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Post by bikescene on Jul 14, 2023 20:13:40 GMT -6
For you guys that run tracks through preamps (VP28, Silver Bullet, etc), are you doing it with individual tracks, the mix bus, or both?
I just built 1 of 2 VP28s and am having fun routing individual tracks into it. I’m still trying to figure out what my workflow will be with them.
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Post by Tbone81 on Jul 14, 2023 21:08:52 GMT -6
All of the above. Sometimes I print tracks through my pres, and other HW, sometimes they live as inserts on tracks, but mostly I have them as inserts on my buses
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Post by christopher on Jul 14, 2023 21:28:30 GMT -6
For stuff I just want it to all have the same tone, I set the session markers to record and stop at the end. Mute everything except the stuff going through. Then I’ll print with speakers off and walk away, come back and change what’s muted and do it again. Sections that aren’t full length I’ll just real time those parts. Very easy and not long at all usually 30 minutes for stereo pairs. HUGE time saver vs screwing with plugins
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Post by gravesnumber9 on Jul 14, 2023 21:40:03 GMT -6
Interesting timing, I just started thinking about this again. I just make them easily patchable and re-route when I need a bit of mojo or something I'm not getting.
Last night I was mixing a live board mix with a really flabby bass. Like just terrible. Nothing was working. None of my HW was getting what I wanted and the only thing that KIND of worked was just slicing out basically all the low end of the bass... but then it's not bass anymore!
That's where I turn to color gear. In this case blowing out the bass track with the tube pre on my 4-710, squashing the ever loving *&#@ out of it with a hardware comp and then running it parallel to the flabby track. And guess what? It still sucked! Haha. But it sucked WAAYYYY less.
Anyway. The answer is that I want anything cool sounding to be easily patchable. In terms of what lives on a bus? I use the Silver Bullet on my mix bus so that already kind of takes care of that. I'm debating running my drum busses through some color pres to achieve the same thing but, for whatever reason, I just never have done anything in moderation when re-pre-amping. Yet.
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Post by copperx on Jul 14, 2023 22:00:23 GMT -6
For stuff I just want it to all have the same tone, I set the session markers to record and stop at the end. Mute everything except the stuff going through. Then I’ll print with speakers off and walk away, come back and change what’s muted and do it again. Sections that aren’t full length I’ll just real time those parts. Very easy and not long at all usually 30 minutes for stereo pairs. HUGE time saver vs screwing with plugins If you use Reaper, I created a script that automates exactly this. You just select all the tracks and time you want to render through HW, and it does that, one by one. If you want to process 100 tracks on a 3 minute song, that would be 5 hours unattended. However, even if you have that many tracks, usually they don't play from start to end, so the time is substantially less. |
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Post by Blackdawg on Jul 14, 2023 22:55:46 GMT -6
this is what the Silver Bullet is for.
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Post by drbill on Jul 14, 2023 23:16:40 GMT -6
this is what the Silver Bullet is for. Exactly.  |
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Post by christopher on Jul 15, 2023 14:15:42 GMT -6
For stuff I just want it to all have the same tone, I set the session markers to record and stop at the end. Mute everything except the stuff going through. Then I’ll print with speakers off and walk away, come back and change what’s muted and do it again. Sections that aren’t full length I’ll just real time those parts. Very easy and not long at all usually 30 minutes for stereo pairs. HUGE time saver vs screwing with plugins If you use Reaper, I created a script that automates exactly this. You just select all the tracks and time you want to render through HW, and it does that, one by one. If you want to process 100 tracks on a 3 minute song, that would be 5 hours unattended. However, even if you have that many tracks, usually they don't play from start to end, so the time is substantially less. I do use Reaper and wow! That seems perfect |
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Post by christopher on Jul 15, 2023 14:22:10 GMT -6
Interesting timing, I just started thinking about this again. I just make them easily patchable and re-route when I need a bit of mojo or something I'm not getting. Last night I was mixing a live board mix with a really flabby bass. Like just terrible. Nothing was working. None of my HW was getting what I wanted and the only thing that KIND of worked was just slicing out basically all the low end of the bass... but then it's not bass anymore! That's where I turn to color gear. In this case blowing out the bass track with the tube pre on my 4-710, squashing the ever loving *&#@ out of it with a hardware comp and then running it parallel to the flabby track. And guess what? It still sucked! Haha. But it sucked WAAYYYY less. Anyway. The answer is that I want anything cool sounding to be easily patchable. In terms of what lives on a bus? I use the Silver Bullet on my mix bus so that already kind of takes care of that. I'm debating running my drum busses through some color pres to achieve the same thing but, for whatever reason, I just never have done anything in moderation when re-pre-amping. Yet. For me when bass is acting that way, I try to make the monitor sound as close to a real bass amp as possible, with all the uncompressed crap/ wrong strings/ slop playing. Then mic it and use a EQ/compressor and mic technique. Use this for mids and highs, and I’ll low pass the original at like 100-150Hz and blend it for sub if needed (check polarity for better lows). If you’ve never tried it, it’s worth a shot. |
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Post by gravesnumber9 on Jul 15, 2023 16:52:30 GMT -6
Interesting timing, I just started thinking about this again. I just make them easily patchable and re-route when I need a bit of mojo or something I'm not getting. Last night I was mixing a live board mix with a really flabby bass. Like just terrible. Nothing was working. None of my HW was getting what I wanted and the only thing that KIND of worked was just slicing out basically all the low end of the bass... but then it's not bass anymore! That's where I turn to color gear. In this case blowing out the bass track with the tube pre on my 4-710, squashing the ever loving *&#@ out of it with a hardware comp and then running it parallel to the flabby track. And guess what? It still sucked! Haha. But it sucked WAAYYYY less. Anyway. The answer is that I want anything cool sounding to be easily patchable. In terms of what lives on a bus? I use the Silver Bullet on my mix bus so that already kind of takes care of that. I'm debating running my drum busses through some color pres to achieve the same thing but, for whatever reason, I just never have done anything in moderation when re-pre-amping. Yet. For me when bass is acting that way, I try to make the monitor sound as close to a real bass amp as possible, with all the uncompressed crap/ wrong strings/ slop playing. Then mic it and use a EQ/compressor and mic technique. Use this for mids and highs, and I’ll low pass the original at like 100-150Hz and blend it for sub if needed (check polarity for better lows). If you’ve never tried it, it’s worth a shot. I'm going to try that! I've heard this suggestion before but totally forgot about it when I was trying to fix this bass part. I don't often mix stuff that I didn't record so I don't have the same bag of tricks for inheriting bad sounds as I do for avoiding them to begin with. Plus, I just got a new Lewitt 840 and it happens to be set up right next to my monitors. It's like it was meant to be! |
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Post by bikescene on Jul 15, 2023 18:54:27 GMT -6
It’s interesting to see that many of you are printing both mixes and all tracks in projects. I was thinking I’d see most answers about only printing prominent tracks or sub buses. copperx I use Reaper too and I’d be interested in checking out the script. |
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Post by Blackdawg on Jul 16, 2023 2:42:10 GMT -6
It’s interesting to see that many of you are printing both mixes and all tracks in projects. I was thinking I’d see most answers about only printing prominent tracks or sub buses. copperx I use Reaper too and I’d be interested in checking out the script. I only do the master bus with the Silver Bullet these days. It's faster and easier and merits pretty much the same results. Unless I'm trying to do some kind of distortion effect. |
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Post by thehightenor on Jul 16, 2023 5:18:57 GMT -6
I'm personally not keen on solid state "hair" on the stereo mix bus, so no pre-amps on my mix bus.
I print my tracks though and mix into a tube compressor and tube EQ and that's enough "size" for my production goals.
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Post by nick8801 on Jul 16, 2023 6:24:44 GMT -6
I used to really dig running my percussion stems through my electrodyne preamps when I had them. Unfortunately, they were part of my studio slim down a few years back. Those were my favorite preamps back in the day. They added such a nice fatness and punch to things.
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