There's No Stupid Like Home Studio Stupid.

[WarpCanada]

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

[Ray Brookes]

Relax, Warren - it's the kind of dumb thing I'd do too. My recent bonehead episode? Recording a lovely acoustic guitar track with the bass and drums in my cans. Only to realise I still had my monitor speakers sounding out and spilling into the recording. Duh. This from a guy who has spent over 40 years working in various recording studios LOL.

[Farrell Jackson]

Relax, Warren - it's the kind of dumb thing I'd do too. My recent bonehead episode? Recording a lovely acoustic guitar track with the bass and drums in my cans. Only to realise I still had my monitor speakers sounding out and spilling into the recording. Duh. This from a guy who has spent over 40 years working in various recording studios LOL.

Ray, I've done that one several times and had to redo the track. But one time it worked to my benefit by creating a very balanced sound on my acoustic with a slight room reverb. Once I had an intermittent buzz in one monitor and spent an hour tracing down connections and such only to find out it was my wife's hair curler cycling on and off in the house, lol. 

Farrell

[Kody]

I have a mix knob on my audio interface that I often turn all the way to direct monitoring when tracking...I always forget to dial it back to playback to hear what I've just put down. Usually takes me a few seconds of sheer panic before I realize why I'm not hearing anything coming back 

[Kenneth]

Anything i've done from 2010 to 2020!

....make that 2021!

[Ferryman_1957]

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........

[TPB]

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

[Jean Pierre]

Ouch! Ouch! Tim, I feel for you, I'm a musician and a handyman myself, and in the country, there's a lot of work to do in the house and in the garden... and we more or less consciously put our musician's hands in danger...

but as these two activities give me pleasure (music AND DIY)...I continue both activities

[DarrenG / The Devil's Toupee]

This is a stupid thing I've done a few times. Recorded something or updated some tracks..pleased with the progress, only to forget to save the file before turning PC off. DOH!

[WarpCanada]

Ouch.  Every time I use my table saw I contemplate the real end of any ability to play piano or anything else and it causes me to consider the safety of my saw operations.   Hope you heal up soon Tim.