There's No Stupid Like Home Studio Stupid.

[Ted]

A couple of my classics, already explored in other threads:

Sadly, I fried mine this AM too.  It was plugged into the Boss AC adapter. Update: It was plugged into the wrong AC adapter. When I turned it on it went POP, and now won't work even on battery power--so consider yourself lucky.

And this one (condensed version):

Terry came over and recorded his parts--but I wasn't too savvy about AUTo Punch, so I accidentally deleted some of Terry's work.

I managed to repair and loop Terry's guitar part late last year, which was probably about three hours of work.  I got really good at copying and moving tracks.

In March this year, I was preparing to do some more work, and I fried my Micro BR--including the SD card. 1

I not only lost my Micro BR, I lost all the work I'd done over months--since my last backup.  I replaced the Micro BR with a new one and restored what I had backed up.

Earlier this month, I re-did all the lost edits on Terry's guitar part, and recorded my own guitar and synth parts. I also recorded Anne's angelic vocals only to discover later that one of our cats meowed just as Anne's voice faded out, on the last note, on her best take.

I started to run out of v-tracks. Rather than erase tracks that had already been bounced, I bounced the tracks I had done to a "working stereo pair," I OPTimized the song, and then created a new copy.

I did about an hour of work on the new copy before I realized that one of the optimizes v-tracks was two-measures out of sync with the others. The culprit had to have been the optimization process. So I re-bounced those v-tracks, EXPorted them to a WAV file, and then IMPorted them to the new copy of the song.

I backed up the SD card, reformatted it, and restored the files.

Things got worse.  Every time I tried to work on the song, I got Card Read Errors, and Disk Busy problems.  The new copy of the song was unusable.  I had to do all of that work again.

I deleted the new copy of the song (losing an hour of work, plus the time I spent fiddling with the problems), and created yet another copy.

That disaster led to Bluesberry writing a whole song about the clusterfuck: "The Ballad of Despair and Redemption with a MicroBR, a Shotglass and a Shotgun"

[StephenM]

Okay time for a thread where you share the most embarassing and DUMB mistakes you ever made in your home studio. 

I'll go first. The second of the stories below literally just happened to me today. I just bought a pair of Behringer C2 microphones.   These are small cylindrical small element condensor mics that require phantom power. 

Bonehead Move 1 : Plug them into my BOSS BR Recorder and they DO NOT WORK.  Consider returning them.  Then later read the manual and find that they do need phantom power so they won't work with the Boss but they WILL work with your regular Audio interface if you have Phantom Power switched on.

Bonehead Move 2:  This one just today.   Plugged both microphones in, turned them on.  One sounds great, the other sounds terrible.  There's a 1 khz shriek, and a lot of noise, and almost no signal.      Record a sample of the noise floor, analyze it with Voxengo span.   Assume my Audio Interface is broken and that I need to buy a new one.  Compose a ranty message to post on a Steinberg forum.  Then look at my interface. There's a SWITCH on that, mate.  It's High-Z.  Input 2 is in High-Z mode, the high impedance mode meant for guitars, not microphones, ya stupid git. 

When I turned off the High-Z mode, my Behringer C-2 microphones sound great, both of them, and I don't need to buy a new audio interface.

So yeah.  I'm dumb this way.

Your turn.

Warren

fun huh?  yup... I've done the z thing.... but the phantom power I knew about because years ago i read up on condenser mics....I have done a good bit of PA work for bands and speaking engagements etc...so I had always used dynamic mics....read up on all those things....it's just how I am...I love reading technical documents and finding out about things...

[StephenM]

I wear hearing aids (as playing in bands wrecked my hearing, be careful out there kids). I'm working on a new track, have got the drums and some bass synth done. Spent most of yesterday fiddling about and redoing stuff because it all sounded a bit odd. The drum balance was out of whack and it just didn't sound right. Spent hours fiddling with it.

Then at the end of the day I realised I had my hearing aids on the wrong program setting. There is a special "Music" setting which has no compression, noise reduction or EQ applied so that I hear music really accurately. Sadly I had not switched to this setting and instead had been on one of the "everyday" settings that applies all sorts of audio effects. When I switched to the proper Music setting, it all sounded s*it again........

and so you got to do it all again right?  well, that is how we get better at stuff...besides, as good at engineering as you are we all need to be handicapped...so we have a fighting chance against your recordings....

[StephenM]

Okay not in the studio just outside I have a chain link fence going around the outside the 2 inch gate post is missing the top cap so I look at it the other day it is filled with water so I am going to fix it the cap does not quite fit because of a burr at the top so instead of cutting it I grab the big hammer because it is closer.  Hold the pipe with one hand I put the cap at the top and give it a good whack no I did not hit my hand lol but the cap went way down and my index finger at the bottom of it gets rolled between the cap and post and neatly cuts a chunk out of the bottom of my finger vegamatic slice so no guitar playing for a bit
Should have stayed in the studio lol

oh no...THAT HURT ME just reading this

[StephenM]

When I first started using the BR1600 i would get the bounces all messed up... I would forget to turn down the stuff i ddn't want in the bounce... I'd be scratching my head off...
or how about doing an entire take that you just loved, 4 minutes long and realize you never armed the record?  multiple times...
mixing a song and realize you left the click track in...
the cool thing is...I am not paying by the hour!

[Ferryman]

the cool thing is...I am not paying by the hour!

Now ain't that the truth! Thanks goodness we aren't stumping up our hard earned cash to let someone else make these mistakes........

I guess we all just like to prove we are human.....

[T.C. Elliott]

Not arming the darn track isn't a mistake... it's a habit. 

I switch my audio system from the BR-900 to the computer. If I'm recording guitars and bass and anything line in, I just use the 900 through the system. If I'm recording vocals or acoustic guitar etc., I switch to headphones (ie, I'm SUPPOSED to turn off the stereo.) But with the headphones on I don't always hear the speakers are still playing and my awesome acoustic guitar take has the click track or backing track on it. Sometimes it takes me a while to figure it out because it blends in pretty nicely until I put the WAV files into reaper. Luckily I do this a lot less often these days.

[WarpCanada]

I definitely do read the BR manual, ALL THE TIME.  I just can't seem to memorize stuff.   I think I may write down some checklists like pilots do.

If I were to use it MORE FREQUENTLY maybe I'd get it all in my memory.

The great thing with the BR is just that I use it like some folks would just have used a tape recorder. new track, hit record, and get my demos and ideas down, so they're not lost.

If ONLY I could just remember to plug the unit in and back UP sometimes! (facepalm)