Dad3353

But I do already..! You just can't see my legs; I play drums.

Kyev is twinned with Edinburgh. A natural 'home' for this..?

I'm not looking to sell, just lend you what you need until you get contact with Smoothhound, or get sorted permanently, if it helps you. All I'd need is a PM with your home address and I'll post a Tx. You can keep it for as long as it's useful to you. No need for complications such as payments and stuff. Over to you...

Incidentally, this 👆 explains very aptly the origins of ...

So... It's working at less than 'optimum', then..? The question remains : Do you need a quick replacement urgently..? I could pop one into the post if you're desperate, with a big gig coming up.

Yes; I think that the concept of Limiting appied much more in the Bad Old Analogue Tape days, when saturation was a potential problem, and in the Bad Old Days of 8-bit Digital, where any clipping resulted in horrific distortion. With modern 24-bit stuff, there's (to me...) no need to raise levels above the dreaded Noise Floor, as there is (to me...) none there. I record, and treat, at much lower levels than in the Dark Ages, so I'm always well away from any limiter's trigger point. When 'Normalising' stems, I aim for -1db, and never need to increase beyond that. It's been a very long time since I suffered clipping of any sort. That's just me, of course; those 'pushing the envelope' may well need such devices. No, I'm not looking at @Leonard Smalls (although sometimes I wonder ...).

Their site seems pretty well up-to-date. Holidays, maybe..? If you're stuck, I have two of 'em; do you need an urgent 'quick fix'..?

For 'boot-camp', I poured meths onto a pair of socks, and wore them for a day or so before a trek. No funny looks, as most of my comrades did the same.

I'm very wary of Loudness in general, and brick-walling even more so (except, of course, 'Unhalfbricking'..!). Possibly a result of the genres I'm most familiar with (no 'Disco' and very little 'EDM'...); rather more airy-fairy flutes and bongos for me, so... Still, if it's Good, it's Good.

A few minutes, once or twice a day, in the week before a gig should help. No smoking whilst doing it. If you put the stuff in an old medicine bottle, you can pour it back from the dish your finger tips are in, and re-use the same, until it evaporates too much and you refill the little bottle.

Potential for a huge Rabbit hole down which to bolt, but an excellent concept. Thanks for sharing; I'll don a parachute and jump in when re-doing my old tapes. Good Stuff.

I have been doing the exact same process, bringing reel-to-reel tapes from over half a century ago of bands I played with, rehearsing, into the digital age, playing them into Reaper for preservation and, if possible, treatment. These, too, are stereo mixes for the most part (some mono...), so nothing can be done on the 'stem' level. The frequency analyser, along with just listening, gives some clue as to what can be done, but there's also a lot that just cannot. My unwelcome suggestion would be similar to that posted previously above; that's to say: know when to stop. Once into the upper ranges, no distinction can be usefully made between Vox, keys, guitars, cymbals, noise... and pursuing perfection becomes a hunt for the Dahu, or Chimera. If it's as good as it gets, it is sometimes (often...) as good as it gets, and that's all. There are moments when a doctor has to decide when to pull the plug on a terminally-ill patient. That moment will be retarded as long as possible, but, eventually, the time of passing will be pronounced and a sheet pulled over the departed. It's sad, but that's Life. Just as an anecdote, and no more cheerful, I had all my weeks of painstaking transfers of tapes on an external USB Teradisk. One day : nothing. The disk was dead. I even sent the disk to the specialists, who could, for a very hefty fee, recover info from dead media. To no avail. I signed up to pay in case of success; they tried, but failed to recover this disk. All, then has been lost, and I must dig out again my crumbling tapes and start again. Lesson..? Back-up, then back-up the back-up, if the stuff is precious. Digital media are fickle, and go 'Poof..!' when they choose to, not when you would like them to. Good luck with your audio archaeology; hope this helps in some way. Douglas

I learned that this works well when marching in army boots (school CCF 'boot-camps'...); surgical spirit (meths...) hardened up the feet nicely, preventing blisters. It works well for guitar/bass (I've never worked out how to use a plectrum, so it's always finger-style...). Best done before gigging, as one gets funny looks if smelling like a Primus stove.

I don't doubt that he's a fine mix engineer; he doesn't come across, to me, as a fine pedagogue, s'all, to judge by this sole video.

Not a fan, to be honest. I doubt that the µ-touches he's playing with come across through headsets, or even many monitors. I certainly would not consider 'tweaking' below 20Hz. That's daft, to me. I would have preferred to hear a 'before/after' with broad brushstokes. That, to me, is not 'mastering' as I know it. Never mind; maybe it's just me. I've just had a quick glance at what U-tube offers, when I search for 'mastering home studio'. I didn't scroll down through them all, but the few I looked at seemed to be basically 'click-bait', each shouting louder than the next with the 'secrets' that the 'pros' don't want you to know, whilst proning whatever plug-in they're pluggin'. I couldn't find anything that goes through the 101 basic principles in any coherent fashion. Maybe I should have looked further..? Good luck in 'taking your mix to the next level' by following all of these 'experts'. I would say that it's better to go slowly on your own, listen, and do baby steps, maybe with a 'throw-away' track, just to hear what each thing does. Experiment; the answer's a lemon: suck it and see.

Well, when you say 'while', I'd say rather in alternance, not necessarilly in the same session. BRX used the expression 'A/B' above, which is where one switches between two sounds, to compare them. We'd do this, for instance, in a HiFi shop, to compare pairs of speakers. That's not what we're doing with this reference song. We're not trying to get an exact copy of the reference, simply having in mind what it sounded like as we remember it. I've listen to Bowie's 'Five Years' I don't know how many times, and when I hear certain gutar players, it brings Ronson to mind. I also have The Doors 'Strange Days' in my memory; I can jear Robby Krieger's style in some players. If I'm recording guitar, I might want to sound like one of those (in reality, I'd favour more Jerry Garcia, the way I play, but still...). A good reference for me would be much of the work of JJ Cale, or early Fairport Convention. Your models will be different. Let's simplify this. What music (group, album, genre...) do you appreciate most..? Do any of them inspire the music you're composing..? Try to imagine what makes your favourite models sound the way they do, compared to your tracks..? Is there lots of delay on the vocals, or rather dry..? Any backing vocals..? Are the drums in the foreground, or in retreat..? A pounding bass, or more subtle..? How are the dynamics..? Constant barrage, wall of sound, or an ebb and flow..? Do all the instruments and voices blend together, or are they distinctly separate..? Lots of hard panning (left/right...)..? Does it seem as if they're on a stage in front of you, or all around the room..? Were they recorded in a cave or tunnel, or an open field..? All of these, and much more, is what one has in mind when aiming for a sound. There's little chance of actually imitating any of the models, and we're not trying to copy anyway; simply aiming to get a result that satisfies. Any help, or am I just confusing things further..?

Nothing wrong with headphones. Listen to your 'target' reference songs through them, so as to have an even base for judgement, though. How about an experiment..? Using one of your 'finished' compositions, add, in Reaper, the Cockos 'RealComp' compressor plug-in to the Master track. Choose, as a preset, the 'stock - Master Bus NY Comp'. Leave its default settings, and listen to your track, turning the plug-in on and off. Which sounds better to you, 'Comp in' or 'Comp out'..? Be aware that many Fx have an effect on the volume, so try to get the levels between the two to be identical, or close, using the 'Wet' and 'Dry' cursors. Try turning the 'Wet' down to -inf, and bring it back up, listening to its effect. Is there a 'sweet spot' where it sounds best to you..? Do you prefer it completely 'Dry'..? Try it and see what happens..?

Use a six-string set and ignore the low 'B'..?

He's right 👆; mastering is a specific treatment, whatever the source, necessary to 'shape' the whole sound so as to correspond, technically, with the target medium or audience. Mastering a classical concert for a vinyl pressing or for release on DVD imply many subtle shifts in frequencies and compressions, including creating a stereo image from a 7-1 source, for instance. There are studios and engineers that are dedicated to this. It's not uncommon for an album, once recorded nd mixed, to be sent to a mastering engineer, just to get his/her particular result. If you're 'home recording', I wouldn't bother with the notion until you're wanting to put out a whole album into the wild. A mastering engineer would take the total output, and treat it all so that it sounds coherent across all the individual songs on the medium chosen for release. The mastering for streaming would be quite different to that for CD, or vinyl, or video clip. It's not really a subject for the recording and mixing of individual songs; it's an additional concept, with its own 'magic', after all else has been done.

BRX is close enough to what I meant. I don't do a specific 'listen to one, then the other', I rely on my memory, mostly, to 'hear' the reference in my head. As I stated, my ears are shot, but the principle is still valid. Don't think it too literally; I don't compare side by side two songs in Reaper. I just know (that's to say : remember...) what REM (for example, or Bowie...) sound like, and listen to my track in that light. I can't explain it better than that. It's certainly not what's usually meant by 'mastering', but that's just semantics. None of what I do costs Money. That's because even church mice would consider me to be 'poor'..! My budget is low, very low. Listening, though, costs me nowt. Cockos (Reaper...) has all one needs as far as basic, and even quite sophisticated, treatment is concerned, with high quality, and bundled with Reaper. I wouldn't know what improvement they could make on LoFi stuff, as that's never the direction I'd be aiming for, but, technically, all the EQ, Compression, Delay and/or Reverb is covered, and much more. Improving is, in general, a thankless task, based on diminishing returns and the guilding of lilies, to a great extent. Once the piece is finished, leave it alone for a couple of days and listen again. Tweak, if required, then leave it again; rinse and repeat. Don't be afraid to scrap the 'tweaks' and go back to the previous version. Most of the time the difference is minor, and often detrimental. I favour the expression 'Perfect' is the enemy of 'Good', although it's possible that it's me doing it all wrong, of course. Edit : To me, when recording, a 'reference track' would be, for instance, an acoustic guitar track in Reaper going through the chords of the song whilst I record the drums (I'm a drummer...). It's just there to have a reference to the structure, and would not (or very rarely...) be used in the final mix, once the other instruments and vocals are done. As I do much of my stuff in France, I'd call it a 'piste témoin', really.

Sorry, crossed lines here. Not a 'reference track' in Reaper, but any disk, song, album, concert that I like, and that will help me judge my own stuff. An example..? I worked for a while at Shepperton Studios, for Trident, cabling mixing consoles (early-mid '70s...). To test the console modules, we'd run a tape through them, and make sure that all the features worked as expected. One tape was, I believe, a sub-master of 'Ziggy Stardust', so I got to listen to it a lot. When I want to buy any HiFi gear, that's the tracks I'd listen with, as I can (or rather, could...) hear if the HiFi was up to snuff. When I'm composing in Reaper, in an orchestral vein, I'd have in mind a rendering of Schubert's Ninth, to see if my trombones are up-front enough, or if more cowbell is needed (that last bit is a joke, of course...). That's what I mean by 'reference tracks'. My hearing is now very bad, but I'm still able to do stuff (OK, rotten stuff, but stuff all the same...), by comparing with other stuff that I know. I can't hear a hi-hat, for instance; if I hear it in one of my mixes, I know it's too loud..! Does this help..?

In my view, much is misleading. 'Mastering' is used, mostly, to adapt a finished song to its target medium or audience. The same track, to be put on a CD, or a cassette tape, will have different mastering parameters. A song destined for car-radio FM will be treated differently to one being produced for HiFi buffs. If you're producing for Soundcloud, it's not the same as for a hard-copy CD. That being said, if you really mean 'how to mix and treat the final product in my home studio', the most important tool you'll need is your ears. The next most important, for me, is a reference point. This means, to me, having an idea of what sound I'm trying to create, compared to other material, from other sources (my favourite band, or a song I know well; probably several...), that I'm wanting to get close to. This doesn't mean copying, simply listening to whatever it is that makes it 'good' to my ears, and that I want my stuff to sound as good as (OK, vain hope, but...). Another important notion, for most stuff, is the famous 'less is more' discipline. If you want to add an effect, do it, by all means, then reduce it by half. Save successive 'takes', with the Fx added, and listen back now and again to the original 'dry take. Is there really an improvement..? Disk space is not an issue, these days, so it's a Good Idea to save each and every evolution, and go back at times to hear what (if any...) has got better. Surprises are in store, often enough, as things go off the rails. No matter, just go back to a previous version and re-build in another direction. Takes frequent breaks, go outside for a walk, have a cuppa, and have fresh ears again. Listen through several systems, if possible. Mix with headphones for detail, then play back through monitors to see if it still works. Often not stated, but very useful, is to listen to the finished track in mono; there are many gremlins in a stereo mix that become flagrant heard in mono. In what order..? From those you've listed, I'd have a hard time stating, as I don't use such stuff, basically. I have a 'standard' Reaper (Cockos...) NY Drum Compression bus preset which is my default overall drum compressor, and a Cockos NY Master bus compressor on the output, again, by default. I do, on occasion, turn these off, for particular stuff I do, but that's it, for me. No exciters, or saturation etc, but that's just me. How should you use them..? Run your compositions through them in whatever order and listen to the result; choose what sounds best to you. That's as much advice I could give; others will doubtless complete, correct and/or contradict the above, most certainly. Hope this helps, a little.

We've a five-string that we'd happily lend out, but we're in France, so... Shirley there's someone in that lovely region that has a fiver as a spare not being used for a few days that could help a fellow bassist (and BCer to boot...)..?