How to find that last 10-15% 'commercial' sound fully ITB?

[Uncle E]

id love to have a really good DAC/ADC and a summing mixer; and probably some old analog stuff from the 50s thru 70s that uses lots of tubes, perhaps a 670 And id probably also want an EQP1A. But honestly Id just want to be able to run some channels outside the box and back in again. And if it runs thru some iron and glass on that roundtrip, ill be happy. Oh and Id love a TC electronic Finalizer and a H3000 unit.

btw, if I can make a recommendation, you might want to check out the Behringer 369. I don't know how close it is to the real thing but the demos I've heard sounded superb, and the 33609 is one of those cases where the hardware really stood out from the software.

[jupiter8]

Meanwhile an acquaintance of mine is celebrating the 30th! year anniversary of their biggest hit. Most played song on the radio in Sweden in 95 and popular all over Europe. Done on a ProTools system and a Yamaha 02R. He did have some outboard gear but it was really nothing to brag about. Some Aphex box and one of those horrible green golfcourse Focusrite dealies. Only used to record vocals as i recall it, the production was completely made in the digital domain.

[EfreetiSultan]

Meanwhile an acquaintance of mine is celebrating the 30th! year anniversary of their biggest hit. Most played song on the radio in Sweden in 95 and popular all over Europe. Done on a ProTools system and a Yamaha 02R. He did have some outboard gear but it was really nothing to brag about. Some Aphex box and one of those horrible green golfcourse Focusrite dealies. Only used to record vocals as i recall it, the production was completely made in the digital domain.

What artist? Antiloop? Ace of base? Dr. Alban? Or maybe not EDM at all, not sure why I assumed that.

[EfreetiSultan]

id love to have a really good DAC/ADC and a summing mixer; and probably some old analog stuff from the 50s thru 70s that uses lots of tubes, perhaps a 670 And id probably also want an EQP1A. But honestly Id just want to be able to run some channels outside the box and back in again. And if it runs thru some iron and glass on that roundtrip, ill be happy. Oh and Id love a TC electronic Finalizer and a H3000 unit.

btw, if I can make a recommendation, you might want to check out the Behringer 369. I don't know how close it is to the real thing but the demos I've heard sounded superb, and the 33609 is one of those cases where the hardware really stood out from the software.

I did check out a youtube video of a comparison between the behringer and the original. They werent extremely close, but no doubt the behringer sounded great nonetheless.

id love to have a really good DAC/ADC and a summing mixer

Try the summing in Luna.

perhaps a 670

I only had the Stam and Tube-Tech but these were some of the cases where the plugin (UA Fairchild) was as good or better.

And id probably also want an EQP1A.

Yes, stereo pair, please.

Id love a TC electronic Finalizer

Try the MD3 and MD4 plugins. I compared the MD3 (running on Powercore) to my old Finalizer and it was a big improvement.

Thank you for the great suggestions. I still havent tried Luna but I am very intrigued by it. Does it require a UAD card?

[Shabdahbriah]

[...] I still haven't tried Luna but I am very intrigued by it. Does it require a UAD card?

No.

[jupiter8]

Meanwhile an acquaintance of mine is celebrating the 30th! year anniversary of their biggest hit. Most played song on the radio in Sweden in 95 and popular all over Europe. Done on a ProTools system and a Yamaha 02R. He did have some outboard gear but it was really nothing to brag about. Some Aphex box and one of those horrible green golfcourse Focusrite dealies. Only used to record vocals as i recall it, the production was completely made in the digital domain.

What artist? Antiloop? Ace of base? Dr. Alban? Or maybe not EDM at all, not sure why I assumed that.

[EfreetiSultan]

Meanwhile an acquaintance of mine is celebrating the 30th! year anniversary of their biggest hit. Most played song on the radio in Sweden in 95 and popular all over Europe. Done on a ProTools system and a Yamaha 02R. He did have some outboard gear but it was really nothing to brag about. Some Aphex box and one of those horrible green golfcourse Focusrite dealies. Only used to record vocals as i recall it, the production was completely made in the digital domain.

What artist? Antiloop? Ace of base? Dr. Alban? Or maybe not EDM at all, not sure why I assumed that.

Thanks. But that was not the most played song on the radio in Sweden 95. In fact I've never heard it before Tbh I don't know the most played song of that year as I was only 15 at the time but I do know it wasn't that since I listened to NRJ religiously at the time

[jupiter8]

Meanwhile an acquaintance of mine is celebrating the 30th! year anniversary of their biggest hit. Most played song on the radio in Sweden in 95 and popular all over Europe. Done on a ProTools system and a Yamaha 02R. He did have some outboard gear but it was really nothing to brag about. Some Aphex box and one of those horrible green golfcourse Focusrite dealies. Only used to record vocals as i recall it, the production was completely made in the digital domain.

What artist? Antiloop? Ace of base? Dr. Alban? Or maybe not EDM at all, not sure why I assumed that.

Thanks. But that was not the most played song on the radio in Sweden 95. In fact I've never heard it before Tbh I don't know the most played song of that year as I was only 15 at the time but I do know it wasn't that since I listened to NRJ religiously at the time

Might have been the most played on P3, the most popular channel in Sweden. The state radio.
You've never heard it? I even heard it in Poland, entering a taxi.

[EfreetiSultan]

Meanwhile an acquaintance of mine is celebrating the 30th! year anniversary of their biggest hit. Most played song on the radio in Sweden in 95 and popular all over Europe. Done on a ProTools system and a Yamaha 02R. He did have some outboard gear but it was really nothing to brag about. Some Aphex box and one of those horrible green golfcourse Focusrite dealies. Only used to record vocals as i recall it, the production was completely made in the digital domain.

What artist? Antiloop? Ace of base? Dr. Alban? Or maybe not EDM at all, not sure why I assumed that.

Thanks. But that was not the most played song on the radio in Sweden 95. In fact I've never heard it before Tbh I don't know the most played song of that year as I was only 15 at the time but I do know it wasn't that since I listened to NRJ religiously at the time

Might have been the most played on P3, the most popular channel in Sweden. The state radio.
You've never heard it? I even heard it in Poland, entering a taxi.

Perhaps it was more popular in Europe outside Sweden? I was living in Malmö at the time. Either way let's not even argue, cool that your friend made that!

PS. P3 was not the most popular back then, it was NRG!

[jupiter8]

Maybe my memory is from those days are a bit hazy. I do recall drinking a lot in those days.
Either way it was a big hit and mixed pretty much in the box. And this was 30 years ago (almost).

They did use hardware synthesizers though,i recall a Virus, a TX81z and a Roland module probably a JV1080 and a Yamaha module.

[andymcbain]

Meanwhile an acquaintance of mine is celebrating the 30th! year anniversary of their biggest hit. Most played song on the radio in Sweden in 95 and popular all over Europe. Done on a ProTools system and a Yamaha 02R. He did have some outboard gear but it was really nothing to brag about. Some Aphex box and one of those horrible green golfcourse Focusrite dealies. Only used to record vocals as i recall it, the production was completely made in the digital domain.

Another massive track that was mixed through an 02R - and it's onboard dynamics

Bedrock - Heaven Scent

[Uncle E]

Speaking of vintage digital consoles, Alicia Keys was mixed through an SSL C200 and its channel strips and bus compressor are now available as native plug-ins.

[sssyntax]

Hi OP, I hear you and I'm in much the same situation.
I'm sorry you have had such unhelpful advice offered so far.
Many of the comments here read like the same pompous know-it-all's from over at Gearpage.
I'm sure your mixes are solid and I too am after what seems like those last peices of the puzzle.
I know that these peices exist and that they very likely do not involve expensive gear, perfect rooms or any of that.
I'm hearing loads of music being used in ads and documentaries etc that arnt top end productions by the best of the best.....and they sound perfect to my ears.
So the answers we are after ARE out there, though I expect that they will be well guarded other than what the excellent Dan Worral helps us out with.
Keep searching man and I wish you all the very best

[EfreetiSultan]

One of the best tips I found, that actually works, is separate the mixbus to dual mono, and process them with identical plugins but slightly different settings for each. Considering alot of old gear is mono and requires two units this helps to make the track pop. Could also try to align one channel slightly off to the other. A mikrosecond or three :p sometimes that sounds nice and also imitates signal flow of the real stuff.
Other than that, that little extra comes mostly from phase alignment/coherence of drums with say bass and guitar.
Another tip for "commercial" tv/radio sound is upward compression

[WackyZoundz]

A few things which helped me:

Use reference tracks in combination with tools like ISOL8, peak/RMS meters, spectrometers, goniometers - and of course your ears. Especially your ears. Make sure to only use uncompressed formats like Audio CDs or losless FLAC when choosing reference tracks. Forget everything that has been run through a lossy codec, it will fall apart as soon as you run it through filters and gives you therefore a false impression.

Get a couple of very different speakers (from good studio monitors to average hi-fi to the smallest and worst USB laptop speakers you can find) and mix your tracks until everything sounds clear and defined on all of them giving the same vibe.

Take into consideration that top engineers use custom/modified gear/software. Adapt this approach to squeeze the last 10-20 % out of everything. Example: You have a lot of good multi-band compressor plugins. But you also have a few single-band compressors which do a better job but only in a certain frequency range. The solution: Use a modular environment DAW/plugin to "built" your own custom multi-band compressor out of single-band units. Customize your tools!

Parallel processing is also a great way to enhance not only a bus but your whole mixes. Create a few versions and then merge them together. Feel free to process each mix differently (EQ, distortion, reverb etc) so you have a few "flavors" to work with.

Mix for others. This enables you to get those "audio engineering ears" which will help you with your own projects. It's important to be able to distance yourself from your own work.

Oversample with a higher factor you think you would need. Aliasing artifacts have the habit of coming back when running tracks through compressors, limiters, distortion and so on. The lower the aliasing the closer you are to the sound of high-quality analog studio hardware.

Have sessions with a sheet of paper and listen to your tracks, then note everything down that comes to your mind. Are the cymbals too loud? Could the rhythm guitar benefit from more low-end? Does the timing feel off in some sections? Do you need more layers? This becomes easier if you play your own creations in between reference tracks.

Always remember that everything has to serve the theme, from composition and arrangement to sound design to mixing to mastering. Push-pull/tension-release/question-answer does not only exist in music theory but in sound design as well. A good example would be filter sweeps on drums: A subtle bell filter on the kick that sweeps down combined with another subtle bell filter on the snare that sweeps up, just mixed in to a degree you rather feel than hear it.