A little last minute hint for those that may struggle while mixing...
I'd double check the guitar tracks... maybe something is wonky.
And by that, I don't mean the pitch (which is fine)...
KVR MIX CHALLENGE - MC13 August 2015 - Winners announced
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 14738 posts since 19 Oct, 2003 from Berlin, Germany
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- KVRAF
- 7576 posts since 17 Feb, 2005
I almost never work with guitars, so I have little in the way of re-amping. Is there a free amp plugin that is good for thick leads? I have Emisarry but it does not give a good sound for this.
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 14738 posts since 19 Oct, 2003 from Berlin, Germany
Well, a load of free content on the market at this point.
I think it's down to the right combination of pedal FX, amp and cabinet. A lot of hosts come bundled with amp suites these days as well. And it's not unheard off to misuse a JCM800 for brutal metal work - with the right pedal FX in front. I actually used LePou's HyBrit Head on one of the guitars, which is said to be a Marshall Plexi/Hiwatt hybrid, and an ENGL 4x12 cabinet. Or was it a Mesa 4x12? I don't have the project open currently.
Anyway... just to "scratch the surface" *cough*
Amps:
The usual suspects are LePou (32bit), Ignite Amps and TSE. Especially for hi-gain stuff. Then there is also Audio Assault, Audiorammer (formerly AuraPlug), IKM (AT3 CS, in the freeware suite are IIRC several Fender, Marshall and Mesa/Boogie - not too sure on the latter however), Kuassa, Mercuriall, phi-L Audio, Shattered Glass, Nick Crow (32bit IIRC), SimulAnalog (now Overloud, 32bit), Native Instruments (Guitar Rig Player), AcmeBarGig (32bit), etc.
Pedal FX:
Pedal FX are plenty available now as well from TSE, Ignite Amps, SimulAnalog, Mokafix Audio (backups can now be found on BPB), Distorque Audio, AudioRammer (AuraPlug), Aegan Music, Musical Entropy (Guitar Gadgets, see KVR DC2014!), IKM AT3 CS (standard pedals), Native Instruments (GR5 Player, standard pedals however) - or in the low budget section Audified (formerly Audiffex)
Cabinets:
Cabinet wise, our new sponsor offers a 30 day demo bundled with a Marshall and HiWatt cabinet - which I can highly recommend (though I am a little bit biased, I use it for a couple of months at this point). Else, use IR loaders from Ignite Amps or LePou and combine it with any IR to your liking (see the Effects sub-board, there are a couple of Guitar threads pinned).
Definitely plenty of possibilities these days. I hope this helps as starting point. Also for the late adopters.
Finding out what is what, and finding the amp/pedal FX/cabinet combination that works best for you, is an own game in itself however.
I think it's down to the right combination of pedal FX, amp and cabinet. A lot of hosts come bundled with amp suites these days as well. And it's not unheard off to misuse a JCM800 for brutal metal work - with the right pedal FX in front. I actually used LePou's HyBrit Head on one of the guitars, which is said to be a Marshall Plexi/Hiwatt hybrid, and an ENGL 4x12 cabinet. Or was it a Mesa 4x12? I don't have the project open currently.
Anyway... just to "scratch the surface" *cough*
Amps:
The usual suspects are LePou (32bit), Ignite Amps and TSE. Especially for hi-gain stuff. Then there is also Audio Assault, Audiorammer (formerly AuraPlug), IKM (AT3 CS, in the freeware suite are IIRC several Fender, Marshall and Mesa/Boogie - not too sure on the latter however), Kuassa, Mercuriall, phi-L Audio, Shattered Glass, Nick Crow (32bit IIRC), SimulAnalog (now Overloud, 32bit), Native Instruments (Guitar Rig Player), AcmeBarGig (32bit), etc.
Pedal FX:
Pedal FX are plenty available now as well from TSE, Ignite Amps, SimulAnalog, Mokafix Audio (backups can now be found on BPB), Distorque Audio, AudioRammer (AuraPlug), Aegan Music, Musical Entropy (Guitar Gadgets, see KVR DC2014!), IKM AT3 CS (standard pedals), Native Instruments (GR5 Player, standard pedals however) - or in the low budget section Audified (formerly Audiffex)
Cabinets:
Cabinet wise, our new sponsor offers a 30 day demo bundled with a Marshall and HiWatt cabinet - which I can highly recommend (though I am a little bit biased, I use it for a couple of months at this point). Else, use IR loaders from Ignite Amps or LePou and combine it with any IR to your liking (see the Effects sub-board, there are a couple of Guitar threads pinned).
Definitely plenty of possibilities these days. I hope this helps as starting point. Also for the late adopters.
Finding out what is what, and finding the amp/pedal FX/cabinet combination that works best for you, is an own game in itself however.
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- KVRist
- 34 posts since 1 Aug, 2014 from Italy
Aehm, I've used Emissary in all rhythm and for the main lead guitar in this project!camsr wrote:I almost never work with guitars, so I have little in the way of re-amping. Is there a free amp plugin that is good for thick leads? I have Emisarry but it does not give a good sound for this.
For the lead in particular it was used with EL34 tubes and coupled with Torpedo WOS free Marshall cab, to simulate Marshall lead sound.
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- KVRian
- 784 posts since 3 Apr, 2013 from Belgium
I started mixing two days ago and I am struggling, then I read your post... I have very difficult to put the musical parts in sync with the beat... At first I was suspecting a vst not properly reporting delay compensation in my set up, but then I tried in Audacity and the tracks were synchronized... I tried into Reaper 4 and it tells me that some tracks contains tempo information. I'm using Sonar currently for mixing and now I suspect that it somehow screw something with the tempo. Could it be that ?Compyfox wrote:A little last minute hint for those that may struggle while mixing...
I'd double check the guitar tracks... maybe something is wonky.
And by that, I don't mean the pitch (which is fine)...
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- KVRist
- 65 posts since 25 Aug, 2014
I'm having the same issues in Cubase. It took me around two hours to sync the melodic parts to the drums and I'm still not sure if everything is fixed.I started mixing two days ago and I am struggling, then I read your post... I have very difficult to put the musical parts in sync with the beat... At first I was suspecting a vst not properly reporting delay compensation in my set up, but then I tried in Audacity and the tracks were synchronized... I tried into Reaper 4 and it tells me that some tracks contains tempo information. I'm using Sonar currently for mixing and now I suspect that it somehow screw something with the tempo. Could it be that ?
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 14738 posts since 19 Oct, 2003 from Berlin, Germany
Okay, I'll throw another hint, since I thought that this is what people do automatically:
1) some tracks have BPM information written into the WAV file. Cubase has a mode in the Pool Window called "Musical Mode". So if the BPM of the project is 100, but the imported WAV file shows "122" or "???" in the pool and the beside it is lit, then remove the X and the tracks are not time stretched anymore
2) all tracks run at the same speed, but some tracks are off-beat. You need to figure out which of these tracks and adjust them accordingly (hint: it works if you shift them by a couple of beats)
BTW: I also tried using the beat/bar and tempo list provided by the client, but ultimately gave up. But I did set the bpm manually. This is where I then realized "wait a minute, something is off", which was an easy fix (see hints).
Then again, this is also part of the challenge.
Understand what's going on, and fix/setup the priject accordingly.
WITH THAT SAID:
7 days left to mix. Good luck.
1) some tracks have BPM information written into the WAV file. Cubase has a mode in the Pool Window called "Musical Mode". So if the BPM of the project is 100, but the imported WAV file shows "122" or "???" in the pool and the beside it is lit, then remove the X and the tracks are not time stretched anymore
2) all tracks run at the same speed, but some tracks are off-beat. You need to figure out which of these tracks and adjust them accordingly (hint: it works if you shift them by a couple of beats)
BTW: I also tried using the beat/bar and tempo list provided by the client, but ultimately gave up. But I did set the bpm manually. This is where I then realized "wait a minute, something is off", which was an easy fix (see hints).
Then again, this is also part of the challenge.
Understand what's going on, and fix/setup the priject accordingly.
WITH THAT SAID:
7 days left to mix. Good luck.
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- KVRian
- 628 posts since 5 Mar, 2011 from Austria
Hi all,
Here is my mix from this challanging track.
MP3: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/717 ... otonic.mp3
WAV: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/717 ... otonic.mp3
As mentioned in the above posts, not only the re-amping was challanging. This was a known task. But to correct the time on some tracks and to move the tracks around till they fit to the drums, was a big surprise. Thirst I thought I made something wrong when Reaper tolded me that in some WAVs a tempo information is inside. Then I saw the post from Compyfox. So I listened to the demo track very closely and was watching the waveform of each track to find out where they should be. I hope I corrected everything. The complicated beats made this not easy !
My second surprise was the noise on some guitar tracks. I am not sure if it comes from my used amps and stomp boxes. But Rhythm#1 and Lead guitar had an extreme noise. Fortunately Reaper has a very good tool called ReaFir to measure and substract noise from the audio. So I got a much cleaner mix.
Here are the mix details:
Reaper v4.731
Drum-Bus: FerricTDS, The Strip (DDMF)
Kick – The Strip
Sanre – The Strip
Toms – The Strip
Overhead & Cymbals – The Strip
Room – The Strip
Bass – Here I copied the track to separate the low end from mid and high at around 150Hz. Low only got ReaComp and ReaEQ. Mid and High got ReaComp, Boogex, ReaEQ. So I could prevent the lowest frequencies from saturation. I think this gives a better defined low end.
Guitar Bus for Rhythm Guitars: Uhbik-A for a small room reverb, ReaEQ, ReaComp
Rhythm#1 – TSE808, JCM900, NadIR, ReaFir
Rhythm#2 – Le456 (LePou), NadIR, ReaEQ
Lead Guitar – Emissary, NadIR, ReaFir, ReaComp, ReaEQ, tkdelay, Uhbik-A
Wah Pedal – ReaComp, FA3 Full, MAutopan, tkdelay
Piano, Synth and Violine - ReaEQ
Master: MQ57, Satin, Span
Here is my mix from this challanging track.
MP3: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/717 ... otonic.mp3
WAV: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/717 ... otonic.mp3
As mentioned in the above posts, not only the re-amping was challanging. This was a known task. But to correct the time on some tracks and to move the tracks around till they fit to the drums, was a big surprise. Thirst I thought I made something wrong when Reaper tolded me that in some WAVs a tempo information is inside. Then I saw the post from Compyfox. So I listened to the demo track very closely and was watching the waveform of each track to find out where they should be. I hope I corrected everything. The complicated beats made this not easy !
My second surprise was the noise on some guitar tracks. I am not sure if it comes from my used amps and stomp boxes. But Rhythm#1 and Lead guitar had an extreme noise. Fortunately Reaper has a very good tool called ReaFir to measure and substract noise from the audio. So I got a much cleaner mix.
Here are the mix details:
Reaper v4.731
Drum-Bus: FerricTDS, The Strip (DDMF)
Kick – The Strip
Sanre – The Strip
Toms – The Strip
Overhead & Cymbals – The Strip
Room – The Strip
Bass – Here I copied the track to separate the low end from mid and high at around 150Hz. Low only got ReaComp and ReaEQ. Mid and High got ReaComp, Boogex, ReaEQ. So I could prevent the lowest frequencies from saturation. I think this gives a better defined low end.
Guitar Bus for Rhythm Guitars: Uhbik-A for a small room reverb, ReaEQ, ReaComp
Rhythm#1 – TSE808, JCM900, NadIR, ReaFir
Rhythm#2 – Le456 (LePou), NadIR, ReaEQ
Lead Guitar – Emissary, NadIR, ReaFir, ReaComp, ReaEQ, tkdelay, Uhbik-A
Wah Pedal – ReaComp, FA3 Full, MAutopan, tkdelay
Piano, Synth and Violine - ReaEQ
Master: MQ57, Satin, Span
soundcloud.com/photonic-1
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 14738 posts since 19 Oct, 2003 from Berlin, Germany
On the tempo and beats again: MOST of the tracks run aligned - only two tracks are off (and those weren't the drums). At least on my end after I turned off the "musical" (time stretch) mode in Cubase.
A(nother) hint on noise: 16bit source files
If and how you address this, depends on each individual.
Else, I'm really curious about the various used guitar amps throughout the challenge.
A(nother) hint on noise: 16bit source files
If and how you address this, depends on each individual.
Else, I'm really curious about the various used guitar amps throughout the challenge.
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- KVRAF
- 7576 posts since 17 Feb, 2005
Look at the spectrum, noise floor is appearant at around 20khz on the Impact Soundworks samples. It's like violet color noise too, not good. I used lowpass on every track to bandlimit. The Slate samples were bandlimited already, very well also. There is some problem with a few of the instrument tracks, not tempo IMO, just off beat.
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- KVRian
- 784 posts since 3 Apr, 2013 from Belgium
I don't know how to disable the time stretch in Sonar, or simply how to remove tempo information from a wav file, tried to convert into flac but no success... Anyone has an idea ? (I don't know if we are allowed to ask such questions, if not just ignore this message 
)
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 14738 posts since 19 Oct, 2003 from Berlin, Germany
I can't help you with Sonar, and to be honest... I've gotten a lot(!) of WAV files in recent months with tempo information (which is no issue to turn off in Cubase, mind you).
But a quick Google search hinted at a feature called "AudioSnap" in Sonar X?
In Ableton Live it's called "Warp", in Logic it goes via Options > Tempo > Remove Tempo (at least Logic 9), in Reaper it's "set track timebase", for Studio One I can recommend to read the manual on TimeStretching.
I do see a problem with this - but I can't offer you folks an immediate fix as I am not using these hosts. And I'm sure this will come up in the future again - tracks with bpm values in the WAV file, but fluctuating in speed throughout the track. Hosts these days should be able to handle that (turn it off globally that is)!
EDIT:
4 days left to mix.
But a quick Google search hinted at a feature called "AudioSnap" in Sonar X?
In Ableton Live it's called "Warp", in Logic it goes via Options > Tempo > Remove Tempo (at least Logic 9), in Reaper it's "set track timebase", for Studio One I can recommend to read the manual on TimeStretching.
I do see a problem with this - but I can't offer you folks an immediate fix as I am not using these hosts. And I'm sure this will come up in the future again - tracks with bpm values in the WAV file, but fluctuating in speed throughout the track. Hosts these days should be able to handle that (turn it off globally that is)!
I did take a closer look yesterday just to be sure. I used MBandpass with up to 96dB/Oct and to be honest... cutting away the "high frequencies" down to 12kHz did not solve the noise issues by itself. If you raise the input gain of each channel, you still have the 16bit noise floor (there goes another hint!).camsr wrote:Look at the spectrum, noise floor is appearant at around 20khz on the Impact Soundworks samples. It's like violet color noise too, not good. I used lowpass on every track to bandlimit. The Slate samples were bandlimited already, very well also.
EDIT:
4 days left to mix.
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- KVRist
- 31 posts since 28 Jan, 2012
Hi All.
Here is my effort, i hope you'll enjoy it.
https://soundcloud.com/sworduigi/kvr-mc ... -elsewhere
Flac file here:
http://www71.zippyshare.com/v/wNNNRL6L/file.html
Here is my effort, i hope you'll enjoy it.
https://soundcloud.com/sworduigi/kvr-mc ... -elsewhere
Flac file here:
http://www71.zippyshare.com/v/wNNNRL6L/file.html
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- KVRist
- 47 posts since 15 Sep, 2014
Hello,
this is my mix:
https://soundcloud.com/dilutedmind/audi ... nd/s-xg8eh
First I tried to get drums, bass and guitars right because it is a metal song. Then I brought in the Piano track
and then the rest.
Kick: splitted in fundamental, 1st and high-mid. used FabQ2, MDrumEnhancer and MJUC
Snare: FabQ2, MDrumEnhancer and MJUC
Toms: MDrumEnhancer again (must be used in every track coz I just bought it
)
Overheads: FabQ2, MJUC, Aphex Exciter
Room: MJUC, FabQ2
Drum Bus: API-2500
Bass: GTR, Softtube Sat Knob, FabQ2, MJUC, MaxxBass, VEQ4
Lead Guitar: Gate, CLA-76, Guitar Rig 5, FabQ2, Scheps73, Aphex Exciter
Rhythm Guitars: Guitar Rig 5 (but different presets)
Rhythm Guitars Bus: API-2500, FabQ2
Wah-Pedal: FabQ2, Guitar Rig 5, Fab Saturn, Aphex Exciter, FabQ2
Piano: FabQ2, PM-Magic Queen, occasionally H-Delay and S1 Imager, MEQ5
Synth: FabQ2
Violin: FabQ2, MJUC, H-Delay, Center
Master: API-2500, FabQ2, CS Master EQ432, Kramer Tape
and some Sends for effects.
I really liked this track!
cheers,
.mixed.mind
this is my mix:
https://soundcloud.com/dilutedmind/audi ... nd/s-xg8eh
First I tried to get drums, bass and guitars right because it is a metal song. Then I brought in the Piano track
and then the rest.
Kick: splitted in fundamental, 1st and high-mid. used FabQ2, MDrumEnhancer and MJUC
Snare: FabQ2, MDrumEnhancer and MJUC
Toms: MDrumEnhancer again (must be used in every track coz I just bought it
)Overheads: FabQ2, MJUC, Aphex Exciter
Room: MJUC, FabQ2
Drum Bus: API-2500
Bass: GTR, Softtube Sat Knob, FabQ2, MJUC, MaxxBass, VEQ4
Lead Guitar: Gate, CLA-76, Guitar Rig 5, FabQ2, Scheps73, Aphex Exciter
Rhythm Guitars: Guitar Rig 5 (but different presets)
Rhythm Guitars Bus: API-2500, FabQ2
Wah-Pedal: FabQ2, Guitar Rig 5, Fab Saturn, Aphex Exciter, FabQ2
Piano: FabQ2, PM-Magic Queen, occasionally H-Delay and S1 Imager, MEQ5
Synth: FabQ2
Violin: FabQ2, MJUC, H-Delay, Center
Master: API-2500, FabQ2, CS Master EQ432, Kramer Tape
and some Sends for effects.
I really liked this track!
cheers,
.mixed.mind