Excellent advice.stillshaded wrote:Well, a clipper is generally the most effective way to tame transients without dulling them. The hardder clip, the more the transients will be maintained. But I've never used the t-racks plugin.
Here are a couple of mixing tricks that can make a huge difference:
I like to do clipping on the drum buss. I actually like to clip everything but the kick in one group, and then the kick separately. You can also get away with clipping the hell out of drums. Especially if you have some "micro-transients" that are created maybe by a compressor or something. A lot of times, it's the length of the transient that determines how much you can clip it with out audible artifacts. There have been plenty of times when I've clipped off like 10db (!) but the transient was only like 2ms so it's completely in audible.
The fee plugins gclip and s(m)exoscope make a terrific team for doing smart clipping.
Also, nudging elements of the track that hit at the same forwards or backwards can have a huge effect on transients. Mess with this.
Also, keep in mind, if your spectrum (basically arrangement and eq) is not balanced well, you're going to have transient issues. Period. If your lead and your huge snare both hit hard at the same time and same frequencies, there's not going to be any way to fix that with processing that won't kill the sound.
On the master buss, I think a combo of light clipping and limiting can be good. Sometimes I like to use the free TDR nova dynamic eq if there's a freq that's really popping to hard. That is the most amazing free plugin.
The very short transients are the ones that gave me trouble. Since the audio is reaching the clipper AFTER it has been clipped, how can the clipper preserve the original transient? That part is a mystery. I have Ozone 7 so I think the dynamic eq is already covered (if only I knew how/when to use the thing). I know to use a regular EQ but I don't see when/how this dynamic eq is useful. It's basically like a multi-band compressor if I got it right. Just with bands and Qs user specified.
