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Hammer Floyd posted:Speaking of bass... This is as good a post as any to share this link: Interactive Frequency Chart If we could just add this to the OP of any recording thread, I think it should be the standard response to most of the EQ questions we get around here.
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| # ? May 25, 2011 20:09 |
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| # ? May 25, 2013 15:06 |
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I made a little diagnostic sound file thing today that I thought might be cool to put in here, since it's pretty pertinent to mixing. It's just a 40hz sine wave which slowly sweeps up to 300ish, and lets you really clearly hear what the low end response of your room is like. Yeah, crappy low end response isn't big news but I had never really appreciated how major an issue it is (especially to home recording) until I tried this myself. http://mark.qsmusic.net/40hzsine_sweep.mp3 (I generated this at a pretty safe level but make sure not to play it too loud) Sit where you normally mix, and as the pitch increases listen for large dips or swells in volume. The more consistent it stays the better shape you're in. There are all sorts of ugly resonances in the low end caused by room acoustics that you often might not notice or might mistakenly try to correct with EQ thinking it's a problem with one of your tracks. I was amazed at how lousy the low end response in my room is despite steps I've taken to treat it already. There's a big null right where I sit to mix 
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| # ? May 27, 2011 18:35 |
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Schlieren posted:I only listened to Song 3 (through 2 minutes then skipped through the rest of the track, whatever) and I didn't hear any problem with the drummer's dynamics, but you are right about the bass at least in terms of its not fitting in with the rest of the mix (meaning I wouldn't worry about it unless you were trying to impress someone else who records music). It sounds farty and flat. A lot of that is whatever the hell tone that guy decided he liked because it doesn't work with the sort of modern contemporary "soundscape" thing you had going on... he needed something more J-bassy, tone rolled off, warm. The guitars sound Kinda the same with the soundscape thing. The flute player was controlling his own delay unit and was slathering it on and all the keyboard parts and loops were coming to me down 1 stereo feed from the key player. The leads and most of the keys seemed to fall in the right place so I left all of that alone. If you had listened farther you would have heard a part where the drummer started playing light enough that my gates were missing some of what he was doing I think. The singer was loving whispering half the time, it was really difficult to get him out over it all. That's where especially the Crystalizer you hear dicing up the sibilants and bouncing them around usually comes in handy. That's essentially what a slapback delay does IMO, it draws the ear to the percussive parts of the speech. It didn't really work on this guy though, he was so sibilant and breathy I eventually realized I had to telephone filter all the effects to make them not annoying. But if you listen on something like a laptop the delays do just barely make the vocals come out. The response of a PA system is way better, but with so much energy bouncing around the room and the varying experience depending on where you are kind of makes the resolution similar in terms of mixing. I spend a lot of time listening to my boardfeeds after the fact because I find I can make them a lot better by making minor changes that you might not even notice in the PA. I'm basically trying to train myself to make those changes as a matter of course. So no worries about bona fides, appreciate the comments anyway. Not trying to win Grammies, just market myself to bands. 
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| # ? May 28, 2011 14:42 |
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The general rule of thumb I've found with metal guitar is this: Your guitar is distorted enough. Stop it. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to metal shows and have been completely unable to make out the actual notes and chords the guitarist is making! All I hear is distortion! So clean it up, turn down the bass, and turn on the goddamn midrange!
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| # ? May 28, 2011 20:32 |
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RivensBitch posted:This is as good a post as any to share this link: This is GOLD. Problems solved. You are Jebus.
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| # ? Jun 1, 2011 11:12 |
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Are there any reasons why vocals would make my ears feel uncomfortable when listening to a mix in headphones vs. any where else? Some weird frequency clashing?
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| # ? Jun 1, 2011 21:13 |
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Yeah, depending on the headphones and how well they reproduce sound, some are more fatiguing to ears than others. Google "Ear fatigue" and there are plenty of forum pundits that have an opinion on the matter, but in my experience it's a function of comfort of the physical headphones on my ears, and how accurately they reproduce sound.
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| # ? Jun 1, 2011 21:48 |
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RivensBitch posted:Yeah, depending on the headphones and how well they reproduce sound, some are more fatiguing to ears than others. Google "Ear fatigue" and there are plenty of forum pundits that have an opinion on the matter, but in my experience it's a function of comfort of the physical headphones on my ears, and how accurately they reproduce sound. Yeah they're garbage 5 dollar earbuds I picked up for working out. I've just been testing out my mix on all different systems and for some reason the tunes were like goddamned dog whistles.
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| # ? Jun 2, 2011 00:15 |
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weekly font posted:Yeah they're garbage 5 dollar earbuds I picked up for working out. I've just been testing out my mix on all different systems and for some reason the tunes were like goddamned dog whistles. The nasal cavities in your head have resonant frequencies and maybe youve got a pair of headphones with a peak near some of your particular resonant frequencies or the harmonics thereabouts? That would bug the poo poo out of me, like when you stick just your ears underwater in the bathtub and talk or whatever
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| # ? Jun 2, 2011 01:06 |
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The thing is it only happens with an unmastered mix of one of my songs so while it's probably my headphones, as it doesn't happen anywhere else, it's still weird to me.
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| # ? Jun 3, 2011 01:44 |
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I'm having some problems with a female vocalist I've been working with. She has this problem where her S is really hard and comes through on the mic quite loudly. I even have a track where there's some delay on it and the repeating S just sounds loving annoying. Is there a technique to getting rid of such things? I tried to EQ it out but it seems like the S is right around her presence range and it just makes her vocals sound more muffled.
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| # ? Jun 3, 2011 05:00 |
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cat doter posted:I'm having some problems with a female vocalist I've been working with. She has this problem where her S is really hard and comes through on the mic quite loudly. I even have a track where there's some delay on it and the repeating S just sounds loving annoying. I use volume envelopes to de-ess manually and go through the vocalist's waveform and find all the "S"es and plot three or four points and drag down and select waveform for each of the "S"es which is lots and lots of fun!!!  Also I'll use panning envelopes from time to time if the vocals are, say, 5 or 15 or 20 % off-center; if I pull them back to the middle during an S the overall vocal output goes down subtly. I've only used that when I really wanted all the sibilants though. I've found this to be time-consuming but it really gives me lots of control over just which "S"es I want quashed, and just how much; at times I've turned sibilants up if it helped make pronunciation of a word more distinct through a cymbal wash or feedbacky guitar or whatever
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| # ? Jun 3, 2011 05:57 |
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Doing it all by hand with envelopes will always give you the most control, but you can also use a de-esser, which is really just a specialized compressor. You can get a decent but rather old free one here.
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| # ? Jun 3, 2011 06:15 |
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Or just tell her to de emphasize her "S" sounds when singing.
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| # ? Jun 3, 2011 06:57 |
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Oh I have, I even make snake noises to make fun of her. It's not as if she's emphasising on them, they just come out really harsh for some reason.
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| # ? Jun 3, 2011 10:56 |
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cat doter posted:Oh I have, I even make snake noises to make fun of her. It's not as if she's emphasising on them, they just come out really harsh for some reason. Both vocalists for the band Low are good about this if you need some examples; lyrics printed as: No one will admit ignoring the age of my skin come out as: No one wiiiii lladmiiiiii tignorinnnn ngthe aaaa geoooo fm yyyskin
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| # ? Jun 3, 2011 14:09 |
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What Schlieren said. It's takes some thought but you can't eliminate a lot of problems by just singing words in a clever way, for example, "can't buy me love" becomes "gan't buy me love." No one will be the wiser! As an aside to this. I think it's funny that I'm working on an instrumental something that is exactly the opposite of what the thread implies. Trying to make something sound like a bad four track recording that's been baked in the sun for two years. Tape warble, hiss, etc. I like it! It's not very often that you get to hear 100% Hogscraper crafted tracks up here. They usually have 2-6 other people involved. EXCLUSIVE! 
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| # ? Jun 3, 2011 17:14 |
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So I have been trying to record some American Primitive stuff all day and I just can't get it where I want it. I mic'd the guitar mid-side but I keep getting this wierd problem where the right side ends up being much louder than the left and this has alwys happened to me as long as I have been using my M-box. I know i did everything right and I know it. I used an AKG 420 set to figure 8 and a Rhode NT-1 as the mid mic, I copied the AKG and panned them out 100 on each side, and put trim on all 3 and flipped the phase on the right AKG track. Anyway I parallel compressed this by sending all 3 out to an AUX track with a compressor and snuck it up behind the non-compressed. I did limit the master channel I think that got me into some problems. I think something else that would help would be to get a ribbon mic. I don't think the mics I have really capture the subtlety I'm looking for. HELP ME  
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| # ? Jun 4, 2011 20:59 |
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I tried manually using envelopes and while it seemed to work fairly well, it didn't quite work the way I wanted it to. Since those de-essers seem to just put some gain reduction on a narrow frequency range there's more than enough control over the harshest frequencies. It's worked out a lot better imo. Now I just need to work on pitch correction. The tone of her voice is nice enough, but she's not the greatest singer. I don't mind engineering her to the point where she becomes a good singer, but numerous offers to teach her vocal exercises and scales have been rejected. I'm using REAPER (gently caress yeah repear goons unite) and from what I can see there's a few tools for loving with pitch. What's the most effective way to do it? I don't want that very sudden warble that auto tune creates. Feh. Singers. You still doing cheap mastering, Hogscraper? I wanna get this stuff mastered but my budget isn't exactly high and since I'm producer/engineer on the record my finances kinda rest on its success. It only needs modest sales for me to break even, so I hope mastering doesn't break the bank. I'd hate to release it un-mastered 
cat doter fucked around with this message at Jun 6, 2011 around 16:15 |
| # ? Jun 6, 2011 16:11 |
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I've been trying to understand how to widen tracks and increase their stereo field. Is this a practice that is generally applied to songs that feature mono recordings, such as rock/metal songs that require a mono input from a guitar/bass/vocals? Or does this apply to Electronic music as well (even though most samples & VSTs are stereo already)? Because I make electronic music, I usually just widen the vocals by using two takes panned hard left & right, and offsetting them a few milliseconds. But in terms of the synths, should I bother touching them with a vst to widen? Or should they be good as is? And if I do need to go about widening them, what VST would you guys recommend? I've done some reading and this one looks to be pretty viable - http://www.nugenaudio.com/stereoizer.php Any opinions? Thanks! E1M5 fucked around with this message at Jun 6, 2011 around 18:26 |
| # ? Jun 6, 2011 18:04 |
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Ableton Live has this built in, as part of the Utility. That aside, iZotope Ozone can do this multi-band.
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| # ? Jun 6, 2011 18:10 |
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Twiin posted:Ableton Live has this built in, as part of the Utility. That aside, iZotope Ozone can do this multi-band. Thanks. I changed up my post a little bit, made it a little more informative for what I was after. I'm not sure if I could justify spending $200 on Ozone just for the exciter/multi-band widener, honestly. That's the only thing that looks appealing at ozone, anyway. Or in this situaton would Ozone on the master bus be better than widening separate instruments on separate buses?
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| # ? Jun 6, 2011 18:27 |
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E1M5 posted:I've been trying to understand how to widen tracks and increase their stereo field. Is this a practice that is generally applied to songs that feature mono recordings, such as rock/metal songs that require a mono input from a guitar/bass/vocals? Or does this apply to Electronic music as well (even though most samples & VSTs are stereo already)? I think a lot of this depends on your synth, but my virus has several tools to pan out synths, one of my favorite is the unison setting which basically doubles your entire synth and has a knob to pan, detune, and offset LFOs for the duplications. If you're using a soft synth but it doesn't have this feature, an easy technique would be to duplicate the entire synth track, VST and all, and then detune and pan the duplicate yourself. If you're using a hardware synth and tracking it back to audio, duplicate the audio tracks and manually detune and pan those. I'm not sure how to do it in reaper, but in ableton a simpler way to do this would be to create a new track, arm it's input monitoring and set it's input to the track of the synth. Then add a pitch/detune plugin and pan the new track. Rinse and repeat as needed. Even simpler solutions would be to use ping pong delays, flangers, and chorus effects.
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| # ? Jun 6, 2011 22:29 |
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E1M5 posted:And if I do need to go about widening them, what VST would you guys recommend?
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| # ? Jun 7, 2011 02:54 |
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@cat doter e-mail me. I'm sure we can work out a budget where everyone is happy. neonmastering @ gmail
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| # ? Jun 7, 2011 19:12 |
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Just finished a 5 song demo EP for a local band I was put into contact with last October! It's the first major recording project I've undertaken as a student. Three of the songs were recorded in their jam space, two were recorded in the University of Lethbridge's brand new recording studio. Critiques are encouraged! Lock 'N' Load
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| # ? Jun 8, 2011 18:47 |
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Holy clipping batman!
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| # ? Jun 8, 2011 20:18 |
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Yarr, lots of clipping and compression pumping.
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| # ? Jun 9, 2011 02:13 |
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Hey guys, not sure if this has been covered or anything but I couldn't find it in the FAQ thread. Is there any specific technique you guys use for finalization mastering? I'm really happy with how my mixes are coming out and everything sits really nicely, but when comparing it to any major label cd, it just lacks a small amount of shine. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but something that'll give it a pretty small level boost and just the shine and oomph to make it cd quality. I don't want to add anymore compression or anything else as I like how everything is sounding really open and natural right now, but yeah it definitely needs a little something.
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| # ? Jun 9, 2011 05:27 |
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SVU Fan posted:Hey guys, not sure if this has been covered or anything but I couldn't find it in the FAQ thread. Is there any specific technique you guys use for finalization mastering? I'm really happy with how my mixes are coming out and everything sits really nicely, but when comparing it to any major label cd, it just lacks a small amount of shine. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but something that'll give it a pretty small level boost and just the shine and oomph to make it cd quality. I don't want to add anymore compression or anything else as I like how everything is sounding really open and natural right now, but yeah it definitely needs a little something. I know mastering engineers use dedicated gear to get good results out of their work, and that a shitload of theory and expertise are required. Either you invest the time learning how to master, or find a dude that can do it for you and invest your time honing your mixing skills, which is a huge, HUGELY important skill that I don't think should be compromised.
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| # ? Jun 9, 2011 06:04 |
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quote:Is there any specific technique you guys use for finalization mastering? Is basically the same as saying: quote:Is there any specific technique you guys use for playing guitar? My favorite technique is years of practice honing a skill so that I can creatively wield it in ways that are esthetically pleasing to the ear. Or, you know, hiring a mastering engineer.
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| # ? Jun 9, 2011 08:38 |
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Sorry guys, I should've been more specific. I didn't necessarily want a one stop fix or amazing one button plugin or anything, but even with learning to mix or learning to play guitar, there are good techniques and useful tricks that make the process easier (hooray to being a highschool guitar teacher). You posted a frequency chart earlier that will help make instruments sit in the mix together well, so I guess I was looking for something similar but mastering related. I know the extreme benefits of hiring somebody who knows what they're doing to do an album because I've done it many times before, but now I'm trying to become that person! This is the Getting poo poo To Sound Good thread, and I know you guys are very knowledgeable from reading your posts in other ML threads, so I thought I'd ask
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| # ? Jun 9, 2011 09:21 |
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SVU Fan posted:You posted a frequency chart earlier that will help make instruments sit in the mix together well, so I guess I was looking for something similar but mastering related. I know the extreme benefits of hiring somebody who knows what they're doing to do an album because I've done it many times before, but now I'm trying to become that person! 
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| # ? Jun 9, 2011 13:31 |
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Bob Katz' book is pretty much the bible for any up and coming mastering engineer right now. Mastering is all context specific and having a lot of good sounding solutions to many different types of audio problems. Experience trumps all in that profession. My experience is telling me that if you think the track is a little dark before the mastering step that would be something I would fix in mixing. Anyway, I heard of this one goon who does mastering for other goons at almost half of his normal rate. You should get ahold of that guy, send him a mix, and let him swap some notes on your mix with you.
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| # ? Jun 9, 2011 15:10 |
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Hogscraper posted:Anyway, I heard of this one goon who does mastering for other goons at almost half of his normal rate. You should get ahold of that guy, send him a mix, and let him swap some notes on your mix with you. I heartily recommend this solution!
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| # ? Jun 9, 2011 19:22 |
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SVU Fan posted:Hey guys, not sure if this has been covered or anything but I couldn't find it in the FAQ thread. Is there any specific technique you guys use for finalization mastering? I'm really happy with how my mixes are coming out and everything sits really nicely, but when comparing it to any major label cd, it just lacks a small amount of shine. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but something that'll give it a pretty small level boost and just the shine and oomph to make it cd quality. I don't want to add anymore compression or anything else as I like how everything is sounding really open and natural right now, but yeah it definitely needs a little something. You may not want more compression, but putting a fast, low-ratio compressor on every song will bump up the volume without clipping. If you are comparing your song to a "major label cd" a huge part of why it "lacks a small amount of shine" is that its quieter. You may have lots of mixing experience, but almost everyone is fooled into thinking it sounds "better", or "fuller", when its actually just louder. As far a mastering, I don't really have much experience, but what I do know is that you shouldn't be 'fixing' anything in mastering, that happens in mixing (or really recording). Mastering is taking a selection of songs and making them sound like a group of songs. Get a mastering program (like Wavelab, I don't know any others) and play all the songs back to back, skipping back and forth at random points. Make sure they are all similar volumes, and have similar bass/treble levels. Also, Hogscraper is apparently a good mastering engineer and can help you out for a modest fee.
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| # ? Jun 10, 2011 02:38 |
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Give Hogz a handy and he'll hand you the world, that's what I always say
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| # ? Jun 10, 2011 04:26 |
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I love the "getting poo poo to sound good" part of this thread title! I don't have much to offer, I think anyone reading this thread and wanting to reap its benefits should do some pondering on what RivensBitch and wixard have to say. To back that up: I've spent the last 7 years working in the technical trenches of the company(s) that makes Pro Tools. And I can tell you with 100% certainty that the tools have very little to do with it. If you want to create a good recording, you just have to learn how to make good recordings. Not much different than learning how to play an instrument. If you're obsessing over gear, STOP!
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| # ? Jun 10, 2011 05:28 |
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OK I've got a question and it's as generic as hell: the snare drum. Why do all mine sound rear end Aim at the ring, aim at the center, play carefully, play with abandon, mic the top, the bottom, both top and bottom, whatever: in order to get it to sound like anything I have to mix in a sample of a good hit, add a shitload of short-duration reverb, and then brickwall the entire thing, and even then it just doesn't sound good. I can get a good kick, good cymbals, good toms. The snare: gently caress you it sounds awful. It's not a cheap snare either, it's tuned properly and when I started recording the skins were new. Help
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| # ? Jun 10, 2011 06:25 |
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| # ? May 25, 2013 15:06 |
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If you don't have someone IRL helping you figure out drums, go buy Superior Drummer 2. You've got a lot of drum choices with everything miced right, and from there you can figure out your mic balance, compression, and EQ choices with pristine sources.
Duck and burger fucked around with this message at Jun 10, 2011 around 13:15 |
| # ? Jun 10, 2011 12:59 |
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