Hi - I'm Andy :) I'm thirty years old and lead guitarist with Smokehand by night; software developer for a large media organisation by day.
I've been an avid listener since a young age. I love the vast majority of music and, although I don't have a large collection, it covers a lot of ground! You can see my listening habits here: http://www.last.fm/user/Codmate/ I love avant garde, jazz and experimental music the most. I started playing the guitar at about age 14, learning a little classical before moving to jazz, blues and rock styles. Some of my main influences on the instrument are Marc Ribot, Lenny Breau, Jimi Hendrix and David Gilmour. I have a small home studio and am interested in music production. I'm lucky enough to have friends who have worked with the likes of Coil, Richard D James and Luke Haines - so I have picked up lots of interesting recording and musical tips over the years :) As a member of the band, I'm also a keen arranger, and I guess good arrangements are really one of my main passions! At home I use Cubase3 SL, Active Whafedale Diamond 8.2 monitors, M-Audio Delta66 + OmniStudio Soundcard/Mixer for music production. I have the usual sorts of guitars - LP Studio, Strat (with SCN pups) and a few nice acoustics, including a Burguet flamenco guitar. I use a Fender Custom Vibrolux Reverb amp, which I consider to be as much an 'instrument' as the guitar I happen to be playing. In other rooms around the house I have a few different rigs: Kitchen - Wharfdale Diamond Pro, NAD 3020i, SB3 Bedroom - Quad L-ite, Sonic Super-T-Amp, SB3 Lounge - Quad ESL57, Quad 77, Cambridge DACMagic2, Cambridge CD4 They are a bit of a mess! I know the lounge set-up is particularly weird and unbalanced, but I plan to rectify it soon - and treat the ESL57s to a refurbishment! They are all set-up pretty badly right now - apart from the bedroom set-up. I have plans though... lots of plans... I keep all my music on CD, and have recently encoded it all to FLAC :) My audio philosophy... Well - for a start, I'm not much of a believer in high-end cables. If it rejects RF well and has good connectors - then it's OK with me! I like XLR for this reason. It goes 'clunk' ;) I've been in quite a few recording studios now and seen the dodgy cables they often use! I figure that there isn't much point in spending more than £10 a meter on a speaker cable for home, when the cable between the desk and studio wall-box1 has to be tweaked by the engineer to get any kind of reasonable signal ;) I think anybody trying to achieve 'the original sound' is possibly a bit misguided. I mean - what is 'the original sound'? 3" from the soundhole of the guitar? Inside the piano? Behind the piano? In-front of the piano? Also, engineers use EQ, and many other techniques, to give each instrument its own place in a mix. This is a good thing IMO. A good mix is an art form in itself. When I get audio reproduction gear, I'm just trying to get a clear re-representation of the performance(s). You're always going to be several stages removed from the musicians' performances, especially with studio-produced material, and rightly so IMO. The engineers' jobs are just as much performances as the musicians, especially in the old days when you had to 'ride the faders' - often with a friend. Ahh - the old days of "you take the bass and the strings, and I'll take the guitar and kit" *nostalgia* =D That said, I love the electrostatic sound. The perceived speed of response of a speaker is important to me as I really pick up on detail. I'm a bit of a stickler for stereo field. As a teenager I spent hours trying to adjust my budget gear to get a half-decent image. I'm looking for transparency I guess. Whatever's on the medium - I want to hear it! I'm here to give and get advice - and that's all really :) Cheers! -- Codmate ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Codmate's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7154 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=30141
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