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Post by scumbum on Jun 20, 2015 21:10:02 GMT -6
I was watching this video on Mastering and one of his tricks was to hit a pair of API mic pres to shave the transients off a mix . I think its what drbill likes to do , and kinda what the silver bullet is for ?
So I was thinking thats probably one of the biggest differences between ITB and OTB . You can't hit the Master Buss harder ITB .
Guys that mixed on Big Analog Consoles back in the day , was that the typical approach , drive the Master Buss hard to get a more compressed mix without using compression ?
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Post by drbill on Jun 20, 2015 21:26:19 GMT -6
Yes and yes. But the silver bullet is about a lot more than just shaving transients. That said, it's excellent at that and will generally yield you a 4-6 + dB of RMS level back into your DAW or other mix device without any obvious "compression" or "limiting".
"Back in the day..." I never really drove the mix bus "hard" to shave transients. We were using tape, and that was it's own shaver..... Of course, we always aimed for the "sweet spot", but there was much less focus on "mojo" or saturation or distortion, because the process itself was generally full of those things. Tape and analog consoles were far "dirtier" than ITB DAW work, and that's why these days we're looking for things like the Silver Bullet or other saturation / tape / analog emulators to make up for a super sanitary digital workflow. Back then we didn't need em.
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Post by scumbum on Jun 20, 2015 22:37:51 GMT -6
Yes and yes. But the silver bullet is about a lot more than just shaving transients. That said, it's excellent at that and will generally yield you a 4-6 + dB of RMS level back into your DAW or other mix device without any obvious "compression" or "limiting". Wow , that is the silver bullet !! What is the ballpark price range for it ? |
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Post by drbill on Jun 21, 2015 0:35:12 GMT -6
Brad is in the final throes of getting bids right now on the last bits. We should know soon. But he's speculating below $2k.
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Post by jeromemason on Jun 21, 2015 1:47:52 GMT -6
Hitting a tape machine in the sweet spot still to this day is probably the best way of doing this IMO. Not on the outputs, but when you're tracking. You can dial your tones in right there, before you ever hit record and that really shaves the transients in the most pure and sonically pleasing way to my ears. Drums, guitars, vocals etc. they just sound so much better when that needle on the machine is swinging between 0db and around +2db. Just wide open. You take a 251, good 2" tape machine and an La2a and you've got a vocal that just sounds like it's on it's own island, just amazing. I sure miss having that.
My BLA PM8's have trannies on every input, and I've gain staged my rig so that when my meters are reading -8dbfs in the DAW i'm saturating them just right. It's somewhat similar, but nothing like really hitting that tape. I'm close to finishing my PRR-176, it has edcor steel trannies all the way around with a fully discrete path thanks to some 1731's. That will get hardwired into my buss and most likely I won't be doing hardly if any compression with it, just using it as a big ass tone box. I figure the PM8>VP28>176 will be a very wide open and large sound. I'm all giddy about it, and I'm really close to finishing the 176, just a few more components and it'll be ready.
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Post by mrholmes on Jun 21, 2015 9:07:29 GMT -6
It was the first thing I recognized mixing into my stereo 1073. Also the image of the mix opens up. I agree jeromemason- today there are other tools to achieve this. A good tape simulation will also round off the transients. I wont repeat now which one I like.... have done it several times. |
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Post by jimwilliams on Jun 21, 2015 10:56:55 GMT -6
As the odd duck here I do everything I can in the analog domain to preserve and hear all the transients in the mix. The digital mix is very flat and still lacks some of the transients I hear mixing analog. The reason is my mix buss is capable of summing tracks and re-creating rise times that exceed the bandwidth of the DAC's it's fed from. A band-limited digital mix core cannot do that nor retain the depth of the mix.
Transients give life to music, removing them takes some of that music away and I don't like audio gear chewing my food for me. Yes, I am an odd duck these days but have always done recordings like that since 1970.
Coming from a musician background, I still follow the Hendrix philosophy, "I want to see and hear everything".
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Post by drbill on Jun 21, 2015 11:17:43 GMT -6
Unfortunately Jim, we live in a digital world. I get your esthetic, but If you want your music heard by the masses, and you want it to compete (i.e.: not be 20dB softer) transients are going to be shaved off. There is no having your cake and eat it too in this scenario. The better and more musically you can do that, the less the music suffers. I think it happens better and more musically in the analog domain. As you well know, this is the #1 thing mastering - and to some degree mixing - engineers deal with. Getting it to sound the way YOU want it to without the transients being TOO managed before you hand it off is the best option IMO. Otherwise someone without as much care as you will. If you're only going to listen in your own bedroom then yeah,,,,,, let the transients fly!
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Post by drbill on Jun 21, 2015 11:33:02 GMT -6
PS - as Jerome mentioned, analog tape machines are the masters at removing transients - the reason we cut hi hats, percussion and shakers and such at such low levels when using tape - and we STILL lost transients in the process. You must get along well with digital because it's the master at preserving transients as long as you don't clip it.
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Post by RicFoxx on Jun 21, 2015 15:02:57 GMT -6
in the real world my ears naturally compress I don't hear things the way I hear a recording into the DAW with a microphone 2 inches from a speaker or 12 inches from the mouth, guitar, etc!
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Post by mrholmes on Jun 21, 2015 15:20:31 GMT -6
As the odd duck here I do everything I can in the analog domain to preserve and hear all the transients in the mix. The digital mix is very flat and still lacks some of the transients I hear mixing analog. The reason is my mix buss is capable of summing tracks and re-creating rise times that exceed the bandwidth of the DAC's it's fed from. A band-limited digital mix core cannot do that nor retain the depth of the mix. Transients give life to music, removing them takes some of that music away and I don't like audio gear chewing my food for me. Yes, I am an odd duck these days but have always done recordings like that since 1970. Coming from a musician background, I still follow the Hendrix philosophy, "I want to see and hear everything". If you want transients sharp as a knife I would not leave the digital domain. Do not use compression or transient shapers, nor tape sims. Sorry but also in Hendrixs music I do not hear any too sharp transients, we always try to make the corners round. If the transients stick out too much it will strain the ears, and speakers. |
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Post by tonycamphd on Jun 21, 2015 16:42:57 GMT -6
As the odd duck here I do everything I can in the analog domain to preserve and hear all the transients in the mix. The digital mix is very flat and still lacks some of the transients I hear mixing analog. The reason is my mix buss is capable of summing tracks and re-creating rise times that exceed the bandwidth of the DAC's it's fed from. A band-limited digital mix core cannot do that nor retain the depth of the mix. Transients give life to music, removing them takes some of that music away and I don't like audio gear chewing my food for me. Yes, I am an odd duck these days but have always done recordings like that since 1970. Coming from a musician background, I still follow the Hendrix philosophy, "I want to see and hear everything". If you want transients sharp as a knife I would not leave the digital domain. Do not use compression or transient shapers, nor tape sims. Sorry but also in Hendrixs music I do not hear any too sharp transients, we always try to make the corners round. If the transients stick out too much it will strain the ears, and speakers. this got silly quick, Mrholmes, do you know the ridiculous level of experience the man who you're talking to has? clearly there is a lot of misunderstanding, Jim wasn't talking about JH's music, he was talking about the man's spirit, also who said anything about transients being as sharp as knives? also compressors don't cut transients if you don't want them to and you use them correctly, neither do transient shapers, knowing how to gain stage and mix properly makes " If the transients stick out too much it will strain the ears, and speakers" a non issue, and i don't think you need to worry about Jim using a simulator of anything haha as far as the false "competitive" narrative, certain broadcasters are going to smash the shit out of your stuff either way, so it doesn't make a difference to anyone but the people who are listening on mediums that are better, they're the ones who will suffer with dumbed down mixes, but believe whatever you want, i'll continue to strive, and stick with making the best sounding recordings I possibly can, then i'll give a full frequency, dynamic mix to a great ME who will be instructed to prepare it for wherever it's going without stomping it to shit, and then the end listener, whether it's a million people or myself in my bedroom, will have a volume control as always, and we will turn up a high quality good sounding tune instead of fried metal, but only if we like your song 8)....making it a champion of competition, same as it's always been. |
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Post by mrholmes on Jun 21, 2015 17:42:54 GMT -6
If you want transients sharp as a knife I would not leave the digital domain. Do not use compression or transient shapers, nor tape sims. Sorry but also in Hendrixs music I do not hear any too sharp transients, we always try to make the corners round. If the transients stick out too much it will strain the ears, and speakers. this got silly quick, Mrholmes, do you know the ridiculous level of experience the man who you're talking to has? clearly there is a lot of misunderstanding, Jim wasn't talking about JH's music, he was talking about the man's spirit, also who said anything about transients being as sharp as knives? also compressors don't cut transients if you don't want them to and you use them correctly, neither do transient shapers, knowing how to gain stage and mix properly makes " If the transients stick out too much it will strain the ears, and speakers" a non issue, and i don't think you need to worry about Jim using a simulator of anything haha as far as the false "competitive" narrative, certain broadcasters are going to smash the shit out of your stuff either way, so it doesn't make a difference to anyone but the people who are listening on mediums that are better, they're the ones who will suffer with dumbed down mixes, but believe whatever you want, i'll continue to strive, and stick with making the best sounding recordings I possibly can, then i'll give a full frequency, dynamic mix to a great ME who will be instructed to prepare it for wherever it's going without stomping it to shit, and then the end listener, whether it's a million people or myself in my bedroom, will have a volume control as always, and we will turn up a high quality good sounding tune instead of fried metal, but only if we like your song 8)....making it a champion of competition, same as it's always been. As far as I know it's a rule of this place that I do not try to force someone to agree with me. If I am not aloud to talk about the experience I made, than what is RGO good for. And I think Jim can speak for his person without any help. Again if it's not about sharing opinions and make each other think than what's it about? |
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Post by drbill on Jun 21, 2015 18:28:56 GMT -6
Again, the bottom line : your transients are going south for the rest of their playback life unless you only listen to them in your private environment.
For the rest of us who WANT our music to be heard by listeners, fans and the general public, its incumbent upon us to shape, trim and shave those transients in a way that brings the least damage to the music, while helping get the signal louder. Anything else does an injustice to the music. This has been going on for decades, and I'm actually kind of surprised we're even discussing it.
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Post by tonycamphd on Jun 21, 2015 19:17:34 GMT -6
Again, the bottom line : your transients are going south for the rest of their playback life unless you only listen to them in your private environment. For the rest of us who WANT our music to be heard by listeners, fans and the general public, its incumbent upon us to shape, trim and shave those transients in a way that brings the least damage to the music, while helping get the signal louder. Anything else does an injustice to the music. This has been going on for decades, and I'm actually kind of surprised we're even discussing it. Your comment assumes "damage" as a necessity, just do the least amount, i reject it. In my world I make the best recording I possibly can, the rest is up to the ME. You know as well as i do that you can have all your transient information in tact, in every format but the worst of offending places(in which case it won't matter anyway), if you use a qualified ME. Do you honestly believe your smidge of extra db and distortion artifacts are going to make your stuff "more competitive"? Not as long as there are volume knobs. 8) |
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Post by drbill on Jun 21, 2015 20:36:13 GMT -6
Again, the bottom line : your transients are going south for the rest of their playback life unless you only listen to them in your private environment. For the rest of us who WANT our music to be heard by listeners, fans and the general public, its incumbent upon us to shape, trim and shave those transients in a way that brings the least damage to the music, while helping get the signal louder. Anything else does an injustice to the music. This has been going on for decades, and I'm actually kind of surprised we're even discussing it. Your comment assumes "damage" as a necessity, just do the least amount, i reject it. In my world I make the best recording I possibly can, the rest is up to the ME. You know as well as i do that you can have all your transient information in tact, in every format but the worst of offending places(in which case it won't matter anyway), if you use a qualified ME. Do you honestly believe your smidge of extra db and distortion artifacts are going to make your stuff "more competitive"? Not as long as there are volume knobs. 8) I'll assume you don't know what ME's do then. Do you believe that all transients remain intact at the end of the mastering process? Talk to any mastering engineer and get enlightened. A large percentage of them actually clip their converters to get a little more loudness edge. Yuck. But "Damage" is in the eye of the beholder as they say. I have had clients that didn't like their mixes until they were clipping and horribly distorted. I try to avoid those guys, but there is a generation of them out there that see that "sound" as the de facto standard, and that's what they want. So be it, I try to make sure they are not my clients, but I don't always have a choice. But you don't do what I do - you do it for the enjoyment and hobby of it, and that's 100% cool. I wish sometimes I could do that myself. But in the library business and most other work for hire music industries, if you choose two equally creative pieces and don't have a creative preference, almost always the louder will be chosen. If you don't turn in mastered files, you're out of the game. It's a hard cold fact of life. You can personally reject it, but you won't make headway in my industry, and that's AOK. with me I've got nothing personal against you or your transients. If we could keep all of em, the world would be a better place. But I live in reality, and where I work, that's just not possible, no matter how righteous and purist we might want to be. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2015 22:08:09 GMT -6
It's unfortunately true in the sense of drBill.
If you don't smash the music the way you want it to be least destroyed, someone else might do it, most probably less nice or not in your sense of taste more often than you think...
So best is, you do a HD audiophile mix, a radio mix, an mp3 mix (yikes!), a video mix (thanks Bob O. for showing up another one that might be needed so music is not degraded), a club maxi mix ..........
...and shave the transients already as best as the media and customer demands it...except you know the ME is doing a very good job...or at least a better job than you.
This said - it depends on the customer.
I mean, not the end customer, the musician and/or the label.
E.g., wiz' track, that we had the opportunity to mix freely and discuss and compare results, for my taste didn't need any dynamics effects *at all* because everything really needed was done at recording time. (Well, he would have done, if he had enough outboard, so it got some hybrid work on the raw tracks before the mix...)
But really - i don't want classic music and acoustic bar jazz squashed and shaved.
Thanks, but no thanks.
And it's interesting we are talking disturbing sharp transients.
Anyone been in the cinema lately? Absurd dynamic ranges to the dolby specs - these might hurt your ears, but people don't seem to care. For my taste, it's too much "show off" and overdramatization, and yes at these levels and DRs it *hurts*.
But as said, the end consumer doesn't care seemingly, or maybe already beats/z(!) his ear to death with high volumes on in-ears...
Not often the case to have these dynamic ranges at high levels in music mixes at all IMO. I explicitly would like more dynamic range and also sharp transients in todays music if done tastefully.
So i don't think i share mrholmes conclusion here - or might also misunderstand...
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Post by EmRR on Jun 22, 2015 7:09:10 GMT -6
You can get a lot of loudness out of RMS type compressors that leave a high crest factor, leaving transients fairly well alone. The mastering house I usually use is good about having conversations around overall final level, and we always land reasonable unless the artist just insists, which has become rarer over the years.
I notice a lot of current hits are no longer crushed to 0dBFS, with many having mix level changes from part to part to create dynamics, most well below 0dBFS. I've seen a few that do long slow fade-ups across the length of the song, and even the end isn't crushed.
Full disclosure is my input chain is 40-80 year old preamps that do their own pre-mangle if hit hard.
Back 'then' I never heard anyone speak of hitting the mix bus hard to achieve effect. We might drive a channel trim hard on an individual source, like snare into a 33115 to get some splat, but not the whole thing.
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Post by swurveman on Jun 22, 2015 7:56:31 GMT -6
I would have liked to hear the original mix from the video bounced with his mastered version and then have him turn the volume knob up of the original mix to reach the volume of his mastered version. Now that would be interesting.
That being said, I am amazed at how much distortion there is on professional mixes that I reference when I do my mixes, particularly pop music. They are compressing/slamming the shit out of these mixes and it's just not at the L2 stage. They are compressing hard everywhere.
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Post by EmRR on Jun 22, 2015 8:35:11 GMT -6
I hear lots of distortion on finished records on my studio monitor system, rarely audible on anything lesser. I hate to think the answer is 'don't listen on a good system', that's what we are supposed to be fighting against.
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Post by jimwilliams on Jun 22, 2015 9:13:48 GMT -6
Again, the bottom line : your transients are going south for the rest of their playback life unless you only listen to them in your private environment. For the rest of us who WANT our music to be heard by listeners, fans and the general public, its incumbent upon us to shape, trim and shave those transients in a way that brings the least damage to the music, while helping get the signal louder. Anything else does an injustice to the music. This has been going on for decades, and I'm actually kind of surprised we're even discussing it. Shaving off transients is a recent fashion, it was not done in the 1980's, if anything they were fought for as analog tape was the main smasher at that time. Yes, if you want to compete in a processed taylor swift world of disposable pop music, you must fit the "program", flawed as it is and admitted by any AE currently working as being flawed. So you must ruin your music as little as possible to fit that over-compressed, no dynamic range essentially unlistenable pop formula. Doesn't sound like fun to me. News: there are other forms of music besides pop. I do mostly jazz and roots music here, naturally recorded and presented. It's my thing just like that smashed pop is your thing. We do things a little differently, as my style is to get out of the way of great musicians, not autotuning pop musicians. In that domain, transients are key to the presentation of the musicians and their style. That has been going on for decades and I'm actually kind of suprized we're even discussing it. |
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Post by drbill on Jun 22, 2015 9:47:38 GMT -6
I hate to break it to ya Jim, but pop isn't my thing. I'd suspect I fall a lot closer to your musical taste than most guys here. Still, there is zero doubt that what gets released TODAY has transients shaved off - no matter what style of music it is. UNLESS it stays in the person's own personal studio for their personal enjoyment.
If I'm supposed to keep ALL transients as Tony suggested, what about that stray cowbell hit or snare hit that has 20dB more transient spike on it than what surrounds it? I'm supposed to print my mix with RMS 20dB lower? No way. That cowbell spike s getting shaved off. I don't know where you're getting that this is recent. It's been going on ever since I entered the biz in the 80's. Remember those 1176's and tape? Hard core transient tamers. Then we got high level tape @ +9. That'lll shave some transients for ya. No, it's been around a long time. We didn't just wake up one morning to hear music compressed and mangled. It's been a linear process, advancing over the years. Now....if you can get the industry to back off the loudness wars, I'm right there with ya - 110%. I never mixed with any compression on the mix buss until the last few years, and even at that, it's barely discernible - yielding just a TINY bit of glue and no noticeable compression artifacts. But I will tell you that the benefit of doing so, and the end result product warrants it's use. And I'm talking underscore, roots/americana, orchestral, rock, jazzy new age acoustic music, and pretty much anything else you can come up with - aside from Pop. Don't do that or Rap.
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Post by lpedrum on Jun 22, 2015 9:51:51 GMT -6
Again, the bottom line : your transients are going south for the rest of their playback life unless you only listen to them in your private environment. For the rest of us who WANT our music to be heard by listeners, fans and the general public, its incumbent upon us to shape, trim and shave those transients in a way that brings the least damage to the music, while helping get the signal louder. Anything else does an injustice to the music. This has been going on for decades, and I'm actually kind of surprised we're even discussing it. Shaving off transients is a recent fashion, it was not done in the 1980's, if anything they were fought for as analog tape was the main smasher at that time. Yes, if you want to compete in a processed taylor swift world of disposable pop music, you must fit the "program", flawed as it is and admitted by any AE currently working as being flawed. So you must ruin your music as little as possible to fit that over-compressed, no dynamic range essentially unlistenable pop formula. Doesn't sound like fun to me. News: there are other forms of music besides pop. I do mostly jazz and roots music here, naturally recorded and presented. It's my thing just like that smashed pop is your thing. We do things a little differently, as my style is to get out of the way of great musicians, not autotuning pop musicians. In that domain, transients are key to the presentation of the musicians and their style. That has been going on for decades and I'm actually kind of suprized we're even discussing it. Both of you guys are well-respected here. Just wondering if there's a way to have this conversation without accusing another member of making "disposable pop music" that's "essentially unlistenable." |
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Post by drbill on Jun 22, 2015 9:59:03 GMT -6
I'll add a PS - mostly for the OP - scumbum -- I'll say one thing, generally speaking, I find a nice rounding off of spurious loud transients to be virtually transparent if done well. You can easily get a 5-7dB RMS gain on a normally uncompressed mix by doing so - and it doesn't sound compressed or negatively affected. It's MUCH less affecting to the music than heavy buss compression. Benefits are a nice widening of the mix and a gluing analog vibe. And if that is robbing me of *all* the music....well, so be it. I've got the important stuff, and it sounds better while giving me a higher RMS level without negatively affecting the music in any even slightly significant way. My personal take on it.
Working in the analog domain with tape, console, analog outboard, etc, this happens all the time whether or not you realize it. But in the digital domain, most of us are smart enough to avoid clipping, cause DAW's have little red lights that show us we're being stupid. so we avoid it. Zero clip, total transients. But in the analog world, normal old school workflow, those same transients that are saved in digi-land get shaved off all the time, and AE's don't even know it. Or maybe they just won't admit it.....
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Post by drbill on Jun 22, 2015 10:00:49 GMT -6
Shaving off transients is a recent fashion, it was not done in the 1980's, if anything they were fought for as analog tape was the main smasher at that time. Yes, if you want to compete in a processed taylor swift world of disposable pop music, you must fit the "program", flawed as it is and admitted by any AE currently working as being flawed. So you must ruin your music as little as possible to fit that over-compressed, no dynamic range essentially unlistenable pop formula. Doesn't sound like fun to me. News: there are other forms of music besides pop. I do mostly jazz and roots music here, naturally recorded and presented. It's my thing just like that smashed pop is your thing. We do things a little differently, as my style is to get out of the way of great musicians, not autotuning pop musicians. In that domain, transients are key to the presentation of the musicians and their style. That has been going on for decades and I'm actually kind of suprized we're even discussing it. Both of you guys are well-respected here. Just wondering if there's a way to have this conversation without accusing another member of making "disposable pop music" that's "essentially unlistenable." Ha! That doesn't bother me a bit. :-) Honestly, I WISH I could crank out a few pop hits. It would certainly help the bottom line... :-) |
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