…of how we produced the Album.
Recording:
Mics: AKG (C1000S , C414B-ULS & D190 ), Audio
–Technica 4050 ‚ Beyerdynamic M300N © & M201, Fame PZM , MXL 2006, Neumann KM184 & KMS105 , Sennheiser (ME-20, MD21 , MD431, MD421 & MD441), Salossi G7 & Conradine, Samsung YP-U2, t.Bone SC-450
Interfaces I: Vocals: Siemens V72 Preamp, dbx 166XL Compressor with small soft-knee into RME Multiface on The Children Of Lir, Paddy’s Lament, The Foggy Dew and He Moves Through the Fair. Recorded on Cubase.
Interfaces II: All other Songs recorded on Fostex MR8-HD with various Mics from the above list.
Interfaces III: Some overdubs come directly from GarageBand, which were recorded with the Tascam US 144.
Mixing and Effect Processing
All tracks were mixed using the follwing environment:
2x ESI nEar 05 near-field monitors
RME Hammerfall DSP Multiface (via PCMCIA)
Acer Aspire 3628 Notebook with 2GB RAM
for connecting with the RME
Acer Aspire 5738 as remote console via
my kitchen through WLAN
Debian 5.0.4 (Lenny) on both machines.
Ecasound v2.7.0
LADSPA (version 1.1 of ladspa.h)
SWH-Plugins v0.4.15
midicontroller-041011
CMT 1.16
The collection of helper programs to manage the audio projects. I called them ecascripts, because they are scripts that handle all stuff for me to get along with ecasound. I guess they might be in version 0.2 now. 
. Feel free to ask for further information on it.
Vim 7.1.314 as the main frontend for editing the eca project files.
Plenty of tuesdays…
Lots of electrolytes (i.e. crisps) and *some* Bitburger
The carpet, that really tied the room together…
Mastering:
During our mixing sessions, we noticed that while the listening through the RME sounded wonderful, the Aspire 3628 produced sort of hard drive-rattling into the bounced wave files. For the whole dsp was on 32bit and the quite funny side-effects of the notebook, we decided to make the final bounces on another machine. We used my virtual 64bit server with Two Intel Xeon 3.20GHz Dual cores and some RAM wi’hich is in a datacenter nearby Frankfurt. We already had a Debian 5.0.4 on it and a 100/10 asymmetric DSL line, so everything was fine. After compiling and installing Ecasound, the various LADSPA plugin collections and my ecascripts collection, we were able to process the final waves there.
This was our finalizing Environment:
A vServer from Server4You with Debian 5.0.4 on it.
Audio software compiled and installed on the server as listed in the Mixing section.
A NetCologne 100/10 DSL line.
Openssh for remote operation.
Wget for fetching the final bounces.
We used Gnome CD Master for building the TOC files and for burning the master audio CDs. So we had the chance to leave all dsp-related stuff to ecasound and burning as well as cue-ing to the burner. We burnt the master CDs as templates for the glass master on the Aspire 5738
I’m very proud that we were able to bring the CD to life as it took us almost two years to find proper ways to manage it. Finally having decided to go with Linux and especially Ecasound on the Terminal (which I personally love best) gave us all freedom we needed.
I’m also very proud of my band mates. They are so open-minded to get involved with producing that way we did. It’s just another CD (well, it’s two..) but to me it’s our contribution to the freedom in this world. To the good things. To the truth. To peace. Its in the music. Its in the way we did it. And that’s, what the story is all about!
Credits (in alphabetical order):
Analogue Birds, Barbara & Tom, Berenike Langmaak, Beate, Berg & Helge, Christine & Christian, dem Dude, Dir, Elina, unseren Familien & Freunden, Frankfurt, Gesa, Helga & Stefan & Leo, Isa, Johannes Elteste, Kai Vehmanen, Kaja, Matthes, Matthias van den Berg, Maria McAteer, unseren Nachbarn, Nasti, Nicola aus Lippoldsberg, Sabine, Petra, Sascha Katterbach, den Schlagsaiten, Steffi & Jan, Tamara, Tom Szilagyi, Steve Harris, Thomas & Maria, Ulli
References (others may follow):
Ecasound homepage: http://www.eca.cx/ecasound/
LADSPA homepage and various links to plugin libraries: http://www.ladspa.org/
Steve Harris’ LADSPA Plugin Docs, see also http://plugin.org.uk/ for a very inconspicious but ver good reference list.
Wget: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget/
The Children Of Lir homepage: http://www.childrenoflir.de
The Children Of Lir on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/childrenoflir
The Children Of Lir on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/lirmusic
