One Synth Challenge #90: Helm by Matt Tytel (Jasinski Wins!)

[doctorbob]

Yeah those lovely classic synth and acoustic sounds you got out of it must've taken quite some patience! I just went for the low-hanging fruit and it was wormy.

Thanks Peter, yup, a lot of careful work getting the right sounds. Another thing I found was that some controls had definite "sweet points" where you would get just the sound you wanted , but moving the control didn't then give a gradual variation in the effect you heard , even a small movement would destroy the sound . Mind you, endless possibilities, but a lot of work involved, and in the end ... so little time ...

Cheers,

dB

[doctorbob]

Ah well... I think, I will call my song done, since it's really hard to keep working with it as processing becomes impossible anymore, really.

Yay! Second track with some singing ... really nice and, well ... clever. Big like from me - stand out track.

dB

[doctorbob]

Updated the track - drums a little more forward (Peter, you were right !). Also rebalanced the spectrum a little - a bit more lo-mid overall, more bass body and a little sharpness trimmed off the high end instruments. There was a bit of a spike at 4Khz ... I think it's better. The drums forward add a little more "excitement" I think. Might be wrong - time will tell.

dB

[Yeager]

Uploaded mine, it's called :

"Rays Of Darkness".

Made In FLStudio.

I used : 16 x Helm 8.6.0.

Track FX :
2 x Fruity Reverb 2
2 x HY-MBDrive
1 x HY-Reso
1 x PSP Pianoverb
1 x TDR Kotelnikov
1 x ADT
1 x Attack Knob
1 x Fruity Delay 2.

Automation : No.

Master FX :
1 x Luftikus
1 x TDR VOS SlickEQ
1 x TDR Nova
1 x Fruity Limiter.

Official DR value: DR9.

Enjoy.

https://soundcloud.com/petervos/yeager-rays-of-darkness

[Taron]

Ah well... I think, I will call my song done, since it's really hard to keep working with it as processing becomes impossible anymore, really.

Yay! Second track with some singing ... really nice and, well ... clever. Big like from me - stand out track.

dB

There's another track with singing?
THANK YOU, BOB, I'm very happy you like it!

[eraze the borders]

Here goes my entry. Hope you guys like it.

https://soundcloud.com/eraze-the-border ... -my-helmet

All sounds made from scratch.

DAW: Reaper 5.22

23 x Helm

ReaEQ
ReaComp
TAL Reverb III
TAL-DUB-II
La Petite Excite
Camel Crusher
Classic Master Limiter
TDR Kotelnikov
Voxengo SPAN

Mastering:
ReaEQ / OTT / Classic Master Limiter

DR: 8

~Cheers

[doctorbob]

There's another track with singing?

Well not singing, but nice use of the formant filter in Slava's track!

THANK YOU, BOB, I'm very happy you like it!

Well deserved, lots of inventive work, and done in style too! Very best of luck - hope every one else thinks it's great too! Just gotta wait on Jasinski's and Z' as per usual, eh?

Hoping to do better than last time ... but you can't please everyone, and that's a fact of life.

Cheers,

dB

[Taron]

AH, yes, the crazy deconstructors are still to come, hehe, but I'm looking forward to it!
I must say, I've had fun after all, though it was quite difficult to make the singer do his thing. The first phrase of his is exclusively pitch bent, meaning programmed, and it's difficult to get the "inflections" and timings and all that right. Thankfully pitch itself wasn't hard, since Jo was hooking up the vertical grid choices to MuLab. But to make it feel more natural, I eventually took the grid off again to get imperfections and all that. At the end it's only a few seconds of "singing", but it was well worth it to me.

I will listen to all the other tracks at voting time to have fresh ears and all, but I was sampling through a bunch already. It's nice stuff, but I think that Helm is quite a bit underestimated by many. I'm sure our tracks will clear that up!

[eraze the borders]

I have a question on mixing / mastering. Although i don't really need to get the maximum loudness out of a song i would still like to know how to boost the loudness and presence. When i'm mixing in my DAW it seems alright to me. But as soon as i bounce and upload the song to Soundclout it seems to lose a lot of loudness and presence.

Do you have any tipps about this?

~Cheers

[Taron]

Well, when you use a limiter on your master, you should make sure that you have a proper balance across the frequency spectrum, because it will not distinguish between what creates the peak, but once the peak is reached it will only boost everything in proportion. That means, for example, if you have your bass very loud, but the rest rather quiet, and you want to limit up to 0db from the current master peak, the boost for the bass may only need a 2db boost, but the rest would really want a 8db boost, but won't get it then, just as an example.
The worst thing is, if you have high peaks outside of the audible spectrum, like below 20hz or above 20khz. You won't hear it, but it will screw with the limiter.
What I do, besides creating a healthy balance across all instruments (and effects), is using a nice EQ compressor on the master, such as Nova-67p, which is really a great, quick solution. The "mastering example" preset is a great starting point. At the very end I put the limiter then (LoudMax64 most of the time).

I might be a bad example, though, because I don't go for loudness directly. I only want to use the maximum bit range/depth, but maintain my dynamics as much as possible.

Guys like Zprime and Jasinski, for example, are pretty much experts with that stuff and I kinda hope they care to reply to you, too!

[rghvdberg]

Rumor has it that Z and J use OTT...

[Taron]

...hijacking SC streams?

[Programator2]

Hello! Here's my entry for this month:

https://soundcloud.com/programator2-1/s ... t-the-helm

Track details:
DAW: Tracktion 5
25 instances of Helm
Effects: 6x Saturation Knob, 5x BootEQmkII, 2x PanCake, 1x SonEQ, 1x Ambience, 1x epicVerb
Mix buss: RescueMK2, Luftikus, TDR Nova, LoudMax, LimiterNo6
SignalAnalyzer and Seven Phases Spectrum Analyzer

[rghvdberg]

...hijacking SC streams?

Probably?

Erm I don't understand what you mean

[Taron]

I had to go look-up OTT, never heard of it. The first explanation I came across was "Over The Top": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-top_content


But in all seriousness, some people ignore what I've mentioned above there and simply keep limiting until the rest seems loud enough, totally clipping those that go beyond 0db. As a result it all sounds crappy and not purposely saturated. So, yeah, watch your frequency spectrum before you start using limiter to get it all loud enough!