Quick Request, for Tony and/or Andrew |
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Quick Request, for Tony and/or Andrew |
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Nov 25 2007, 01:26 AM |
Cheers Smells - I'll download tonight and try to listen tomorrow mate.
Wife's away to UK tomorrow so hopefully - daughter permitting - I'll get time . What would be good - and I realise it may not be possible - is to have a short wav file version of a few MB if possible. Reason why is I want to try and have a look at the post mix harmonic balance and I can't do that with a mp3. Don't worry though if you can't - it would just be a bonus. BTW - your voice ain't bad mate - certainly better then mine . Cheers, Tony -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Nov 26 2007, 03:27 PM |
Hi Chris,
sorry for the delay - had problems getting my daughter to go to bed last night - mum's away and she was a bit upset! Your new version brings the vocals out a lot better imo - much more forward in the mix overall and -to me - nicer balance. Couple of things I did notice - your level is a bit hot - it's up to -0.2 on my meters. It's probably happened when you put some eq gain and isn't really an issue here. What you may find in future recordings though is if you run hot that you'll limit the scope for adding reverb etc at the mastering stage. I checked the overall eq balance through a mastering eq on the wav clip and the bass doesn't appear to shelf until below 45 Hz. If you want you can shelf higher then that - anywhere around 70-90Hz is usually ok. Drummers will hate you as your attenuating their low end kick but in a final mix virtually no one will notice . Doing this opens up the frequency spectrum a bit more and lets the mid-range breath a bit. I also noticed that there were a few quite large eq spikes - probably caused by room effects where you recorded. Big dip at about 70Hz and several quite large peaks across the mid eq range upto quite a broad spike (and the one with most gain) at 4kHz and then no apparent high end shelfing. It's sometimes helps to shelf the high end at or over 9-10kHz as otherwise a mix can sound like it lacks a bit of definition. Two eq spikes at 677 and 785 - presumably where you were adding gain on the sweet spot for the vocals. Main thing here is experiment in future with low and high end shelfs just to remove the low end bass and the high end over 9-10k. You might want to add a little reverb on the mix at mastering just to give a bit of ambiance. I tried it with a convolution reverb set to a small arena in Reaper and though it added some nice presence and space to the snare and vocals. Sorry I didn't save the file - had to rush out to get daughter from school . I've attached a wav file where I've played around a bit with the overall harmonic eq balance on the wav clip and done some shelfing. You may love it or hate it - np - eq balance is a matter of personal taste - but it's there to give you an idea of what shelfing and balancing can do . Give it a listen when you've time and see what you think. Cheers, Tony -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Nov 26 2007, 03:34 PM |
Well I won;t comment on the overall mix, since this is Chris' baby, I'll let him take a crack first, but TOny, this was a very informative post I learnt a lot - thanks!
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Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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Nov 26 2007, 04:18 PM |
NP Chris and glad to help.
Know what you mean about 8 tracks - stated life using a big old 2 track that was my mate's dads. You could only bounce 1 or 2 times before the whole thing got swamped in noise . Was great fun and had a big advantage of being fast to set up (well apart from when you had to do tape splicing ). You're spot on about mixing btw - it's the balance of the final mix that is the important one.Sadly mixing isn't equal to the sum of the inputs so it's not a case of get each individual track to sound awesome and the whole will be killer. Mixing life would be a lot simpler if it was : ) . It's one reason though why a good engineer is sought after - knowing when to leave alone an individual track even though it 'doesn't sound great' according to the client because you know that its how it will sit in the mix that counts is key . I get around much of the 'customer doesn't like it' bits by recording as dry as possible and doing the mix when they're not there. That way you don't get the drummer/whoever continually demanding more level etc . Only issue then is trying to work out what they meant by 'we want it to sound like XXX's album' when you've never heard it and they're not there to explain. Just give them what you like as most don't know/notice anyway though . Cheers, Tony -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Nov 26 2007, 05:23 PM |
Chris - I feel your pain! 8 track can be very restrictive and you make a lot of compromises. I think you'll love the new world of Reaper and have a lot of fun re-recording this piece. It will surely be worth the effort as the track is really cool!
Regarding Tony's edits - I like the way he tamed some of the harshness in the mid upper band, and smoothed the whole thing out - definitely easier on the ears in my opinion. I can't wait to hear the re-record of the piece as a whole - I think due to your 8 track limitations, the drums and bass are missing a little bit of drive and could use some compression to densify them (if there is such a word). A track like that deserves a powerhouse of a rhythm section and I think you'll be able to achieve that a lot better with reaper . (Disclaimer - I am listening on PC speakers too and my monitoring may be well off in terms of bass response, so please take my comments with a pinch of salt!) -------------------- Check out my Instructor profile
Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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Nov 26 2007, 07:21 PM |
... its too frustrating to spend hours and hours recording and it sounds cack at the end. Story of my life mate and I usually can't even blame the recording and mixing (unless I'm doing that as well ). Compression and gate on the drums +1 but it's easier to do at the individual track mixing stage - personally I'd go for quite a bit of compression and get the drums to 'pump' a bit. There are mastering compressors as well but unless you use a multi band then you'll be applying it globally or you'd have to sidechain it and try to do something like frequency sweep it. Otherwise in mastering stage you could try applying a limiter - I did some when I applied the reverb and it seemed to my ears to help a bit. You could also use the limiter to bring the overall level down a touch. I'm pretty certain that there's a free limiter included as one of the free Reaper effects. Minor aside - don't know if you do this but I always record the parts of the drum kit as a buss (or busses if I want to separate out the high end cymbals etc for different stuff) and that way I can apply compression etc to the buss rather then globally to the entire mix or fiddling around with the individual bits. Cheers, Tony -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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