Old 01-14-2009, 06:37 PM   #161
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Hey Yep. Thanks again for this super thread. A few snippets from your last post, with some emphasis added :

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By way of for instance, some heavy rock recordings in particular make use of very guitar-heavy soundscapes that are harder to work around. The old 80's metallica records for instance (pre-black album) had lots of layered tracks of very bass-heavy guitar sounds that soak up the entire frequency spectrum. The approach on these records was to have excruciatingly little bass, an almost inaudible little wub-wub, and quite "pointy," papery-sounding drums. All of the meat of the track was guitar. The vocals were also heavily multitracked and also compressed and saturated, with most of the lows subtracted, and just kind of "soaked in" to the dominant guitar riffs.
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a sound that fills up and stays full sounds fat, a sound that fills right up and then drops right off sounds punchy.
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If the guitar sound needs to pound on the low E and A strings, and extend way down into the bottom octaves, why is there is a bass player, seriously? (guitar is technically a bass instrument, and the bass only goes one octave lower). And if you've got a dropped-D or baritone-tuned guitar, then how many speakers are actually going to reproduce the two or three notes lower than that? Do they really matter? and if the guitar is furthermore a super-saturated modern high-gain sound that takes up the whole frequency spectrum, what room is there for other instruments, other than for papery drums to add a smidgen of attack to the overloaded guitar riff?
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But we're not going to get that AND get fat, pounding hip-hop drums that suck the whole air out of the room between beats, because leaving enough air to do that means turning down those massive guitars until they are whiny fizz behind the 808 stomp. In order for something to be big, something else has to be small.
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So maybe we're better off just getting "fat" from the bass, and getting "punch" from the kick. Or vice-vesra (this can work great, actually). But neither of them are going to happen if the guitar is soaking up the whole low end...
Here's what I'm getting from this, and what I've found to be true while DAWing and also just from careful listening.

Every instrument has its range where it "normally" belongs. But the actual range the instrument is capable of producing almost always exceeds its "normal" position in a mix and its function in a particular arrangement.

What's important from the POV of a total mix is that there be enough frequency distribution to fill the ear in a satisfying way, but it doesn't necessarily matter WHAT instrument is producing any particular frequency range so long as the total mix is balanced relative to genre-expectations.

That's why you can get away with papery drums that when soloed sound like nothing to be proud of and a pointy high-end bass that is barely "bass" at all, like your 80's Metallica example. (Aside: It's when you can successfully pull-off new balances that defy genre-expectations that new sub-genres are born... or at least novelty hits.)

The idea is, when listening to -- and actually enjoying -- a well-made record, you don't immediately notice that the drums are tiny and thin, because they're still doing their job *as drums* in a mix that is overall satisfying your expectations of "heavy" or "full" or "punk" or whatever it is you wanna hear.

In context of the mix, the fullness of the guitars will "lend" fullness to the papery drums and the pointy bass, just as the drums are lending rhythmic dynamics to what might be a just a wash of wide-spectrum guitar slosh. This is why in a typical mix you can lop off low end on the bass (even going up into its fundamentals) to let the kick through, or vice versa, because each of them "borrow" characteristics from the other. That's why it's called a "mix."

Plus, the ear fills in what's missing, which is also what lets you high-pass into fundamentals; overtones always imply the pitch, and define instrument character.

It's all an illusion. You don't really notice what's actually going on until you get "out from under" the full wash of the mix and look/listen closely at what's actually there. What's actually there is often quite surprising, and less than you would imagine or how you remember it.

That getting "out from under" is one of the advantages of listening and tracking and mixing at sub-conversation levels, because it puts you more "on top" of the sound where you're less susceptible to the power of mere volume.

Does that make sense?
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Old 01-14-2009, 07:26 PM   #162
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Wow, Marah Mag.

I think you just said in one post what it took me five pages to say.

Exactly.
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Old 01-14-2009, 08:45 PM   #163
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***From a learner's perspective,

I began researching the kind of albums I wanted to sound like and the instrument I spent the first chunk of time on was electric guitars (I'm a guitarist first).

I was surprise to find that most crunch electric guitars I heard are low passed as far as 200-ish and high passed at 7-8K-ish. By itself, it sounds tiny but in the mix gives room for the bass and vocal. As mentioned above, the bass and ear lend low end energy to the guitars and they don't SEEM tiny in casual listening.

Further, I was surprised to hear how many instruments and tracks are high passed.

I can't tell you howmany times in live and studio situations, I did the "solo-listen to make each track huge" thing. Thank God for progress.

My humble .02

Anyone care to add? Or just move on.
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Old 01-14-2009, 08:57 PM   #164
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Sidebar...

Trivia question: what band recorded more number 1 hits than any other? More than the Beatles, Elvis, The Stones, and the Beach Boys combined?

A: The Funk Brothers, the then-anonymous house band/songwriting/arranging team behind Motown.

Home recordists take heart: all of the Detroit-era Motown records were made in the small (originally dirt floor) basement of Berry Gordy's humble Detroit home. I am paraphrasing from the film "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" when I say: "people always wanted to know where that 'Motown Sound' came from. They thought it was the wood, the microphones, the floor, the food, but they never asked about the musicians."

I am paraphrasing again when I say that it was widely thought that it didn't matter who the singer was, anything that came out of "Hitsville USA" (namely, that dirt-floor basement) was made of "hit." Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, the Temptations, The Four Tops, the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells, and so on were basically just rotating front people for the greatest band in popular music history.

I don't care what kind of party you're throwing or what the crowd is like, if you put on "Bernadette" or "Uptight Everything's Alright" or "standing in the shadows of love" or "WAR" or any of those old Motown numbers, people will get out of their seats and start dancing and clapping (maybe on the wrong beats, but whatever). Nobody knows the lyrics, nobody can hum the guitar riff, and it has nothing to with the production. The music bypasses the higher cognition functions and directly communicates with the hips and the hairs on the back of your neck.

The guitars are indistinct, the keys are hard to make out, the horns and winds vanish into the background, James Jamerson's incomparable bass symphonies are the definition of "muddy," but the unified whole is impossible not to respond to. One cannot be human and not react to "Heard it through the grapevine," "Heatwave," "Tracks of my Tears," "Shotgun," and so on.

This is American-style popular music at its apex, and unlike nostalgic hippie music or punk purists, all you have to do is to throw it in the CD changer to hear its real power and musical accomplishment. No explanation or cultural context required.

My point is not that everyone should aspire to sound like Motown. In fact I do not think it is possible or desirable to re-capture such a sound with any kind of production techniques. And my point is definitely not to argue that they were "good for their time" or anything like that. Throw it in the CD changer and see if it isn't just as good today. If you think it sounds "old" or doesn't hold up, ignore what I'm saying.

My point is that you could not MAKE a bad recording of this band. The recordings ARE bad-- they are muddy, overloaded, indistinct, midrangey, all of it. And you could put those recordings into a cassette player and record the output of an old 6x9 car speaker through a cheap mic and then replay it at a wedding and it would STILL get more people dancing than anything on the top 40 from any era.

The production does not make the song. The preamps DEFINITELY don't make the song. Hell, the SONG doesn't even make the song, in modern popular music. It's the performance.

The rest is just flash and sizzle.

End sidebar. More to follow.
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Old 01-14-2009, 09:15 PM   #165
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...Pros care to add?
I should probably say that I am NOT a "pro."

I was, once upon a time, a "pro" in the sense of somebody who earned his daily bread by twisting knobs on mixing consoles, but not anybody of note. Audio engineering is a cruel life, fraught with the acute anxieties of borderline homelessness in the company of grossly overpaid musos, and I could not hack it.

I am now just a hobbyist, who occasionally does recording projects, mostly for love, rarely for money, and never for more than break-even rates. I have made records that have been played on commercial radio, but such playings are few and far-between and I am not some million-dollar producer in disguise.

If my advice is helpful, then take it for what it's worth, if it's not, then ignore. In any case, do not mistake me for any kind of "authority" in the biz, and don't trust anything I or anyone else says unless it actually works to help you make better-sounding recordings. It is your ears that count.
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Old 01-14-2009, 09:49 PM   #166
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Point taken.
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Old 01-14-2009, 10:14 PM   #167
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Thanks for all the advice. This could not have come at a better time for me. I have only a couple months of mixing experience. I just bought a copy of "ReaMix" and I swear the combination of that book and this thread is changing my life. I've been a guitar player for years and I had an epiphany the other day. I play in what we'll call a "pseudo band". My friend, the "lead singer/rhythm guitarist" doesn't have loads of experience. I rebuked him a couple weeks ago when he complained that he had dialed in a killer tone on his new tube amp while playing in his bedroom late at night, left the tonestack and gain controls where they were and then cranked the master volume for our rehearsal the next day. We might as well have mic'ed a washing maching on the spin cycle. I spared him the lecture on preamp -vs- power tube distortion in guitar amps and explained that the tone he dialed in was without the rest of the "pseudo band" in the room. "You have to adjust your tone so the rest of the band has room to play their parts!!!" I yelled. "They'll leave space for you and you should try to keep your tone in the space they give you!" Now I realize that I've been mixing totally wrong, trying to squeeze every ounce of fatness out of every track while it's soloed. I seem to end up with 8 or 9 tracks that sound really good by themselves, but when I play more than about two of them at the same time I get this muddy, ambiguous wall of sound with every instrument competing for the same space that just gets worse and worse. I was taking the same approach to mixing as my friend was to his guitar tone. I had to rebuke myself! Now I've been listening to pro mixes in many different genres and truly listening to the mix. It's like an entire world has revealed itself to me! Six months ago, drums sounded like drums, but now I'm starting to hear how the character of the drum kit is used in different mixes with different vocalists and musical styles. I'm starting to really appreciate the way I can hear several distinctly different acoustic guitar parts in a country ballad, along with a mandolin that's in your face but doesn't seem to clash with anything else. Or how a bluesy strat is presented for a solo and then put in a perfect place so that the vocals can be brought back into focus. Consider me inspired and please keep the wisdom flowing!!!
Sorry for the long post, but if you've been reading up to this point I hardly think this one will look all that big. Size is relative, right?
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Old 01-14-2009, 10:23 PM   #168
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Heartfelt View Post
***From a learner's perspective,

I began researching the kind of albums I wanted to sound like and the instrument I spent the first chunk of time on was electric guitars (I'm a guitarist first).

I was surprise to find that most crunch electric guitars I heard are low passed as far as 200-ish and high passed at 7-8K-ish. By itself, it sounds tiny but in the mix gives room for the bass and vocal. As mentioned above, the bass and ear lend low end energy to the guitars and they don't SEEM tiny in casual listening.

Further, I was surprised to hear how many instruments and tracks are high passed.

I can't tell you howmany times in live and studio situations, I did the "solo-listen to make each track huge" thing. Thank God for progress.

My humble .02

Anyone care to add? Or just move on.
Apparently you posted this as I was typing post #167. I would be all ears should anyone care to offer any nugget of advice or encouragement!
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Old 01-14-2009, 11:03 PM   #169
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another great post, yep. love yr work.
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Old 01-15-2009, 08:05 PM   #170
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Quote:
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I should probably say that I am NOT a "pro."
Yep,
We appreciate the humility with which you speak.
Thanks for the time taken and by all means, please continue. We appreciate it.
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Old 01-16-2009, 09:36 AM   #171
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One more thing as you start to listen more closely to the production and the mix...

If you have one of those random/everything radio stations that plays all kinds of songs from all different eras, that can be a great resource for hearing a wide variety of juxtaposed approaches, and especially for hearing how skilled recordists in different genres may approach things.

Rolling off the lows is a common "oh, wow" moment when you first hit upon it, but do not overlook doing the same for the highs. High-end buildup is not always so obviously degrading and unsatisfying as low-end mud, but getting into the habit of rolling off the highs can also work wonders.

If I had to pick a single least favorite aspect of modern "loudness war" recordings, it would be the distinctive effect of having a big, flat wash of highs fed into a look-ahead limiter that modulates the extreme highs of the whole song in response to the actual dynamics that were once there. The effect is like having a constant ringing phone buried in the mix, and it only gets worse when the mix is fed through broadcast processing at the radio station.

This is especially common in over-produced alternative rock bands, where you have strings, hyper-compressed splashy cymbals, multi-layered vocals with hyped highs, saturated, trebly guitars, and what-have-you all piled up in the highs. Listen for this "ringing phone" and you'll start to hear it everywhere, and it's not pleasant. This is the kind of thing that we mean when we talk about records that are "fatiguing" to listen to. They're loaded with essiness, seasick dynamics, and weird artifacts. And mp3 conversion and cheap DA converters only worsen these problems in real-world playback, especially when you have a huge stereo spread with lots of highs from different sources.

NOBODY who was actually using level-matched listening would actually PREFER such a sound. The reason people do it is to try and get the record "hotter." The engineer (or more likely, an A&R mook) hears the extra 3dB increase in signal level as sounding "better" for all the reasons we talked about earlier in this thread, so that's what stays. The problem with this is that you cannot use these techniques to reach through the listener's speaker and turn up the volume knob. In fact, these are exactly the kinds of recordings that customers are likely to turn DOWN, completely defeating the point of the degradation.

So once again, if it doesn't sound loud enough, use the volume knob on your speakers. And match levels every step of the way. Your ears will guide you, as long as you're not confusing them with hype and volume effects. The reason why so many people are inclined to record sources and then mix in ways that have over-hyped lows and highs is the whole "loudness switch" effect-- it sounds louder, and louder sounds better. But it's a self-defeating cycle when you just keep piling on more loud and more hype and then turning down the mix to prevent clipping, and then adding more hype and more loud, and then turning down the mix to prevent clipping, and so on.

And this is not just a mix thing, it's every step of the way, from setup to instrument selection to mic placement to gain-staging to tracking and so on.

It's not some super-magical thing requiring golden ears and magical gear, it's just careful listening and not deceiving yourself. And it's not actually that hard when you strip away the confusing superstitions and mumbo-jumbo and anxieties and TRUST WHAT YOU HEAR, without getting caught up in trying to guess at where the "hit magic" or whatever comes from. Just take ten deep breaths, and repeat to yourself "all you need is ears."
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Old 01-16-2009, 09:46 AM   #172
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I thought I was the only one hearing the "ringing phone" !!!!

I hear it in a lot of music these days and in television commercials. Even to the point where I've gotten up to answer the damn thing! I thought it was a subliminal tactic to get a person's attention.
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Old 01-17-2009, 02:28 AM   #173
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Quote:
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I thought I was the only one hearing the "ringing phone" !!!!
No, your certainly not the only one, I hear it mostly in the car and often turn down the stereo to answer my phone only to find it not ringing at all.

Yep, just wanted to express my gratitude once more for your time & effort, and although you say your not a PRO ENGINEER you obviously have a lot of experience and thorough understanding of all aspects of the recording / mixing process. I'm sure this thread is valuable to both novice & experienced engineers alike. And i'm sure I speak for everyone when I say it is VERY, VERY much appreciated. Thank you!!

Cheers
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Old 01-17-2009, 07:48 AM   #174
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And i'm sure I speak for everyone when I say it is VERY, VERY much appreciated. Thank you!!



I am also sure of this
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Old 01-17-2009, 10:58 PM   #175
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New yep PDF is up!

http://www.filesavr.com/whydoyourrec...17-09thread171
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Old 01-18-2009, 01:31 PM   #176
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i'm going mainstream there but this thread is unarguably among the best things i've read regardless of the topic.
sometimes you listen to some speech or read some book that leave you with the strong impression you've discovered the meaning of life. Their speakers or writers open up a whole new world for your understanding and things become OBVIOUS.
Yep has given me the same kind of thrill.

so thank you yep and please go on as we can't wait to read more.
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Old 01-18-2009, 01:58 PM   #177
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BTW i cannot believe you've never thought about putting all that wisdom and knowledge in a book . i mean everyone including me seem to be thinking it deserved to be.
but as you walked away from "profesionnal-ness" because swimming with sharks was not your thing i guess sharing your knowledge means more to you than selling it. i tend to agree with that approach if it's yours. Sharing has tremedous value. and obviously if you've had decided to write a book rather than open this thread i and many other would have not had the opportunity to "see the light"...

oh i've figured it!!! WE ARE A READER PANEL!
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Old 01-18-2009, 09:58 PM   #178
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I think the 'ringing phone'is the same as what I hear as a constant background noise that sounds like crshhh shhhh that is maybe supposed to be high frequency content but is really just noise.

I have wondered what exactly that is.
It, along with the distortion from the 'loudness wars', makes listening to much of the modern productions unpleasant.
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Old 01-20-2009, 08:46 AM   #179
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best thread *ever*
can't wait for the rest...
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Old 01-21-2009, 02:47 PM   #180
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Quote:
Originally Posted by yep View Post

Repeat until 2am, go to bed, and wake up to find that the "improved" recording sounds like a vortex of shit.
That should be on a plaque somewhere. This thread has gotten long, so I may have missed this... but this is why things like the K system are so important. Consistent listening levels are critical.

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Old 01-21-2009, 03:13 PM   #181
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Fellows,

please kindly notice my first post overhere:

GREAT thread. GREAT people here. GREAT piece of software.

Thanx so much.
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Old 01-21-2009, 05:15 PM   #182
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Hi Yep ! Hi every reader !
As I read this thread since I've been given the link to it on another forum, I 'd just registered here to say in my very first post :

Thank you very much, Yep, this thread is a gold mine for me, and, I guess, many home recordists glued in their poor mixes and their un-answered questions !
I can't wait to read more and more from you !

My best regards to you, Yep !
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Old 01-21-2009, 05:50 PM   #183
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Well, Yep's excellent thread has helped me to do something that I have not wanted to do for a long time.

I finally started rolling some lows and low mids out of my tracks to see
if that would clean up some of the mud and boomyness that I just couldn't seem to get rid of.

I have a tendency to spend too much time listening to the solo'ed tracks. Therefore it is painful for me to start making those cuts and trims because my impression is that I am thinning the tracks out too much and I REALLY like fullness/low end warmth.

But, as I said, I took the plunge, trimmed out the low end and then listened to the end result in the context of the full mix. The difference is not subtle, it's huge. It Really cleaned up the mix and let a lot of the more delicate and subtle mid and high end frequencies shine through.

If you haven't tried it I think you'll a good wow factor out of it. Part of my wow factor came from the fact that I had probably over boosted the lows on a few tracks, but still, I think the difference was remarkable.


Anyway, Carry On Yep !
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Old 01-21-2009, 07:18 PM   #184
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Certainly this is THE best thread ever.

I used to think big studios had some serious-undisclosed-hidden-tricks to make recordings sound huge, secrets that could never be revealed to us mortals. I thought those secrets were the ones that were keeping me out from doing better mixes. Now thanks to Yep's generosity I'm sure there are no magical wands or "golden ears". Now I have my confidence back. Just like the previous poster said, I used to find myself very late at night tweaking for "that" perfect kick drum and forgetting about the whole, just watching those meters carefully. Not anymore.

A big THANKS to you Yep.
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Old 01-21-2009, 07:37 PM   #185
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I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say yep's 'ringing phone' comment is a metaphor for 'bad sound' 'annoying sound'....not literally a ringing phone.

I'm just chuckling (in a good natured way) at all you dudes who say you can hear ringing phones. lol

yep...please confirm.

Are you literally hearing ringing phones? What's the ring tone?

Or are you being metaphoric?
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Old 01-21-2009, 08:07 PM   #186
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Man, this isn't a metaphor. Try listening to Pink's "Get this Party Started" or whatever it's called. Every time this was on the radio I was looking for my phone.
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Old 01-22-2009, 04:39 AM   #187
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I wanna hear it from yep
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Old 01-22-2009, 05:19 AM   #188
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Re: ringing phone

No, really. I don't know what the correct term is but whatever "anomalies" are introduced into the mix because of file compression, over-processing, whatever, have made some kind of tone that sounds just like my cordless ringing. Or maybe my cordless sounds like the anomalies. In any event, I've stopped the music on a few occasions and chased down the phone only to find out it was the music "ringing".
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Old 01-22-2009, 07:07 AM   #189
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Quote:
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I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say yep's 'ringing phone' comment is a metaphor for 'bad sound' 'annoying sound'....not literally a ringing phone...
No, literally. That's the best way I can describe it-- it sounds like a phone buried somewhere deep in the mix, as though there were a phone ringing far in the background when they recorded the tracks.

The effect comes from having really saturated highs that get rapidly modulated (pumped up and down in level) by aggressive digital look-ahead limiters and multiband compression. This is an ugly process in a lot of ways, but when it starts tracking really fast-moving signal such as the individual cycles of low-frequency content (yes, this happens), then it starts to modulate more delicate and sensitive parts of the sound.

Listen to some modern rock stations for a little while (like, ten minutes) and you are bound to hear examples of it. You might describe it differently, but I think "ringing phone" is a pretty good analogy, and egregious examples could certainly cause someone listening to loud music to reach for a phone with an old-style ringer or ringtone. If you take some high-passed white noise and sharply modulate it very quickly up and down in level, that's a pretty good way to synthesize a ringing phone, and that is exactly the effect going on here.

The technical causes for this are a little more complicated than we need to get into right now, but the cool thing about using your ears is that the technical causes really don't even matter all that much. If you level-match your monitoring decisions you would never apply the kind of processing that produces this effect, because it sounds bad. The only reason people do it is because it makes the signal hotter, which fools them into thinking it's an improvement.

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Old 01-22-2009, 08:19 AM   #190
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Fair enough.

I know what you mean...but I didn't think you meant it ilterally...anyway...back to it...
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Old 01-22-2009, 09:55 AM   #191
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No, literally. That's the best way I can describe it-- it sounds like a phone buried somewhere deep in the mix, as though there were a phone ringing far in the background when they recorded the tracks.
I often hear this too, but to me it is more of a smoke detector sound. Regardless, I too have gone digging in the couch looking for my cell that I think I hear ringing or jump up to answer the door from this sort of junk. Listen to any of the Hinder/Nickle Back like bands... they all have this cloud of high end in their sound. It sounds very big and 3D for about 5 seconds, then it is just tiring as you realize other definition is totally gone.

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Old 01-22-2009, 10:34 AM   #192
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yep - i apologize if this is off-topic, but i was wondering if you could comment on when it's appropriate to eq or compress a signal prior to recording on a DAW versus applying eq or compression after recording.

i've asked this question before in this forum, received a variety of answers, and am curious about your learned opinion.

(actually, i had a disagreement with a friend of mine and i want to see how "right" I was.)

of course, since your audience is much bigger than just me, feel free to disregard this request.

thanks!
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Old 01-22-2009, 10:38 AM   #193
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...Listen to any of the Hinder/Nickle Back like bands... they all have this cloud of high end in their sound. It sounds very big and 3D for about 5 seconds, then it is just tiring as you realize other definition is totally gone.
Even that big and 3d effect is an illusion created by loudness. The songs are mastered 6~12dB hotter, so the immediate effect when it comes on the CD changer or ipod shuffle is of a sound that "blooms." But if you actually level-match it against a pre-digital recording, the badness is immediate and obvious. It doesn't even have to be a particularly good alternate recording-- some 70's disco or whatever.

And my point in this thread is not to rail against the modern "loudness race," it's just to point out how easy it is to fool oneself into making bad-sounding recordings, regardless of whether you ultimately decide to master them hot.

If anyone decides that they want or need to ultimately try and compete with modern hyper-limited records by squeezing the song at mastering, that's their business. But even still, you will get much better results if you are starting with good tracks and a good mix than if you go through the whole process trying to hype the hell out of everything every step of the way.

You can try to fool your listeners with "loudness race" mastering if you want, but for heaven's sake don't fool yourself during the recording process.
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Old 01-22-2009, 11:20 AM   #194
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yep - i apologize if this is off-topic, but i was wondering if you could comment on when it's appropriate to eq or compress a signal prior to recording on a DAW versus applying eq or compression after recording...
Great question, not sure if I have time to answer in full but here are some thoughts...

First I would refer you to all the stuff about gain staging above. The more analog you have, the more it matters.

Second, there are some situations where there is a technical advantage to certain kinds of eq and compression before the AD conversion. If you can remove rumble and clamp down on obvious and egregious spikes before converting to digital, then you will be able to have more bits of resolution for the stuff you actually want to keep. This is becoming an almost academic point with good 24-bit converters in modern multitrack recordings, but there is no reason not to use high-pass filters on stuff like female vocals, for instance. And if you're recording something like a shaker or metallic percussion or a clean electric guitar on the bridge pickup straight in, then chances are it's going to have a lot more dynamic swing than you really need or want, so there is little danger to knocking a few dB off the attack, especially if it's a wild player who is prone to clip the input.

Third, there is a lot to be said for analog. Analog compression in particular may be easier to get a smooth, natural sound out of than digital compressors. This depends a lot on the particular kinds of effects available to you.

Fourth, there is a lot to be said for working fast and committing to sounds while you are still inspired, as opposed to second-guessing and pushing off decisions until later. This depends a lot on how you like to work and how prone to OCD and ADD you are, but sometimes just doing the obvious thing as soon as it's obvious gives better overall results than obsessing over every little aspect of fidelity or theoretical "best practice." This consideration can cut either way-- maybe it's faster and easier for you to just plug in the mics and hit record and then clean up the sounds later, or maybe you can focus better and keep up inspiration by getting the sounds closer to where you want them with a couple of quick eq rips before you hit the record button.

Personally, I have a really hard time feeling good about drum tracks in particular until they are at least approximately the sound I'm looking for-- sometimes that means real-time monitoring with plugins, but if there's a decent channel strip on the input, why not put it to use?

Lastly, and with specific respect to typical bedroom studios, there is nothing at all wrong with just recording everything clean and then doing all of your processing "in the box," especially if the quality and usability of your plugins exceeds that of affordable analog gear. ESPECIALLY if you're not quite sure what you're doing with a compressor (I will get around to that topic, I promise).

If you have good, clean preamps and respectable 24-bit converters (see test from page 1 if you're not sure), then there is nothing wrong with just doing it all in the box. People can and do debate endlessly about whether analog sounds better and how important resolution is and so on, and some aspects of those debates have merit, but in practice there are a lot of very high-quality plugins that make it easy and cheap to get great sound. If you have the time and money you can buy the full complement of analog processors and experiment to find which are your favorites and how they compare with plugins, but IMO a good all-digital recording is not going to prevent you from getting signed or prevent your record from being a hit.
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Old 01-22-2009, 11:55 AM   #195
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Actually I like the idea of the "ringing" phone cause ringing is also a technical term when it comes to any sort of filters which do have a feedback loop in their design... and these - when overdone - might also be a part of this particular "problem" in the mix.

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Old 01-22-2009, 12:04 PM   #196
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Thank you yep for an interesting and informative answer!
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Old 01-22-2009, 12:11 PM   #197
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I guess I take a lot of what Yep says for granted. To take what he is talking about in EQ a step further, consider EQ on reverbs and delay. A lot of the cheapness I hear in home recordings is poorly used reverb and no use of delay. Delay can create a great sense of space without adding a lot of tail information that can stack up. I always reach for delay to create space before messing with reverb. Reverb is more a glue to create spacial coherance in my mind.

Reverb is of course useful, but to keep it clean, high pass the signal (and maybe low pass if it is too sizzly) to get rid of mud and "frequency stack up". Reverb is essentially a zillion little echoes with a decreasing volume over time. Think about that... a kick drums hits and depending on the decay time etc, you may end up with the equivalent of two kick drum hits in the mix over time... cut that junk out or you just get greasy build up.
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Old 01-22-2009, 12:20 PM   #198
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Another couple of words on resolution and conversion, and why it matters.

Very low-bit converters do not sound as good as higher resolution converters. Modern 24-bit converters actually exceed the technical capabilities of the technology (they really only get about 19 or 20 bits of meaningful resolution, but whatever). The point is that reasonable recording levels, there is as much resolution as anyone could realistically hear, more than any real-world speakers could produce, and a little extra.

HOWEVER, any converter loses resolution as the signal gets quieter. If you record at like -50dBFS, then you are basically recording 16 bits of resolution plus 8 bits of silence. (16 bits is actually perfectly adequate for real-world music, but it's useful to have the extra headroom and "insurance" of recording at higher bit depths). If you were to record at say -100dB, then you would effectively have an 8bit recording with 16 bits of silence. (speaking in round numbers here). This is getting into territory where we are starting to hear noticeably degraded signal in the form of grainy tails and general "digititis," particularly pronounced in the highs and in quiet passages. But of course you would have to deliberately go very far out of your way to make such recordings, and no sane person would ever set their record levels that low. (In practice it would actually be noisy as all hell and probably much worse than an actual recording through 8-bit converters, but whatever).

So without over-stating the case, it's generally desirable to keep the input levels to the AD converters reasonably close to 0dB on the digital peak meter, within the parameters of careful gain-staging above. and generally speaking, that's about all there is to it as far as the modern recordist is concerned. Easy as cake.

BUT, there IS a slight possibility of extreme scenarios where resolution is needlessly lost due to sloppy work practices. For example, and going back to some of the stuff talked about above, if you close-mic everything and get that "big" proximity effect on every track, and then go back in with a digital eq and pull down all your lows by 12dB (ala TedR, above), then in theory, your converters devoted a lot of their available headroom and resolution to capturing some heavy bass that you did not need, at the expense of the more delicate and sensitive highs. IF you ALSO then boost those highs by an aggressive 12dB or so, then you are turning up any grainyness or other undesireableness that you maybe could have avoided by either:

- Using less proximity effect through better mic placement, or;

- Rolling off the lows BEFORE converting to digital.

This is especially true if you also apply heavy digital compression-- you're turning up more and more of the highs and quiet passages that are most susceptible to low-resolution degradation, because you dedicated so much of your available resolution to capturing big, powerful, headroom-devouring low-end that you didn't even need.

This is MOSTLY academic, and would only ever become a noticable problem in pretty extreme cases. But it never hurts to use best practices when it is easy to do so, and it's always better to work in ways that are sensible in the first place than to try and push the limits needlessly.
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Old 01-22-2009, 01:08 PM   #199
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Continuing...

A lot of the stuff about analog "magic" is a hard-to-parse-out tangle of theory, personal preference, superstition, gear chauvinism, and genuine technical differences. And maybe even a little bit of "magic."

Undoubtedly one of the reasons why many people prefer to track stuff like drums to tape before importing into ProTools or whatever is just because they have developed and found ways of working that revolve around the peculiarities of analog signal. For example:

Engineer tracks drums to tape, doing his eq rips and basic compression and gating right on the console, hitting the tape in just the right way that he's used to doing to get the drums to fatten up and punch just so. When he comes back the next day to mix, the drums are already "seated"-- they're warm, sculpted, well-placed, and "glued" together from the combination of tape compression and the little bit of harmonic fire and spaciousness that this process adds to the sounds (so far, this is just from bringing up the decay and room sound by compressing, plus harmonic distortion-- no need to infer any "magic" at all yet). He then dumps it into Protools or whatever for editing and it still sounds good, so he decides to give digital a little more investigation.

Same engineer, on the next project, tracks drums straight to digital. Comes back the next day to mix, and finds that the drums (which have not been saturated, compressed, and distorted) sound cold, isolated, and disconnected compared to what he is used to. It takes him a lot longer to get the drums to sound the way he wants them to, and he finds it a slower, more cerebral, and less-satisfying process compared to the inspired familiarity of tape.

Being that this engineer spends his days actually making records instead of prowling the internet for flame wars and gear debates, he makes the simple decision that recording to tape sounds better, and says as much whenever he is asked. He also feels that at least compressing and eq'ing in analog is preferable to digital. For obvious reasons he does not bother to spend weeks looking for freeware tape emulators and AB'ing them with his real Otari deck or whatever, he just tracks to tape first.

This perfectly legitimate opinion based on real and non-imaginary experience leads to a widespread misunderstanding that digital is somehow flawed or incapable of capturing the tiny details or nuance or warmth of real instruments. Theories spring up left and right that this is due to quantization or superharmonics or nyquist filters or what-have you. Boutique manufacturers bring to market expensive modules and processors of every sort intended to restore that "analog warmth." Preposterously high sample rates are proposed to try and capture the ultrasonic harmonics that digital is missing. Analog fever grips millions of home recordists who believe that this must be the magic that is missing from their late-night sessions of boosting every frequency to clipping.

Well, magic there may be, and then again maybe not, and maybe superharmonics or quantization irreversibly affect sound and maybe they don't, but we don't actually need any of that to explain why this engineer prefers working with tape. Occam's razor says that tape provides him with an intuitive, familliar, and easily-controllable form of processing that he's become used to. And the most obvious technical aspects of that processing are things that we can reproduce or at least approximate with other kinds of processing (including digital), so there is no reason to ipso facto conclude that there is anything supernatural about analog nor intrinsically inferior about digital.

And here is the kicker-- when you record to digital you are already recording an *analog* signal. The mics, preamps, and input circuits ARE analog. So whatever "magic" supposedly exists in analog should theoretically exist in EVERY digtial front-end already! When he's taking his "analog" recording and then dumping it into protools after it's got that "analog magic," you're doing the same thing when you plug into the preamp on your firepod or whatever and then converting it to digital!

Now, it may very well be the case that some processors sound better than others, and it is entirely possible that some or all of the best-sounding ones are analog, but a lot of the analog crowd is trying to have it both ways when it comes to the theories they propose. If digital is bad because it chops the waveform into quantized slices, then why is it acceptable to record to analog and then chop it into slices in ProTools for editing, or for playback on CD? If analog is better because it retains ultrasonic harmonics, then why do low-passed vinyl records still sound good?

EVERY digital recording is analog first, then digital, then restored to analog on playback. This applies to recordings that are recorded straight into an onboard soundcard, as well as recordings that were tracked and mixed entirely in analog and then passed through a single digital processor at mastering. If there has ever been a single good-sounding CD or DVD, then digital is capable of good sound (and there have been, I've heard them).

This doesn't mean that all freebie compressor plugins are just as good as a Fairchild, and it does not preclude a certain "magic" in the way that certain kinds of well-designed circuits react to varying signal voltage in ways that mimic human hearing and the mechanical reactance of sound in open air, but it does mean that digital is *capable.* And occam's razor suggests that the electrical processes that happen in analog circuits are subject to being analyzed and reproduced by clever makers of digital processors, at least theoretically, and that those processes do not require exotic theories of human hearing or spiritual resonance to explain.

I do not claim to have the answer to all questions and debates, just offering some food for thought next time your heart sinks when your favorite producer says he prefers the sound of tape.
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Old 01-22-2009, 01:16 PM   #200
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Given my "real world poor man's studio":

Only one room. Mic booth is the corner of the studio with a "diffusor" wall shielding it from the rest of the room. All acoustically "well" treated, of course

All the background noise (PC fan, fan from the power supply of the mixer, harddrives and so on) result in -65 dB at the vocal microphone. Lets have 6 dB headroom to be save while recording that makes 71 dB, or something like 14 bit.

On the other hand I have (EMU) 24 bit converters with 120 db SNR in the analog line pre amp section and maybe 109 dB in the mic preamp section (appr. 18 bit). And thats even more than my AKG mic's SNR, though.

Shall I print in 24 bit or is 16 bit enough and I will have no lose what so ever, but better performance of my DAW?

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