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Post by kilroyrock on Aug 15, 2016 10:47:03 GMT -6
That sounds like a cool feature. Makes it easier to hear what you're loosing. On another note, I'm kind of amped up this AM. Too freaked out to mix or use any LPF's..... Had to kill a decent size Mojave Green who was on the back porch this morning. First one I've seen here since moving - and easily within striking distance of the back door. I thought these things were supposed to stay in the desert. LOL Unfortunately, no. They are up here at 5500 ft altitude. Dog found it before the wife did thank God. Gets your adrenaline going..... Holy crap Dr! I had to quick google to see that its a damn rattlesnake! Yikes. Did you shoot the little bastard? Snake venom expert Dr. Sean Bush, professor of emergency medicine at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, told HealthPop that the Mojave Green snake is known for having the most lethal venom of all North American pit vipers, a class of snakes that includes rattlers.
<shudders>
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Post by donr on Aug 15, 2016 10:56:10 GMT -6
The Fabfilter EQ has a solo button where you can hear what you're rolling off. Pretty interesting to hear what above 10kHz really sounds like. Um, Air?
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Post by cowboycoalminer on Aug 15, 2016 10:58:12 GMT -6
I don't know what was going on in my brain last night. I was thinking LP as I was writing HP. Typical cowboy brain fart. Sorry guys.
And arguing my stupidity to boot!! LOL
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Post by drbill on Aug 15, 2016 11:04:30 GMT -6
That sounds like a cool feature. Makes it easier to hear what you're loosing. On another note, I'm kind of amped up this AM. Too freaked out to mix or use any LPF's..... Had to kill a decent size Mojave Green who was on the back porch this morning. First one I've seen here since moving - and easily within striking distance of the back door. I thought these things were supposed to stay in the desert. LOL Unfortunately, no. They are up here at 5500 ft altitude. Dog found it before the wife did thank God. Gets your adrenaline going..... Holy crap Dr! I had to quick google to see that its a damn rattlesnake! Yikes. Did you shoot the little bastard? Toxin wise, the most dangerous snake in north america from what I understand. No, the last snake I dispatched I went inside, found the shotgun, put it together, found ammo, went out and blasted, but this time it was too close to the house and kind of mobile, and I didn't want the trauma of it getting away and always wondering..... "is that snake just around the corner? " So I grabbed a shovel - in shorts and flip flops no less! A shovel is the best snake tool around. Killed dozens of em in my youth with a shovel - even big ones. But the mojave's always freak me out. Some weird voodoo mystique they got goin' on..... Im thankful our pitt had enough sense to bark but not approach too closely. I was going to make a snakeskin band for my hat, but by the time I got done with it, it was too chopped up.... :-0 I got the rattle though.... This dude cracks me up thrashing thru the bush. But that's about the size of the one this morning. I don't do catch and release.... :-)
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Post by drbill on Aug 15, 2016 11:06:13 GMT -6
I don't know what was going on in my brain last night. I was thinking LP as I was writing HP. Typical cowboy brain fart. Sorry guys. And arguing my stupidity to boot!! LOL No worries. Been there, done that = X's 100. You did make me think for awhile though..... LOL
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Post by Johnkenn on Aug 15, 2016 12:36:01 GMT -6
The Fabfilter EQ has a solo button where you can hear what you're rolling off. Pretty interesting to hear what above 10kHz really sounds like. That sounds like a cool feature. Makes it easier to hear what you're loosing. On another note, I'm kind of amped up this AM. Too freaked out to mix or use any LPF's..... Had to kill a decent size Mojave Green who was on the back porch this morning. First one I've seen here since moving - and easily within striking distance of the back door. I thought these things were supposed to stay in the desert. LOL Unfortunately, no. They are up here at 5500 ft altitude. Dog found it before the wife did thank God. Gets your adrenaline going..... Um...nnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
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Post by donr on Aug 15, 2016 16:25:48 GMT -6
I live on a mangrove island on the Gulf of Mexico in FL. We have diamond back rattlesnakes that are as fat as bike tires but we don't see them much, they don't like humans. But you watch where you walk, always. There's no native mammals on the island except for opossums. I wonder what the snakes eat.
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Post by donr on Aug 15, 2016 17:44:34 GMT -6
Back on topic, it never occured to me that the highs would load up like the lows do on tracks that don't need those freq's. Which is why I listen to the pro's.
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Post by c0rtland on Aug 15, 2016 22:19:37 GMT -6
I don't know what was going on in my brain last night. I was thinking LP as I was writing HP. Typical cowboy brain fart. Sorry guys. And arguing my stupidity to boot!! LOL It can be as confusing as fiction and non-fiction. When I see non-fiction my brain reads not-real instead of not-not real. Maybe if I read fiction as 'made up' instead of 'not real' it wouldn't be so confusing. Don't worry about it.... We knew what you meant. That's what a sabbatical will do to ya haha
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Post by c0rtland on Aug 15, 2016 22:46:53 GMT -6
Also, I'm gonna get philosophical...
A lot of today's famous professionals grew up on analog and learned how to make that sound really good. Compensating for natural hf roll off enjoying natural tape compression etc. then digital got thrown in and it's the inverse in a lot of ways to analog.
Today people use both. Some of those people started on digital then got into analog and some haven't used analog systems at all.
Tool selection and mix techniques seem to work for one world or the other. There are different pitfalls to each set of tools.
This can make things quite confusing. Now there are two very different worlds in audio.
it seems to me that eventually when digital has been around so long that many people have only used that platform they will instinctually know how to make it sound wonderful and will be able to make amazing sounding records. People already do itb.
I guess what I'm getting at is that the present time is the most confusing time to learn this skill of engineering/mixing because the two worlds are colliding and all the dust hasn't settled yet. I don't really see it settling quickly either with everyone doing emulations and trying to make a square fit into a triangle. Maybe we should develop new technology instead of emulating old tech. Nostalgia definitely sells and feels safe though.
I'm no writer but...
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Post by popmann on Aug 16, 2016 13:18:29 GMT -6
So, luckily, I don't have problems above 15khz or so....because there's not much there. It actually starts falling off a cliff around 12-13khz....in the area of most gone by 16-17khz....and, keep in mind, I'm capturing at 88.2, which I've always found warmer and "less bright" than 44.1 despite the theory saying it's "just" extending the high frequencies. I LPF other people's tracks all the time because "better gone than wrong"....I've always chalked it up to cheap tracking gear and choices. I usually use a resonant LPF, and sweep it until I can find a flattering place for a bump so that it doesn't get "darker" so much as it gives a little bump somewhere flattering and drops above that....it should simply get more focused without the super high crap. But, as always....I would seperate this advice for a project studio--if you're having to do tons of filtering in a project studio, where you are the tracking engineer....I'd encourage you to find out where it's coming from--ideally get it gone on the way in.... Which brings me to a related question for jsteiger -is the old API 50/15 bandpass a real wide Q band pass or a HPF/LPF in series?
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Post by BradM on Aug 16, 2016 13:30:26 GMT -6
With my ears you sure don't! I think I sometimes confuse clear with bright. Confuse is maybe not the right word, but I want clear, wide, deep mixes. Sometimes they just end up bright. I think because I fear dull. Can somebody speak to the cutting of high frequencies in the range of human hearing, but the boosting of "air" stuff (well) above 20 KHz? Cheers, Geoff I really want to chime into this thread because there's so much good stuff here to comment on...stuff that I was especially exploring when I was developing my Chop Shop EQ. But I need to work on some prototype stuff for a few hours first. I do want to throw the following pics out there for you guys to chew on, in regards to Geoff's specific question about cutting high frequencies with a LPF and then boosting the "air" above that. This is what happens in the Silver Bullet when you boost Air (the corner frequency is something stupidly high) and then engage the Vintage filter. Brad Attachments:
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Post by jsteiger on Aug 16, 2016 13:35:54 GMT -6
Which brings me to a related question for jsteiger -is the old API 50/15 bandpass a real wide Q band pass or a HPF/LPF in series? They are 2 pole, 12dB per octave passive high and low pass filters in series.
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Post by BradM on Aug 16, 2016 13:36:03 GMT -6
I LPF other people's tracks all the time because "better gone than wrong"....I've always chalked it up to cheap tracking gear and choices. I usually use a resonant LPF, and sweep it until I can find a flattering place for a bump so that it doesn't get "darker" so much as it gives a little bump somewhere flattering and drops above that....it should simply get more focused without the super high crap. Yes! This. Try a slightly resonant LPF (12 dB/oct) at about 12k with about a 1-2 dB bump on it and you won't even notice you've lost most of the top end on most material. This is actually the full CW setting on the Chop Shop Hi-Cut filter with the 0.5X engaged. Brad
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Post by Guitar on Aug 16, 2016 15:22:24 GMT -6
The UAD Ampex ATR-102 on mix bus is really good at controlling high frequencies. Just like they used to do in the old days, haha.
I also sometimes feel the need to use a Pultec cut on the high frequencies on the mix buss, or bass guitar. It's not strictly a filter but it works in a similar fashion. I think it's a shelf actually. So yeah a high shelf cut can work well too in addition to LPF.
The only thing I've messed with boosting above 20K is the Maag EQ, but you can hear something happening there, which may or may not be what you're after. I don't do it a lot in practice. I also agree with PopMann that higher sampling rates have a more pleasant tippy top, so that's how I prefer to work these days.
I've noticed the high end of a mix can really start to get out of control fast when adding loudness and limiting, the pseudo mastering stuff, so if I'm going for a loud mix I have to be really careful about the brightness at that point. If you want to hear how painful your mix could be just put a limiter on your project and crank it up. A better mix will hold together more under this stress, in my experience. Maybe I am just getting over a bad old habit of tracking really bright sounds, and/or not fixing them in the mix. That's a good way to sound amateur, or "digital" in the common slang.
I also intentionally sold almost all of my hyped sounding condenser mics and replaced them with more neutral and full sounding mics. That was a good move for me.
I've seen someone dogmatically apply extreme HPF and LPF on all of their tracks and the result is really bad audio, so that was a cautionary tale to me to not take it too far. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
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Post by geoff738 on Aug 16, 2016 17:27:17 GMT -6
I've seen someone dogmatically apply extreme HPF and LPF on all of their tracks and the result is really bad audio, so that was a cautionary tale to me to not take it too far. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. This also brings up the question of the quality of the filters. Are the ones that come with our DAWs good enough? Or are they fixing one aspect of digititus at the expense of a different digital artifact? Cheers, Geoff
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Post by Guitar on Aug 16, 2016 17:38:00 GMT -6
I've seen someone dogmatically apply extreme HPF and LPF on all of their tracks and the result is really bad audio, so that was a cautionary tale to me to not take it too far. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. This also brings up the question of the quality of the filters. Are the ones that come with our DAWs good enough? Or are they fixing one aspect of digititus at the expense of a different digital artifact? Cheers, Geoff I would love to hear a design engineer's thoughts on that interesting question. The case I was referring too though was just specific abuse of filters. You give a young man a key to the shed and say, "Go cut down a tree." So he goes out with every weapon possible and burns down the entire forest. It's really easy to go astray with audio when you don't have the gift of experience. It's just a little too similar to Star Wars when Luke is told to "Use the force." It took him many years and mistakes to get the hang of it. Even though he had all the tools to begin with.
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Post by BradM on Aug 16, 2016 17:43:31 GMT -6
This also brings up the question of the quality of the filters. Are the ones that come with our DAWs good enough? Or are they fixing one aspect of digititus at the expense of a different digital artifact? Cheers, Geoff I would love to hear a design engineer's thoughts on that interesting question. I've thought about this myself and suspect that is indeed the case. I don't have a good objective answer for you based on science, but I can say that using an analog LPF has been a total eye-opener for me personally. When I use the LPF in my DAW my brain says "meh" for some reason. But when I use the analog one the result feels very smooth and musical. Has anyone else noticed this when comparing? drbill - you have a Chop Shop, so maybe you can comment? Brad
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
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Post by ericn on Aug 16, 2016 18:04:14 GMT -6
I would love to hear a design engineer's thoughts on that interesting question. I've thought about this myself and suspect that is indeed the case. I don't have a good objective answer for you based on science, but I can say that using an analog LPF has been a total eye-opener for me personally. When I use the LPF in my DAW my brain says "meh" for some reason. But when I use the analog one the result feels very smooth and musical. Has anyone else noticed this when comparing? drbill - you have a Chop Shop, so maybe you can comment? Brad Used during tracking they keep a ton of crap your not hearing from using up all your headroom .
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Post by geoff738 on Aug 16, 2016 18:09:46 GMT -6
So cowboy, what filters were you using?
Cheers, Geoff
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Post by drbill on Aug 16, 2016 18:27:42 GMT -6
I would love to hear a design engineer's thoughts on that interesting question. I've thought about this myself and suspect that is indeed the case. I don't have a good objective answer for you based on science, but I can say that using an analog LPF has been a total eye-opener for me personally. When I use the LPF in my DAW my brain says "meh" for some reason. But when I use the analog one the result feels very smooth and musical. Has anyone else noticed this when comparing? drbill - you have a Chop Shop, so maybe you can comment? Brad I'd say I have the same experience. We get lulled into thinking "ok this works", in the digital domain. Seems to do the job and is working fine. But your note on "musical" resonates with me. We use plugin, after plugin, after plugin, after plugin, etc. and think they are fine. But recently switching up and going to a hybrid based approach, getting all my outboard gear in front of me (mastering style desk) has been enlightening and liberating. Even 'cheap" analog gear sounds and works better to my ears. EQ's are so "sweet" in the analog domain as opposed to digital EQ plugs. A quick A/B will not give you the big long reaching picture. However, working with analog gear such as the chop shops, silver bullets, 550A's, vari-mus etc. on the analog inserts of your DAW instead of plugins (in PT they instantiat just as easily - actually quicker) is life changing - much more than summing boxes or analog consoles ever were for me. I've got 48 channels of i/o for inserts, and I'm hoping to eventually up that to 64, ,80 or 96 channels of i/o for analog inserts into my mix. If I could afford enough great analog gear, I'd be using minimal plugins - just for the super cool things some plugs can do, and using analog inserts for EVERYTHING most people use plugins for. Hybrid is the future IMO. That's just me though. I did it the other way for years and was "OK" with it. But I feel like I'm in the matrix and just woke up. PS - On a side note, I use analog gear that is easily recallable, or that mostly stays at the same settings throughout a project, so skipping between songs is pretty painless.
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Post by ragan on Aug 16, 2016 21:00:45 GMT -6
I've thought about this myself and suspect that is indeed the case. I don't have a good objective answer for you based on science, but I can say that using an analog LPF has been a total eye-opener for me personally. When I use the LPF in my DAW my brain says "meh" for some reason. But when I use the analog one the result feels very smooth and musical. Has anyone else noticed this when comparing? drbill - you have a Chop Shop, so maybe you can comment? Brad I'd say I have the same experience. We get lulled into thinking "ok this works", in the digital domain. Seems to do the job and is working fine. But your note on "musical" resonates with me. We use plugin, after plugin, after plugin, after plugin, etc. and think they are fine. But recently switching up and going to a hybrid based approach, getting all my outboard gear in front of me (mastering style desk) has been enlightening and liberating. Even 'cheap" analog gear sounds and works better to my ears. EQ's are so "sweet" in the analog domain as opposed to digital EQ plugs. A quick A/B will not give you the big long reaching picture. However, working with analog gear such as the chop shops, silver bullets, 550A's, vari-mus etc. on the analog inserts of your DAW instead of plugins (in PT they instantiat just as easily - actually quicker) is life changing - much more than summing boxes or analog consoles ever were for me. I've got 48 channels of i/o for inserts, and I'm hoping to eventually up that to 64, ,80 or 96 channels of i/o for analog inserts into my mix. If I could afford enough great analog gear, I'd be using minimal plugins - just for the super cool things some plugs can do, and using analog inserts for EVERYTHING most people use plugins for. Hybrid is the future IMO. That's just me though. I did it the other way for years and was "OK" with it. But I feel like I'm in the matrix and just woke up. PS - On a side note, I use analog gear that is easily recallable, or that mostly stays at the same settings throughout a project, so skipping between songs is pretty painless. I 'woke up' recently too. I like analog EQ so, so much more than plugin equivalents. Lots of good stuff out there for very little coin too.
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Post by M57 on Aug 17, 2016 4:51:04 GMT -6
The last few years I've really gotten into HPF and LPF on just about everything to some degree. It absolutely helps, as long as you use it right. For me, it's one of the absolute basic skills that you have to master to move one rung closer to professional work. Guitars absolutely get both. Bass will get both sometimes, but the LPF on bass is just to get rid of the amp hiss/fuzz. Various drums will get both to clean up bleed and boom. Vocals will get HPF. Other stuff like BGVs will get both, rather aggressively too. I'm sure this is a genre specific question, and it's not just for svart - but when DON'T you use LPF? OH come to mind, but are there some not-so-obvious times where you want to keep the air in the mix? I notice that svart doesn't use any on lead vocals. What about others? Is this standard practice? Also, where do you hack at the highs? I think I tend to roll bass off pretty aggressively above 6k - or maybe even lower. and conversely where might you use it sparingly? (E.g. rolling off at higher frequencies but with a milder slope)
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Post by svart on Aug 17, 2016 5:27:11 GMT -6
The last few years I've really gotten into HPF and LPF on just about everything to some degree. It absolutely helps, as long as you use it right. For me, it's one of the absolute basic skills that you have to master to move one rung closer to professional work. Guitars absolutely get both. Bass will get both sometimes, but the LPF on bass is just to get rid of the amp hiss/fuzz. Various drums will get both to clean up bleed and boom. Vocals will get HPF. Other stuff like BGVs will get both, rather aggressively too. I'm sure this is a genre specific question, and it's not just for svart - but when DON'T you use LPF? OH come to mind, but are there some not-so-obvious times where you want to keep the air in the mix? I notice that svart doesn't use any on lead vocals. What about others? Is this standard practice? Also, where do you hack at the highs? I think I tend to roll bass off pretty aggressively above 6k - or maybe even lower. and conversely where might you use it sparingly? (E.g. rolling off at higher frequencies but with a milder slope) I guess it depends on the tone of the tracks. OH wouldn't get LPF.. Acoustic guitar won't either. I don't use LPF on vocals, but I also don't ever boost up top either. I find that if I clear out the top end of all the other things that don't need to be there, then vocals will shine on their own, without a lot of top boost. That's where the pros have always gotten it right.. Clarity without overworking the mix. I was always guilty of trying to force EQ on tracks to get them to *stand out*.. But when you have that on every track, it ends up just as jumbled as a mix without EQ, but with ear splitting EQ on it. Most of my LPF sit around 3K-7K as standard. Some things I just LPF with a general frequency setting, some things I try to tailor the frequency by doing the whole "moving the cutoff down until I hear it affect the *main* portion of the signal" thing.
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
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Post by ericn on Aug 17, 2016 6:30:44 GMT -6
The last few years I've really gotten into HPF and LPF on just about everything to some degree. It absolutely helps, as long as you use it right. For me, it's one of the absolute basic skills that you have to master to move one rung closer to professional work. Guitars absolutely get both. Bass will get both sometimes, but the LPF on bass is just to get rid of the amp hiss/fuzz. Various drums will get both to clean up bleed and boom. Vocals will get HPF. Other stuff like BGVs will get both, rather aggressively too. I'm sure this is a genre specific question, and it's not just for svart - but when DON'T you use LPF? OH come to mind, but are there some not-so-obvious times where you want to keep the air in the mix? I notice that svart doesn't use any on lead vocals. What about others? Is this standard practice? Also, where do you hack at the highs? I think I tend to roll bass off pretty aggressively above 6k - or maybe even lower. and conversely where might you use it sparingly? (E.g. rolling off at higher frequencies but with a milder slope) A lot of this and what Svart covers is where the "art " of mixing comes in. Experience and skill are what tells you what and how to filter and EQ to make a mix work. Yes there are some very successful mixers who have an almost production line method, but what makes them so I demand is when they step out of that method!
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