51m0n

[quote name='Skol303' post='1347215' date='Aug 21 2011, 03:38 PM']^ Gotcha, and I couldn't agree more with either you or S1m0n. More than happy to bow to your superior know-how Like I said, I wasn't suggesting that a list of frequencies should ever replace using your ears - otherwise the best studios would be run be deaf mathematicians... all I'm saying is that for me personally, it's certainly helped to know, for instance, that I can lose some of the 'boominess' from a typical kick drum by starting to tweak its frequency somewhere around [i]here[/i]; or I can usually make a snare sound more crisp by boosting it somewhere around [i]there[/i], so that's where I'll start twiddling. Of course, it depends on the song in question and the context of everything else in the mix. But for me, it has helped to have a rough idea of where each instrument [i]usually[/i] lies in the frequency spectrum. Not as a replacement for using my ears, but just as a starting point to help me understand where different sounds might be sitting in the mix. [b]You guys can probably reel off the typical frequency bands of instruments in your sleep, so for me it's just been a basic exercise of getting at least some of this understanding for myself. The rest, as you say, is going to be all about listening, listening and then listening some more![/b] Anyway, you can count on me pestering you guys for advice when I get stuck! [/quote] This is the crux of it, not really, well, kinda, maybe. I could list a load of frequencies where stuff can happen, but I cant tell you where it really will happen on a given source. I dont need to, neither do you. You have to learn to use your tools to work it out. Mixing is a jigsaw, you have a load of sounds and you want to ge tthem to sit together such that you can hear them all and there are no areas where one piece obscures another. You have three ways to do it (off the top of my head). 1) Cut holes in the frequency spectrum to allow them to slot together 2) Change the envelope of the sound so you effectively move the energy in the time domain to a differnt point 3) Use the wonder that is stereo to make things sit alongside each other. You are concentrating on 1. In order to do this you need to compare two sounds and figure out a couple of things:- 1) where are the 'nasty' parts of the sound that [i]you[/i] dont want in this mix - use a paramteric eq, boost a band by 6 to 12 dB and then slide the frequency up and down until you hear something about the sound you dont like, then set the gain to 0dB, we will adjust the gain at this frequency later if necessary.... 2) when they are both playing, does one overlaps the other in a detrimental way, if so choose which sound you want to hear in that area then go to the other sound and repeat 1 but listen for more build up in that area that is overcrowded, then cut the gain until the two sounds are no longer a mess there, and you can hear the one you want to. 3) when you have got riod of the build up then listen again in context and see if you can still hear that nasty part of the sound, if you can grab that gain control on the frequency in 1) and pull it down, dont bin it (the nature and timbre of a sound is so often actually a result of the nasty part of it - more than you will ever believe!) The point of this is simple it doesnt matter what the freuquncies are! Put this another way, you need know the following:- 20-40 Extreme sub bass, rarely actually detectable on hifis, so you can bin anything below 35Hz almost always and it will just make things sound better 40-80Hz Deep bass, that biiigg warm pillowy bass area, too much and things become undefined, too little and things will sound empty 80Hz Lowest area of a normal male voice 80-130Hz Bass, like old school bass, not super deep but you know, punchy and full of energy - too much will sound thuddy 130Hz to 500Hz Low mid, this is the killer, somewhere in here is all the mud and crud, somewhere in here is the warm and round, too much of this on a non-bass instrument (ie guitar) is going to cause you a world of hurt on the bass, too little and hese instrumetns will have no impact. B ottom end of the snare, and female vocals are in here somewhere. 500-1KHHz - there is presence in here, but too much is nasal 1KHz -3KHz Again presence, can sound scratchy and very very tiring, but is also where your ear is most effective (Fletcher Munsen old boy!) 3KHz-6KHz Lots of toppy sibilant presence on vocals is somewhere in here 6-10KHz de-essing territory (can go as low as 4KHz as it happens) 10-20KHz can we say bats? This is air, too much is tiring and distracting and will show up on hard tweeters as painful, too little and whaqtever else you do will sound muddy. Right now you could have written out something along thiose lines with a little thought, play with some sound sources (say a drum kit recording on 5 or 6 tracks to start with) and play the game (my bro Rimskidog and I) have suggested with eq, see how these areas of the frequncies interact and how they sound when you boost and cut them. Now forget it (its like jazz in this regard!!!!) because you can intuitively understand this stuff within a very very short time, it is not necessary or even helpful, to put numbers to frequencies to mix, it is only useful when talking about mixing, and that is the rub, you are talking about how to actually do it, and Rimskidog and I are telling the truth. If I said to you, what kind of frequency range is upper mid, you could hazard a guess, so listen to the sounds and think "is the upper mid ok?" and then go there (mentally) and concentrate on it. It is that simple, you dont need to get tied up in the numbers for this. Use the other tool (eq) to make changes and really get to grips with the specifics of the area. Same with compression! As for stereo there needs to be the following in the center of 99.99% of mixes:- Kick Snare Bass Lead Vocal Everything ( I mean EVERYTHING) else needs to get out of the way, nothing else matters. By out of the way I really mean at least 70% panned, on a rock track 100% is fine. Double up guitars to pann them left anf right (do multi track them, do not just duplicate the same track and pan it) - if that doesnt fit the situation then send a delay or reverb to the other side to widen the guitar. I could bang on for hours about reverb vs delay for ambience, and other special effects, but the core skills to mix are really, frequencies (eq), envelopes (compression) and stereo space (panning). Get those right and you are 90% of the way there. One last point, dont change it unless its a problem. Hardest thing in the world is knowing when a sound is right....

Three words:- [size=7][b]Use Your Ears!![/b][/size] Nothing else matters, no guide lines, however well written, apply to mixes in the general sense all that well. Some idea of where you may find various parts of the sound are useful, but using a sweep eq properly to find them [i]in the context of the mix[/i] is the real truth. Any other approach will not work nearly as well. Some of those eq points I would take with a [b]huge[/b] pinch of salt, kind of like the size of Jupiter, but heavier.... The idea that you can compress something with various settings as a starting point is pretty bogus too to be honest. Instead learn how to set one up to do various things to a sound, practice on various sounds to change the transient in some way you predetermine (soften the attack, thicken the punch, add sustain, cause pumping or release artifacts) try and achieve these results deliberately, a couple of days of playing around with a decent comrpessor vst and you will been way way better off than if you try and apply the same cookie cutter approach to various source signals.

[quote name='4000' post='1345337' date='Aug 19 2011, 12:28 PM']Personally I think the Wal on BSSM is is his best sound.[/quote] + several million.....

The main melody vocal and backingvocals/chord changes reminds me of Zepplin a bit - may be going mad though ) Thats a compliment!

I wonder whether that grind on the full bass is actually the stingray preamp breaking up a bit due to the level its trying to produce. If the MB blue clip light is staying off then I would hazard a guess that that is the case. Could well be wrong though Either way its no bad thing if its a sound that works right for you in any given situation, in this one I preferred the tone with the bass on the preamp dialled down. Either way its lovely material, I'm sure it sounds fantastic live!

2nd track is a lot better for me, I'm surprised by how much actually, I listened through the first one and really enjoyed it, lovely song, beautifully performed in both cases. Back to the bass, the 2nd track is warmer and sits in the mix better, its lovely and strong, but round and plummy at the same time, really really dig it, very old school. I would say I can hear the odd clack of the strings against frets in both, thats just how you play, its cool though, kind of reminiscent of someone digging in a bit on a db. Its not that toppy nasty metallic click (at least not on my cans), so much as a nice rhythmic chacchtk (?) sound. Personally IMO you can not beat a little Tascam or Zoom type device in the room for this kind of attempt at objective analysis of a set up, if that means the bass is on the rhs of the recording, that fine, because, guess what, thats where the bnass was from the perspective of the device/someone standing where the dcevice was. Frighteningly honest those tools are, every band should have on and use it for this kind of documentation I think....

Thats excellent Dave!

[quote name='Linus27' post='1344285' date='Aug 18 2011, 12:49 PM']Do you think that a Gramma Pad plus an extra strip of Platfoam under the front to add as a tilt would work? I only use a MarkBass combo and have been looking at a tilt. I like the idea of this Gramma pad but it does not raise the combo up much. Adding another strip of Platfoam under the front to tilt it would be ideal but would it take away some of the effect the gramma pad does?[/quote] Yes, and I think it would add to the effect as it goes, more foam = even less vibration based coupling. Should be a very cheap way to get your tilt on and improve on the already excellent GP.

[quote name='cytania' post='1343666' date='Aug 17 2011, 08:58 PM']Anyone remember the Real Audio format? Sounds like this forum is ready to throw MP3 in the same dumpster. The only real argument is between wav/aiff and flac. Nobody has really tried to convince me to stop spinning CDs but most are drawn to computerizing their music. Back in the 70s/80s people got turned on to Hi-Fi by hearing some else's system or hearing one in a specialist shop. No one mentioned backup or convenience. The sound was an instant seller. By the way, if the Sonos goes up in smoke does home insurance cover the downloads in it? More to the point has anyone here lost a physical record collection and got the cost back on their insurance?[/quote] Ogg can sound pretty darned good too (although it is largely a lossy format it does have a lossless wrapper around FLAC for storing the metadata we are so used to now). You couldnt back stuff up in the 70s/80s so it wasnt relevant (except by copying to a crudy cassette). The sound of high quality (88.2 and above 24bit) source is significantly better than mp3 or CD on a decent system. Like it or not convenience seems to be the largest factor governing how we buy and listen to our music. High quality be damned if it isnt convenient. For the record I spend more time listening to CD or CD quality rips (of my own CDs) than anything else on my stereo, and it does sound good, but I also check mixes on that stereo, sometimes at significantly higher than CD quality, and it does sound better, particularly wiht the top end and the sense of the space the recording is perceived to be in. I have also listened to plenty of higher quality mixes both commercial and not and there is a very real difference.

Oh, and Bob Katz knows his *&^@!!!!

[quote name='BigRedX' post='1343488' date='Aug 17 2011, 06:29 PM']I don't agree. Lossless audio codec of all kinds will soon be a thing of the past.[b] The space savings that they give you are entirely dependent upon the dynamic range of music, the less dynamic range the less the compression possible[/b]. Also every extra bit of encoding and decoding that an audio file undergoes increase the chances of errors in the audio stream which decreases audio fidelity. These days hard disk storage is ridiculously inexpensive and solid state storage is getting cheaper all the time. When most people's audio storage is measure in Terabytes, what's the point in increasing the possibility of errors to save a few megabytes?[/quote] Errr I dont think that is actually very accurate. Data compression has nothing to do with dynamic range at all, it works on an entirely different principle. FLAC is a form of data compression. The more repetition in the file you are compressing (of any part of the data) the more compression it will give you. FLAC is a data compression system optimised for a specific form of data (audio in this case). ZIP is optimised for text pretty much, JPEG is optimised for photo style images, GIF for simple diagrams. It has nothing to do with dynamic range, that is a different kind of compression. Even by todays standards of cheap storage, very high quality wav files (192KHz by 24bit) are big, too big to be happy backing up several hundred albums when each one is roughly 10x the size of the CD. Its not just storing them you see, its being able to back them up, each album weighs in close to a DVD in size, how many of you feel like uploading 150 DVD on to a cloud storage solution with your crappy ADSL upload speeds (note, upload, not download, very very very different!!!), not many I think, so what about backing each one up to a DVD? No takers??? I am not surprised. Yet 192 24 sounds sublime, and FLAC does make it significantly lighter weight. And FLAC is LOSSLESS, that is the point, the result of unpacking a FLAC file is the exact same wav as you had before you packed it up as a WAV, it is a perfect replica, every single bit is the same, there is NO change. Same as with any other lossless compression format. The files are identical (this is trivial to prove, and FLAC has a complete test suite for you to do your own research with if you doubt the validity of these claims). Some interesting reading about [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_audio"]lossless audio[/url] and some [url="http://flac.sourceforge.net/documentation_format_overview.html"]geeksville about FLAC[/url] in particular

[quote name='gapiro' post='1341386' date='Aug 16 2011, 12:33 AM']Slightly intrigued by this, but would be coming from cambridge, and am complete noob. Whats the low down on what happens etc? S[/quote] Bunch of bassists and kit in a big room. Lots of chat, rather informative or not, lots of drooling at expensive kit. Several cups of tea later you go home after a very pleasant time. If you're very lucky you dont find yourself selling a kidney to buy something new and shiny the following week.....

[quote name='Sonic_Groove' post='1342967' date='Aug 17 2011, 12:13 PM']+ 1000 Until streaming formats become ubiquitous you are in Phillips 2000 (not even Beatmax territory) and could be investing in something that will be useless very quickly. Brendan[/quote] I dont understand what you mean by this. FLAC is a Free (open source) Lossless Audio Codec It is not going away anytime soon, it is supported by a large number of software players, it is not going to disappear in the way of Betamax, since it is not any more dependant on specific hardware than your average PC. It is available on Mac, Linux (more correctly POSIX like systems generally), and Windows, on hardware systems and so on - for free.... Any file server can have a FLAC read from it with the right software (given its open source nature that will not change), its merely data after all, the interpretation of the data by a software decoder into a standard WAV (albeit of very high quality) is assured as a long life solution. A high quality DAC turns that into something your amp can use. What is to

[quote name='Beedster' post='1341081' date='Aug 15 2011, 08:04 PM']Alternatively, are there any online sources where you can buy better quality music files than iTunes? Chris[/quote] Chris, get over to hdtracks.com check out their catalogue, and listen to snippets in all sorts of lossless formats and quality levels, it will really help you decide if its worth your while taking this path - IMO hihg quality FLAC (anything from 88.2 upwards @ 24bit) is a big step up from CD...

If you want to record on a bottom of the range laptop you can. It will do it. And no worse than it was before. If you want to be able to record 16+ tracks you may struggle, for one thing the harddrives in bottom of the range laptops are slow, for another they dont have that much more spare resource after the OS has eaten what it needs, than the old laptop did. Thats how it has always been (esp on MS OS) If you step up to a pretty heavy duty modern laptop you will blow away any performance from any laptop even 5 years old. [i]As long as you run up to date software on it[/i]. Why? Because modern CPUs make much of multithreaded architectures, many cores hyperthreaded. And old software doesnt work like that at all, so it cannot take advantage of most of the power of the modern CPU. Put this in some context, my old lappie had a 1.7GHz Turion 64bit processor in it, my new lappie has a 1.7 GHz i7 CPU in it. Which means it has 4 hyperthreaded cores running at 1.7GHz, or 8 times the compute power of the old lappie, but if the software cannot run efficiently making use of those threads then it doesnt get to use the power.... Because it is a 64 bit modern machine I can use huge amounts of RAM too (8 GB in fact) whereas your old lappie cant get over a couple of GB (32bit architecture).

[quote name='Linus27' post='1342919' date='Aug 17 2011, 11:25 AM']Yes we must. I will take a slower car this time so you can keep up. Maybe a 1.2 Fiesta or Polo [/quote] Ouch!

Reaper has an open ended try before you buy license (and only costs ~ £25 for non-commercial use) Its superb....

[quote name='Linus27' post='1342896' date='Aug 17 2011, 11:11 AM']No worries, I think its been a great discussion and not only has it helped me, hopefully it will help others when searching. For me, learning about how the 2EQ preamp works was really helpful. As was how the low mids and VPF filters change the dynamics. All good. I can now get back to doing what I do best, going fast in Gran Turismo 5 [/quote] Need to find an evening for another race mate, this time I'll remember to put some soft tyres on my car (excuses excuses!)

Nice!

[quote name='endorka' post='1342856' date='Aug 17 2011, 10:45 AM']I like the FLAC format, but my Windows Media Player doesn't pick it up for indexing its library, which is annoying. Not sure if ITunes does, but I'm not too keen on that software. Any other decent media players with library functionality that will pick up FLAC files? Jennifer[/quote] Foobar2000 free, extremely poerful and built from the ground up with audio quality being the driving concern.

Oh and another point, the commonest listening environment these days is, at least from the perspective of the industry, the car. And in the car you have about 12dB of headroom above the noise. So if your track drops below that it cant be heard. So you have to compress the nuts off of it to make it work in that environment. If everyone would just go back to experiencing music at home then we could start mixing with that as the most important environment a bit more..... I have a lot of hope for the ear bud, it has a vastly higher signal to background noise ratio than a car, and better frequency response than anything before it in terms of lightweight headgear, and should mean we can start to mix for a better environment than the automobile more often.

As for the difference in sound between the 70's 80's and now, a huge amount of the issue is the way things are mixed and mastered now. Everything is a competition for loudness and punch, even in folk music! Its a breath of fresh air (sorry, no, its less common than rocking horse poo) when you get an artist whoi wants a mix that is all about the song and emotional content and not just being as loud as the next CD. Blame the marketing hype, the artist, the mix engineer, the mastering engineer, radio station, but ultimately blame the stupid consumer for buying stuff more when its louder. Oh hold on, its just a fact, the human ear perceives louder as better in the short term every time. Thats a sorry but completely true fact about psychoacoustics for you. And that is ultimately what drove the horrendous loudness wars that we are still coping with now. It is a damn shame though!

FLAC is excellent If you want to hear how good digital can sound then download a few albums in very high quality FLAC from [url="https://www.hdtracks.com/"]hdtracks[/url] I can notice the difference from cd quality on a pair of medium quality cans Going fully over to a media server is a perfectly good solution, and backing up large amounts of data to a seperate physical location/disk is possible (its a PIA but at least you can do it, and really quiet easily) - how many of your CDs are backed up?

[quote name='JTUK' post='1342719' date='Aug 17 2011, 08:49 AM']The thing is that with MM that is an awful lot of bass being put out. I no longer own a MM, but I had this the other week when a friend of mine was having problems with his Sterling and SVT3. He had the mids boosted and couldn't hear himself very well. This sounds odd on paper but you would have to know the amp and have heard his sound at the time, and also [b] I don't think Ampeg ever get this EQ part right as they use a 5 point dial AND a short banded graphic. It really DOESN't work well, IMO[/b][/quote] Totally agree with you there JTUK! I have played through several of those Ampegs and the eq on them is terrible IMO very unintuitive, and there seems to be little synergy between the various eq stages. I think the most important thing to do for your sound is eq with your ears not your eyes, and to listen to how the bass sits in the mix as a whole. If the result is a tone with no apparent mids according to the eq but it sits right, then you are good to go, the battle is against the common perception that because certain mid areas sound awful solo you should cut the hell out of them in a mix. Sometimes that may work, but it is very venue and band/genre/player/MIX specific and frankly unusual. Its always worth incvestigating less mid cut in the presence of the band, as often as not it will surprise the hell out of you. I'd like to thank Linus for trying all of these ideas and coming back to us with his findings. For him it turns out more mids than he thought were right for the mix, in that space, on that day, playing those songs. He now has a ballpark from which to tweak at different venues. It doesnt really matter whether you have huge PA support or are relying on your backline to provide the sound out front, the goal is the same, to be able to clearly hear your bass sound how you need to without treading on the rest of the band's toes. This is every bit as important with a huge PA, bass travels further (more energy) than anything else, and it spills to any other mics on stage more than anything else, the more focussed your sound the less volume you need on stage to hear yourself in the mix, the less spill, the easier the job is for the sound guys, the better than can make you sound. Simples....

[quote name='JTUK' post='1342258' date='Aug 16 2011, 06:47 PM']I am listening to the bass because I have to play it. It doesn't matter if I only have so many bars where it is pretty much a bass as this will define the tone in peoples mind. Burying it in a mix is one thing... to have it so out of shape is the way to get yourself not rebooked. You might not approach this that way if you don't do playing gigs and only mix them but to foster a bass sound because it is easy for you at the detriment of the bass is ridiculous and will not get you any favours from the band. I honestly have to say I doubt if I need any lessons from you, thanks.[/quote] ROFL, fine, okeedokee, have it your way squire, no problem, silly old me, no idea about live gigs, only ever mix, thats me. Right ho! The point I am trying to explain is that what you are doing is burying bass in the mix, or having to have it way louder than it should be in order to hear it, to the detriment of the mix burying other instrumetns in its place. Which is a great way not to get rebooked! Presenting a well strutured whole with everything audible is the goal, not getting a fantastic solo bass sound at the detriment of the band. You would do well to read up a bit on mixing in general though, particularly frequency mixing, I think it would help you and your band to sound better as a unit. Dont feel you have to, after all you clearly know what you like, go for it knock yourself out....