KVR Audio

bool · Post by **bool** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:21 pm

but this particular guy does stuff in rotation on mtve.

... ok he doesnt have a clue. nevermind.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:23 pm

bool wrote:... ok he doesnt have a clue.

Indeed.

brok landers · Post by **brok landers** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:27 pm

Kingston wrote:You have confused mixing and mastering.

in no way.
know that the biggest mistake ever made is to seperate mixdown and mastering ...
you can fix way more in the mix than in the mastering.
its actually 2 processes in conjunction, which ideally have to be done together, or at least the mastering should begin in the last quarter of the mixing process.
the two processes ideally belong together, as they greatly affect each other ...

No it just means you have saved more dynamic range for the mastering, actually giving you more choice.

exactly! you still didn't get it??
the mastering compressor sounds way more natural (and along with that your mix, too, actually) if you don't drive it that hard (which is not necessary anymore, when you do as i described) , but you still achieve a loud master.
thats the whole goal actually ... to have a loud master which doesn't sound too overcompressed in the sum ...

because it's also illegal to use volume and gain plugins, right?

what's that bullshit ?
why should i even consider a gainer plugin, if i don't need it, because i carefully mixed?

You can take care of the loudness in mastering.

if a track is allready mixed good, yes ...
i'd rather have the choice to correct a mix while mastering (not _by_ mastering), as a lot of mistakes done in a mix, often come to light while mastering.
often one simply cannot achive loudness by the mastering process because of simple mistakes in the mix, be it that the bassdrum is too loud.
once printed in the mix, the mastering engineer (which mostly is far away of where your mix is done) has problems to solve which takes him hours, still not achieving best results, but it would take one second to correct the mistake in the mixin process ...

well, we're different ...
you go your way, i go mine ...

brok landers · Post by **brok landers** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:31 pm

a note on the loudness-race: i'm not in it, i don't like to be loud no matter what price.
but what i experianced is, that if your mix, your sounds and your arrangement is good, you can achieve a good portion of loudness which actually doesn't affect the sound in a bad way ...
you just have to know, how it is done through all stages ...

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:34 pm

brok landers wrote:
You can take care of the loudness in mastering.
if a track is allready mixed good, yes ...
i'd rather have the choice to correct a mix while mastering (not _by_ mastering), as a lot of mistakes done in a mix, often come to light while mastering.
often one simply cannot achive loudness by the mastering process because of simple mistakes in the mix, be it that the bassdrum is too loud.
once printed in the mix, the mastering engineer (which mostly is far away of where your mix is done) has problems to solve which takes him hours, still not achieving best results, but it would take one second to correct the mistake in the mixin process ...

well, we're different ...
you go your way, i go mine ...

Well I sort of assumed certain quality here, that no fixing in the mix was necessary. In this case mastering is just the final gloss and setting up of RMS levels of all tracks to a similar level. That's why I don't worry about it during mixdown. I guess in my type of music I never have to worry about spurious peaks that would distraught the carefully set up mastering compressor(s). Hence I don't resort to brick walls as loudness utilities.

brok landers · Post by **brok landers** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:35 pm

Kingston wrote:
bool wrote:... ok he doesnt have a clue.
Indeed.

my english is not too good, so i might have understood this wrong.
but if you mean me, well, yes i don't have a clou ...
that's why mixing and mastering is my job (and i live well from it), besides sounddesigning ...

i'm outta this ...

btw, sorry for this hughe hijacking, alexey ...

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:38 pm

brok landers wrote:
Kingston wrote:
bool wrote:... ok he doesnt have a clue.
Indeed.
my english is not too good, so i might have understood this wrong.
but if you mean me, well, yes i don't have a clou ...
that's why mixing and mastering is my job (and i live well from it), besides sounddesigning ...

no this wasn't about you at all.

it was about some guy who records his things clipping the AD-converters... on purpose. The loudness race has progressed this far you see.

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:43 pm

And here I thought we used compressors to tame peaks on tracks...

brok landers · Post by **brok landers** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 10:07 pm

bduffy, if its necessarry, yes ...

i mostly use it to shape a drum sound to give it more presence ...
for vocals i mostly use multibandcompressors, as the dynamic behaviour on the different frequencies on vocals are often a problem, also one can shape the high/mid content for that exitersound that is so popular in rnb ...

also you can leave the deesser then ... different tasks, different uses ...

brok landers · Post by **brok landers** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 10:11 pm

Kingston wrote: no this wasn't about you at all. it was about some guy who records his things clipping the AD-converters... on purpose. The loudness race has progressed this far you see.

ahh ok ...

i apologize ...

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 10:18 pm

brok landers wrote:bduffy, if its necessarry, yes ...
i mostly use it to shape a drum sound to give it more presence ...
for vocals i mostly use multibandcompressors, as the dynamic behaviour on the different frequencies on vocals are often a problem, also one can shape the high/mid content for that exitersound that is so popular in rnb ...
also you can leave the deesser then ... different tasks, different uses ...

Well it sounded to me like you were talking about compression: turn down the peaks so you can turn up the track.

brok landers · Post by **brok landers** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 10:25 pm

like i said, it depends on the signal ... the relation of attack and the body of a drumsignal is what i often shape with a compressor, rather than compress it inaudibly to get it loud ...
it depends on how it sits in the mix ...
i allways try to find a musical relation for what i do, i.e. if a mix is too quiet i try to boost the loudest signal the way you assumed, to get the rms level of that signal louder without cliping, so i can relativeley rise up the rest of the signals in the mix ...

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 10:43 pm

Hmm. I don't think I get this whole thing. You seemed to be concerned with getting the track as loud as possible, which isn't really a priority in mixing, now I don't know.

brok landers · Post by **brok landers** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 10:49 pm

no, bduffy ... you got that wrong.
i initially wanted to show a way of how you get your mixes as loud as when mixed with analog gear, which is slightly harder to achieve in digital.
there are several aspects that have to be respected, and i've tried to explain, which these are ...
i'm not in the loudness race, as i stated before, but i for sure try to mix my songs as loud as possible without affecting the sound.
this whole lodness-race-thingy imo came up in general, because the mixes suffered a lof from just pushing the masteringthreshold ...
nevertheless, then somewhen kingston threw himself in, expanding the topic, so we discussed about more different ways of thinking about compression, mixing, mastering, digi vs ana, etc ...

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 10:52 pm

..Yeah, sorry. No clue what's going on. Have an awesome weekend!

Voxengo needs a freeware compressor.