Mixing Thread

[cheddatom]

Mixing is a totally different problem to recording, and so we could do with a seperate thread....



I'm working on an album at the moment for my band creep joint. The drums sound great, and bass is my forte, however, i've recorded way too much guitar. 2 close mics and one distant condensor on every guitar take. 2 takes on Tele bridge, 1 take on Tele mixed brige+neck, 1 take on (basically) an LP. Then there's individual takes (still using 3 mics) for effects like octaved guitar, delay guitar. Then i've recorded some acoustic take of the Tele at home (which sounds amazing). Basically I now have one massive mushy mess of electric guitar.

I know that people like to layer up guitars a lot, so my thinking was that it wouldn't sound that bad, and it doesn't, but it's just not biting through the mix. What would you do?

[Phill]

simple answer? don't use them all? :awesome:

[haze015]

Layering guitars generally doesn't bite at all (Listen to any My Bloody Valentine song).

Cut way back on layers and focus on each layer and what it is actually adding to the track in the first place rather than at the mixing stage :)

[ChrisirhC]

Roll off the bottom end on the guitars as it'll leave room for the bass and kick.

parallel compression will beef each take a bit, if you were going to do layers of guitars I wouldn't have them anywhere near the middle pan wise, but not best to put them way out there either.

[bshuker]

Well for one I would start bus'ing or grouping your guitar tracks up (specifically put the the groups of mics into individual groups per take).

See if there are any good combinations of mic levels to give good blended sounds, and try taking the mics out one by one to see what sounds good.


Important point at this stage: The guitar is a very mid heavy instrument, and its the upper area mids (c5k) that give most of your guitar's presence and bite in a mix.

Guitarists notoriously make the mistake of thinking that a good room sound (shit load of bass gain and treble usually are the culprits) is what you need to translate in a mix. This is wrongo, you want a lot of Mid, you do still want bass, but not a lot, thats why you have a bass guitar, and treble should be enough but not piercing, also a lot of gain will compress a tone and actually make your tone less present.

So consider those sort of things when EQ'ing and auditioning your tracks.


Once you find some good tones within your mics, mute off the tracks you're not using, then consider which mics you can group up and work on in pairs (for example if you've got two sets of rhythm R/L or something, work on those together).

Don't go too mad with processing, a little compression won't hurt if needs be (but try use a multiband so you can even things out where it needs it not crush the whole thing).

You say you've got a lot of layers, you will probably have to work a lot of subtractive Eq'ing (for example take out any areas with a narrow Q that are problematic and clashing, remove it from the track you don't need to be as forward in the mix to let the other track breathe) and some creative panning/automation to get it all to come through how you want it.


Hope that helps a bit.

[Dramatic Hammer]

I'd decide exactly what I want from the guitar, pick takes that contain elements of the desired tone and go from there...
Like one for 'balls', one for 'bite', one for 'chunk' etc etc and blend to get the ultimate sound.

[haze015]

Guitarists notoriously make the mistake of thinking that a good room sound (shit load of bass gain and treble usually are the culprits) is what you need to translate in a mix. This is wrongo, you want a lot of Mid, you do still want bass, but not a lot, thats why you have a bass guitar, and treble should be enough but not piercing, also a lot of gain will compress a tone and actually make your tone less present.

The mistake is guitarists generally develop their sound away from the band, not when they are all in the same room.

[bshuker]

The mistake is guitarists generally develop their sound away from the band, not when they are all in the same room.

Indeed it is. The sound I describe is usually a lot more fulfilling aurally when playing by yourself, a lot (i say a lot, i mean most guitarists who are in amateur bands (by amateur i mean not semi-pro or pro gigging/working)) tend to make this mistake. (also I'm not saying more experienced guitarists don't do it, but again just the general trend tends to be what I've said).

I mean even live people can get it wrong, and will wonder why they aren't cutting through the mix and so forth, it's something that a lot of guitarists need to get told before they realise lol.

Not saying that your guitarists have, it's just meant to be some broad advice.

[Dramatic Hammer]

It's pretty shocking the number of guitarists around here who turn up to gigs without a sensible amp, use a multifx set to scoop and then wonder why it sounds like shit :LOL:

[bshuker]

It's pretty shocking the number of guitarists around here who turn up to gigs without a sensible amp, use a multifx set to scoop and then wonder why it sounds like shit :LOL:

Exactly my point lol

[Dramatic Hammer]

Exactly my point lol

Too many shit metallers :noey:

[bshuker]

Too many shit metallers :noey:

Hahahaha, at least when I was a metalz0r I had good tone. Lol.

[haze015]

It's pretty shocking the number of guitarists around here who turn up to gigs without a sensible amp, use a multifx set to scoop and then wonder why it sounds like shit :LOL:

EQ's are a dangerous thing on guitar amps and pedals :LOL:

[bshuker]

Tbf, even the non-metallers get it wrong, Punk/Hardcore kinda kids are bloody awful aswell. Not cos they scoop, but because it's just like, OHAI TREBLETREBLTREBLEPRESENCE NO MIDS NO BASSS OMG :| then they play it with a Squier Strat on the Bridge pup. It's like, oh god, there goes my 15khz+ for the night. Cheers!

Also I hate all the people that show up with the MG heads and cabs, thinking they have something good...god.

Thinking about this just makes me feel so happy I don't do FOH anymore.

[haze015]

Thinking about this just makes me feel so happy I don't do FOH anymore.

One of the venues I used to do it for had a JCM800 and a Trace Elliot on hand :D

Shame I didn't really do much FOH for the rock stuff there really.

[the_man361]

Mixing is a totally different problem to recording, and so we could do with a seperate thread....



I'm working on an album at the moment for my band creep joint. The drums sound great, and bass is my forte, however, i've recorded way too much guitar. 2 close mics and one distant condensor on every guitar take. 2 takes on Tele bridge, 1 take on Tele mixed brige+neck, 1 take on (basically) an LP. Then there's individual takes (still using 3 mics) for effects like octaved guitar, delay guitar. Then i've recorded some acoustic take of the Tele at home (which sounds amazing). Basically I now have one massive mushy mess of electric guitar.

I know that people like to layer up guitars a lot, so my thinking was that it wouldn't sound that bad, and it doesn't, but it's just not biting through the mix. What would you do?

i'd say to save you from insanity, either find which broadband parts of each channels signal you like and isolate them with a good EQ, or start losing some channels that sound shit... wossat? they all sound good? then you'll have no problem only using one of them, right? :D

i tried to record guitars using too many mics a few times.... imo it /can/ sound okay, but its not worth the effort.. what it takes to get something that is simply phase coherent (let alone sounding good) with 3 mics on a guitar cab is wayy too much effort over yield when compared to a 1 mic on the speaker overdubbed stylee... theres no definition because the guitar does not occupy a specific frequency range, i think you might be getting too much, try and cut it down a bit and show it who's boss... maybe itll play nice then. get the bits you like, lose the rest, and remember it doesnt have to sound amazing in solo mode.

[cheddatom]

Well, first thanks for all the replies.

Half the problem is i'm mixing it with my guitarist in the room, so when I say "we need to get rid of some of these channels" he says "noooo it sounds massive with them all" but if I could just get rid of them without him knowing we'd be OK.

I've currently grouped them by take rather than by mic, so for each take I have a great stereo tone using all three mics. It's just when I add them all back in it's mushy. (they're all high-passed by the way).

At the start of mixing, I was really intimidated by all of the channels of guitar and so I decided (as you've all advised) that we needed to listen to each one and decide which tone was best for which part and use that. It just seems like such a massive task!!

I'm now thinking that as I have a good sound using all three mics, I could group all the channels by mic, and cut the individual takes in and out when they're needed.

anyway, this is why I haven't posted any Creep Joint rough mixes yet. I've got a couple of songs with only 3 layers of guitar on that sound amazing so i'll get them up fairly soon.

[Anthony]

Get someone to hit you every time you reach for the solo button while EQing. It does a world of good to your mixes :P

Less mics means a more phase coherent, sensible sound. Those distant mics would be adding a lot of mush to the mix. Also, I'm curious about what you mean by stereo? You're not trying to get that big wide guitar sound by panning two mic's from a single take in opposite directions are you? Cause you'll just end up with lots of mushy ghosty centre guitars. That big wide guitar sound comes from 2 separate takes panned L and R. If you want to add more mics for more tone, I would actually consider doing a separate take for each mic position.

Oh and beware, Marshall cabs are wired with the speakers out of phase with each other, if you've mic'd separate speakers that would give you a whole heap of hurt.

Lastly, don't listen to your guitarist about the guitars mix :P
At least not too much, he might not be listening to the entire mix objectively, but instead focussing on his guitar, what I think of as mentally soloing an instrument.

[bshuker]

+1 Some sound bits of advice there

[cheddatom]

There's lots of good advice on this thread and it'll all be useful in the future, but in relation to my specific problem it would be good to think of me as an "intermediate" level mixer, rather than a beginner.

To get some shit out of the way....

I have tested each mic against each mic and all three in combination to check the phase. I currently have one of the close mics flipped. The close mics are each on one speaker of a 2 x 12". The distant mic isn't VERY distant, it's around 3m from the amp and it sound amazing, especially with some distortion on top.

Each close mic is panned hard L and R and the distant mic is centered. It's not a "massive" or really wide sound in respect to stereo imaging, obviously. It is however, a great tone with some stereo width.

Perhaps a good method would be to take the L mic from one take, the R mic from another take, and the distant/C mic from anothet take.

[the_man361]

Well, first thanks for all the replies.

Half the problem is i'm mixing it with my guitarist in the room, so when I say "we need to get rid of some of these channels" he says "noooo it sounds massive with them all" but if I could just get rid of them without him knowing we'd be OK.

I've currently grouped them by take rather than by mic, so for each take I have a great stereo tone using all three mics. It's just when I add them all back in it's mushy. (they're all high-passed by the way).

At the start of mixing, I was really intimidated by all of the channels of guitar and so I decided (as you've all advised) that we needed to listen to each one and decide which tone was best for which part and use that. It just seems like such a massive task!!

I'm now thinking that as I have a good sound using all three mics, I could group all the channels by mic, and cut the individual takes in and out when they're needed.

anyway, this is why I haven't posted any Creep Joint rough mixes yet. I've got a couple of songs with only 3 layers of guitar on that sound amazing so i'll get them up fairly soon.

switching between different mic sets with different tonality in parts of a song might be a cool idea.. or automating volume levels on one group while leaving another to produce effects may or may not sound sweet.. beware of teh phase

Get someone to hit you every time you reach for the solo button while EQing. It does a world of good to your mixes :P

Less mics means a more phase coherent, sensible sound. Those distant mics would be adding a lot of mush to the mix. Also, I'm curious about what you mean by stereo? You're not trying to get that big wide guitar sound by panning two mic's from a single take in opposite directions are you? Cause you'll just end up with lots of mushy ghosty centre guitars. That big wide guitar sound comes from 2 separate takes panned L and R. If you want to add more mics for more tone, I would actually consider doing a separate take for each mic position.

Oh and beware, Marshall cabs are wired with the speakers out of phase with each other, if you've mic'd separate speakers that would give you a whole heap of hurt.

Lastly, don't listen to your guitarist about the guitars mix :P
At least not too much, he might not be listening to the entire mix objectively, but instead focussing on his guitar, what I think of as mentally soloing an instrument.

good advice with the solo button, though id refine that slightly and say "make someone hit you AFTER youve done initial housekeeping eq with solo on" .. e.g. removing any hiss or nasties.

i never heard anything about marshall cabs being wired out of phase... care to explain why? can i revert mine back to a dual in phase setup? seems a silly thing to do

[cheddatom]

I won't post more about my own mixing before I get chance to play again.. not for a couple of days.


However, one thing I've loved is recording an electric guitar acoustically with a condensor mic. Has anyone else ever done this? Did you love it as much as me? Is this the same sort of sound you get from a peizo bridge?

[bshuker]

Yeah it's pretty cool, interesting to blend it with the amp recording, is cool to hear some of the pick attack and stuff, like, you kind of really hear the playing

[cheddatom]

I've done a new rough mix of Somnambulist, a song some of you listened to before. This is the album version, un-mastered, with a shit vocal sound so far. Let me know what you think! All opinions welcome, especially on the mix.

[ChrisirhC]

Put a stereo track of the band most like your tone.

A/B with that until each guitar has it's own tone you like, the best way to do it is get the sound on the amp then try and get that exact sound into the computer via the mic.

If you have 2 guitars

Duplicate a guitars track, no effects yet, then push forward a few samples or delay it (with 100% mix) and only a few milliseconds, maybe 20-40 delay. Pan each hard Left and Right. (this is a cheap ''wall of sound'' guitar effect)

Now, bring one channel down in volume til it's starting to sound hard to one side, but still not 100% L/R

Do the same with the other guitar only to the opposite side that you pushed the first one.

It leaves this big U shape in the stereo panorama for chucking in drums bass and vocals. Then you start worrying about the depth :awesome:

The bass guitar may be TOO bassy, you might solo it and think there's no balls to it, but when you get the kit in with that highly comrpessed kick you realise you've got too much bass

[the_man361]

Duplicate a guitars track, no effects yet, then push forward a few samples or delay it (with 100% mix) and only a few milliseconds, maybe 20-40 delay. Pan each hard Left and Right. (this is a cheap ''wall of sound'' guitar effect)


why have a cheap wall of sound when you can take another 5 minutes to track another guitar part instead? it sounds much better and you avoid the possibility of having dodgy sounding comb filtering that can be introduced by your method... im right against duplicating, panning and delaying a take for that method

[coffee_and_tv]

I've done a new rough mix of Somnambulist, a song some of you listened to before. This is the album version, un-mastered, with a shit vocal sound so far. Let me know what you think! All opinions welcome, especially on the mix.

sounds great, really good clear mix. maybe doesnt sound as 'big' as it could during the heavier bits? although i guess the mastering process would help with that..

[cheddatom]

ChrisirhC - The guitars are multi-tracked and panned quite wide on this mix. I don't want to A/B my mix against something else just yet. I tend to do that at the end of the process, and during mastering. I like the guitar tone I have. Is there something you suggest needs changing with it?

The bass might be too bassy, we're going to re-record it on a new bass soon.

Ta for the comments. We should probably get this thread off page two! Who else has some mixes to upload?

[bshuker]

why have a cheap wall of sound when you can take another 5 minutes to track another guitar part instead? it sounds much better and you avoid the possibility of having dodgy sounding comb filtering that can be introduced by your method... im right against duplicating, panning and delaying a take for that method

Giant +1 on this. It never sounds right if you fake it


lol at what i said ifyou think about it wrong aswell :awesome:

[bshuker]

I've done a new rough mix of Somnambulist, a song some of you listened to before. This is the album version, un-mastered, with a shit vocal sound so far. Let me know what you think! All opinions welcome, especially on the mix.

I like the kind of mix you're going for with it with the twangy guitars and clipped vocals plus the kinda trashy drums.

But...it seems kinda underpowered from the bass end to work right somehow. I don't know what you other people have listened to this on but for me its not that bassy.

See if you can't compress the bass a bit and bring it up a bit, give it some more at any rate.

I'd probably do a little overall eq'ing to the guitars, maybe just take the hi-pass down a little bit (it sounds like they're hi-passed to me), just give them some more lower mid range just to fatten them out a wee bit.

Also I noticed you've got your toms panned seriously hard left/right and with the way you've panned the rest of the kit (sounds very central to me), it sounds pretty bizarre when you're tom hits come in. Might be worth just bringing them in a bit


Sorry it's not a particularly detailed evaluation i only just got up but it's just my general comments from a couple of listens. It's a really cool song though!

[cheddatom]

No, that's cool, the toms do stand out too much, I thought it was level, but if I bring the panning in a bit that might do the trick.

With the bass as we're going to re-do it i'll hold off judgement.

Yeh, the guitars are high passed, I suppose I was trying to let the bass cut through more, i'll put the lows back in the guitars, re-record the bass, and see what we get.

[bshuker]

Sweet, don't put too much lows in the guitars i'm just thinking they need some more low mids and upper lows just to fatten them ever so slightly. Then go absolutely fat as hell with the bass track!

[cheddatom]

The bass we used is an Aria pro II P/J and it sounds great at practice, but I can never get the fucker to record well, so I got him to buy a squire bronco heavily modded by a guy on basschat.co.uk. Hopefully that will sound a shit load better. Tonight is the taste test!

[ChrisirhC]

why have a cheap wall of sound when you can take another 5 minutes to track another guitar part instead?

Sounds tighter.

OR maybe I'm just crap at keeping in time :awesome:

I've never experienced comb filtering with it, now that I've heard his track it's maybe not a technique he'll be using on it, but it's a simple method to when people say

''im in a metal band and both guitarists sound really mushy in teh mix11!! help!''

The bass we used is an Aria pro II P/J and it sounds great at practice, but I can never get the fucker to record well, so I got him to buy a squire bronco heavily modded by a guy on basschat.co.uk. Hopefully that will sound a shit load better. Tonight is the taste test!

How are you recording it?

I've heard good results with a MIC and a DI, just zoom in and fix the phase issues as much as you can and blend them into one another as you please.

Even putting higher end on a bass guitar or a kick drum mightn't seem right but when you do it might give it the life it needs.

Have you read 'The Mixing Engineers Handbook'

It's good to reference on it from time to time. Some good tips from pro's too.

[bshuker]

Still a god awful method of producing guitars.

People who say they can't do a double take obviously need to work on their timing, it's not difficult.

I hate all these godawful tricks to try and polish shit players.


Something that absolutely everybody STILL gets wrong, is that they think they can play stuff mediocre with mediocre sounds and get it to sound great later with editing and effects.

I guarantee you that if you play it well and have a great sound in the first place, then it's going to sound a million times better than some hashed out takes cut together.

Why is it that everybody just wants to cheat these days? Genuine musicianship goes a fucking long way.

Also had the same issue with a lot of people I did Music Tech with at 6th form, (and some people from the tech college across the way doing higher ed diploma in 'professional sound engineering', and these people couldn't even keep time with basic 4/4 music and couldn't play any basic chords or play a major scale let alone read notation. These people were all aspiring to be record producers and godknows what else, and they struggled with basic rudiments of music.

Baffles me.


/rant. lol

[ChrisirhC]

Still a god awful method of producing guitars.

People who say they can't do a double take obviously need to work on their timing, it's not difficult.

I hate all these godawful tricks to try and polish shit players.


Something that absolutely everybody STILL gets wrong, is that they think they can play stuff mediocre with mediocre sounds and get it to sound great later with editing and effects.

I guarantee you that if you play it well and have a great sound in the first place, then it's going to sound a million times better than some hashed out takes cut together.

Why is it that everybody just wants to cheat these days? Genuine musicianship goes a fucking long way.

Also had the same issue with a lot of people I did Music Tech with at 6th form, (and some people from the tech college across the way doing higher ed diploma in 'professional sound engineering', and these people couldn't even keep time with basic 4/4 music and couldn't play any basic chords or play a major scale let alone read notation. These people were all aspiring to be record producers and godknows what else, and they struggled with basic rudiments of music.

Baffles me.


/rant. lol

I agree...several thousand enter the industry each year with a degree expecting to be the next big record producer and that's just not the reality, nor are there many jobs.

This is the society we live in though, there will always be a quicker cheaper way to do something and people will always strive to find it.

I've met guitarists that couldn't put together major/minor triads or work out key signatures. Scales are taught as shapes rather than notes in magazines, most people here are guitarists including myself but it's the 90% of them that watch EVH and steve vai videos, think they can tap like that or think shredding will get them somewhere while they practice 10 hours a day trying to play 20 notes a second.

I haven't played guitar much this past year, and my chops suffered, just fluency and timing is going down the shitter.

[the_man361]

Sounds tighter.

OR maybe I'm just crap at keeping in time :awesome:

I've never experienced comb filtering with it, now that I've heard his track it's maybe not a technique he'll be using on it, but it's a simple method to when people say

''im in a metal band and both guitarists sound really mushy in teh mix11!! help!''



How are you recording it?

I've heard good results with a MIC and a DI, just zoom in and fix the phase issues as much as you can and blend them into one another as you please.

Even putting higher end on a bass guitar or a kick drum mightn't seem right but when you do it might give it the life it needs.

Have you read 'The Mixing Engineers Handbook'

It's good to reference on it from time to time. Some good tips from pro's too.

yeah your timing has to be on to double track effectively.. but if you're playing the type of music to double track a part and cant play two takes in time, then maybe it needs to be worked on.

other methods i'd look to before copying and delaying the same take are using another mic in another position to record 2 mics at the same time off the guitar cab, but phasing can be a massive issue here.. so get the cans on and move the mics until they ARE in phase.. totally in phase. millimetres count a lot when using two mics on a guitar cab, i was working on some dual mic guitar recording recently

[ChrisirhC]

yeah your timing has to be on to double track effectively.. but if you're playing the type of music to double track a part and cant play two takes in time, then maybe it needs to be worked on.

other methods i'd look to before copying and delaying the same take are using another mic in another position to record 2 mics at the same time off the guitar cab, but phasing can be a massive issue here.. so get the cans on and move the mics until they ARE in phase.. totally in phase. millimetres count a lot when using two mics on a guitar cab, i was working on some dual mic guitar recording recently

Marshall cabs are wired out of phase aren't they though, Is that top to bottom by assumption?

I don't want to have to tell anyone to come back to double track all their parts never mind asking a bloody guitarist :P I've heard of a technique micing the rear of the cab but a SDC might work here, though the sound will change a lot with the front mic when you remove that rear plate. I think guitar micing is well overlooked for some reason, the 'stick a 57 on it' seems to stick when there are millions of better solutions, I put C414's on amps once during a metal set and it sounded as good as the amp's tone.

In the DAW it's easy to zoom right in until you can actually see the waves out of phase then give them a nudge into phase. Will not work for everything though, you can't beat proper mic placement.

[the_man361]

i checked my marshall cab and both speakers are wired in phase. if they were wired out of phase, they should null in the middle too, every so often.

and yeh, if it comes down to it, i guess a fix it in the mix approach of nudging them into phase might work, but it wont be as good as actually getting the phase right by placement. have you read this:
http://www.badmuckingfastard.com/sound/slipperman.html

its a very useful collection of bits about recording guitars

[ChrisirhC]

i checked my marshall cab and both speakers are wired in phase. if they were wired out of phase, they should null in the middle too, every so often.

and yeh, if it comes down to it, i guess a fix it in the mix approach of nudging them into phase might work, but it wont be as good as actually getting the phase right by placement. have you read this:
http://www.badmuckingfastard.com/sound/slipperman.html

its a very useful collection of bits about recording guitars

Forgot about that still funny :LOL:

[cheddatom]

How are you recording it?

I've heard good results with a MIC and a DI, just zoom in and fix the phase issues as much as you can and blend them into one another as you please.

Even putting higher end on a bass guitar or a kick drum mightn't seem right but when you do it might give it the life it needs.

Have you read 'The Mixing Engineers Handbook'

It's good to reference on it from time to time. Some good tips from pro's too.

We played on friday with his new bass and fuck me it sounds better. We went home to DI his takes but he got way too fucked on laughing gas. I'll do it with a DI and a couple of close dynamic mics and a distant condensor and then see what I get.

Have you even listened to the sample I put up? There's a shit load of top end on the kick. I'll get another mix up later this week.

[Burning_October]

Hey, i'm a beggining level mixer, and for fun i'm taking all the seperated tracks for Hysteria and trying to make a better mix of it because the album version is horrible. Again, i'm completely new to this (this is the first thing that i've ever tried), so I have no idea what the do's and dont's of mixing are.

So, at this point, i'm trying to push the rhythm section up in the mix a little bit, because that's really what drives the song, but the kick drum keeps distorting. Aside from that, the drums as a whole sound tinny and kinda demo-ey. Is there any way to fix this?

[cheddatom]

Turning one thing up is the same as turning everything else down. If you do the latter, you will avoid distortion.

[Burning_October]

Turning one thing up is the same as turning everything else down. If you do the latter, you will avoid distortion.

Oh. You'd think that I would've thought of that, but I guess not:LOL:. Thank's for the tip!

[cheddatom]

If you get a whammy you'll have common sense.

[ChrisirhC]

If you get a whammy you'll have common sense.

Yea, that's all I use for mixing these days.

but I have a fuzz waerhouse for putting some scream into vocals.

[cheddatom]

That sounds amazing, got any samples? I have to use a whammy for my brutal screams.

[Burning_October]

So, I really want to get into mixing in the future, and I thought, why not start now? However, I have no idea what i'm doing, and was wondering if anyone just had some general tips about what not to do when mixing music. Any advice/info is appreciated. I know that this is pretty general, i'm sorry. I don't really have a specific thing that I need help with, I just need some general knowledge, if that makes sense.

Also, I need some help with some terms. Like, what does panning hard LR mean?

Anyway, I know that this is random and may be kind of stupid on my part (i'm a noob to this), but any help is appreciated.

[gunnerthekiwi]

Ahem. We already have a mixing thread here. (http://board.muse.mu/showthread.php?t=60840)

[Gemsy]

Merged the threads so you don't have to type it all again ;)

[coffee_and_tv]

cheers gemsy!

[haze015]

So, I really want to get into mixing in the future, and I thought, why not start now? However, I have no idea what i'm doing, and was wondering if anyone just had some general tips about what not to do when mixing music. Any advice/info is appreciated. I know that this is pretty general, i'm sorry. I don't really have a specific thing that I need help with, I just need some general knowledge, if that makes sense.

Also, I need some help with some terms. Like, what does panning hard LR mean?

Anyway, I know that this is random and may be kind of stupid on my part (i'm a noob to this), but any help is appreciated.

If you're interested in it, try to find a course locally where you can make use of a studio as that'll do far more good than reading anything online (which can actually do more harm than good!) :)

[Burning_October]

I'll try and find a place, though I don't think I have one near me.

Although, one questions, what does panning hard L/R mean?

[Phill]

it means it's panned to the left and right and not in the center.

[toff]

I'll try and find a place, though I don't think I have one near me.

Although, one questions, what does panning hard L/R mean?


Panning the sound so its exclusively coming out of one speaker.

[Burning_October]

Oh, okay. So why shouldn't you do that? I've read in a lot of places that you shouldn't do that.

[toff]

Sounds unnatural. A good way of approaching panning is imagining your watching a band live. For example, lets say your watching a stereotypical rock band setup. Youve generally got your singer in the middle of the stage, so its a good idea to have them panned Center. Youve then got your got your guitar on one side, say the left, so youd pan that a little bit to the left, maybe to 9 O'clock (this would let some of the guitar signal spill into the right speaker). Youd do vice versa with the bass on the other side. This gives the instruments their own space in the stereofield, and stops them sounding jumbled together.

Then youve got your drums. A technique i use is to pan certain parts of the drum kits to different sides. In rock music, the kick and the snare are typically the drums that are driving the beat of the song, so its a good idea to keep them panned center, maybe slightly off to either side. If the drummer has a few tom rolls, it sounds pretty funky to pan maybe the high tom slightly right, the mid tom near-center, and the low tom slightly left. If youve got 2 overheads, its also cool to pan them to different sides from eachother.

With panning, you wanna create space in the sound, so instruments can have their own little bits. And ive just rambled on to fuck there, so Im hoping it answers your next 1,000,000 questions :P

[Doog]

best tip I can think of for any newbies to recording/mixing is the old adage "less is more". death magnetic is the perfect proof of concept for that theory. they turned everything up and it sounds like ass

[montgomery]

you should start with mixing something simple such as a song with 1 guitar, 1 kit, 1 bass, and 1 singer. No layering, just pretty much 1 layer for each part. Once you get that down, you can start slowly working towards more complex projects. If you haven't noticed, most major label produced albums have a shit ton of layers for each instrument. What you need to figure out before you start laying all these instruments together is how mids and verb effect sound scape. Volume level is the easiest part of mixing; if you are having a hard time finding a good volume for a certain instrument, then your reverb or mid adjustments are out of whack. If you know what you are doing and get the right frequencies cut or boosted and the right amount of verb, then finding the right volume level should be incredibly simple.

Also, you can't mixing something to sound good if it wasn't engineered good. Mic choice and placement are crucial to a good sounding record.

I find my strength in mixing to be guitars, and my weakness to be vocals. I can make vocals sound pretty damn good on first instinct, but I over think them and end up destroying their mix. I can make guitars sound like pure sex though.

[cheddatom]

death magnetic........sounds like ass

I'm fucking sick of the band-wagon mentality surrounding the sound of this album. It's the best sounding Metallica album. It sounds better than everything they've done before. Less compression overall would have been better, but it still sounds fucking good and before any of you morons without whammies say "bbbbbut it's distorted" IT'S A METAL ALBUM and it does not cause "distortion on your HiFi" unless it's a peice of shit.

[haze015]

Oh, okay. So why shouldn't you do that? I've read in a lot of places that you shouldn't do that.

Like I said, go do a course or even subscribe to SOS and ignore everything you read on the internet.

Generally stereo mic'ing techniques require you to pan hard L/R, if the technique doesn't, then you can make full use of the stereo field by doing so.

If you have a mono channel, you reason you don't generally go hard L/R is that you lose the stereo effect, 'stereo' doesn't mean 2, it actually means something more like full or thick. Nothing to do with sounding unnatural.

[Samcoma]

I've done a new rough mix of Somnambulist, a song some of you listened to before. This is the album version, un-mastered, with a shit vocal sound so far. Let me know what you think! All opinions welcome, especially on the mix.
Just downloaded this, got to be honest the other mix you did a while ago seemed to have more punch to it. Although the clarity in this mix is much, much better! Have you got anymore songs on the way?

Edit: The guitars sound a little too far panned to the left channel.
Edit: NO WAIT my left speaker is fucked. Just listening to again through a decent set of headphones.

[cheddatom]

It's changed loads now. I'd say we're about 70% there with our 10 track album. It does sound good, but I keep fucking up little bits. I spent about an hour absolutely destroying the guitar sound on a song yesterday - very fucking depressing. I think a lot of it is my shit monitors. I might go back to hi-fi speakers.

[Samcoma]

Looking forward to hearing you stuff! I've got harbinger and the first mix of somnambulist on my mp3 player.

[cheddatom]

oi! get them off! That was for opinions, not your enjoyment.

I'll put some more up next week probably, to test my mastering.

[Samcoma]

oi! get them off! That was for opinions, not your enjoyment.

I'll put some more up next week probably, to test my mastering.
Hah they're staying on there :phu: Cool man, when you get the album together let me know and I'll definitely be up for buying it. The PE album still gets a fair few listens. ;]

[cheddatom]

lol, I really should have made a good job of the PEs album, it's just I couldn't work on it and not be out of my head. It just goes to show, you need a sober engineer, no matter how fucked up the musicians are.

[Samcoma]

Lol I enjoyed it none the less. The rough sound fits the music perfectly. I don't think a highly polished sound would work with the music ;p I

[cheddatom]

yeh, but it could have been half-way decent rather than varying from shit to average.

[Samcoma]

It wasn't too bad. Besides if the songs are good I normally ignore the mixing :p

[cheddatom]

Fair enough!

We were actually going to get together again last week but Aid chickened out again. I'd love to be doing those sort of crazy gigs again.

[Samcoma]

I've really got to get my arse in gear and see a few of the K&T bands this year. I keep getting flooded with work or stupid bills.

[cheddatom]

yeh I want to see Industry but they cancelled their manchester gig and I cba going to leicester.

[Samcoma]

Haha if I had my car up and running I'd be going everywhere.

[cheddatom]

I have a great car and free fuel i'm just a lazy cunt. Basically because i've never had to go further away than nottingham/brum/manchester to see bands so now I can't be arsed.

We might be doing some london gigs in a couple of months with Creep Joint.

[Samcoma]

Lol tell me about it, a good friend of mine was doing a gig in Norwich a few weeks ago. Even offered to pay for train fairs etc. I just couldn't be fucked. But if I'd of had a working car I'd of been there heh.

Do some gigs in Brighton you cunt! I can't be bothered to go down to London if I have to get a train!

[cheddatom]

We don't have contacts in Brighton! (surprising I know)

[Samcoma]

We don't have contacts in Brighton! (surprising I know)
:eyebrows: Just flood a few of the venues with promo CDs. I moved up here a few weeks ago, and the venues are always looking for bands.

[cheddatom]

it's a bit far to go! We're not taking this band that seriously, so although I get free fuel, we're not going to be staying overnight just for a free-pint-toilet-gig.

[Samcoma]

;p fairs, but yeah if you are gigging in London lemme' know where, and I'll see if I can get a lift down/ avoid the train in every way possible.

[cheddatom]

I always post my gigs on here, it won't be until September at the earliest anyway.

[Samcoma]

That's all good, I've got a stupid amount of work to do till the first week of September. Then it's all fun, games and drugs. :awesome:

[cheddatom]

what are you going to uni or something?

[Samcoma]

Hah not quite, but I am doing a shit load of studying, and spending far too much time with the cock nugget that is the second guitarist in the band. I start BIMM on the third week of September so I'm getting as much music theory down as I can, as well as working. Haven't been able to go on a proper binge in quite some time.

[cheddatom]

So you're doing a music course then, that's cool. Good luck!

[Samcoma]

Yeah and a sound engineering course at the same time. :) Thanks!

[cheddatom]

Oh well, see you around sam! Check myspace/creepjointmusic for gig dates.

[Doog]

I'm fucking sick of the band-wagon mentality surrounding the sound of this album. It's the best sounding Metallica album. It sounds better than everything they've done before. Less compression overall would have been better, but it still sounds fucking good and before any of you morons without whammies say "bbbbbut it's distorted" IT'S A METAL ALBUM and it does not cause "distortion on your HiFi" unless it's a peice of shit.

excuse me, bandwagon mentality? am I not allowed to trust my own ears now? if you listen to the mix from the cd and then listen to the mix that they used for guitar hero the difference is like night and day.

[cheddatom]

excuse me, bandwagon mentality? am I not allowed to trust my own ears now? if you listen to the mix from the cd and then listen to the mix that they used for guitar hero the difference is like night and day.

Yes, the two different MASTERS are very different. That has nothing to do with whether or not the master is "distorted" as everyone claims (it's not) and the original master is still a good sounding album. The guitar hero master sounds better, but the original sounds good.

I don't even like metallica!

[no3chris]

Yes, the two different MASTERS are very different. That has nothing to do with whether or not the master is "distorted" as everyone claims (it's not) and the original master is still a good sounding album. The guitar hero master sounds better, but the original sounds good.

I don't even like metallica!

yuck man, the original dosn't sound good, the snare is painful to listen to, i havnt even heard the guitar hero version, the album is crap ANYWAY theyve lost it man.

[cheddatom]

yuck man, the original dosn't sound good, the snare is painful to listen to, i havnt even heard the guitar hero version, the album is crap ANYWAY theyve lost it man.

It's a massive, aggressive drum sound. Each to their own, express your opinion etc fine. I just get very annoyed when people tell me "It's full of digital clipping" or "it distorts your stereo" which are both factual statements, and both entirely erronneous.

[no3chris]

It's a massive, aggressive drum sound. Each to their own, express your opinion etc fine. I just get very annoyed when people tell me "It's full of digital clipping" or "it distorts your stereo" which are both factual statements, and both entirely erronneous.

agreed. i mean obv they wanted it to sound like that, metallica aint gna take no shit and release crap that they think sounds like shit.

i just don't like it, however i loved st.anger ! , like you say, each to their own i guess haha

[cheddatom]

yeh, like for me St Anger is unlistenable, so mushy, and the snare goes from shit to absolutely appauling as the album progresses. The arrangement on that album is also utter toss.

I've only listened to death magnetic 2 or 3 times, just to compare the two versions and hear what people were going on about. I reckon it's a better album. Having said that, the only metallica albums I would ever choose to put on are load and reload, which is apparently blasphemous in proper fan-boy circles.

[no3chris]

yeh, like for me St Anger is unlistenable, so mushy, and the snare goes from shit to absolutely appauling as the album progresses. The arrangement on that album is also utter toss.

I've only listened to death magnetic 2 or 3 times, just to compare the two versions and hear what people were going on about. I reckon it's a better album. Having said that, the only metallica albums I would ever choose to put on are load and reload, which is apparently blasphemous in proper fan-boy circles.


you my sir, are an abosulute diamond !

metallcia fans know shit, load and reload are the bands best works ever !!

i have the same opinion! NO NO MASTER OFP UPEPTS IS TEH BEST.. 20 years ago or whatever maybe, its boring now

[the_man361]

ugh, imo death magnetic is mastered way too loud

[cheddatom]

metallcia fans know shit

That's the logical conclusion :p

It's weird that they just responded to their fans' criticisms by trying to re-produce the same old shit instead of following the natural (and good) direction they started taking with load.

[cheddatom]

ugh, imo death magnetic is mastered way too loud

It is mastered too loud, but if you stick it on a CD player, and then play MOP or AJFA or whatever, it's just 1000000000000 times better sounding. It sounds loads better than St Anger as well IMHO. Just because the master is pretty bad, doesn't mean every aspect of it sounds awful, although I can see why some people find it unlistenable, I personally don't. (not that i'd turn it up very loud!).

[the_man361]

It is mastered too loud, but if you stick it on a CD player, and then play MOP or AJFA or whatever, it's just 1000000000000 times better sounding. It sounds loads better than St Anger as well IMHO. Just because the master is pretty bad, doesn't mean every aspect of it sounds awful, although I can see why some people find it unlistenable, I personally don't. (not that i'd turn it up very loud!).

yes, if we disregard the lack of dynamic range and its loudness it sounds better, it was recorded with better sounding gear (though some might get on teh analogues)

[cheddatom]

yes, if we disregard the lack of dynamic range and its loudness it sounds better, it was recorded with better sounding gear (though some might get on teh analogues)

Yeh, it is a really big aspect to overlook, but I find as long as it's not too loud (CD player volume) then it works for me. It's like Californication - load of people hate it, but I LOVE the sound of that album, I just don't turn it up to 10.

[the_man361]

Yeh, it is a really big aspect to overlook, but I find as long as it's not too loud (CD player volume) then it works for me. It's like Californication - load of people hate it, but I LOVE the sound of that album, I just don't turn it up to 10.

ah, ive got a problem with that album if im listening on a decent pair of speakers. there's so much high frequency distortion

[cheddatom]

It just doesn't bother me. I sometimes worry that I have bad ears, or i'm just a shit listener. I still manage to make stuff that people like though.

[haze015]

The whole clipping thing is a confusing issue, was reading an another forum about old/cheap CD players that clip at 0.0dB and modern ones can compensate for that and all sorts of other things.

[Doog]

It's a massive, aggressive drum sound. Each to their own, express your opinion etc fine. I just get very annoyed when people tell me "It's full of digital clipping" or "it distorts your stereo" which are both factual statements, and both entirely erronneous.

it's not distorted all the way through, but seriously - go back and listen to the drums during the chorus of the day that never comes. as haze said, the snare sounds particularly bad. in fact I just went back and listened to that part of the cd on my hi-fi, and it absolutely does distort. no question at all.

yes, if we disregard the lack of dynamic range and its loudness it sounds better, it was recorded with better sounding gear (though some might get on teh analogues)

erm... you do realise you just effectively said "if we disregard all the stuff that makes it sound bad, it sounds better" don't you?

The whole clipping thing is a confusing issue, was reading an another forum about old/cheap CD players that clip at 0.0dB and modern ones can compensate for that and all sorts of other things.

I was taught to set a margin limit of between -0.3 and -0.6dB during mastering to prevent it clipping on any system for that very reason


incidentally, from a purely sonic point of view, I agree that load and reload are the two best-sounding albums metallica have produced. iirc garage inc was also pretty sweet

[bshuker]

yep, totally agree load, reload and garage inc are probably the best sounding metallica records.

[no3chris]

yep, totally agree load, reload and garage inc are probably the best sounding metallica records.

definetely ,garage inc .. cover album.. oddly encompasses their tone the best, perfect recording, its brilliant

[Phill]

turn the page is quality

[cheddatom]

yadddayadddayadda

I'm not going to go back and listen to it because I don't like metallica. I can guarantee there's nothing on that CD that plays over 0db and my music system can handle that.

There's a difference between distortion added intentionally in the studio, and distortion occurring at home because of bad practice in the studio. The distortion on DM is the former.

[Doog]

sorry, but you claimed that "it's full of digital clipping" and "it distorts" were erroneous factual statements. now you're trying to point out the difference between types of distortion to try to keep your argument alive? you do realise that a cd doesn't have to exceed 0db to distort, don't you?

seriously, I don't give a crap whether you like the cd or not, go and listen to the chorus of the day that never comes, and come back and tell me what you think. tbh if you still try to claim there's no distortion then quite frankly you have shit ears. you're literally the *only* person I've ever encountered who claims there's no distortion on the cd, and I had a pretty long discussion about it on another board (which led to me downloading the guitar hero version) with several other users there who all said exactly the same thing

[haze015]

you do realise that a cd doesn't have to exceed 0db to distort, don't you?

Erm, you'll find it does. :erm:

[Doog]

not if the mastering process induces it

[haze015]

not if the mastering process induces it

Only if it hits 0dB, if there's distortion below that, it's not the CD.

[cheddatom]

sorry, but you claimed that "it's full of digital clipping" and "it distorts" were erroneous factual statements. now you're trying to point out the difference between types of distortion to try to keep your argument alive? you do realise that a cd doesn't have to exceed 0db to distort, don't you?

seriously, I don't give a crap whether you like the cd or not, go and listen to the chorus of the day that never comes, and come back and tell me what you think. tbh if you still try to claim there's no distortion then quite frankly you have shit ears. you're literally the *only* person I've ever encountered who claims there's no distortion on the cd, and I had a pretty long discussion about it on another board (which led to me downloading the guitar hero version) with several other users there who all said exactly the same thing

Like I said, there is distortion there in the mix. Distortion has been applied to individual tracks in the studio. I do it quite a lot.

There is no digital clipping occurring on playback.

[Doog]

Only if it hits 0dB, if there's distortion below that, it's not the CD.

it could happen if you make the absolute rookie error of mastering in 24 or 32 bit format, although there's next to no chance that that'd ever happen - and if it did the guy who mastered the cd would be out of work very quickly :LOL: but besides that, I'll just come back to what I said earlier - I was taught to master to -0.3dB at the absolute most so that this never becomes an issue

cheddatom - if distortion had actually been applied to the tracks during the mix, don't you think the distortion would be present on the tracks throughout the song as opposed to when it's loud? furthermore, I haven't even said anything about the origin of the distortion, but I can't find any explanation for it other than the levels exceeding 0dB at some point in the mixing/mastering process. I certainly don't buy the theory that it's deliberate, not for a second

[no3chris]

i say lets agree to disagree, and stop wasting our time talking about the worst album ever.

forget the recording process, the songs are fuckin' terrible

[haze015]

it could happen if you make the absolute rookie error of mastering in 24 or 32 bit format, although there's next to no chance that that'd ever happen - and if it did the guy who mastered the cd would be out of work very quickly :LOL: but besides that, I'll just come back to what I said earlier - I was taught to master to -0.3dB at the absolute most so that this never becomes an issue

Actually, you master in 24/32 bit, then dither to 16.


n00b :p

[cheddatom]

cheddatom - if distortion had actually been applied to the tracks during the mix, don't you think the distortion would be present on the tracks throughout the song as opposed to when it's loud? furthermore, I haven't even said anything about the origin of the distortion, but I can't find any explanation for it other than the levels exceeding 0dB at some point in the mixing/mastering process. I certainly don't buy the theory that it's deliberate, not for a second

Don't you think the distortion applied during the mix could be reacting to the dynamics of the waveforms? Don't you think there's distortion on the kick and snare all the way through the album?

There's no way they let it exceed 0dB at the mix down or at the mastering stage.

There is a hell of a lot of limiting going on, and it's a very brash sounding album, but there's nothing above 0dB on the CD, and they wouldn't have let that happen before it got to the CD.

[Doog]

Actually, you master in 24/32 bit, then dither to 16.


n00b :p

flaw in my explanation :LOL: I meant if you forgot to dither (which reminds me that, for my final year sound production project, I applied dithering but forgot to apply the noise reduction option as well so there was a little bit of noise left on the cd. still got pretty good mark for it though, so it can't have been that noticable)

Don't you think the distortion applied during the mix could be reacting to the dynamics of the waveforms?
it's possible yes, but it's also possible for that to happen unintentionally

Don't you think there's distortion on the kick and snare all the way through the album?
no I don't, absolutely not

[cheddatom]

olol. I'd better actually listen to it if I want to carry on arguing then, just to be sure.

EDIT: I'm not going to listen to the peice of shit. The fact is, there's lots of distortion going on in that album, none of it's created by playback through your stereo, it was all created in the studio, none of it is that horrible type of distortion known as "digital clipping".

[Doog]

look I went back and listened to it, and the distortion I heard is not consistent with any kind of effect that you'd want on any track. why the hell would you set up an effect on the drum kit so that it distorts during loud fills, which are precisely the moments when you more than likely want as clean a sound as possible? the drums don't distort at all during the verse, and there's very little distortion on any of the other tracks. it ONLY happens when there's a lot of loud stuff going on at the same time, and it doesn't fit with how any previous album I've ever heard has been mixed

tbh if you're not even willing to go back and listen to it then I'm willing to just ignore your "facts" as the witterings of an idiot talking out of his arse and hilariously petrified at the prospect of being wrong

[cheddatom]

My above post states the only facts I am stating. I don't even think you're arguing with that? Or do you think there is distortion created by bits on the actual CD above 0db which create digital clipping through your stereo on playback?

I ripped the CD when this argument was first going on(when the CD came out), and inspected it in Cubase. Just as I thought, it's impossible to burn anything above 0dB on a CD mastered to red book standard.

The waveforms are VERY compressed, and almost flat in parts. This is because it's been heavily limited. Some limiters can be "overdriven" creating a distorted sound. This is likely to be what you're hearing at the peaks.

We're on the internet, so you can make this argument never ending if you like. I'm not wrong, or scared of being wrong. I don't give a toss.

[haze015]

The waveforms are VERY compressed, and almost flat in parts. This is because it's been heavily limited. Some limiters can be "overdriven" creating a distorted sound. This is likely to be what you're hearing at the peaks.

That's exactly what is going on, if you're using limiting, nothing will go beyond a certain volume, so nothing can clip afterwards. Turn the input gain down, no distortion.

[Doog]

My above post states the only facts I am stating. I don't even think you're arguing with that? Or do you think there is distortion created by bits on the actual CD above 0db which create digital clipping through your stereo on playback?

I ripped the CD when this argument was first going on(when the CD came out), and inspected it in Cubase. Just as I thought, it's impossible to burn anything above 0dB on a CD mastered to red book standard.

The waveforms are VERY compressed, and almost flat in parts. This is because it's been heavily limited. Some limiters can be "overdriven" creating a distorted sound. This is likely to be what you're hearing at the peaks.

We're on the internet, so you can make this argument never ending if you like. I'm not wrong, or scared of being wrong. I don't give a toss.

all I said is that it distorts in places, and you came back and told me that I (and anyone else who said the same about the distortion) was "empirically wrong". then when I went back and verified that it does distort in places, you started coming up with different types of distortion to obscure the point. now, oddly, you've come up with an explanation that backs up my original point, which makes me wonder why you were even arguing with me to start with?

[montgomery]

ah man I can't wait to get my mbox in. I have been away from protools for too long. once I get that sucker in, its remix time. Up until now, all of my mixing has been done on the school's KROKs, but i just bought a set of adam A7's. That will be a treat.
First thing I will do is remix the drums of an old band recording, then I will retrack the guitars with my oranges and mix those, then remix the old bass, vocals and piano. It is going to sound sick. I will post it when I finish it. Hopefully it will be done in 2 weeks.

[the_man361]

That's exactly what is going on, if you're using limiting, nothing will go beyond a certain volume, so nothing can clip afterwards. Turn the input gain down, no distortion.

actually, not entirely true.. but good enough for jokes. intersample peaks can still occur, depending how advanced your limiter is

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/tips-techniques/334385-intersample-peaks.html this may be of interest to the more nerdy tech people around here. i imagine that there might be some intersample clipping going on in that metallica album, due to the level to which it is limited.

ah man I can't wait to get my mbox in. I have been away from protools for too long. once I get that sucker in, its remix time. Up until now, all of my mixing has been done on the school's KROKs, but i just bought a set of adam A7's. That will be a treat.
First thing I will do is remix the drums of an old band recording, then I will retrack the guitars with my oranges and mix those, then remix the old bass, vocals and piano. It is going to sound sick. I will post it when I finish it. Hopefully it will be done in 2 weeks.

ace :D might need to be careful with the bass on the A7's depending on how 'hifi' your KROK's were, you might find it slightly weak, though that could be adjusted with the knobs at the back.

[cheddatom]

I'm fucking sick of the band-wagon mentality surrounding the sound of this album. It's the best sounding Metallica album. It sounds better than everything they've done before. Less compression overall would have been better, but it still sounds fucking good and before any of you morons without whammies say "bbbbbut it's distorted" IT'S A METAL ALBUM and it does not cause "distortion on your HiFi" unless it's a peice of shit.

excuse me, bandwagon mentality? am I not allowed to trust my own ears now? if you listen to the mix from the cd and then listen to the mix that they used for guitar hero the difference is like night and day.

.....loooong protracted argument where I explain the different kinds of distortion used intentionally.....

all I said is that it distorts in places, and you came back and told me that I (and anyone else who said the same about the distortion) was "empirically wrong". then when I went back and verified that it does distort in places, you started coming up with different types of distortion to obscure the point. now, oddly, you've come up with an explanation that backs up my original point, which makes me wonder why you were even arguing with me to start with?

Your original point was that the guitar hero version of the album is noticably different to the general release version. We agreed on that.

My original point was about the fact that there's no "digital clipping" on the album, the album does not make your HiFi distort, and there is a big band wagon upon which a load of "musos" have jumped, which has perpetuated these myths.

I've never used the word empirically.

[Doog]

Your original point was that the guitar hero version of the album is noticably different to the general release version. We agreed on that.

fair enough

My original point was about the fact that there's no "digital clipping" on the album, the album does not make your HiFi distort, and there is a big band wagon upon which a load of "musos" have jumped, which has perpetuated these myths.

yes and you jumped on me for being on that bandwagon and said "That has nothing to do with whether or not the master is "distorted" as everyone claims (it's not)". that was before you said anything specifically about digital clipping or any other kind of distortion, you just claimed it doesn't distort at all

I've never used the word empirically.

I just get very annoyed when people tell me "It's full of digital clipping" or "it distorts your stereo" which are both factual statements, and both entirely erronneous.

meh, it starts with 'e' and says the same thing :p

[haze015]

yes and you jumped on me for being on that bandwagon and said "That has nothing to do with whether or not the master is "distorted" as everyone claims (it's not)". that was before you said anything specifically about digital clipping or any other kind of distortion, you just claimed it doesn't distort at all

I think his point was the distortion was intentional, so therefore part of the sound rather than shoddy mastering/engineering/production.

[no3chris]

lolz right, i'll say it again, lets just chill this is the definitive fact:

If the distortion was intentional, or the mastering engineer had necked a bottle of midouri before he went to work..
The album is musically horseshit and production wise horseshit, the guitar hero version too! its a poo poo album, poo... poooo

:) think were gonna all end up setting fire to each others houses the way this thread is going ! lmao

[cheddatom]

yes and you jumped on me for being on that bandwagon and said "That has nothing to do with whether or not the master is "distorted" as everyone claims (it's not)". that was before you said anything specifically about digital clipping or any other kind of distortion, you just claimed it doesn't distort at all


Sorry I think you misinterpreted my aggressive language for personal insults. You are right, I didn't word my first couple of posts very well, it looked as though I was saying "there's no distortion on DM".

Doooooooooooooooooog
He's nothing but a droog
Spends all day working McDonalds and eating all their food

He needs to chill out!
Smoke a fat spliff
Breethe deep, in and out, let your mind drift

Not too far you puff!
Stop thinking about men!
All I said was relax! Just try counting to ten

Fuck it, you get three verses anyway.

[montgomery]

I have been working on a remix recently and here is the rough instrumental mix I came up with today. I started from scratch this morning and bounced this instrumental track at around 5pm central time zone. I will work on vocals a little this weekend, but will probably spend the weekend drinking and touching up the instruments first. Take a listen and tell me what you think of the mix.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=49ce8a9438d08ec819747bd91027d4ddf5eda69b b18467d3

These are notes I came up with after listening to it:

Drums aren't loud enough
piano sounds a little dull
the G-B-e strings are harsh in the intro riff and need to be smoothed down a bit.
snare in interlude needs to be a little beefier.


take a listen and give me some pointers. thanks.

I didn't feel like uploading a wav since my internet is slow, so deal with the 196 mp3. Snare some attack in the mp3.

[ryanbmuff]

I've just bought an alesis multimix 8 usb mixer, and i've connected it up to cubase, however cubase is sending a horendous buzzing through it when the input is activated...anyone know how to stop it? I dunno what it is.

[ryanbmuff]

Also I can't seem to get any output from cubase to the mixer to speakers/amp whatever (I don't have a PA). The mixer is getting the sound as I can see the lights flashing to indicate there is sound coming out from cubase but it's not sending it to the amp or speakers through the main mix output

[TastyBassRiff54]

I have been working on a remix recently and here is the rough instrumental mix I came up with today. I started from scratch this morning and bounced this instrumental track at around 5pm central time zone. I will work on vocals a little this weekend, but will probably spend the weekend drinking and touching up the instruments first. Take a listen and tell me what you think of the mix.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=49ce8a9438d08ec819747bd91027d4ddf5eda69b b18467d3

These are notes I came up with after listening to it:

Drums aren't loud enough
piano sounds a little dull
the G-B-e strings are harsh in the intro riff and need to be smoothed down a bit.
snare in interlude needs to be a little beefier.


take a listen and give me some pointers. thanks.

I didn't feel like uploading a wav since my internet is slow, so deal with the 196 mp3. Snare some attack in the mp3.

WOW I really like it!
I think the intro's fine... drums are a bit distant though.

But it's wonderful :D

[montgomery]

WOW I really like it!
I think the intro's fine... drums are a bit distant though.

But it's wonderful :D

I will be posting the finished product later today. It is balls to the wall.

[montgomery]

here's the final

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=49ce8a9438d08ec819747bd91027d4ddf5eda69b b18467d3

its LightAMatch_final

[cheddatom]

Also I can't seem to get any output from cubase to the mixer to speakers/amp whatever (I don't have a PA). The mixer is getting the sound as I can see the lights flashing to indicate there is sound coming out from cubase but it's not sending it to the amp or speakers through the main mix output

Do you still have this problem? Do you have lights on the master meter?

Sorry I think you misinterpreted my aggressive language for personal insults. You are right, I didn't word my first couple of posts very well, it looked as though I was saying "there's no distortion on DM".

Doooooooooooooooooog
He's nothing but a droog
Spends all day working McDonalds and eating all their food

He needs to chill out!
Smoke a fat spliff
Breethe deep, in and out, let your mind drift

Not too far you puff!
Stop thinking about men!
All I said was relax! Just try counting to ten

Fuck it, you get three verses anyway.

surely that^s ban-worthy rapping?

[Don'tPostThePear]

i feel like i can make a "better" mix on my notebook's speakers than with my headphones with a dac and a headphone amplifier. i just can't really feel the levels on a headphone, is it normal?

[cheddatom]

you shouldn't be mixing on either really. Don't you have some half decent stereo speakers?

[Don'tPostThePear]

you shouldn't be mixing on either really. Don't you have some half decent stereo speakers?

i don't expect good results from this setup, i just found this interesting, (that with 5$ built in speakers i can have better results than with a 300-400$ headphone "listening chain") i have a "decent" computer speaker (not 5.1 bullshit but not monitor stuff either) but i think their freq. resp. is nowhere near flat.

Btw Izotope Ozone have a function called EQ matching, it "collects" a tracks frequency response and then collects yours and it can eq your track until your track freq. response looks similar to the one you try to copy. It can help if you get for example the bass levels really wrong because of a shit speaker.

Looking at a really lot of track's frequency response from different genres were the biggest help i ever got about mixing, i think this helps you to get know to your speakers sound to be able to make better mixes.

(like in my case, if i mixed a track in a way it sounded "good" (i can't really mix/produce but eq wise it was kinda good) on my headphones i actually had to cut back a lot of mids because my headphone overexxagerates them and on other systems my mix would have been sounded even more bad)

[cheddatom]

when you say it "collects" the frequency response, I mean, I just find this debatable. You need a mic to "collect" in the first place, and they won't know the frequency response of the mic as they don't know the response of the speakers yet, let alone the room.

[Don'tPostThePear]

when you say it "collects" the frequency response, I mean, I just find this debatable. You need a mic to "collect" in the first place, and they won't know the frequency response of the mic as they don't know the response of the speakers yet, let alone the room.

i probably used the wrong words, it basically measures the loudness of different frequency bands and creathes a graph from the values measured during playback. it averages the results constantly as long as you play the song.
this graph looks pretty similar for a lot of songs, even from different genres, it looks like there is an universal consensus about what sounds "good."

Here's a screenshot about responses measured and averaged through most of the songs:

(songs were limited to be around the same loudness but still the mau5 was probably louder than Floyd but it doesn't matter too much for this graph)

purple - Pink Floyd: Time
yellow - Muse: Hysteria
white - Prodigy - Spitifire
blue - Daft Punk - Around The World
red - Deadmau5 - Ghosts N Stuff

http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/1383/respo.png

[haze015]

Actually there's a massive difference between all of those songs!

[Don'tPostThePear]

Actually there's a massive difference between all of those songs!

i'd say the difference is minimal (ok the mids are different thing but we have pop songs with vocals being the loudest and some guitar /muse/ and stuff "without" any midrange /mau5/ but that 5db difference is still lower than what untreated rooms and non monitor speakers can cause) compared to the difference between the response of different speakes and listening enviroments. A fucking room can create 20db (!) or more variation of levels if it's not some perfectly treated studio room, if we exclude Time which is not loud enough to compare to the others the difference between the songs is nothing compared to the difference between your room and Abbey Road or whatever hyped studio.

So while we won't hear our mixes in our shitty rooms with shitty equipments at least we can see them and compare it to the pro stuff.

The differences between my "mixes" and between the songs on that pic were far greater because of my headphones (sennheiser hd555)

[haze015]

The differences between my "mixes" and between the songs on that pic were far greater because of my headphones (sennheiser hd555)

Shouldn't be mixing on headphones anyway. :p


But yeah, acoustic treatment is important, but a lot of studios will have multiple monitor options, the idea is to balance between them, rather than rely on one set for all your mixing. Which would probably have more of an impact than the room itself.

Abbey Road's monitors cost £13,000 each.

[cheddatom]

I thought you were talking about a program that analyses the frequency response of your monitoring set-up, and then EQs to compensate.

What you're actually saying is that you've found a spectrum analyzer and ran some of your favorite mixes through it.

I don't think mixing by sight is a good idea!

If you're forced to mix on headphones, the way to compensate is to take your finished mixes around and listen to them on a couple of half decent systems, and in the car, and on your shitty laptop, and listen to where you've gone wrong. That's when you compare it to other CDs IMO.

[Phill]

Tried that pedal yet?

[cheddatom]

noap i've been mixing actually. If I remember to take it home tonight i'll wack my bass through it and turn the sub up (I have a new 10" sub in my mixing room).

[Phill]

do it, i'm pretty interested to hear how it goes on bass. record something if you get a chance!

[cheddatom]

I will! I did that other pedal for you. That red one, I can't remember what it's called, it sounds acee though.

[Phill]

red llama. that was a little beauty, i forgot all about that one! you use it much?

[cheddatom]

yeh. I don't really play bass much any more, but I use it for recording creep joint, and I use it if I want a simple jamming rig. It does Timmy C very well when you blend it.

[Phill]

That's always good. I reckon a clean sig, the driven red llama on a signal, then the diefet on another signal and you won't even need a whammy.

[cheddatom]

That's an idea. At the moment, I have an ODB-3 with all the top cut off, blended with a selection of dirt with the bottom cut off. Normally i'd put the red llama in there, but if I swap it out for the ODB-3 it might be MEATY. There's a clean blend as well and compression etc. but that's been the basis of my sound for ages. I just kick the ODB-3 off when I want something less ballsy.

[Simno]

Ohai everyone.
Right I am a n00b at mixing, and really I'm only looking for fairly simple tips here. I've been recording demos using guitar rig (then programmed drums bass and misc other instruments such as strings, using midi, into sound font into vst), and audacity for compiling tracks , oh and I also record vocals using guitar rig cab/preamp emulation etc etc.
What I really want to know is basically what range of frequencies to notch out/roll off and boost on the EQ's for the following..

a drum track
a fuzzy bass track
guitar tracks
vocal tracks

I don't have any way (that I know of or understand) in audacity of seeing where the track's frequencies overlap, so I've just been guessing at frequencies to remove to try and clear up the sound.

I'm fine with panning and setting relative volume levels. The EQ'ing is really to try and just help bring out certain parts and also help the vocals stand out without making them sound like they are floating over the top.

If there is any software I can 'obtain', even just for the EQ'ing part or for better mixing, I could at least then export the guitar/bass/drum tracks out of Audacity individually and mix them in there.

Sorry for the ramble, all help very welcome!

[cheddatom]

Sometimes overlapping frequencies can help a mix. Voxengo do a free VST spectrum analyser which you can add on each channel to view the frequency content. Your drum close mics should probably be EQd individually.

You probably want to use some compression as well, but perhaps that's built into your amp sims etc?

It's hard to give general EQ ideas because I don't know what sort of sound(s) you're going for. Feel free to e-mail me something if you want specific tips.

[Simno]

Sometimes overlapping frequencies can help a mix. Voxengo do a free VST spectrum analyser which you can add on each channel to view the frequency content. Your drum close mics should probably be EQd individually.

You probably want to use some compression as well, but perhaps that's built into your amp sims etc?

It's hard to give general EQ ideas because I don't know what sort of sound(s) you're going for. Feel free to e-mail me something if you want specific tips.

Cheers dude, will check that software, and mail if I get stuck.

I'm still really up for putting this stuff together with proper bass and drum parts as we initially bantered about too. I'm just getting the 'ep' done in my own (shit) quality, to get all the ideas out if you know what I mean.

[cheddatom]

yeh, that's cool. I find it very difficult to write about things like EQ unless i'm actually listening to what i'm talking about.

[Don'tPostThePear]

what i'd like to see is that someone uploads like 4 raw tracks (git, bass, voc, drums) or 3 plus drumtracks and some of the guys who know their shit will mix it and then everyone can learn fom it.

(i think i saw some guys here who actually learned this stuff in school)

[cheddatom]

Some big bands have given away "stems" for people to mix and mess with. There are probably some forums where you can read about how the best ones were done.

[Don'tPostThePear]

Some big bands have given away "stems" for people to mix and mess with. There are probably some forums where you can read about how the best ones were done.

but founding them would require unprecedented amounts of searchbar and google abuse

i was actually quite proud of myself when i found and bumped this thread

[milkybar=]]

but founding them would require unprecedented amounts of searchbar and google abuse

i was actually quite proud of myself when i found and bumped this thread

i have stems of killer queen, can like them to you if you want

i do music tech at college n will like to do it at uni, sounds like piss but to do it well is an art itself. beautiful

[Doog]

Ohai everyone.
Right I am a n00b at mixing, and really I'm only looking for fairly simple tips here. I've been recording demos using guitar rig (then programmed drums bass and misc other instruments such as strings, using midi, into sound font into vst), and audacity for compiling tracks , oh and I also record vocals using guitar rig cab/preamp emulation etc etc.
What I really want to know is basically what range of frequencies to notch out/roll off and boost on the EQ's for the following..

a drum track
a fuzzy bass track
guitar tracks
vocal tracks

I don't have any way (that I know of or understand) in audacity of seeing where the track's frequencies overlap, so I've just been guessing at frequencies to remove to try and clear up the sound.

I'm fine with panning and setting relative volume levels. The EQ'ing is really to try and just help bring out certain parts and also help the vocals stand out without making them sound like they are floating over the top.

If there is any software I can 'obtain', even just for the EQ'ing part or for better mixing, I could at least then export the guitar/bass/drum tracks out of Audacity individually and mix them in there.

Sorry for the ramble, all help very welcome!

think with bass, guitar and vox tracks the specific mix eq depends a lot on what sound you want from them, and what sound you're getting out of your guitar/amp or the type of voice your singer has. drums are slightly easier because you want them to be clear, defined and consistent, so gates and compressors are more involved in a drum mix than eq is. generally I try to take some of the low mids out of the kick drum and the toms (~500hz, rising for the smaller toms) to get rid of some of the hum, and maybe add a touch of high frequency to add definition.

the snare eq is dependent on the particular snare, but you'd usually want to remove most of the hum from the drum skins and just have the snare itself - you can use a bottom mic on the snare to help with this as well. exception to that could be if you tune the drum to the key of the song or if you just want more of a lo-fi sound.

overhead mics need to be almost completely lacking in low end because it'll reduce spill from the drums. other than that you can pretty much leave the overheads alone, the cymbals produce plenty of high frequency already so it doesn't usually need to be boosted and you can just do some fine tuning with the mids

[cheddatom]

There shouldn't be any hum on your tracks in the first place!

Removing low mids from toms and kick drums is a good bit of advice, 500Hz is a good pointer, it gets rid of "boxyness". How strange to link this to "hum"

[haze015]

Si, download Stillwell 1973 EQ. That should cover most of your EQ needs, the sort of EQ that often comes with DAWs are often far too overkill for most mixing tasks and only useful for very specific tasks.

Frequency analysers aren't a smart thing to go by either in all honesty.

[Doog]

There shouldn't be any hum on your tracks in the first place!

Removing low mids from toms and kick drums is a good bit of advice, 500Hz is a good pointer, it gets rid of "boxyness". How strange to link this to "hum"

sorry, just my terrible way of explaining it. can't say I've ever heard the term "boxyness" though

[*TC*]

any of you guys got any links to places that have helped you learn about stuff like this?
I was doing music tech in college but had to leave and tbh it was shit anyway because the equipment was substandard and we had to mix/master in cheap headphones.
Now I want to learn it properly because I am in the process of applying to every studio in a 10 mile radius for an assistant job. I know they get a lot of prospective engineers and I don't want to go in and them expect me to know things that i have no clue about, which is definitely going to happen at the moment.

[cheddatom]

TC - just experience really. Get yourself some stems to mix and some half decent monitors. I'm helping a young guy learn at the moment, and as much as I try to explain everything I do, nothing can replace experience. He learns loads more when I give him some stems to play with.

sorry, just my terrible way of explaining it. can't say I've ever heard the term "boxyness" though

You know when a kick drum sounds like someone hitting a big cardboard box? That's boxy IMO

Hum is more like the noise you get from bad mains circuits etc.

Si, download Stillwell 1973 EQ. That should cover most of your EQ needs, the sort of EQ that often comes with DAWs are often far too overkill for most mixing tasks and only useful for very specific tasks.

Frequency analysers aren't a smart thing to go by either in all honesty.

I would download ALL of the Stillwell free plug-ins. They're ace! I wouldn't say that the 1973 EQ covers all EQ bases though. A lot of the EQ I do has a much tighter Q (I don't know the technical term) than you can get with the 1973.



EDIT: I probably come accross as arrogant when I talk about this stuff, but it's just that I do it a lot, i'm not an expert by any means, else i'd make a living from it!

[Don'tPostThePear]

I would download ALL of the Stillwell free plug-ins. They're ace! I wouldn't say that the 1973 EQ covers all EQ bases though. A lot of the EQ I do has a much tighter Q (I don't know the technical term) than you can get with the 1973.

here's an another one for awesome (probably the best) free plugins: http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/
plus this mad scientist type of dude's plugs: http://sirelliot.blog.com/

i think expect from the drum samples and ozone (i use this more for learning than mastering, it is not like i have to master anything) everything is free including the synths and the DAW from the stuff i use.

[Doog]

You know when a kick drum sounds like someone hitting a big cardboard box? That's boxy IMO

Hum is more like the noise you get from bad mains circuits etc.

I know what hum is :LOL: I just couldn't think of a good word to describe the 'bad' sound you get from the kick/toms, and I went for hum because there's an element of that (as in general hum sound, not as in the technical term 'hum') in the resonance of the skin

[haze015]

Tom, I wouldn't personally use more Q than 1973 generally, often seems too much on these monitors, but seems to translate nicely on other speakers, so I trust it more than my own judgements. Obviously if I want to get rid of spikes or raise something specific or whatever, then it's not the tool for the job, but for basic bass/middle/treble, pretty much spot on.

But that's just me.

any of you guys got any links to places that have helped you learn about stuff like this?
I was doing music tech in college but had to leave and tbh it was shit anyway because the equipment was substandard and we had to mix/master in cheap headphones.
Now I want to learn it properly because I am in the process of applying to every studio in a 10 mile radius for an assistant job. I know they get a lot of prospective engineers and I don't want to go in and them expect me to know things that i have no clue about, which is definitely going to happen at the moment.

In all fairness, even if the college had provided you all with a studio equivalent to Abbey Road, you'd all still be making shit records and you're generally expected to use your own headphones on any similar course, that's not the college's fault.

But yeah, as cheddatom says, experience is all there is to it, there's no rules at all on how you do anything, so you really need to be the kind of person who'll turn everything on full just to see what happens with every piece of equipment, because you really do learn best that way.

[cheddatom]

Tom, I wouldn't personally use more Q than 1973 generally, often seems too much on these monitors, but seems to translate nicely on other speakers, so I trust it more than my own judgements. Obviously if I want to get rid of spikes or raise something specific or whatever, then it's not the tool for the job, but for basic bass/middle/treble, pretty much spot on.

But that's just me.


That's interesting. I've been using it on vocals, and drum buses, but I suppose I need to try it on guitars etc now as well. I know what you mean about it translating well. For me it feels like a "master EQ" if you know what I mean? Something to put at the end of the chain to define the general sound.

[Don'tPostThePear]

When you use an ampsim, the volume of your recording will obviously alter the amount of overdrive in the amp. (a recording peaking at 0dB and averaging at -10db will drive the amp harder than a recording peaking at -18 and averaging at -30db)
What kind of signal level (in dB) those amp sims except?

(if they are true simulations then a to quiet recording would be like turning down the vol. knob on your guitar and a too hot recording would be something like using a clean boost in front of the amp)

[haze015]

That's interesting. I've been using it on vocals, and drum buses, but I suppose I need to try it on guitars etc now as well. I know what you mean about it translating well. For me it feels like a "master EQ" if you know what I mean? Something to put at the end of the chain to define the general sound.

I wouldn't use it for that, although the high shelf is nice on the master, try a Pultec EQ emulation on the master for a more of a master EQ.

Might want to look at summing mixers as well if you're looking at ways to add a touch of "class" to a mix.

[cheddatom]

I try to avoid doing too much mastering as I know I don't know what i'm doing!

[cheddatom]

I finished a project a few weeks ago that i'm really proud of. I've had very little input into the music, but recorded and mixed the whole thing in my studio. Any criticism of the mix would be gratefully received, so please have a listen and let me know your thoughts

soundcloud.com/musicbyemilio/sets/popular-myth-conflict/ (http://soundcloud.com/musicbyemilio/sets/popular-myth-conflict/)

[Phill]

First impressions of Fireworks,
Vocals are slightly too loud to me, a lot of the instrumental stuff gets a little lost in the background. Only every so slightly though. Overall it sounds great.

[cheddatom]

there's a conundrum - if the vocal were quieter would the background stuff blur the "focus"?

Or yeh maybe it's just too fucking loud. Thanks!

[Don'tPostThePear]

It's amazing

I can't really pinpoint a single mixing decision i don't like, i have feelings about things at some parts but that can be caused by my listening equipment or soundcloud's encoding. (like on track 3 i feel like the sides are sometimes overpowering the middle/mono channel or maybe the drums should be a bit louder to get the middle on level with the sides) Maybe sometimes i would have used more agressive EQing to separate the instruments more at the denser parts but i don't know if that is allowed in more natural/acoustic sounding styles like this.
And i am pretty sure that i can hear clipping on track 3 in the first 5 seconds and later masked by the instruments. I heard it on the first track too.

The clean/acoustic guitars are sounding perfect.

Btw how you did the stereo guitars coming in @ 0:40 on the first track? Is that simple mono sources panned left and right or you had to fuck around with room and stereo mics?

edit: btw you can totally sing hangover by taio cruz over the third track, it sounds like the same chords to my ears.
edit2: i edited some fuckups

[cheddatom]

Cheers DPTP. I've done some pretty drastic EQing, I never stick to any rules, so if you have some opinions on how I could have seperated the instruments more that would be great

I'm gutted that you can hear clipping. I'll have to check that later. I did have a big problem with noise (I was using my old £20 mixer to record) and had to use some pretty drastic plug-ins to make it tolerable. (waves X noise, i'm sure you can get better these days)

All over the guitars and vocals I'm using a Rhode NT4 stereo mic in my massive studio, it gives a really nice room sound.

On the first track I think it's two mics on one guitar but i'd have to listen again as i'm not 100% sure. Generally on acoustic I use a SM58b on the soundhole and a NT2 or SE2200A on the 12th fret, both about a foot away.

I'll have to tell him about the plaguarism! HAHA!

[Don'tPostThePear]

Cheers DPTP. I've done some pretty drastic EQing, I never stick to any rules, so if you have some opinions on how I could have seperated the instruments more that would be great

I'm gutted that you can hear clipping. I'll have to check that later. I did have a big problem with noise (I was using my old £20 mixer to record) and had to use some pretty drastic plug-ins to make it tolerable. (waves X noise, i'm sure you can get better these days)

All over the guitars and vocals I'm using a Rhode NT4 stereo mic in my massive studio, it gives a really nice room sound.

On the first track I think it's two mics on one guitar but i'd have to listen again as i'm not 100% sure. Generally on acoustic I use a SM58b on the soundhole and a NT2 or SE2200A on the 12th fret, both about a foot away.

I'll have to tell him about the plaguarism! HAHA!

don't tell him because it is a really shit track aimed at 14 year olds mixing bacardi breezer with vodka and he will be offended:LOL:

btw is it possible that your noise plugins removed some of the treble of your hihats and crashes? i kinda felt like that the drums maybe missed some of the very high frequencies but i did not know that it was on purpose (like fo more vintage sound) or not.

[cheddatom]

lol, OK, never heard of him! No, the noise was fine for drums as they're played pretty loud, I did EQ out a lot of the top, you should be able to hear the cymbals but not much sizzle (if that makes sense)

[Crowella]

Bump.

Hopefully im not the only one that suffers this. Spending twelve hours mixing a song and then realising it sounds much better than the original recordings, but its sadly too boomy in the bass, guitar has little guts and shimmer and less dynamic overall. Ffffffuuuu-. I can't argue, it was my first proper attempt at mixing and while it did sound better (not much), will just start over.

Anyway I have a question regarding drums. The recordings we got from the studio sound a bit turd. I have a few questions...

1. Is it normal to have cymbals leaking through the Tom and kick mics? I couldn't do any EQ on the toms because it just seems to throw the cymbals into it and make the mix a bit muddy. If it is normal, what would the best way to reduce the cymbal noise and preserve the toms sound?

2. What sort of EQ bands should I be looking at with a track containing all cymbals like the hi hat, crash and ride? Our recording has them all on one track which I thought seems stupid but I might be wrong.

3. We have overheads as well. Am I right in placing a high pass filter on them to cut out the kick/toms from the overheads?

4. More of a recording question. Since we aren't happy with these drums and if this mix doesnt sit great we might re record. How and what 8 mics would we need to set up on a standard kit. I'm looking at what type of mic where mostly. I can probably get up to 10 nice set up if I can get two interfaces working together.

They sound like massively noob questions but I'm just thinking that these recordings we had done weren't as great as we expected. They even lost my bass DI recording some how so I'm not impressed :( Then again, they were done by first year students.

[Dramatic Hammer]

In that situation I'd attempt to use the room/overhead mics to get a decent sound then use the close mics for reinforcement. Depends how cymbal happy the drummer is though.

Gating the tom/kick mics might help and you could always use them as sample triggers if it's that bad...

[cheddatom]

That's a big question so my answer may be badly structured...

Obviously you're going to get cymbal bleed on tom mics. If the toms are tuned well, hit well, and the mics positioned well, it shouldn't be a problem. You could try a gate or an expander to give the peaks a bit more gain. Also a compressor with a high threshold and fast attack to kill the peaks.

When you're mixing drums, I would begin with your overheads. Turn them up, balance the levels, take all EQ off and listen to it. Try a bit of EQ - cutting, not boosting, and try some subtle compression. I like quite a low ratio with a very fast attack, and ran parallel with an un-compressed chain. Some plug-ins will give you a mix knob for parallel compression but not many.

Anyway, when you have a nice punchy drum sound using just your overheads, bring in the kick mic. Fade it in and out and concentrate on what it's bringing to the mix. The kick will deffinitely need some EQ, usually a big cut in the low mids leaving the upper mids to punch and some low end for ooomph. It'll probably need some compression too. I tend to use a high threshold low ratio medium attack, but then follow that with a limiter (fast attack, hard ratio)

Then bring in the snare until it's the loudest thing int he mix. EQ out any shitty ring. Put all these through a drum-bus and compress that a little bit.

Now add in your tom mics. EQ out any rumble, and probably scoop a fair bit of the middle - like 400Hz with a wide scoop. The close mics are going to add the low end and high-mid that'll be missing from the toms on the drum mix. If you have to turn them so much that they're crashing the rest of the mix, do try gating/expanding as it can be really effective. If they're so badly mic'd or tuned or played, just don't bother with them, leave them muted.

I hope that helps a bit anyway

[Crowella]

To both of you, thank you very much. They answered my questions. I will give them a try tonight.

I did some things similar to what you both said as far as mixing to the overhead levels. I'll keep at it :)

[Don'tPostThePear]

lol i have always treated OH mics as ambience/room/reverb kind of mics but i know shit bout mixing real drums.
They should form the basis of my mix?

I use drum plugins for "real drums" (like superior drummer or battery but i use free stuff)

When i create the miditrack for a drumbeat should i put every midi note on one track and mix the drums with the mic levels or i can make individual tracks for individual sounds (like track1:kick track2:snare track3:hihats etc.) and use the mic levels as a toneshaping tool rather than a level tool. (like if i want more reverb i can raise the room and OHs and lower the track volume for a more consistent level)

(i use the second method but maybe that results in unrealistic sounds, i feel like i treat real drums more like a drum machine that way)

[cheddatom]

i'm a little confused by your post there, but...

Overheads should be positioned over the kit, they're not room mics, they should be capturing every part of the kit, fairly equally. You really have to be careful positioning them

Room mics could be used as part of the main kit sound, but for me personally I use them sparingly.

When you're using a decent VST drum kit, you should be able to mix the kit within the plug-in. I wouldn't bother creating seperate channels for each drum.

[Crowella]

i'm a little confused by your post there, but...

Overheads should be positioned over the kit, they're not room mics, they should be capturing every part of the kit, fairly equally. You really have to be careful positioning them

Room mics could be used as part of the main kit sound, but for me personally I use them sparingly.

When you're using a decent VST drum kit, you should be able to mix the kit within the plug-in. I wouldn't bother creating seperate channels for each drum.
chedda, your advice has come to very good use. Spent a few hours on it and it's excellent. I couldn't make the drums much thicker sounding. To be fair it was a pretty cheap kit but at least it has definition now. I've posted a clip below. I know there's no cymbals but I think it's sounding a bit less dull than before.

First two are the original recordings. The last two are the mixed. I have to admit, I don't exactly have the best speakers to mix on. In fact, using some Sennheiser HD280's because it's 1am and I shouldn't make too much noise.

http://soundcloud.com/adamcrowell1990/drum-mix

I can hear my bass in the overheads. lol. Oh well.

[Don'tPostThePear]

i'm a little confused by your post there, but...

Overheads should be positioned over the kit, they're not room mics, they should be capturing every part of the kit, fairly equally. You really have to be careful positioning them

Room mics could be used as part of the main kit sound, but for me personally I use them sparingly.

When you're using a decent VST drum kit, you should be able to mix the kit within the plug-in. I wouldn't bother creating seperate channels for each drum.

I thought that room mics are basically the reverbs. In other words if you like the sound of the room you just bring up the level of the room mics and then you don't even have to use reverb plugins on your drums.

I don't like mixing within a drum plugin because i am more familiar with the EQs and comps i use on the regular.

I am just worried that maybe i lost some reality/glue/cohesion between the kit because i put everything on separate channels.

[cheddatom]

Crowella - can't listen as i'm at work. Just keep playing with EQ and compression until you get there. Honestly the most important things are to tune the kit properly, play the kit properly, and get your overheads in phase and sounding good.

I record the same kit in my studio a lot. Most of the time i'm playing, but occasionally I get to play with this amazing drummer who's at least 100 times better than me. Same mics, same positions, same mix, same drum kit, but the fucker still sounds better than me. It's just the way he hits the drums, it's so precise, it's so much easier to mix.

DPTP - that's exactly what room mics are, yeh, which is totally different to "overheads". A room mic mics the room, an overhead mics the kit.

If you're worried about "glue" then put all your seperate channels into the same group bus and give them a bit of compression.

The reason I wouldn't split out VST drums like you are is that they've often already been EQ'd, compressed, and reverbed etc within the plugin, so adding extra, as opposed to changing what's already there, isn't necessarily a good idea.

[Crowella]

I'll keep working at it. At the end of the day, we admittedly played with a shit kit. Amazing drummer but I don't think that salvaged it. At least we will do our recordings at home now so we can experiment to try and get a full sound.

[cheddatom]

Give it a go at home. You can do drum sounds with 2 mics, great drum sounds with 4 mics.

This was done with a Rhode NT4 stereo mic on the kit, nothing else. http://soundcloud.com/cheddatom/uniform My room is very "roomy" which doesn't help, but for that song I like it and think it works.

[Crowella]

Give it a go at home. You can do drum sounds with 2 mics, great drum sounds with 4 mics.

This was done with a Rhode NT4 stereo mic on the kit, nothing else. http://soundcloud.com/cheddatom/uniform My room is very "roomy" which doesn't help, but for that song I like it and think it works.
After this experience with mixing. We're going to try home recording for sure. I have a proper interface on it's way so we can mic up the drums. I showed our band the mixed results tonight from one song and they were over the moon in how it's turned out. I was actually shocked too, like we were listening to another band.

It wasn't a great recording to begin with since the drums were recorded quite thin but it's turned out into something not bad, a bit more than we are used to. Thanks for your help :)

Now, to recover our guitarist's behind the beat timings with some editing. :facepalm:

[Crowella]

First proper mix done. Not very happy with it. Whatever, I used it to learn some techniques and I know many places I can improve, mostly with how I listen to mixes, so here's another question... halp!

I might have to use headphones to do the majority of my mixing. I know this seems taboo by most people but right now my recording machine and table is in the corner of a cluttered room next to a window, air con and mirror and I won't be able to move my stuff around anywhere else any time soon.

So my question is, I was looking at getting some AKG-K-701's soon. Would these headphones be fine for doing mixing?
http://www.amazon.com/AKG-K-701-WHITE-HEADPHONES/dp/B000EBBJ6Y

It's not going to be the only thing used on later mixes. We are getting some Yamaha HS50's soon and they'll be in a room that's much more simple, open and acoustically friendly.

[cheddatom]

I would really not recommend mixing on headphones. It doesn't matter how good they are, you just can't get a good enough stereo image. I guess you could get used to over time

Sorry I couldn't give very specific advice on the mix, i've still not been able to listen to it

[Crowella]

I would really not recommend mixing on headphones. It doesn't matter how good they are, you just can't get a good enough stereo image. I guess you could get used to over time

Sorry I couldn't give very specific advice on the mix, i've still not been able to listen to it
No problems. Just an idea I had anyway. The Yamaha HS50's should be around soon but I just have a fear that I won't have a good place to put them. I'm too close to a corner and I can't move anything. I'll keep looking into it.

[Assassin231]

Bump.

Anyway I have a question regarding drums. The recordings we got from the studio sound a bit turd. I have a few questions...

1. Is it normal to have cymbals leaking through the Tom and kick mics? I couldn't do any EQ on the toms because it just seems to throw the cymbals into it and make the mix a bit muddy. If it is normal, what would the best way to reduce the cymbal noise and preserve the toms sound?

2. What sort of EQ bands should I be looking at with a track containing all cymbals like the hi hat, crash and ride? Our recording has them all on one track which I thought seems stupid but I might be wrong.

3. We have overheads as well. Am I right in placing a high pass filter on them to cut out the kick/toms from the overheads?

4. More of a recording question. Since we aren't happy with these drums and if this mix doesnt sit great we might re record. How and what 8 mics would we need to set up on a standard kit. I'm looking at what type of mic where mostly. I can probably get up to 10 nice set up if I can get two interfaces working together.

They sound like massively noob questions but I'm just thinking that these recordings we had done weren't as great as we expected. They even lost my bass DI recording some how so I'm not impressed :( Then again, they were done by first year students.

1. Yes, I usually cut the individual tom hit transients out using tab to transient in protools - and adjust the fades by ear. You can use a gate but I find that it takes a lot of tuning to make sure every hit sounds great (without automation) - and even then you can't beat doing it by ear. If you have the time I would recommend this long winded process to get it bang on.

2. Yeah, thats a bit odd - depending if they have been panned accordingly beforehand to give proper stereo width and good imagery. If they have, then its unfortunate that they are all on one track - but you will just need to get a 8 band EQ up and really carefully notch out all the horrible frequencies and filter off most of the low end. This is a general rule but its far more complicated - its all down to taste and how you need it to sit in the mix.

3. Yep, use a lowpass filter - but it won't really eliminate the fundamentals of the toms much, more so the kick and general boom of the kit - however you can do this after so its always best to leave it flat until your confident enough to know the sound you are going for pre-recording.

4. Again, depending on the sound 8 mics should provide plenty of clarity if the mics are good and are placed well. Make sure the kit is tuned very well and consider a kick tunnel so you can really control the mix of the kit before EQ. I would go for:

Kick In - RE20, D12, D112, MD421, 57
Snare ^ - 57...
Hats - small diaphragm condensor like a KM84, C451, NT3, NT5 - something with a pretty narrow polar pattern aimed away from the snare.
Tom - MD421, 441, 87, 414, 57
Floor - as above
OH L - 414, 87, 451, a nice pair of ribbons like 121s, in general a nice pair of condensers will do fine, spaced pair.
OH R - as above - remember to check distance from the centre of the snare to each capsule to avoid phasing issues.
Mono Room - something like a D112, RE20, maybe a large diagram condenser infront of the kit about 6 foot away (fuck the shit out of it with some compression and blend in with EQ to get a nice rock sound)

If you have any more channels try go for another kick mic (outside the kick) - like a subkick or NS10 woofer reversed as a mic - but a large diaphragm condenser on the front head will give it more midrange bite. A mic under the snare - like a 57, 451 or KM84 and if you can - more room mics! Depending on the room - walk around the room with the drummer playing and listen for a sweet spot where you get a good trashy sound of the room reverberation mixed with the direct sound of the kit - a stereo pair of room mics, with heavy compression just sitting with the rest of the drums will make them sound so LIVE.

[cheddatom]

don't use room mics if you have a shit room though

Why would you go for a spaced pair rather than XY for overheads?

[Dave.]

Just wondering. What is the best set-up to get the best sound out of drums with the least microphones?

[Dominic.]

Just wondering. What is the best set-up to get the best sound out of drums with the least microphones?

kick, snare, overheads?

[Dave.]

kick, snare, overheads?

I was thinking that.

[Raurie]

http://record.apogeedigital.com/how-tos/recording-drums-with-two-microphones/

[Dave.]

http://record.apogeedigital.com/how-tos/recording-drums-with-two-microphones/

Jesus, that's great! :D

[Crowella]

http://record.apogeedigital.com/how-tos/recording-drums-with-two-microphones/
Yeah, I'm quite impressed with that.

Likely we might go for a 5 mic setup, possibly 6. We will have to see. I'm not making enough money to even hire the microphone gear at the moment. :(

[cheddatom]

the above method would leave you with a mono sound, not really acceptable for anything better than a demo

Google "recorderman method". i can't remember the proper name. You set up one mic over the rack tom, pointing at the snare, and another mic over the floor tom pointing at the snare. Get some tape or string or something and make sure both mics are the same distance from the middle of the snare, and the kick... So both mics must be X from the snare and Y from the kick (make sense?)

this method combine with a kick drum would be the minimum for me. If you only have two channels, use this method but in your daw bounce both tracks to a mono, high pass it, fuck about etc, and you can use that as your kick drum channel.

[Assassin231]

the above method would leave you with a mono sound, not really acceptable for anything better than a demo

Google "recorderman method". i can't remember the proper name. You set up one mic over the rack tom, pointing at the snare, and another mic over the floor tom pointing at the snare. Get some tape or string or something and make sure both mics are the same distance from the middle of the snare, and the kick... So both mics must be X from the snare and Y from the kick (make sense?)

this method combine with a kick drum would be the minimum for me. If you only have two channels, use this method but in your daw bounce both tracks to a mono, high pass it, fuck about etc, and you can use that as your kick drum channel.

I would prefer spaced over XY nearly every time because of literally that - space. I find that a well positioned spaced pair provides far superior imagery and captures the essence of the kit that much better. XY gives good imagery and you don't have to worry about phase really. Its all opinion though - thats just what I would use. The technique you are talking about is glyn-johns and yeah that too is a great technique - it all depends on the sound you are going for.

[cheddatom]

...and you don't have to worry about phase...

hah, that's why I prefer it really. Having perfect phase ensures plenty of attack.

I did the album (link in sig) with a spaced pair of condensors, and an old Sony stereo mic in the room. I did spend ages measuring for the overheads though. I've been using my NT4 stereo mic as overheads recently, to save time, and I love the sound of it.

It sounds like you know your shit anyway - i'd be very interested to get your opinion on the sound of the album if you fancy giving it a listen?

[Assassin231]

hah, that's why I prefer it really. Having perfect phase ensures plenty of attack.

I did the album (link in sig) with a spaced pair of condensors, and an old Sony stereo mic in the room. I did spend ages measuring for the overheads though. I've been using my NT4 stereo mic as overheads recently, to save time, and I love the sound of it.

It sounds like you know your shit anyway - i'd be very interested to get your opinion on the sound of the album if you fancy giving it a listen?

I will happily give it a listen tonight through the studio speakers and let you know my thoughts!

[Crowella]

See, I come from the camp of thought that phase is everything, probably a trade off from doing an engineering degree so I'm more than happy to get the tape measure out and fiddle around.

I'm also doing the drums in a bedroom with very little reflective sound because it has a sloped roof, good sound insulation, etc. I have enough acoustic foam and "movable walls" and stuff for us to try and tune the best sound we can get. My only fear is we might not get a roomy feel at all but hopefully our condensor mic can be used, just compressed to hell, etc. Worst case scenario is we do the lounge room which means it'll take longer than it's supposed to.

It's going to be a fun bit of experimentation so I'm going to take a lot of these tips, try them out and see what we can get out of it. :)

[Assassin231]

hah, that's why I prefer it really. Having perfect phase ensures plenty of attack.

I did the album (link in sig) with a spaced pair of condensors, and an old Sony stereo mic in the room. I did spend ages measuring for the overheads though. I've been using my NT4 stereo mic as overheads recently, to save time, and I love the sound of it.

It sounds like you know your shit anyway - i'd be very interested to get your opinion on the sound of the album if you fancy giving it a listen?

Nice sound, what was the budget like? What gear you rocking?

[cheddatom]

...My only fear is we might not get a roomy feel at all...

just record it dry as possible and play about with reverb after

Nice sound, what was the budget like? What gear you rocking?

Thanks! This is recorded at my studio, which is just a massive room at the back of the company I work for. It's a very lively sound, but I love it. I have a red audio drum set of mics which I use for kick and toms, and one of the condensors for hats. Then I have 57s on the snare, Karma Audio bullet mics as overheads, some weird old stereo sony mic on the room. I also use my NT2 over the stairwell for extra bass boom.

The bass is all DI'd from my pedals, the guitars are all through a H&K Warp 7 SS head and matching 4 x12" with 57s and NT2 or SE2200A. Pre-amps are all through a shitty studiomaster desk I bought for £20, going into M-Audio Delta 1010Lts, mixed and mastered in Cubase

From an engineering POV it's not that interesting other than the song "bulletproof" which was recorded all live with vocals through the PA, everything turned up and bleeding all over the drums. There's just one extra layer of guitar.

[Assassin231]

just record it dry as possible and play about with reverb after



Thanks! This is recorded at my studio, which is just a massive room at the back of the company I work for. It's a very lively sound, but I love it. I have a red audio drum set of mics which I use for kick and toms, and one of the condensors for hats. Then I have 57s on the snare, Karma Audio bullet mics as overheads, some weird old stereo sony mic on the room. I also use my NT2 over the stairwell for extra bass boom.

The bass is all DI'd from my pedals, the guitars are all through a H&K Warp 7 SS head and matching 4 x12" with 57s and NT2 or SE2200A. Pre-amps are all through a shitty studiomaster desk I bought for £20, going into M-Audio Delta 1010Lts, mixed and mastered in Cubase

From an engineering POV it's not that interesting other than the song "bulletproof" which was recorded all live with vocals through the PA, everything turned up and bleeding all over the drums. There's just one extra layer of guitar.

You got a great sound for the equipment used thats for sure! Sounds pretty standard mic setup-wise, with what you have - was the mixing process pretty heavy then? I would personally have tabbed in lots of samples to give it more of an industrial feel - did you do anything cool like that post-tracking?

[Crowella]

I should have posted what I put in the MP3 thread in here. Top work chedda :) I'm glad that with that gear you posted you were able to push out that.

[cheddatom]

Well since the album was done I switched over to my mackie mixer but there's something up with it - too noisey. I have a couple of A&H desks which I should really try out. I just love the sound of that studio master though!

You got a great sound for the equipment used thats for sure! Sounds pretty standard mic setup-wise, with what you have - was the mixing process pretty heavy then? I would personally have tabbed in lots of samples to give it more of an industrial feel - did you do anything cool like that post-tracking?

Cheers! Getting the drum sound was easy, I'm used to that now. But yeh, everything else took ages, not least because we would mix together, so when I go to tweak the upper mids in the vocals or i'm listening for the right attack setting on the guitar compressor, one of the guys shouts up that the bass isn't bassy enough etc...

No drum samples if that's what you mean? I'd rather not use them if I can help it

[Assassin231]

Well since the album was done I switched over to my mackie mixer but there's something up with it - too noisey. I have a couple of A&H desks which I should really try out. I just love the sound of that studio master though!



Cheers! Getting the drum sound was easy, I'm used to that now. But yeh, everything else took ages, not least because we would mix together, so when I go to tweak the upper mids in the vocals or i'm listening for the right attack setting on the guitar compressor, one of the guys shouts up that the bass isn't bassy enough etc...

No drum samples if that's what you mean? I'd rather not use them if I can help it

Yeah nice. And I did mean samples - but nothing too nirvana haha.

Have you checked out SPL transient designer? You can drastically change the sound of any drum and give it as much snap as you want - one of the most useful plugins ever for drums - I have worked with a few producers who swear by it and it helps you to craft the drum sounds with the mix without overusing compression/eq. But yeah nice work!

[cheddatom]

yeh, i have it but didn't really get on with it. I fully accept it's my own limitations but I just ifnd it easier to use compression to control attack. I should give it another go

[Assassin231]

yeh, i have it but didn't really get on with it. I fully accept it's my own limitations but I just ifnd it easier to use compression to control attack. I should give it another go

Well the mix is great - the problem with critiquing a good mix is that you enter a realm of opinion once everything is sitting well, balanced out and complimenting the music!

[cheddatom]

Thanks very much!

I did check out your soundcloud the other night while I was waiting for some exports. It's not really my thing but the sounds are great. I sent the link to my mate, it's exactly the kind of thing he puts on late at night when we're stoned.

[Don'tPostThePear]

We moved and i got a bigass empty room for my guitar stuff, the problem is that there is a pretty strong reverb going on in the room. (surprisingly it sounds good for clean guitar) I'd rather have the room dry and add verb via pedals/VSTs.
What kind of furniture can lead to a drier sounding room? Drapes? Sofas? Bookshelfs? Carpets? Bags full of clothes? (not really aesthetic but i don't care about that in the guitar room)

[Dave.]

We moved and i got a bigass empty room for my guitar stuff, the problem is that there is a pretty strong reverb going on in the room. (surprisingly it sounds good for clean guitar) I'd rather have the room dry and add verb via pedals/VSTs.
What kind of furniture can lead to a drier sounding room? Drapes? Sofas? Bookshelfs? Carpets? Bags full of clothes? (not really aesthetic but i don't care about that in the guitar room)

Curtains or flags on the wall is what I use.

[Dave.]

I'm playing a band battle tonight (song vs.song). We don't have an mics for amps or drums etc. because its such a small venue so I was wondering if anyone has any advice for getting the mix right? We're using a mic (which is using its own PA), a guitar+amp, a bass+amp and drums.

[Dominic.]

Get someone to stand in the middle of the crowd bit and tell you whether to turn the guitar/bass/vox louder/quieter until it sound right in comparison to the drums?

Simple enough?

[Dave.]

Get someone to stand in the middle of the crowd bit and tell you whether to turn the guitar/bass/vox louder/quieter until it sound right in comparison to the drums?

Simple enough?

Suppose so. I want to get the mix right because if we win we get to represent our youth club in a national finals and we only get one shot.

[Raurie]

Get someone to stand in the middle of the crowd bit and tell you whether to turn the guitar/bass/vox louder/quieter until it sound right in comparison to the drums?

Simple enough?

Pretty much this. Make sure it's someone whose judgement you trust and doesn't have a complete tin ear as you might need to play with the way you're EQing the amps as well as the volume to get a decent mix. Nothing beats hearing it yourself though so what we quite often do is for one of us to hop off the stage during the soundcheck and check how things sound from the audience position once we're happy with it on stage. Obviously this requires you to have a long enough cable, relies on you actually getting a soundcheck and isn't really an option if you're a drummer ;)

[Dave.]

Pretty much this. Make sure it's someone whose judgement you trust and doesn't have a complete tin ear as you might need to play with the way you're EQing the amps as well as the volume to get a decent mix. Nothing beats hearing it yourself though so what we quite often do is for one of us to hop off the stage during the soundcheck and check how things sound from the audience position once we're happy with it on stage. Obviously this requires you to have a long enough cable, relies on you actually getting a soundcheck and isn't really an option if you're a drummer ;)

Ok then. I have a plan of attack :LOL:

[haze015]

When you rehearse with the band, always setup like you are on stage and try and make sure the speakers from the amps are pointing at roughly where your ears are.

Makes soundchecking a doddle as you don't waste ages trying to work out why everything sounds shit.

[Liam511]

Wish I had a good recording set up :(
I haven't got the money for a mic (not even a wee shure sm57) so have to use the headphone output of my amp into my mixing deck... As you can imagine this doesn't sound great... I loose all the nice tone front he speaker from my vox Vt30 and everything sounds very clipped.

At the end it makes EQing very hard :(

[JJ]

u need 2 compress 2 impress

[cheddatom]

liam yuo should be able to record a decent DI'd guitar tone. What interface are you using? it sounds like you're clipping the input on your computer/interface.

Deffinitely EQ out most above 5Khz anyway

[haze015]

u need 2 compress 2 impress

:noey:

Guitar amps will compress the sound to varying amounts to start with, so post compression isn't that useful.

[JJ]

:noey:

Guitar amps will compress the sound to varying amounts to start with, so post compression isn't that useful.

Haha, I meant in general. Satire.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/13220_469507093104677_595781500_n.jpg

Although muse do love 2 compres

[haze015]

Are you talking about brickwall limiting in the mastering stage?

As thats a very different discussion.

[Liam511]

liam yuo should be able to record a decent DI'd guitar tone. What interface are you using? it sounds like you're clipping the input on your computer/interface.

Deffinitely EQ out most above 5Khz anyway

Basically I have my guitar going straight into the amp, which doesn't have a line out so I have to output through the headphone jack using an AUX cable into my Mixing desk, which I tend to bypass any compression or EQing whilst playing.

[cheddatom]

do you have one of these USB mixing desks or something?.. what interface are you using?

You can handle compression and EQ once it's in the box anyway so no need for any of that. You just need to get your gain staging right.

[Liam511]

It's one of these:
http://www.zzounds.com/item--ZOMMRS1608

Tbh I'm not the most technically minded person, I have no idea about cutoffs etc so I tend just to fiddle until I'm happy :LOL: never works very well though

[cheddatom]

right OK, you're not moving it to a computer, you're mixing in the Zoom box?

As you're recording into the box there'll be a level meter jumping up and down on the screen. Make sure it peaks about 2/3 of the way up, that way you can guarantee it's not clipping.

How does the guitar sound through headphones plugged into the headphone output of your amp? It should sound exactly the same coming back out of the Zoom recorder. if it sounds different then something is going wrong in the recording process, but I can't think of much you can fuck up apart from input gain

[Liam511]

right OK, you're not moving it to a computer, you're mixing in the Zoom box?

As you're recording into the box there'll be a level meter jumping up and down on the screen. Make sure it peaks about 2/3 of the way up, that way you can guarantee it's not clipping.

How does the guitar sound through headphones plugged into the headphone output of your amp? It should sound exactly the same coming back out of the Zoom recorder. if it sounds different then something is going wrong in the recording process, but I can't think of much you can fuck up apart from input gain

Yeah it tends to sound the same bar the differences in sound from headphones and the speakers in the room. I think it mostly is a clipping issue when I record, that and possibly the need of a guitar set up and battery change for active pickups.

[cheddatom]

if the sound you get out of the zoom into headphones is the same as the sound you get out of the amp into headphones, you don't have a problem recording. you have a problem getting a decent tone out of your amp, or at least out of the headphone output of your amp.

does the amp have an FX send you could use as a line out?

I would try turning down the gain, treble, presence, and also check out the Zoom for any amp modellers it might have built in.

[Liam511]

if the sound you get out of the zoom into headphones is the same as the sound you get out of the amp into headphones, you don't have a problem recording. you have a problem getting a decent tone out of your amp, or at least out of the headphone output of your amp.

does the amp have an FX send you could use as a line out?

I would try turning down the gain, treble, presence, and also check out the Zoom for any amp modellers it might have built in.

Yeah, thats why im considering getting a mic, I find that I much prefer the sound of the amp when Ive no headphones plugged in. unfortunately it doesnt have an FX send or anything.

[cheddatom]

well, you could try a bit of compression, but mainly your problem is EQ. Your guitar cab is probably getting rid of a lot below 100Hz and above 5Khz. EQ this out. then make a fairly wide EQ boost (about 1db) and sweep it up and down the spectrum until you find a place you like.