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[quote name='Skol303' post='1367213' date='Sep 9 2011, 01:05 AM']Must say I've been guilty of squishing dynamics to death in order to up the 'loudness'... but it's a bad habit I'm starting to break! I think it [i]can[/i] apply to certain genres of music in a positive way, but I totally agree that it can ruin most music. If anyone's interested, I've recently been listening to an interview with the German mastering guru Rob Babicz who has some wise words on this subject (and plenty else for that matter). It's in German with subtitles, but it's only 15 mins long and includes gratuitous footage of his very unique and custom-made studio gear... in case that sort of thing makes you drool, as it does me Here's the link: [url="http://vimeo.com/808485?pg=embed&sec=808485"]http://vimeo.com/808485?pg=embed&sec=808485[/url][/quote] Lucky guy, nice studio, and nice way to make a living! Informative stuff, and absolutely bang on, although I did chuckle when he talked about his 1176 clone and setting a long attack, as all you compressor nerds out there will know the longest you can set the attack on an 1176 is about 3ms, which is uber short in fact!

[quote name='noelk27' post='1367011' date='Sep 8 2011, 09:30 PM']The author of the article "To The Limit: 'Dynamic Range' & The Loundness War" (Sound On Sound, September 2011) would suggest we're arguing about nothing: music is getting louder but it is not getting less dynamic. Makes an interesting read.[/quote] Interesting spin on it. He states the difference between loudest and quietest parts of music now and over the last 40 years hasnt changed much, he states that this is due to a large degree to the original material having more perceived range now than at any time previous. Clearly modern recording techniques are what make this possible. For older material I'd squarely point to the issues with recording to tape as a huge part of this, it is one of the nicest sounding forms of compression/limiting there is, and it was applied liberally to every single track when recording almost anything back in the day - driving the tape hard to make it squeeze signal a bit was the norm, in fact if you had a truly awful kick or snare it wasnt unusual to overdrive the tape to get it good and crunchy to help the sound - which compressed the nuts out of it. However the result sounds far more pleasant than a digital brickwall limiter that is pushed even a tiny bit too far IMO & IME. In fact in order to achieve a beautiful mix these days as a standard I have a compressor on every track & every group and a tape saturation emulation on nearly every track & every group too (and an eq and often as not a gate too). Back in the day the tape would have done a lot of that work for me. However what he misses out is that whatever else you do, if you brickwall limit something you are heavily and abruptly distorting the transients of the signal - thats what it does - and that this distortion is less pleasant to human hearing over time than not bothering to limit in the first place and instead turning up the playback system so you hear those transients in all their glory. Digital (even 16bit CD) made available a vastly superior dynamic range than analogue of any period. Rather than make the best use of that we are now in a position where we make less use of available dynamic range than at any time in the history of recording, even Edison's cylinder had a better dynamic range than current output does. Oh and the final point - over limited masters really do sound like s*&t.

No. I wouldnt do anything to a file that wasn't in the context of the mix...

ANd you may find that you look like Madonna....

The [url="http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr07/articles/avantonemixcubes.htm"]Avantopne Mixcube[/url] is the studio monitor of choice for checking your mi against a less great reproduciton device. Yamaha NS10s are awful sounding things, fair stereo image, horridly stunted frequncy response (personal opinion, don't try and change my mind!), and yet are popular as nearfield monitors (less now than they were maybe, but still more popularthan their performance really justifies). Personally I like to monitor on the best available kit I can use, as long as I have a good couple of reference recordings for comparison then the better the monitors and room, the better the mix and the better it will translate to other systems.

You are going to love this thing on a gig, it sounds superb!

[quote name='fatboyslimfast' post='1366337' date='Sep 8 2011, 01:10 PM']Did you use K-14 on the track you mastered for Silddx? If so, completely in agreement with you![/quote] I used K14 metering for the mixing, you havent heard the final masters yet, that was just the mix, raw as it were with a very simple 'level up' to a reasonable level - in fact there has been a lot more work on those tracks since (upto 30 tracks of bvs on each!!!) I should have finished the nmastering within a couple of weeks, usual issues though, need to get something close to a commercial level but without trashing the sound at all. We are getting there, they sound lovely now. Release party is on the 9th I think, after which you are all encouraged to buy a copy

[quote name='fatboyslimfast' post='1366324' date='Sep 8 2011, 01:00 PM']Which is why I love buying 60s and 70s vinyl. Yes, there is mastering compression (there has to be or the music would either be swamped by vinyl roar or the needle would jump with loud transients), but generally it's only used where and when necessary, and only as minimally as required. I'm all for the "turn it up" movement, where the recording engineer leaves it up to you if you want it louder or not. There is so much dynamic range available on CDs compared with analogue media that it seems criminal to waste most of it.[/quote] Mastering compression is not the same as brickwall limiting. A bit of compression on the 2 buss wont knacker the transients, instead it will help 'glue' the mix together into a cohesive sound. Brickwall limiting (and even deliberate clipping of the ADCs in a mastering chain - god forbid) are post digital techniques to get the RMS level higher compared to the peak level, so closer to 0dbfs, which is the absolute maximum level achievable in a digital system. The entire warm/tape brittle/harsh/digital argument is a nonsense thoguh. If you accept that art the turn of the tech a huge number of people were recording to digital using the same techniques/mics/signal chains as they did with tape. Now tape doesnt handle transients anywhere near as well as digital, it limits transients and compresses and warms up the sound all of which is as a result of it being less perfect at capturing audio than digital, not to mention the hiss! Nowadays engineers are far better at choosing the right tools to work with digital and get results at least as good as those on old recordings. The issue is that the execs with the chequebooks are forcing the hand of mastering engineers to the point where people have come to accept over limited final masters as how things should sound. Its a nightmare!

[quote name='bartelby' post='1366321' date='Sep 8 2011, 12:58 PM'] My copy of "Mastering Audio: The art and the science" by Bob Katz arrived yesterday. A quick flick through shows there's a bit in there about loudness.[/quote] Top book that

LIstening environment, record company execs (and their fear of not being loud enough on radio), artists falling fo rthe same trap, the advent of digital allowing for true brickwall limiting of peaks, move away from the natural compression of tape (although this has lagely been mitigated now) all contributed over time to this. I honestly hope that one day we really do take a stand and adopt the K-metering system for mastering and mixing as a standard (K-14 works great for me). Strangely the advent of mp3s actually gives light at the end of this tunnel in a way. Unlike wavs mp3s (and oggs, although flacs dont - but theer is an ogg flac wrapper that handles this) can contain metadata, and that means it can store level variations (replaygain) against tracks in your playlist to make the output volumes equal. Meaning that the final mastered volume is irrelevant, only the sound quality should count. I have a copy of Californication pre-mastering, and it sounds absolutely lovely - especially the kit - often been tempted to do my own far more sympathetic mastering on it.....

[quote name='razze06' post='1363807' date='Sep 6 2011, 09:58 AM']Peavey Mark III (or IV) 400. Not only will it run 2 ohm loads, but it will crack windows 300 yards away at half volume, and cook your breakfast on the heat sink. All this for less than £100 [/quote] Shame they sound like tramp vomit when pushed hard though

[quote name='funkypenguin' post='1365992' date='Sep 8 2011, 02:49 AM'][url="http://www.musikmachen.de/Workshops/Bass-Videoworkshop-It-s-all-about-SOUND"]http://www.musikmachen.de/Workshops/Bass-V...all-about-SOUND[/url] Jonas Hellborg talking about sound. worth watching[/quote] Thanks for that - he's absolutely bang on about the recording and listening back, slowing things down etc etc I would add that you all should be recording rehearsals and making changes to your sounds as a band to fit songs without relying on a soundengineer. In other words the closer the band can get the individual elements to being exactly right when they are together the less they rely on a soundengineer to do it for them on the gig.

Heeeeyyyyy, what can I say, I feel like Fonzy all of a sudden

Tricky this, but my advice, start saving. To go loud with a smaller rig you need very speicialised kit, extremely high quality and high excursion drivers, in a superbly engineered cab and a really good amp with the ability to drive such a small cab to its maximum. Really you need a Barefaced Super Twelve and an amp with the whallop to drive it (cheapest known option is probably a hartke lh500, the S12t will cope with more though). You're right, this isnt cheap, sorry, a cheap solution doesnt exist. You could spend a couple of years buying a load of nearly there cheaper solutions and trading them on, they wont be portable and loud enough though. IN the end you will spend more money doing so. Do yourself a favour and deal with the schlep of the gear you have for now and save up for the quality kit you need to achieve your goal.

Getting whatever your rig is up high is the best solution to the volume issue. I use a 410 simply because I just love the tone from the cab. Its big, but reasonably portable compared to other 410s (not so much a couple of 112s though). I find that even with a 410 I need to get it up high to make the most of it. But thats because I want tohear the bass really loud in my 'onstage mix'. If I had a bigger cab or just put it on the deck and cranked it (it would go loud enough like that) I then overpower the band in the rest of the venue. Not so good! There is a place for 810s and 410s etc, and thats in the back of a big rig that gets loaded and unloaded by a bunch of hired muscle - they are called roadies I believe - I've never had a team of roadies schlepoping my kit so I wouldnt get such a huge cab. If I were to get one I'd be looking for a Bergantino NV610 though, cos they sound uttely monstrous and are surprisingly small...

Any that I actually manage to make sound 'right' all the way from start to finish, no unwanted clunks, clicks, squeaks and wotnot... But I do love the low Db on the B string of the Roscoe....

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='1364452' date='Sep 6 2011, 07:14 PM']Oh my God... stop this now![/quote] Difficult to keep it under control with all this pervy material isnt it!

Me gving it the beans on my Roscoe Century Standard 5 at my 40th birthday bash

If any of the parts were recorded starting from somewhere other different from the rest of the tracks ("we'll just need to record the choruses on this track, one at a time, I'll give you a four bar count in, ok?") then you need to render the tracks to stems. Turn off all the fx, set the volume to unity gain (ie 0) check there are no overdubs and then try and find something that can do a render of all the indivisuil tracks, Reaper (I know, but bare with me I use it a lot!) lets you render all the selectted tracks in a project to whatever bit depth output and sample rate you like. Best bet is retain the samplerate and bit depth and render as wavs. This way your mayte doesnt need to line anything up as all the tracks start at 0:00:00 in the project. If everything starts there already then just send him the original wavs.

I dont understand the need or desire to dumb down the formula for impedance. Firstly, it really is not complex, if you havent mastered fractions and simple algebra yet, and are an adult you should look into some evening classes to be honest. Secondly you need to know and understand the simple formula so that you can work out for yourself if what you want to do with your kit will break it, without asking on here always. After all we arent there in the shop, on the gig with you to hold your hand always. If it were some seriously complex mathematical formula then I could understand the need for a simplified version, but it isnt at all, and any simplification on it will not work properly. If someone asks for something to be explainedsimply then I find stepping through the explaination carefully and accurately to more often than not be the best bet for everyone, if they then ask further questions about the detail thats fine. Telling them the wrong answer because they asked for a simple explanation is patronising, stupid and prone to cause damage to their kit.

Theres[url="http://www.delamancha.co.uk/dynamite_cowbell.htm"] a cowbell vsti[/url] which I found to be excellent for this kind of thing...

See what we have here is a basic failure to disclose the truth. The truth is that due to its clever digital preamp processing it can ring a lot out perceived volume of the signal. There are several ways you can do this, you can bin any tricky frequencies likely to soak up a lot of power (that would be sub bass), you can compress and limit the signal before it leaves the pre and hits the power amp, you can have very clever control of the power section current too. Its all great and it definitely makes the most of the actual power of the device. There is one thing it does not do though, it does not change the wattage RMS rating of the head. Not a bit. So if you claim it to be more powerful than it really is, you are lying. And as our mummies told all of us, dont tell fibs because you will get caught, and at the very least look like a bunch of complete prats.

Immerse yourself in real funk. Complete and total diet of old school funk that a lot of those guys were inspired by such as:- The Meters Curtis Mayfield Kool and The Gang Aaron Neville Jimmy Castor Bunch Betty Davis Gil Scott Heron Pfunk Bootsy Roy Ayers The Delfonics Tower ofPower The Headhunters The Vibrettes After a few days of nonstop funkiness, start jamming along with a random playlist of these gems (youtube/grooveshark can really help you here). Its not how many notes, its not 16th vs 8th notes or anything like that, its the 'shape' of the swing and the rests that define funk feel. There is no better way to get it than to get on with listening to it all the time.

Typically (as in , the industry standard complied with by all cabs and amps I've ever seen or used) any multiple socket array of outputs/inputs to/from speakers are wired in parallel not series. This is very important. So it makes no diff to the circuit wether you use the two outs on the back of the amp, one to each cab, or the two outs on one of the cabs to daisy chain. The resulting circuit you've built is the same, two speakers wired in parallel to the amp. In order to work out the total impedance in a parallel circuit the formula is as follows:- 1/total = 1/speakerA + 1/speakerB + 1/SpeakerC..... through all the speakers stated impedances. In the case of 2 8 ohm cabs in parallele weget:- 1/Total = 1/8 + 1/8 = 2/8 = 1/4 so Total= 4 Ohms. That 4 ohms is the total load across the amp, if it is rated to 4 ohms it is a happy amp at this point. Things get complex when you have differently rated impedances on the speakers though, since the lower impedance speaker will get more current than the higher impedance speaker. Simplest rule of thumb is to stick with the same impedance cabs for now!

[quote name='larrybassman' post='1359135' date='Sep 1 2011, 07:28 PM']Hi, Stick with 15 inch speakers or even multiples of 12 inch speakers , 10 inch are far too middly and dont really have that real depth that 15's do. I can honestly say that I have tried them all and found 10 inch speaker far too middy and toppy, we are after all BASS players.[/quote] Nope, you are very misguided, diameter has nothing to do with tone at all.