51m0n

Are you turing the interior of that room into a faithful mockup of the bridge of the Millenium Falcon?

You're not hanging a cloud off it are you??

Tasty bit of compression with a slow attack time will increase the transient spike, giving you more attack - you will need more headroom to generate the extra spike though...

You defintely definitely need to stay balanced here. live is a world of hurt regarding noise, especially considering the long cable runs with dollops of all sorts of unknown leaky wiring and crud flying around. A studio is a hugely cleaner environment to work in as often as not IME...

Awesome line - used to play it years ago - everytime it gets to the pops I shudder though, I hate the timbre of them, he needed new strings or a less twangly sound IMHO

I use an H4n and se the levels manually, 24bit 48KHz wav files allowing a good 12dB of level above the peaks. That way I never, ever get any unwanted overs. 24bits means massive dynamic range, so make use of it! I then use Reaper after the fact to bring the level up to something more sensible for general playback, and render down to 320kbps mp3 for ease of transfer to other band members via the web (wetransfer.com is brilliant). Reaper lets you set up sections and then render them, automatically naming them as it goes, it is super easy to pull out the good bits from the entire rehearsal, takes me about 15 minutes to do a 2 hour rehearsal, and I record in 4 track off it now as a rule as well..

A Zoom H4n on its own, just stuck up near the wall in a reaheasal room souinds like this when recording a 3 piece enjoying a bit of impromptu jammage:- https://soundcloud.com/51m0n-1/track-7/s-T7TIC So far pretty much everything I've heard from the likes of an iPhone or other smart phone hasnt come close, even with a mic attachment thingy.

DV247 completely ballsed up their 'next day delivery' and although they knew it was going wrong they didnt get around to letting me know So on the phone they promised £50 back aby way of apology (on an already great proce). Then they didnt actually do the refund (it didnt turn up on my credit card at all after a week). So I'm spitting feathers at this point, when I phone up again though, they firstly didnt suggest I was talking nonsense or trying it on (a lot of theses places will suggest that you aren't being entirely honest with them or whatever), they had accurate notes that anyone on the team could read about my first call, so it was easy to chas eup the guy who was dealign with it in the first place. They managed to phone me and leave a comprensive answer phone message apologising for the issue again, and ensuring that they had sorted it now, from the original chap who was trying to sort it all out. And sorted it was. Double trouble balls up, but they stil lmanaged to turn that around, and I would shop with them again, amazingly they actually made me feel that it was just 'one of those things', of course if it happened again I wont go near them afterwards - they've had their 'opportunity' now. By contrast dont buy anything from alpha-batteries.co.uk their service after sales is rubbish, their communication is apalling they routinely dont do what they say they will and they are a complete bunch of useless idiots IMO. Had a very very trying time with them over a car battery that failed in warranty, and they just were so unhelpful over the course of several weeks that I wouldnt ever ever buy anything from them again, or let anyone I know take that risk - you have been warned - other than that though they are shiny (not).

This isnt a bad mix is it.Some pretty good all round tones IMO. Nice one! If I had to be critical I'd say there is some conjestion in the track, its all on top of each other a tad and theres some build up in low mids as a result maybe (disclaimer I'm listening on cans that were once good but are now very old, and are a little the worse for wear I think - they certainly dont reach as high as they once did!). Not sure I'd have put that much grind on the bass either, or I'd try and get it to sound less like a seperate instrument alongside the bass and more like a part of the actual bass timbre... I'd look to get the guitars panned wider, the bvs/harmonies out to the sides more as well, give that lead vocal a bigger space to work in. The arrangement could lead you along more too, but thats maybe beyond the mix. On the other hand that is rather the nature of the genre. Like the track though, reminds me of the likes of the Cardigans... I'm being very very critical of what I would consider a pretty good mix all round really of a good song.

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1355392564' post='1897643'] Yeah, but ............................................... it would have sounded better on vinyl, hence this thread! [/quote] Coffee -> keyboard....

Cheers! It was a lovely bass tone to begin with - I just fit it in the mix right. Look anyone unsure of how digital works vs analogue - in fact if you even think you know all about it, this video is still worth watching... http://www.xiph.org/video/vid1.shtml

Damned good question Stu! Apologies all the for the War and Peace scale post.... How about I mix by ice cold intuition? In order to be able to use all the tools at my disposal to create a mix that is emotive and compelling I have to know how all those tools work, and what they can do, what they are good at, when its appropriate to use them. I know why I use every single tool that I do use. I have learnt through watching others, listening constantly, reading the theory (obsessively), discussing with real masters of the art on forums and in person, trying and failing and succeeding, and going back to what happened when and trying to understand exactly what I did, and did not achieve and how I could make it better. Like anyone who is desperately fascinated with an art/science its taken a very long time to get to the poitn where I dont have to refer to a text book or website to achieve any of what I do, its just 'in my hands, or under my skin'. I've been fascinated for more than 20 years with the subject of recording. I have learnt some, I know people who have forgotten more than I'll ever know. Its like jazz, you have to learn all that theory so well that you don't think about it at all when playing it if you are going to be any good at it at all (disclaimer, I cant play jazz for love nor money!). But here's the real thing, I cant remember who said it but its gospel, "The best piece of gear in a great mix is the song". A mix is a production of the song, and an arrangement of that song's performance. It is all about the music. I can enjoy terrible reproduction of a great song, I enjoy great reproduction of the same song so much more that it is palpable. I can't stand the best reproduction of a rubbish song because, the all important thing is, does the song move me? I can't do a great job mixing a song that I can't stand, I can do an ok job on a song I think is OK. A great song will get the very best out of me. When I get to actually mix something though I'm not in that theoretical headspace. I am analysing and choosing routes to go intuitively at all times. I react to how the track makes me feel at an emotional level, and try and bring the core of that out of the song each time. I never ever think in terms of the audio theory really now in the act of mixing, so if I want a guitar to pop more, but I don't want to change its tone, I would intuitively reach for a compressor to enhance the transient a bit to give it the impression of being more in your face, yet at the same time remaining the same sound. I wouldn't think about the settings in any theoretical way, I just set them where they do the thing that sounds right, which is where the settings need to be to get the result I need to make the guitar more immediate and to convey the impression that I feel the instrument in that track needs to convey. It just so happens I also can relate what those setting would be in terms of the controls of the device and why, because I really have studied compressors. To do this mixing thing as intuitively as possible I personally have to rigorously (as rigorously as I can) separate the session into several sections, initial listen (throw those faders up and see what hits me, listen to whats there as rough as you like a few times - get a 'hit', a feel for the piece), organisation and tidying up (getting all the groups and channels organised, sorting out gain staging everywhere, last thing I want to think about is making sure the level isn't too hot later on, making some rough guesses on the effects I'll need, cleaning up any obvious unwanted noise), blocking in the mix (getting some proper levels carving out the gash from tracks with eq, trying to get the sounds basically right with whatever tools I need to use), then I usually take a break. That's all the housekeeping uncreative boring crap done (thank goodness), I need to come back at it fresh for the good stuff.... Now all of that may take anywhere between 1 and 8 hours work (depends on the tracking, the number of tracks, the complexity of the textures). And I'm left in a place where I could run off a mix and usually it will be a pretty vanilla mix, it will sound clean and tidy, but the levels wont be right everywhere, there will be a lack of 'mojo' quite often, the band would hear it and in most cases quite like it but be looking for more. Its sort of a demo of the mix to be, not yet fully formed. This is where the creative bit comes in, I like to have found an 'in' by now a thing I can use to pull a listener along, to tie everything together, I don't know, some spark of a cool idea I can use to make the song somehow 'more'. On Little Toy Soldiers it was the dotted note delay on the drums, and then the reverse snares IIRC. It just pops into my head as something to take the mix beyond just a simple reproduction all cleaned up sorted and into the realm of a bit of a production, something a bit more fab than you would normally get live. It can be something very subtle or really in your face, and I hate 'inventing' something out of thin air, it has to be entirely driven by the song and the performance, I don't add new parts, although I do take parts out if they aren't serving the song. This is all intuition. Building these parts of a mix vary but could easily take more than another 4 or 5 hours. This is the key bit this is what makes a mix sound special - and its sometimes (more often than not) sooooo subtle, that people wouldn't know it were there unless it was taken away. There is absolute level refinement all the time, and balance and panning is finalised throughout. Sometimes I'll just find I've gone down a dead end and back waaaay up and go down a different route (happened a lot with Kit, especially with the drums on Little Toy Soldiers, that was truly epic!) Eventually its just all done, I cant polish it any more, I cant take anything out or add anything in without disturbing the way the song flows through its sections and makes me feel. If the musicians hate it now, I'm doomed Its all intuition. Every bit if it. Driven by the emotional response I feel with every single instrument together and alone. But its only possible because I have studied what the tools do, and how they work. And I'm still learning, daily, new ideas, new tricks to get more out of a song to present to a listener. The bigger the arsenal, the easier it is to riff with the material and just create something. The hope is that the result is at least good every time, and occasionally I can pull off something that's really great, a mix that you don't hear at all, but that enhances the pleasure of anyone who hears the song, every time they hear it.... Sorry again for the probably excruciating level of pretentious sounding twaddle in that post....

Fascinating article on flaws in thinking around sample rates and use of ultra high sample rates for playback and how this realtes to amps, ears and stuff - and pono... http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1355328161' post='1897002'] [/quote] I've missed something else here haven't I

The reality is that when mixing contempory music the mixer is the person who starts the process to enable the mastering engineer to get aboslute maximum level. By clever use of ducking to keep high energy signal from one instrumetn adding to another at the same time (bass and kick for instance) it is possible to remove the need for the extra dynamic range required by the two together. On top of this certain instruments (notably but not limited to percussion) have particularly large transients, careful use of very fast or look ahead limiters can catch the meat of these transients, again gaining more dynamic range for the average level. Using EQ to carve out unwanted areas of an instrument in a mix not only gives greater clarity, but also stops more build up of energy that can rob the mix of potential loudness'. Compression on pretty much everything set to control level transparently can also help a great deal in taming wilder sections, allowing the overall average level to stay high. It is very common practice to use huge amounts of automation to keep the level of any important instrument exactly right all the time, intakes of breath are pulled back, louder notes are curtailed, quiet sections are boosted. Every couple of seocnds can have several automation moves in level alone. On several different instruments and the vocal. In order to make a particular part of the mix easier to hear, and yet leave the maximum average level thoughout its not uncommon to slightly boost the first note of a passage from that instrument (whilst minutely droping competing instruments at the same time) - the result is your ear is drawn to that partiuclar instrument for the duration of its part, without having to actually turn it up. Parallel compression is used liberally to give instruments more weight in the mix without appearing to lessen their dynamic range (although that is what is actually happening it is much harder to notice with parallel compression) All of these techniques are commonplace, and have been for over twenty years to a greater or lesser extent. The difference is that if you take them to an extreme all together there can be almost no dynamic range in a piece. Pass the resulting mix to a mastering engineer with instructions to compete for loudness and he will use several more compressors and eqs, and more parallel compression and multiband limiting, and brickwall limiting to get every ounce of level out of the track. Ther will be no actual clipping of the digital data, because the limiter algorythms don't allow that, but the transients will be severely curtailed (by more than 12dB easily) over the result if the mixer and mastering engineer were not 'out for level' from the get go. This adds extra harmonic info (well in fact it raises the level of this info compared to the loudest level in the track) as well as reverb/ambience levels. The sound of the mix will change, it often results in nasty hats and cymbals, the lowest frequencies are boosted to a degree in instruments where those frequencies would be less noticeable too, although there is also plenty of use of eq in the mix to make everything pretty big sounding, huge amounts of low end are detrimental to final level. Fletcher-Munsen curves describe what frequencies our ears hear best, and its somewhere around 1Khz to 3KHz that we pick out easiest, so if you want your mix to sound loudest, to 'pop' out in a busy shopping centre PA, or over the car/road noise, or compared to the other adverts on the telly, then you give that area (which sounds like garbage quite often, very trashy and unpleasant) and 'healthy' dB or three of boos too, with a very very expensive analogue EQ so you can say you only use the best equiptment when recking the sound of the mix. This kind of mixing and mastering is absolutely rife today. It is the 'accepted norm'. It sounds like gash IMO. Bruce Swedian was right, its [i]all[/i] about the transients....

[quote name='gjones' timestamp='1355327462' post='1896985'] I do it all the time. I don't like the unrealistic hi fizz of hi-hats and cymbals. Most albums these days are mixed for noisy environments like cars [s]with extra lows and hi end added[/s] with large amounts of compression and limiting on individual high energy elements and on the two buss in an effort to reduce the average dynamic range of the track to no more than 4dB so everything can always be heard and everything always sounds loud (though as a result it also always lacks punch as the transient has been crushed to death), even if it sounds like cr4p, in very demanding acoustic spaces like cars, founderies, and underneath a space shuttle as it lifts off. [/quote] Fixed for you

[quote name='lettsguitars' timestamp='1355317046' post='1896793'] A modern computer and budget interface is more than they had in the sixties. They are still deemed radio worthy recordings. I must admit we use a midi drumkit which helps to get a cleaner finish. [/quote] In the sixties they had 4 and 8 tracks of tape, not 4 or 8 channels necessarily. If you go back to the 50's they had 1 track. I cant think of a time when they were recording to 2 tracks in mono and using overdubbing, they went straight from 1 track and moving people around in the room to 4 tracks and overdubbing (which was still alot of pain due to degradation during bounces. I can guarantee you that a recording made with 4 tracks of tape in Abbey Road Studio 1 in mono, recorded over some weeks, will sound a whole bunch better than 4 tracks in a rehearsal room recorded in a couple of hours! Other things they had 'back in the sixities' tube desks (lovely great wodges of glorious saturation),Pultech EQs (have you any idea how much they cost now??), Joe Meek or similar hand built compressors for every channel (oh yes, the Abbey Road compressors are a holy grail all to themselves), Fairchild compressors (don't go there without remortgaging your house), Neumann U47 (FET and tube), KM84 and U67 mics, AKG D12 mics all sorts of beautiful ribbons from the likes of Coles, tape decks you could 'push' hard for more lovely tape compression and saturation. Beautiful big live rooms to put things in to mic with virtually no unwanted sounds in (traffic rumble - room next door with another band in etc etc). A great seperated control room to listen to the soudsn you were capturing. TIME to move mics around until you were absolutely satisfied. The may have had 4 tracks of tape, or 8, they didnt only use 4 microphones at a time, that is why they had desks with 8 or 16 or more inputs, and other mic summing boxes too. Furthermore we aren't in the sixties. People (punters) dont expect to hear recordings that sound like the sixities recordings did, unless you are the Bootleg Beatles, in which case you can use 8 tracks, but good luck getting 'that sound' without using all that kit back then. You may get fairly close, but it wont be the same. No, in order to record something today that sounds contemporary you will need to multitrack beyond 2 channels, if only to get the immediacy and upfrontness of the vocal, drums and bass.

[quote name='Norris' timestamp='1355317604' post='1896799'] No offense intended, but I think you may have got this the wrong way round. The maximum frequency that can be recorded without aliasing is half the sampling rate. See [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_rate"]Nyquist Rate[/url]. Having said that, I agree with you that above a certain frequency the human ear would have difficulties telling the difference - in audiophile terms known as 'air', the upper frequency range above the limit of hearing. I still like vinyl, CDs AND mp3s - they all have their place [/quote] No I understand Nyquist Rate, it is the lowest sample rate for alias free sampling with theroretically perfect reproduction available. Its theroetical, since there is no such thing as a perfect filter, and therefore there is the need for a transition band above the Nyquist Frequency ( the maximum signal Hz that cna be perfectly sampled) to allow fo ralias filters. Around 2KHz in a CD quality wav. I think you misunderstood what I was getting at. For a sound to happen and be entirely missed by the sampler it must happen entirely within the time taken for two bounding samples to occur. Therefore the duration is less than the time inbetween two samples - less than 1/44100 of a second at CD sampling rates. In order to play that back a system has to be able to show the entire shape of that signal, be it analogue throughout or digital. It must have the ability to show signals that last that short a time, and furthermore it has to be able to do so with accuracy. Show me a playback system that can reproduce a signal that would be entirely missed by the system that samples at 44100Hz.

[quote name='lettsguitars' timestamp='1355314443' post='1896738'] Way ott imo. I've used an old laptop a coupple of cheap mics (se) and an alesis i/04 with absolutely more than acceptable results for a demo. 500 is more than enough if you already have a computer and a couple of mic leads! You would NEVER in a million years hear the hum of the laptop over a live band. [/quote] I would disagree (and I record [i]everything[/i]) that a couple of mics would give you a good sounding demo, it can give you an adequate rehearsal tape, and that is about it. For my three piece we record every single rehearsal, we use an H4n to record the drum kit (positioning is a problem, and you can forget a deep kick drum) a senn 835 on the guitar, and a Red5 kick mic on the bass cab (again positioning is critical to balance the port with the cone, or you get less deep low end to playt with). The results are pretty good once they are mixed, certainly good enough as a document of exactly who played what. But demo quality? You have to be kidding I accept my standards for recordings may be rather diferent than yours, I think this chap probably wants a better than rehearsal tape quality demo. If you want to get gigs the more pro sounding the recording of the band is the easier it becomes IME. The reason to not use an old laptop and interface for recording is nothing to do with hum from the laptop, its because a really good quality interface (and believe me you want a quality interface for this) is more than the £500 budget alone. And an old laptop is highly unlikely to give you the ability to record more than 2 mics at once anyway (harddrive and buss speeds in laptops are pretty severely curtailed, getting throughput from 8 tracks to disk is a struggle with a less than excellent 8 channel USB interface IME).

Ta!

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1355235293' post='1895715'] But it's empty! ................. it was very good though if that's any consolation. [/quote] Well I'll just have to drown my sorrows in a wee glass of Ardbeg 10yr old tonight then - I shall raise the glass in your direction though sir

[quote name='lowdowner' timestamp='1355235346' post='1895716'] CD sampling *is* lossy, samples are taken once in every 1/44100ths of a second - the waveform in between is thrown away. When the DAC converts these samples back to analogue they interpolate and smooth out the waveform by guessing what would have most likely occurred in between the samples. The original data (waveform) between the samples is lost. Hence, CD sampling is 'lossy'. It's actually worse than that. due to timing errors in the DAC's clock as it drifts with respect to the reading of the bits, further interpolation is required. Many people claim to be able to hear this 'guessing'. I'm not so convinced - but many are. But either way, CD sampling is, by definition, lossy as it only 'samples' the waveform. [/quote] Please please show me a playback system that can accurately reproduce these events that happen in between the 44100 samples taken per second. It would need to be capable of measurably reproducing frequencies over 44100Hz, in fact close to 88000Hz. Now how many of these systems are owned by the menbers of this forum, or indeeed worldwide exactly? Or better yet who claims to have the pair of ears that can hear it? Simply put you have to have one hell of a set of tweeters to reproduce that tiny tiny blit of signal (B&W Diamond series maybe), but there are very very few microphones capable of capturing anything up there faithfully either. For your interest [url="http://www.sanken-mic.com/en/product/product.cfm/3.1000400"]these claim to reach 100KHz[/url] And you wont hear it. Because those tweeters have mass and will not reproduce it faithfully if it is some kind of unusual spike at that point. In other words if the signal is not very very close to (read the same as) the interpolated result of the sample reproduced post DAC then your vinyl system cant reproduce it faithfully either. And you can only hear up to 20Khz when you're young. It is to all intents and purposes NOT lossy. The result that comes out of the DAC is what went into the ADC or too close to argue over given the vagiaries of the signal chain in [i]any[/i] normal front room, or even fairly well treated room (hell even most well treated rooms). Of course we could just be talking about a signal that occured in between the samples, some extreme transient, but given that the samples at a mere 44100HKz are 0.00002267573 seconds apart I would think it fair to suggest that no one would notice that the sound in question happened at all - too short for human perception I would think, certainly too short for a common or garden hifi to reproduce faithfully regardless of the medium its recorded on to, and as for then accurately picking that up in anything but the most perfect room in existence, thats not ever going to happen. As for a leading edge transient being picked up that much later than it should, again I am wholely confident that not one human on the planet could tell that a signal started that much too late. Our perception is pretty impressive, we use differences in the time of a sound hitting one ear then the other to help accurately pinpoint the position of the source in the stereo field, however our ears are 17cm apart (on average) and that equates to something like half a millisecond, or 0.0005 seconds, if a sound is hard over to one side. Differences of less than one sample though? I rather doubt we would perceive the leading edge as a difference in position. I can probably find a way to produce wavs with exactly these kinds of sounds on, they would by their nature be running at well over 44.1KHz so you would need a serious sound card to even join in the fun and games, but if anyone really wants to try and find out I can try and produce a wav with a sound in it that lasts less than the gap between two samples at 44.1KHz, and another sound where a transient is pushed late by the same margin on one side. Then we can all try and see if we can hear it.... And bear in mind music is recorded these days at at least 48KHz as often as not, more of it than ever is now recorded at 88KHz or 96KHz, where these timings drop significantly again. [quote name='lowdowner' timestamp='1355235626' post='1895721'] A weekend or so ago I put on a record on my turntable (classical as it happened, but probably not very relevant) and the people in the room said 'If i heard music of that quality at home i'd listen to music more - it's amazing'). They listen to mp3's through a computer feed into an amplifier and speakers in their own home. Standard Mp3s sound rubbish and are very bland - but most people now listen to music whilst playing computer games, browsing the net, or as background 'wash'... it probably isn't important to most people to have a great, exciting, sound - just that it's convenient. Each to their own... [/quote] What soundcard, what DAC, what preamp, what amp, what speakers? I can guarantee if they heard playback out of my laptop into my speakers via my RME soundcard they would get just as big a hit off the music. I know because I've had professional musos and non-musos, sound engineers and non-sound techies all make the same comments about my kit too. I've had the same comments from CD playback as well. Its indicative of the low standards people accept day to day with the music they here everywhere that as modest a set up as mine (nowhere near the £3.5k spend - I wish it were though, rather jealous!) can make such an impression on people of all backgrounds.

My point was that whilst mp3s are plentiful and freely available, there is no reasn to stick to mp3 quality, since downloading a FLAC file of better quality is a perfectly reasonable desire these days. And mp3 sound quality really really isnt superb at the ubiquitous 128kbps I'm afraid - otherwise I wouldnt be banging on about it head in hands wondering when Big_Stu is going to pass the bottle so we can both drown our sorrows.... If mp3s werent at such low quality, and mastering was not so loudness obsessed everyone would enjoy music more. Audiophile be damned Its no wonder to me that music is devalued when it so often sounds rubbish as a result of poor reproduction (and mastering, and mixing, and tracking, and arragement, and songwriting - but I digress).

[quote name='redstriper' timestamp='1355231868' post='1895638'] It's not evil Si - it makes music easily available to millions of people around the world. Most people are nor audiophiles and don't care about Hi Fi, but they can still love music [/quote] Ha, yes , most people are so used to loudness orientated mastering that they tend to prefer it now too. Its not a good thing, its the first time in history that reproduction of music has actually gone significantly downwards in terms of quality. Its not more accessible really though, not now, bandwidth is getting bigger, storage is cheaper than ever, so why not have a resurgence of improved fidelity? Having said that I find 320kbps mp3s fine, its all that 128kbps stuff that I find inlistenable - and I'm not by any means an audiophile: I just like good recordings and good playback - I want to feel the music move me, not hear the issues with the reproduction preventing me enjoy it...

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1355231049' post='1895617'] I finished my last bottle of Islay malt souvenirs last night; a Bruicladdich 8 year old Port Charlotte. Black! black, is the day, heavy is my heart. [/quote] I feel your pain!