with so many recordings, not just from libraries, but also recordings that were commissioned by, by us for Call of Duty projects. So I’ve heard a lot of John Fasal sessions and Charles Maynes sessions that were recorded specifically for Call of Duty projects, and Chuck Russom stuff. And that mic always sounds amazing. There were a handful of mics that always sounded amazing that the Neumann 191, there were a few of them. And so I bought that little list of mics that was that were just always really, really good. I’ll use it more. I promise. I just, I don’t use that one that much.

René Coronado 41:05
If you have a vehicle to record ever a PZM is just magic.

Mark Kilborn 41:08
Yeah, I’ve heard thatI need to I need to do that.

Tim Nielsen 41:11
And they’re not expensive museums in general, I mean, 200 bucks or something right? For most of them

René Coronado 41:15
underrated for travel, too, because you can just take them with you in a little bag and just drop them like landmines. You don’t have to put like, you know, wind protection and screens or anything else up, you can just have it all in a little bag and just drop it down. And you get this big hemispherical pattern. I’m a fan of PZMs. I love them.

Tim Nielsen 41:30
Yeah, it’s funny. My first rig was a ship’s ms rig. And it’s still the single if my house was burning down, it would be the one thing I would try to grab. If I could only grab one thing, it’s what I would grab, because I could do 95% of my work with that rig. And partly because I know it so well. I know exactly how to record with it. But it’s also just that versatile for me. You know, I’m still huge fan of M/S. Some people aren’t but yeah, I mark I know so many people that bought Schoeps M/S Rigs which are not cheap. And I always felt bad because I’m like, I hope you like it because I wrote that article for Designing Sound so many years ago about M/S. And, and that rig but I feel strongly about it. But you know, there are other options now to build an M/S are cheaper, but at the time, there weren’t a lot of options figured out microphones were really few and far between. They still are to some degree, you know, there aren’t that many of them. But yeah, I mean, you need one good general sound effects rig, whatever that turns out to be and then just use it and learn it. You know, and then when you really have a reason to upgrade, then, you know, upgrade if you can if you want to but you know, nowadays, I don’t think you’d even need to you could do your whole career, you know, with a much, much cheaper rig than even that.

René Coronado 42:30
I mean, gear inspires though, you know, it really does.

Mark Kilborn 42:33
But is it worth the cost?

René Coronado 42:34
Well, it depends.

Mark Kilborn 42:35
I mean, I agree it’s inspiring, but it’s really expensive.

René Coronado 42:38
I’m not saying like a Schoeps rig in particular. But whatever gear it is that actually gets you out in working. I think that’s there’s real value there.

Tim Nielsen 42:45
Yeah, but what I guess I would argue that try not to fall into that trap of thinking that some expensive thing is going to entice you to get out and record you should be recording with $100 recorder if that’s all you can afford,

René Coronado 42:56
for sure.

Tim Nielsen 42:56
And then hopefully you’d be smarter than me and realize that, hey, I can actually record perfectly well, with this record. I mean, Kristina, you’re starting out. So you’re kind of you know, the rest of us who are all old hats at this, you know, we’ve spent all our money already. But I mean, I do. I do think it’s changing the mentality a little bit I do, I think there are a lot more people kind of starting out on their careers. And like you’re saying you don’t buy things impulsively, like I did, and you don’t feel this need to buy as many things and I think early on in my career, at least I did feel the need to buy a lot of these things. And I do think if I was starting out now I wouldn’t feel that pressure, the pressure I made to myself, but you know, I think it’s great that you know, you’re being more selective about what you buy.

Kristina Morss 43:37
oh, I’m also a person that takes like half a year to make a decision on stuff. So I’m that type of person. But I am also on the bandwagon of h1Ns as a person that takes walks every day. So like I bought that just because I saw a video of the behind the scenes of Blade Runner 2049. And they had just, they were just using that. And I thought, Wait, everyone always told me that I need expensive gear to do like big movies. So what is this? So I bought one. And then I just like that it works for a lot of things. It’s what I use with students, if they’re trying to test out stuff, because I kind of don’t want to get them like my all my more expensive gear or especially high school kids. No, no like you. And yeah, it sounds pretty good. I like it. And I think that I’ve only had it a few times. If I post my gear like on Twitter. There’s like a few people that go, oh, I would never use a zoom h6 on my project. Right? Like, well, I’m in the indie world. So yeah, there’s lots of that who nobody knows what I used

René Coronado 44:38
They are telling on themselves when they say that though.

Timothy Muirhead 44:41
Oh, yes.

Tim Nielsen 44:41
Years ago, I did a film called John Carter and I needed to record baby bears. I wanted to record baby bears, which are really hard to find. And I found this woman in Tennessee who ran a black bear rescue organization and I said hey, could I if I flew out there could I record these bears? And she said, Well, you know, we try not to let them have much human contact. and blah, blah, blah, you know, I can give you like 20 minutes, I thought, Well, I’m not going to fly halfway across country for 20 minutes. And I said, but what if I sent you a recorder? Would you be willing to try to record it. So I sent her a zoom h1, not even an h1n this was years and years ago. And she got so excited. And she knew nothing about the technology. But you know, it’s such a simple recorder, you push record, I set the level at 50%, I just kind of preset up. So all you gotta do is turn it on press record, and let’s see what you get. And she sent me back six hours of baby bear recordings, which have proved still, so yeah, they were all over Dark Crystal, we use them in Solo. And they were fantastic. And, you know, again, she knew nothing about gear, she just knew to pointed out the thing that she wanted to record and record. And, you know, yeah, there was a lot of mic handling and a lot of things I had to deal with. But, you know, some of my favorite sounds in my library were recorded on a $99 recorder. And, you know, I, Dave Farmer and I were recording on mini disc back on Lord of the Rings and $100, plug in microphones from a company called Sound professionals, it was making these little sort of portable we would clip em to our shoulders and walk around and record and you know, so we were using compressed stuff, which we then converted back into Wave, and, you know, it’s all over Lord of the Rings, and nobody cares, you know, if it’s the right sound and makes it through the process. You know, that was always inspiring to me too early on was, you know, to own a wide range of things. It wasn’t just the expensive stuff that I wanted to own. I mean, I wanted to own cheap stuff, too. I just wanted to own too much stuff. That’s the problem.

Timothy Muirhead 46:22
Well, the problem arises because as a general rule, people who work in sound are people who would be recording, regardless if it was their paycheck or not. So in addition to buying stuff that we use at work, it’s also our hobby in many people’s cases. So you can somehow in your mind, start accounting for stuff to purchase that, well, this isn’t for work. This is more of a fun microphone, you know, and, and then it slowly ties back into work. But there is that weird Venn Diagram of work versus hobby, that might not be the case and other professions? Mark, do you find that you kind of make that account in your head that you can afford something? Because it’s also a hobby?

Mark Kilborn 47:03
I’ve gotten much better about it in the last three or four years? But yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s almost dangerous, you know, I kind of wish I could have a, at least when it comes to purchasing, I wish I could have a very detached business attitude towards the stuff and say, I’m only going to purchase things that, you know, fiscally make sense in the matter totally responsible. And, you know, getting growing up and having kids kind of changes that perspective a bit. It forces you to change your mind about that, which is a big part of why I’m more cautious now. But yeah, it’s something to be mindful of. And I think about that a lot when I purchase things. It’s do I want to buy this? Because I think it’ll be fun. Do I want to buy this? Because I’ll actually need it. Do I really need it? Do I have something else that will solve this problem for me?

René Coronado 47:45
Do you have like a gear account mark? Or do you just like buy stuff out of the house account?

Mark Kilborn 47:49
What do you mean, you talked about at work?

René Coronado 47:51
No, I’m talking about money,

Tim Nielsen 47:52
like you differentiate?

Mark Kilborn 47:54
Oh, no, I don’t have a gear account. I keep it. I just buy it out of personal checking account, but I keep it. I’m very cautious about purchases. And you know, one of the smartest things I do now is I discuss it with my wife. And she’s very reasonable. And she understands it. Now. She used to play in a band years ago. So she gets a bit of recording. And so she’ll usually ask me questions like, What will this do for you that you haven’t done already? Like, she’ll ask me the questions. I should be asking myself if I forgotten to, and it’s really helpful.

Tim Nielsen 48:22
My wife is the opposite she goes, “You work hard. If you want to buy just buy it.” Oh, thank you.

René Coronado 48:26
She’s an enabler.

Tim Nielsen 48:27
Yeah. She’s, you know, she’s like “you work hard, you can afford to just buy what you want.” I once bought a microphone because I liked the color. And it was a very expensive microphone. It was a shotgun. And they came out in this blue and I was like, well, that’s a gorgeous microphone. I bought it purely for the aesthetics, the CMIT. Yeah, I just want that because it looks neat. And it probably literally never been used in the 15 years that I’ve owned that microphone.

Mark Kilborn 48:50
Yeah. And see, she’s familiar with some of my gear and she’ll even asked me about Shoeps specifically, she’ll say, I know you use your reps all the time. Are you going to use this as much as that? No. Okay, then why do you really need it?

Tim Nielsen 49:00
I want it!

René Coronado 49:02
The reason I asked that though. Mark is because it you know, this is something that I do right? I definitely take a percentage of my paycheck every every month, not a percentage but as a certain dollar amount. Yeah, every every twice a month and scoop it into a literal different bank account that’s got its own debit card to it. And that is my reinvesting in myself money

Tim Nielsen 49:21
but but then do you feel responsible to spend that money like if you accumulate was when you look at like oh my god, there’s $5,000 Here I better buy something just because you have that money set aside to or, or would you

René Coronado 49:31
it’s never built up that high?

Timothy Muirhead 49:32
Yeah, I was gonna say there’s no way his bank to $5,000 No way.

René Coronado 49:36
No, but what happens is I end up with a with a I end up with a reserve there right but it’s also a guilt free reserve. It is I have this need I’m going to go get this thing so that I can go do this thing that I need to go do and so it does keep me from like the vanity purchases right which is you know, which come out of like the house account which you know, which can come with regret sometimes right? And but it also it also keeps me from the other problem. which I have, which is being too much of a tightwad in spots, right and, and trying to cut corners. So it keeps me from cutting corners by trying to buy the cheaper thing, instead of buying the thing that actually need to do the thing that I’m trying to do. And it’s just like a guilt free systematic, here’s my reinvestment in myself bank account that’s sitting way over here. And it allows me to do things like like buy unsexy things like, like power supplies, and, and hard drive space, etc. Right. And so that’s why it never builds way up. But it just allows me to continually reinvest myself systematically, in a way that that can still be fluid, you know, from month to month,

Tim Nielsen 50:35
Dave Farmer and I have a running joke, which is that any anything that costs under $100 doesn’t actually count towards anything keeping track.

René Coronado 50:41
So I think it’s a fact though. That’s just that’s just understand

Tim Nielsen 50:45
that was only $69 Doesn’t count.

Mark Kilborn 50:47
Nice. I so I’m not as regimented as you are, I do kind of do that. We, my wife. And I actually both have a basically a discretionary fund in our budget app we use you need a budget, which is awesome, because it’s on our phones, and we can track stuff. So we each get a certain amount of dollars, we allocate ourselves to spend on whatever and out of that comes, whatever she wants to buy, it comes out of that comes video games I want to buy or movies I want to buy if I want to blu ray of a movie, cuz I’m a big nerd about it, or plugins and microphones. And I don’t know, I feel like I’m more likely to spend it if I have the money set aside and I, I struggled to even rattle off a list of things I want at this point, I’m kind of at a point where I’m pretty good with microphones. If anything, I probably need to get rid of a few of them, I probably need to get rid of a few plugins. So I’m worried that if I set aside money for that, I’d probably start spending it. That said, I do set aside money for things like purchasing courses that I think are going to be interesting, or you know, educational materials, like I bought Tim’s Soundminer video set, which I’m ashamed to admit I’ve been so busy. I still haven’t finished watching that, but I will get there soon. I’ve watched part of it. It’s been really helpful. It’s awesome, actually. But I yeah, I’m worried I’d spend it if I set aside money explicitly for audio stuff.

Tim Nielsen 52:01
Well, that’s the key, right is to think about any purchase we make is like, is this going to better my work or, you know, actually has some tangible improvement in it or better my own ability, you know, like, I do think spending money on learning is never a bad investment in yourself. Yeah, much more a better investment than spending it on gear that you may never use.

Mark Kilborn 52:21
Yep. And looking at my six plugin purchases this year, I can only say that for sure about one of them. I bought Acon extract dialog because I was working on a short film, or earlier this year, I had a really, really bad problem with a line of dialogue. I sent a clip of it to a friend and he said, Hey, go get this plugin. I hate to tell you to buy a plugin, but this will actually solve your problem. And it did. But yeah, you’ve got to think about what problems at solving otherwise, it’s easy to get on this treadmill of just spending too much money on stuff you don’t need.

René Coronado 52:50
Kristina, how do you approach it?

Kristina Morss 52:52
I started off when I was like a camera person. I had a shared bank account card with my dad. And he would see every single thing I would buy for film. And that just gave me that guilt, I guess over the years. So and we still have that

Timothy Muirhead 53:09
The watchful eye.

Kristina Morss 53:10
Like if I go, Hey, I’m gonna buy a computer. He’s like, I want to see it. I know. And that’s okay. I don’t care. I’m 31 don’t care. But I’m an adult that dad Gosh. But, uh, that that also helps me because I used to be really terrible. When I first started. I bought so many plugins, and never I took most of them. I still haven’t touched them. Like I don’t even know why I bought it. Maybe somebody told me or I saw an article, or thought, wow, that looks really cool. I want to buy it. And then never used it. But I work more on the indie side of stuff. Like no budget to low budget. So I think that’s why my mentality of it coming in is like, do I need it? Or do I not? Because whatever I get from that the project is going to go into my little fund of what I need or want, like, someday, I will pay off cedar, maybe. But you know that that’s how I approach it is just whatever I have without plus when I moved into sound design of fully as like a full full time job. I lost my job. So it was just like, oh, no, what do I do? I don’t have an income. I don’t have health care, but I need to do something. So I just scrounge money, and I get really really afraid to spend money anymore.

René Coronado 54:35
Yeah, that’s heavy. So it’s like when you’re triaging between you know life and career like what what tilts the scales?

Kristina Morss 54:42
Um, I guess what is needed if I know that like maybe I’ll pass on a project that I know that I cannot actually fix like their dialogue, kind of. So it’s always dialogue that needs to be fixed and I’m like, I’m sorry, your your lavs are scratchy. I I don’t I don’t know how to fix that. But I kind of just take it one project at a time. And it’s, I enjoy that. And I learned as much as I can from it. And yeah, I think it’s just if there’s a need, or if I asked like people in the industry, like, hey, here is a sound clip, I don’t know how to do anything with it. And they’ll tell me, it’s this, and it’s this amount, and I’ll go, okay. Maybe by the end of the year, I will buy a certain amount, or if their sales, especially sales, those are my favorite times. And that’s when I will buy it.

René Coronado 55:33
Nice.

Timothy Muirhead 55:34
I think something that both you, Kristina and Mark just mentioned was kind of having someone that you trust, that maybe has a little bit more experience or experience in a different area that you can pass something on to and say, What would you do in this situation, finding those, I don’t know, if mentors necessarily the right word or a peer group, that can be really helpful. And also, what I found is, I have an MKh 30, a figure eight microphone, but I don’t have a 50 or 60. So I have friends that do though, so we can they borrow mine and I borrow theirs when I need to get the M/S system set up. So finding that peer group is also something that can cut down on your gear acquisition is finding ways to pool resources with people. And another thing I just wanted to mention quickly about plugins. In January this year, my computer that had worked wonderfully for a long period of time, just crapped out, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. And I ended up just trashing everything and slowly installing things one at a time. And I got to a point where everything was working. And I had a very long list of plugins that were not installed yet. And I was just like, Well, I’m not gonna install those until I need them. And almost all of them I’ve still not installed. And that was in January, like there’s a core group of plugins that I use regularly. And the rest of them I’ve not even thought about since I didn’t install them on that rebuild.

Tim Nielsen 56:57
I wish it was easier to sell plugins because it’s like microphone, it’s like, okay, there’s plenty of places to sell that and you can transfer iLok assets to some degree and different things. But some companies don’t allow you to and everything’s because I mean, I have 1000s of dollars of plugins. And the same for me about the money. I want to sell a lot of my stuff just because somebody else might actually be able to use this. I finally sold my old sound devices 722 Not because I mean, I love that record. I mean, that thing took me through a large part of my career. And it was nostalgic. And I read only reason I kept it for many years was purely nostalgia, but it pained me to think that that recorder was sitting on a shelf not getting used, you know, it’s like a racehorse that wants to run you know, it wants somebody wants to in so I sold it really at a very reasonable price to somebody who’s starting out who wanted a good recorder. And I just felt much better about that fact that it was being used and wasn’t just sitting in my closet anymore. But plugins are this that way. I wish I knew what to do with all these plugins that I don’t really want or care about anymore. I wish it was easier to sell them

René Coronado 57:54
that did it affect your workflow, Tim? I mean, as far as is it? Is it more streamlined now without having to wade through all the plugins?

Timothy Muirhead 58:01
Well, yeah, I’ve actually getting a plugin out of you know, the menu is easier. But yeah, the truth is, I just wasn’t using all these plugins. And a lot of the plugins that I purchased, I purchased stupidly because I purchased because of the price not because of a need. So like you get an email ….

René Coronado 58:20
We all nodded our heads there five heads going up and down….

Tim Nielsen 58:23
Everybody is nodding,

Timothy Muirhead 58:23
or you get an email from iZotope or whatever that you know blankety blank reverb is on sale for, you know, $29.99. But, and then it’s 80% off, you see that? How can I lose, you know, and then you spend that $29.99. And as you guys are saying, if it’s under 100 bucks, you know, you don’t necessarily, it’s not something you are lamenting 20 years from now, but it is just something that I ended up not using, because you’re also when those emails come in, you’re in the middle of a big tight deadline. And you’re like, I’ll get to that when I’m done this deadline, I’ll take the time to go relearn it. And then two weeks later, when you’ve delivered your session, you’ve forgotten about it. And you’re just moving on to the next thing. And that’s one of the things I find really hard is finding the time when I do buy something to dedicate to learn that thing that I’ve just bought.

René Coronado 59:08
Yes, it’s the same thing with plugins as is with microphones, you have to sit and bang on it for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours to really figure out what the heck is even going on there so much. And sometimes you find some plugins that you just love, like there’s a Native Instruments delay. That I forget what it’s called….

Mark Kilborn 59:25
Replika

René Coronado 59:25
but I just Replika, it’s freakin amazing. Mark knows when talking about it’s so easy to make anything sound good. And I’m a delay guy. I’m not a reverb guy. And it’s just like, I love it. I love that thing. And it’s so easy. And it’s just like, I don’t need another delay in my life anywhere at all. You know, it’s just the best and sometimes you run into that right? And then you find the one thing it’s like you knew exactly how that thing works and what its gonna do when you just don’t need another one. You know, but you don’t get to that point unless you sit with an individual plugin and bang it forever and really figure out what the heck it’s even doing.

Tim Nielsen 59:58
Yeah, Tim I did the same thing like every everybody But once a year, maybe once every year and a half, I kind of wipe my computer just preemptively and kind of rebuild it. And every time I go through my set of plugins and all my installers and I have keep a list of all the ones that I own, and I go to do I want to install it this time, because the truth is, when you install 500 or 600, plugins, you know, it’s, it’s probably the cause of the instability in the first place that’s causing you to rebuild your computer, to be honest, you know, some of those plugins don’t get update, I mean, it’s impossible to keep track of updates of all these plugins as well. So I try it, and then, you know, eventually, I slowly install them as I want them or need them. And but yeah, I mean, I’m the same way I have, I’m sure 35 to 40% of the plugins that I’ve bought, haven’t been used in five years, probably never get used, again, the assets just sitting there. And it’s being completely wasted at this point, you know,

René Coronado 1:00:46
you know, Mark, you were talking about how you’re worried that if you start allocating money, specifically to do reinvestment, right, even if you exclude, say, exclude education from it, like, I’m just gonna take, you know, 150 bucks a month and move it over to this account. And I’m just gonna use that to buy stuff for sound. Right, right. And your concern is that I’m just gonna spend it and it’s just gonna evaporate. What I have found in practice, for me anyway, is that the impulse purchases disappear. And the reason they disappear, is because I’m constantly saving for the bigger thing, right? I’m like, I want that freakin M930 microphone, that’s the one I want in my life. And this $30 plugin is going to keep me from that. And so I just end up like, not going down the road of the impulse purchases, because I end up with certain targets that that I’m always got my eBay searches going, you know what I mean? And I know how far away I am from him, like a seven year old with this allowance. Just like

Mark Kilborn 1:01:40
I get that

René Coronado 1:01:41
I’m going to save up and buy that Nintendo man, it’s gonna happen.

Mark Kilborn 1:01:43
No, I totally get that. I think the difference between you and I are the two different the two key differences I think I have in my situation are A, I can be really, really impulsive. And I have been for a very, very long time, kind of like what Tim was describing, and be I, I mean, I’m very fortunate to be able to say this, I don’t have any big purchases I want to make. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that, like I can’t even think of a microphone I want to buy right now. I’m really, really fortunate.

Tim Nielsen 1:02:08
Well, we’ll talk privately afterwards. I’ve got a list. Yeah,

Mark Kilborn 1:02:11
please don’t. And that doesn’t mean I won’t come upon something in the future, obviously. Or maybe somebody will come along with something that’ll blow my mind as much as you know, something I’ve already purchased. But as it stands, I’ve got nothing big that I want. And nothing for the most part aside from the occasional impulsive purchase. I’ve got nothing that’s more interesting to me than my retirement account, frankly. I mean, that’s what it comes down to is that’s more interesting to me at this point. Mm hmm.

Timothy Muirhead 1:02:40
Cool. Well, thanks for joining us, everybody. Today, this is really interesting talk. It’s nice to hear everybody’s different kind of philosophies on how they go about acquiring and in Tim’s case on acquiring equipment these days. So thanks for joining us, everybody who’s great to have you.

Tim Nielsen 1:02:57
Thanks for having us. It was great.

Mark Kilborn 1:02:58
Thank you very much.

Kristina Morss 1:02:59
Thank you.

Timothy Muirhead 1:03:01
Before we leave this episode, I want to send a super huge and humble thanks to Michael O’Connor, who volunteered to edit and mix this episode. Michael is a very active member of the field recording slack. And I’ve learned a lot from him over the last few years. So it was really an honor when he reached out to help out the podcast on this episode. If you’re unfamiliar with Michael, he is a film and television sound designer, as well as the owner of Audio Shade libraries, which you can check out at audioshade.com. I personally have the quadcopter library and I’ve used it a lot. It’s awesome. It’s great stuff. Okay, that’s all for now. My name is Tim Muirhead and on behalf of Rene Coronado and our guests in this episode, Kristina Morss, Tim Nielsen and Mark Kilborn. Thanks for listening, and keep your ears peeled for future episodes of Tonebenders.

Narrator 1:03:50
Tonebenders is produced by Timothy Muirhead, Rene Coronado and Teresa Morrow. theme music is by Mark Strait. Send your emails to [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter via @thetonebenders and join TonebendorsPodcast on Facebook. Support this podcast. You can use our links when you shop with Amazon or b&h or leave us a tip. Just go to Tonebendors podcast.com and click the support button. Thanks for listening.

Timothy Muirhead 1:04:21
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