The CD recording of Standing Stones of Beara was begun shortly after my trip to southwest Ireland in 2003. The (mostly) original acoustic and electronic instrumentals were recorded entirely by myself in SONAR Producer Edition running on a Pentium 4 custom PC with 2 GIG of RAM and "silent" power supplies to reduce fan noise. Tracking was configured for 24-bit resolution, 44.1 kHz sample rate.

Violin, mandolin, mandola, and acoustic guitar were recorded with a combination of tube microphones (MXL V69, Rode K2) into an RME FireFace 800 firewire audio interface, and later, via a Presonus ADL600 tube preamp and Joe Meek Twin-Q preamp. These tracks were mixed with a DI feed from transducer pickups on my instruments (my "live" setup). Synth bass, keyboard synth pads, and most drum tracks were created using an Alesis QS 6.2 synth, or with Cakewalk's Dimension Pro software synthesizer. A bodhrain purchased in Dublin was also used on some drum tracks, and recorded with an SM57 mic.

Jeff Whitmore also overdubbed some electric and acoustic bass tracks on several tunes. The electric was recorded direct into the ADL600, and the bowed double bass was recorded with one of the tube condenser mics as well as an SM87 on the fingerboard. The addition of the bowed bass adds an "eirey" background layer to the title track, "Standing Stones'.

Final mastering of the exported stereo 2-track mixes was accomplished in Wavelab 5, using a combination of Voxengo, UAD-1, and Crysonic VST plugins. Little or no compression was used, and volume was raised by limiting. The mix level was increased to around -13 to -14 DBFS average RMS, with peaks no higher than -5 DBFS. Wavelab's audio montage was used to sequence and top/tail the individual clips, and dither the final output using UV22-HR to 16-bit 44.1 kHz for the master CD-R.

I created the CD insert artwork using Adobe InDesign 2.0. The CD was manufactured by DiskFaktory in California. The project took over 3 years to complete, from late 2003 to early 2007, working part-time of course.  If I were to release this CD again I would have it professionally mastered, but otherwise I am quite happy with the result. Working on this project has inspired me to go further in my development as a recording engineer. I have since added more external hardware to my mastering and tracking chains, and additonal UAD-1 plugins. The basic process remains the same, however, in my current work.