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Post by svart on Jun 16, 2022 8:34:26 GMT -6
Some of those AT mics are dark like an old vintage mic. Any of us could put out a decent project with them. Limiters often add highs so just slamming the limiter brings life and sounds good. There is a limit to how good you’re gonna get though, and that’s why that guy probably gave up He gave up because it wasn't challenging for him. He went off and did video for a while and now he's flipping houses. And it wasn't ever about just the tones and fidelity, it was everything. Songwriting, arrangements, everything. It was effortless for him so he just never really seemed like it mattered. He was never one of us tryhards that have to listen to every tiny little detail. He just made changes and moved on. Like I said, effortless.
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Post by svart on Jun 16, 2022 7:21:21 GMT -6
I am glad I am able to read all of this now without feeling like I need to buy/try every single piece of gear or method that has been mentioned. When I first joined this forum, I was allowing myself to get caught up in all the “gear you must have” and spent tons of money buying stuff I honestly didn’t have the time to figure out how to use. Plus, being a songwriter, writing songs kept “getting in the way” because the songs have to come out. I read all of these types threads now for information and learning instead of for what I “need”. That has been like as dr. bill and monkeyxx as well as a couple of others have said, totally freeing. I have chosen a mixer and I pay him a sum to mix for me now. Just like svart I meandered around for a few years (during my "10,000 hours") until I made the discovery (we're a few decades on since then), also I met a few engineers that could use nearly anything (one was a Presonus interface with a few plugs) and it was utterly depressing how good they were.
I knew a guy who went down to GC and bought himself a Presounus interface, some KRK Rokits, a couple headphone and some AT mics on sale and went home. He produced multiple bands within the year and his projects sounded better than mine after 15 years. I was so grieved that I almost quit.. He was so good at doing it all with nothing but a few plugs while sitting in his untreated living room and here I was behind tons of higher end gear and decades of trying. After a few years he got bored and stopped recording. WTF.
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Post by svart on Jun 16, 2022 7:14:38 GMT -6
So, the consensus is that it's a non-issue? It's starting to drift into 48 vs 96 territory, but I guess I'm more interested in any technical issues with 48 upsampled to 96? I plan on running these drum tracks through outboard, so there's going to be more conversion trips through my Aurora (n). Then again through the drum buss and master buss. If you want it to be "absolutely perfect" in techincal terms, some SRC algorithms are cleaner than others. Here's a handy reference: src.infinitewave.ca/Altough, I wonder, if downsampling is "dirtier" (due to filtering,) than upsampling, which in my mind just adds a bunch of "nothing bits" above the previous cutoff frequency. Maybe @tomegatherion would know. So here's how it works. Upsampling, or adding more sample points to an existing waveform, would normally analyze the existing points and between each point would estimate a curve of some type. The algorithm would then estimate the value of the new sample based on this interpolation curve. The drawback is that the quality of the interpolation matters greatly. Some interpolators will use high order polynomial curves (with matching the order value to the signal being critical), which are more accurate but uses more resources and take more time. Some will do linear interpolation which is much faster but less accurate. Either way, there will be some error that exists, which is the difference between the estimated(interpolated) point value and what a real sample value should be. This error in value is also quantization error. A way to reduce this error is to oversample the original signal at some very high samplerate so that the quantization steps are very small at the cost of much higher processing and resource requirements. Once you get a higher accuracy signal that has been upsampled, you can then reduce the sampling rate once again. This works for A/D converters as well as software sample rate conversion. You then have to Low Pass Filter so that you remove the small amounts of harmonics that appear at higher frequencies from the resulting quantization steps. Downsampling is effectively the inverse. There's a dozen different ways to do it but the most common algorithm will decimate, or remove certain samples based on a ratio. This filters the signal then removes the samples required and may or may not apply more filtering. Neither one would realistically be "dirtier" than the other if properly done but upsampling would have more chances to introduce error since the process is more intensive and introduces "ghost" samples.
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Post by svart on Jun 16, 2022 6:28:57 GMT -6
I worked with an artist who's album was primarily tracked by another producer where I was brought in to cut some overdubs because I was local to the artist. When things were tracked and it came time to mix, he liked my roughs better than his producer's mixes, so I ended up eventually getting the mix gig. I did a couple of the mixes that the artist loved and then got a conference call from the producer saying he was "concerned that we are compromising on quality" because I was sending back mixes @ 48khz instead of 96kHz. Meanwhile, while he was concerned with what our furry friends can hear, down in the audible spectrum, the sessions he was sending me were littered with bad edits and poorly intonnated guitars. So yeah.... seems like people get too hung up on the wrong things sometimes and miss the bigger picture. So many stories like this. I had a guitarist (seems they are generally more anal about small things than anyone else, second only to vocalists..) who would nitpick various small things in his tracks like single string plucks.. But not be concerned that string bends would land on a sour note or that his guitar intonation was off at higher notes. Or a vocalist that was super concerned about a hard T sound in one word on one track and we did maybe 30 takes over a day on this one phrase and I could barely tell a difference between the takes.. In the end the artist was so upset it wasn't working she was about to ditch the whole tune out of anger. I ended up ducking the T a little in automation with a little de-esser and it worked well enough she was OK with it.
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Post by svart on Jun 15, 2022 8:01:16 GMT -6
Upsampling will simply sound like 48K but at 96K samplerates.
BTW, I can hear a difference between 48K and 96K when A/B'd. Will it make a difference in your mix? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the quality of the 48K. I've heard 96K that sounded worse than 48K, so YMMV.
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Post by svart on Jun 15, 2022 7:37:51 GMT -6
I really love my CAPI 553F.
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Post by svart on Jun 14, 2022 17:58:38 GMT -6
I get a ticking sound sometimes when I put my phone too close to certain pieces of gear. The carrier frequency might be in the 600MHz to 2.4GHz range but the packets it sends are in 200Hz intervals, which is why you hear a ticking noise.
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Post by svart on Jun 14, 2022 12:15:28 GMT -6
It's just part of my process. I use it to tame the hard peaks almost entirely. I'm not really going for tone or anything else out of it. During mixing, I edit the vocal into phrases and then peak normalize them all so that I'm getting roughly the same level throughout. I then compress a little more for smoothness and do any volume automation on that output. It uses less resources and I don't have to keep up with so many settings this way Which ratio do you typically use for this purpose while tracking? I have a 76D I want to start using for this exact purpose. Do you usually go full fast release and a fast-ish attack? I appreciate your insights! Usually 4:1, rarely 8:1. I'm not trying to squish it flat, just knock it down so that the hard peaks aren't more than a couple dB from the normal peaks. The attack is maybe 1/3rd from fastest and the release is nearly fastest but I'll have the singer belt out the loudest sections so that I can test the release and make sure it's not letting go so fast you actually hear it release.
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Post by svart on Jun 14, 2022 9:53:46 GMT -6
I typically don't compress on the way in but I recently picked up an Audio-Scape 76D. I'm looking forward to using that on vocals; just to knock of ~6dB on the way in. I've always found I could hit an 1176 harder with less obvious artifacts. I still plan do do the rest of the compression ITB as I always have. This might just get me closer to the sound I want a little faster. I didn't either. I tried it once 20 years ago and messed it up pretty badly and swore off doing it for over a decade. I gave in and gave it another try and it worked so well that I could kick myself for not re-trying to sooner.
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Post by svart on Jun 14, 2022 9:51:37 GMT -6
A 1176 doesn't smooth out the top end, it's handy for catching peaks but personally I'd never use it as my only vocal comp. Also I already have a Serpent Splice and a UA6176.. It's just part of my process. I use it to tame the hard peaks almost entirely. I'm not really going for tone or anything else out of it. During mixing, I edit the vocal into phrases and then peak normalize them all so that I'm getting roughly the same level throughout. I then compress a little more for smoothness and do any volume automation on that output. It uses less resources and I don't have to keep up with so many settings this way.
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Post by svart on Jun 13, 2022 20:22:44 GMT -6
Of all the things I learn in school, I thought people trying to give me free drugs would be a whole lot bigger problem than it has been.
Turns out nobody gives you free drugs.
Sad face.
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Post by svart on Jun 13, 2022 12:21:03 GMT -6
I'm no longer one that thinks that any piece of gear adds an unmanageable amount of tone to anything. What I'm looking for in a vocal compressor is mostly taming the hard peaks. Some can do this more easily than others so I tend to stick with them. The 1176 does this, and I have a handful of them, so I use it! I tried the LA2A and LA3A for years and never really found them to work that well for what I wanted. The LA2A gets too wooly if you push it to useful GRs and the LA3A is just too slow. I'm also losing a lot of interest in different preamps and such too. They just don't matter that much in the mix. I used to want to believe these tiny differences mattered so much but it just doesn't seem to be true. A good API/clone preamp focuses the voice around the midrange where our voices are mostly concentrated and I'm finding that's good enough for everyone. Anyway, I typically use a Rev A or Rev D for vocals. I think my Rev A is patched in right now and might stay that way. svart – your post here was an important read for me, so I read it a couple of times. These are things I think about, and it's encouraging to hear someone else coming to similar conclusions. I really need to stop "overthinking" or even "imagining/hearing-into" so many variables (which tend to be ever so slight in the cosmic realm of simply making music I want to listen to). Good stuff! Chad PS: Sorry for the quick interruption. This is a great thread. Carry on! I think it's important that folks find what works for them. Sometimes that's experimentation like I did. Sometimes that's watching a mentor use something and using it as well. Sometimes it's just using what you can afford but you've learned it well enough. I just suggest not getting caught up in the hype. I was totally guilty of that, buying/building/modding as many different things as I could to try to supplement my lack of skills. Let's just say that there's no amount of gear that can replace skill/knowledge but skill/knowledge can certainly take the place huge amounts of gear. I had heard this many, many times over the years but I still found myself searching for that elusive grail of tone. Sometimes you can truly lose the forest through the trees and having tons of gear allows you to ignore the obvious by saying "my gear isn't good enough to get what I want" when it was probably plenty good enough right from the start. It's so much more fun playing with new gear than admitting that the common point of continued disappointment with your mixes is yourself!
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Post by svart on Jun 13, 2022 11:12:32 GMT -6
Panasonic HJE120 earbuds. They're not crazy unforgiving, but if something is off, you'll hear it (especially in the low end). I've found more issues with the low end on mixes with these than anything else.
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Post by svart on Jun 13, 2022 9:09:53 GMT -6
1176. Nothing else has worked better for me. All genres, all voices, all mics .... all pre's? Or is it specific to a given singer and given chain in a given genre? Which 1176 is your favourite for tracking? Thanks I'm no longer one that thinks that any piece of gear adds an unmanageable amount of tone to anything. What I'm looking for in a vocal compressor is mostly taming the hard peaks. Some can do this more easily than others so I tend to stick with them. The 1176 does this, and I have a handful of them, so I use it! I tried the LA2A and LA3A for years and never really found them to work that well for what I wanted. The LA2A gets too wooly if you push it to useful GRs and the LA3A is just too slow. I'm also losing a lot of interest in different preamps and such too. They just don't matter that much in the mix. I used to want to believe these tiny differences mattered so much but it just doesn't seem to be true. A good API/clone preamp focuses the voice around the midrange where our voices are mostly concentrated and I'm finding that's good enough for everyone. Anyway, I typically use a Rev A or Rev D for vocals. I think my Rev A is patched in right now and might stay that way.
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Post by svart on Jun 13, 2022 7:07:07 GMT -6
Almost 30 years ago was playing guitar during a thunderstorm and lightning hit just outside the house on the side where the ground rod was. The shock I got from the guitar made my hands tingle for a couple days. I never touch anything in the studio during a thunderstorm to this day..
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Post by svart on Jun 13, 2022 6:50:53 GMT -6
1176. Nothing else has worked better for me.
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Post by svart on Jun 12, 2022 9:02:05 GMT -6
In one of the classes I teach, I blew the students’ minds when I noted that no real professional has time to churn out regular content, and as such, is in no position to pontificate with authority about the process of record making in the real world. I’m very pleased to say a rather large number of lightbulbs appeared over their young heads 🤣 I've said for some time now that as the world of the "name brand" pro mixers starts to wane in favor of smaller(read:cheaper) mixers, the more you'd see them get into "teaching". And look at them now. All kinds of pay-to-learn videos where they teach you their pseudo-tricks and try to upsell you on their line of branded plugins..
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Post by svart on Jun 7, 2022 9:12:38 GMT -6
That's kinda funny. Emulating the transient shaving effect from their old A/D voltage limiting circuits..
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Post by svart on Jun 7, 2022 8:05:06 GMT -6
It depends on what the problem is. Sometimes if someone mics up a piano they put the mic too close to certain strings or you get modes from the placement/room you might need frequency-dependent compression or a little wide boost/cut to get those notes louder/softer.
Also, the first thing you'll notice about "sinnerman" is that it's extremely midrange centric. There's almost nothing below 300Hz or above 3K on that piano. Hell, there's almost nothing above 6K or below 100Hz in the mix. The piano is also playing a very finite range of notes too, so it's not like they'd have to do much to keep things in check compression-wise.
Also, the original 1973 mix is quite boomy with a lot of notes masking each other heavily so there's not a lot of care made to keep everything intelligible besides the vocals which are quite loud in comparison to the rest of the instruments. The piano disappears a lot in this mix as other things mask it.
So I guess it depends on what you want and what your problems are. If you're going for this type of mix, then push the faders up and don't think about it too much. If you're going for a modern "everything in it's place and intelligible" type of mix then you're going to need to do a lot of work to make sure each instrument has space. I think the start to that would be to aggressively HPF/LPF each thing until you can't cut anything more without affecting the meat of the tone, then start your mixing.
One of the biggest issues I've had, and I believe others have, with this type of songwriting is that they start with the instruments. Always start with the vocals and then move down the chain of instrument importance and fit things as you go.
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Post by svart on Jun 6, 2022 15:55:13 GMT -6
RGOs.
Why I am no longer following...?? I fight depression and some other illnesses and some other problems' life can present you.
Cheers A.
Sorry to hear that. I hope you can solve some of these problems and come back better than ever.
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Post by svart on Jun 4, 2022 9:08:45 GMT -6
The neve preamps are not the vintage class A style that people think of when someone says "neve preamps"..
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Post by svart on Jun 3, 2022 9:27:23 GMT -6
I've never really heard that much difference in NOS or quality brands in many of my attempts at upgrades through swapping tubes. It was more obvious going from cheapo chinese tubes to something decent, but most of the time going from something like JJ to NOS RCA or the like didn't make any discernable difference. I even tried Gold Lions once (when I needed to get an amp up and running for an impending session but couldn't find a cheaper set available quickly enough) at an extreme cost but was rather disappointed in the lack of clearly superior results.
I think the majority of "difference" heard is more likely the supporting circuit reacting to the difference in operating points on the new tubes rather than the tube itself making a difference or simply that a new tube sounds different from a well-used tube, so obviously swapping in a new tube could be easily heard. However, I've swapped tubes in units to new tubes and heard a difference, but later swapped back and heard no difference between them after burning in for a long time.
The rest is confirmation bias.
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Post by svart on Jun 1, 2022 16:32:18 GMT -6
I dunno. It makes me want to ask, if replacing a guitar is forbidden without permission, then what else do I need permission for? Using EQ? Compression? Editing? Where does it stop? I know artists that have weirdness about "too much EQ" or "too much compression" as well because they watched some YT video that told them the reason they don't like what they're hearing is not because of something they're doing wrong, it's obviously the amount of processing or some such nonsense.. It seems ridiculous to even consider asking permission to use as much EQ and compression as needed to get a guitar sounding right.. But why does using a simulation of a model/brand of amp that the artist already uses is some kind of heresy? Both are clearly manipulating the tone to get something better and in some cases the EQ and whatever will affect it more than anything else yet I've never once heard an artist ask me if I used too much EQ after the mix was done. Actually I've never had a single artist ask me anything about their mix once it was done. Seems that people want to see the baby, not hear about the labor pains. I used to let it get to me when folks would change their minds after tracking, or try to nitpick everything. I realized exactly what you're saying, they have no idea what they're asking for so they try to control everything. Mostly it's just fear of failure I believe. That's why I try to figure out what they want, not listen too closely to what they're saying because what they're saying is usually muddied by lack of knowledge.
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Post by svart on Jun 1, 2022 14:32:21 GMT -6
I don't know the context of Svart's situation is that he described above but I feel like, in many cases (guitar "tone" guys are a perfect example of this) there is this sort of unspoken expectation (or maybe even explicitly stated expectation) that what happens before the microphone is their domain and what happens from the mic onward is the engineer's domain. I only bring this up to say that, to the extent that any artist is "dictating process", I don't feel like they are necessarily in the wrong to dictate what they want, as they are the paying customer and, more specifically, the tone of their guitar/amp combo is part of their art. I get that the artist may have made demands that were difficult or even impossible to reach ~~~ The shops that are up to par call it demanding. The ones that aren't up to par call it difficult. Impossible? I'll make you a record if it takes every penny you have! This is not a problem. First time I worked with Warren Haynes I asked if he had any preference in microphones... he goes "nope my job ends here" - and pointed at the speaker. Stark contrast to Joe Bonamassa who carried his own SM57's. Its a big stage and I'm only the sound monkey. I'll reamp/software guitar sounds once in a while if the tracks are provided at mix. Maybe 70/30 split..? Most of the time I go with whatever was tracked but sometimes... sometimes people are a little misguided or not hearing things right and that DI saves the day. When producing from scratch I won't pull a DI guitar track unless someone requests it. I took 'em for a couple 3 years before I realized that ya know? I never used 'em. Not once. Only burning inputs for data collection so it stopped. Maybe I'm lucky in that most of the time, at this point in my career I get great players who kinda know what they want. Even if they don't know exactly how to get it they know exactly what they're going for. And so most of my world is real amps displacing air with pressure capture devices.. aka microphones. Very few times has someone said ya know, I wish I had used the blonde Jr instead of the Boogie or whatever. Sorry I used that fuzzface? And if that does happen its easy enough to back out & retrack a part or two. Those calls are always pre mix... not mix revisions. Funny. I'm reminded of a session several years ago... Artist said he wanted to bring someone in for guitar solos Ok cool. Day of the guy shows up and literally in the first 90 seconds... he asks what kinda software we use. No no... what guitar software? Guitar software..? That's what your here for! He wanted to know if we had amp farm or whatever, a software pedal/amp platfrom because he plugs right into his interface... Oh no man. We've got all the real stuff that emulates. Your welcome to use all of it! Here's a 66 deluxe reverb... 69/70 basketweve 4x12 slant... silvertones... fuzz pedals... couple wahs... look at all this! You'd think most people would get really excited but this guy? He looked like he just got punched in the dick. Yeah, it's horses for courses. I've worked with folks that demand the real thing. No problem. Most of the time we get a tone and everything is good. As I mentioned, sometimes folks demand radical changes and it just becomes a can of worms. I've also had a guy show up with a digital pedal and vehemently refuse to sit around testing amps and mics. His pedal was what we were going to use and that was just that. Back then I wasn't bold enough to go the extra mile on mixes so it stayed as-is. He and his band were happy enough but I never thought it lived up to possibilities. Anyway, people are fickle. All we can do is try to make them happy and fulfill their desires in some form or fashion.
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Post by svart on Jun 1, 2022 13:45:05 GMT -6
I dunno. It makes me want to ask, if replacing a guitar is forbidden without permission, then what else do I need permission for? Using EQ? Compression? Editing?
Where does it stop?
I know artists that have weirdness about "too much EQ" or "too much compression" as well because they watched some YT video that told them the reason they don't like what they're hearing is not because of something they're doing wrong, it's obviously the amount of processing or some such nonsense..
It seems ridiculous to even consider asking permission to use as much EQ and compression as needed to get a guitar sounding right.. But why does using a simulation of a model/brand of amp that the artist already uses is some kind of heresy?
Both are clearly manipulating the tone to get something better and in some cases the EQ and whatever will affect it more than anything else yet I've never once heard an artist ask me if I used too much EQ after the mix was done.
Actually I've never had a single artist ask me anything about their mix once it was done.
Seems that people want to see the baby, not hear about the labor pains.
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