51m0n

Sure. For live you are really looking for set it and forget it type of level control more than anything else. Things may be very different on a recording... Vocals normally have no appreciable transient so you can get as fast as the comp will go although listen for distortion, since some comps can produce artifacts if you set them too fast. As little as 3ms isnt a problem IME. This also negates the need for a limiter after the compressor in almost all cases. Release can be set fairly gently too since we are looking to damp down the fire a bit on everything and there is no big need to let a transient poke through). 100 to 150ms should be fine. Get the threshold set exactly like you did on the bass (max ratio, quiet singing, turn the threshold down until you see some GR occur on the meter) but watch out for feedback (esp with an automatic makeup gain), then slacken off the ratio until you get a good 3dB to 6dB of GR (assuming the monitors get a clear unaffected version, or your singer might kill there voice trying to push the monitor louder) when singing normally. Set the makeup gain to equal to the volume of loud singing. Again watch for feedback - if you get some knock the ratio down a tad then try setting the makeup gain again. Soft knee if you have the option too... Job done....

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1352471600' post='1863516'] It's a Plan B. What does the OP do if MB aren't interested? [/quote] Save up like the rest of us

Oh you will like that mic, they are ridiculously good.... Shan't say any more then

The [url="http://kitrichardson.bandcamp.com/album/submission-chords"]Kit Richardson Submission Chords[/url] EP, havent listened to it for ages. Its still great!

5 strings for me....

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1352459586' post='1863288'] I'd also talk to Hartke. [/quote] Whyt would he want to talk to Hartke if he is interested in MB gear??

I feel Iike a voice of dissent I'm afraid. I think these mixes need a lot of work personally. There are a lot of compression artifacts on the drums; the snare is very heavily compressed, the kick has no depth, its choked by the compression, nasty cymbal pumping going on etc etc. Lots of washy cymbals and in some places heavy reverb, nasty since it over clutters everything. Have you run this straight into a brickwall limiter in an effort to get volume? If so dont, its ruined the mix completely. In fact the cymbals sound really trashy and nasty. The mixes are muddy and confused, that is, there is little or no seperation in the mix, the instruments are fighting for the same space in the mix (both frequency wise and in the space you have created - use the pan control!!!) a lot, the bass is a low mid rumble, the low end of the guitar and the mick are swamping it. All very confused. The vocals lack any finess in terms of mix, they are all muddy and indistinct. I know they can be made to sound better! Also there are a lot of tuning problems espsecially when the bvs/double tracking comes in. They should be the highlight of the song, not just another bit of the problem... Didn't enjoy the mix at all which is a huge shame since I think there are some really good songs in there! This whole collection needs remixing, no amount of mastering can fix this. Anyone claiming they can master the problems away is deluding you, ignore them! Just my opinion..... (sorry if it comes across a bit harsh, but its really what I honestly think)

I'm a cheapskate. So if there is a free solution out there I use it. I've got a huge number of very very good sounding free vsts. One that is really nice if you can programme and make drums sound good for yourself is mydrumset by bluenoise [url="http://www.bluenoiseplugins.com/plugins/drummix/beta-edition/"]http://www.bluenoise...x/beta-edition/[/url] Its no where near as fully featured as theones you pay for. But its a nicely recorded kit and I've had some real success getting decent results with it using exactly the sort of processing I woudl use on a real kit (unsurprisingly). Its certainly enough to get you going! Other than that the two most important things you need are good monitoring (spend every penny on proper monitors you can the Neumann kh12a is definitely getting up toward a real monitor) and some acoustic control of the room you work in. Which requires more reading than anything else, and some simple DIY with not desperately expensive items in order to vastly improve the sound of the room you are working in. If you cant afford a great set of monitors then use speakers you really really know and check your mixes on as many different systems as you can to see how they translate. Get a decent interface that allows for all the ins and outs you require. If you arent recording full bands you probably need no more than 2 ins, and 4 outs (2 for headphones). Go for quality, I would recommend an RME Babyface as a great sounding interface with absolutely bulletproof drivers. Seriously good quality. Personally I'm about to pull the trigger on an RME UCX, because I can expand it easily up to a full 14 mic inputs, which is enough to record a full band, I can also get some [url="http://www.seventhcircleaudio.com/"]real quality mic pres[/url] later to plug in to it for some flavour. Added to that the lowest latency in class and the RME reputation I just cant control the GAS on this device If you need more inputs straight away then the Steinberg UR824 is about the best bang for the buck interface with 8 mic pres in it, that you can expand up to 16 more channels with the 2 ADAT I/O channels. Highly regarded bang for buck there! Beyond that its all about getting arrangements right to help the tracking and mixing. +1 for Zen and the Art of Mixing, its a superb book, lots of insight into mixing (and tracking and arrangement) in a not too technical format.

Thats really interesting. I've been wanting a way to switch between channels on my rack compressor (ideally ch1 or ch2 or ch1 into ch2) in my fx loop to allow me some more options re compression in between toons. Looking at this it may be exactly what I need for at least ch1 or ch2. Now if I could figure out how to do ch1 -> ch2 as well....

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1352294531' post='1861164'] That version of [i]Night Fever[/i] is simply +++ AWESOME +++. [/quote] +1 thats just fabulous

[quote name='Lifer' timestamp='1352304536' post='1861346'] That sounds good to me, used to practise to a click in a metal band I was in years ago, set a PA speaker on fire once! [/quote] The rimshot and handclap are kinda important here. The handclap will 'disappear' into the snare if the volumes are all set right, and everyone is playing tight; its never a harsh sound, and it has some duration, which lends a sense of weight to the back beat. The rimshot is usually a far shorter sound, though again not being a nasty electronic blip it doesnt hurt your eears so much at war volume, and should sit right on the kick attack when everything is just grooving along.... [quote name='redstriper' timestamp='1352305239' post='1861360'] That is a great idea and so obvious, I don't know why I've never thought of it. I will try it on our next recording session. [/quote] Its a simplification of a system used by Doug Whimbish a lot when he was working with Will Calhoun in Living Colour. I kid you not, every funk band I've ever been in I've got to try this out, invariably it replaces loose tight wanna be funky with tight as a gnats butt super funky in a few weeks of rehearsal. The results are so profound its scary, its like everyine suddenly starts to hear the groove and time the same way, you all get your concept of the swing dialed into each other with a much greater sense of exactly, and precisely where the one is. How you then push and pull against that point in the beat is what makes the funk/groove happen, but if everyone hears that point slightly differently it tends to lead to a less well honed groove IME. Getting guitarists and drummers to try it can take a little convincing, get them to play the song once without, three times with and once more without. Thats all it takes to hear the difference....

What I would suggest then (and feel free to shoot it down in flames), is try taking the set of tracks yuowish to record, get a cheap old drum machine or use your mac book, plug it nto the PA and set up a really nice hand clap on 2 and 4 and a rimclick on 1 and 3 to practice the entire band against it.. Go through the songs three times all together locking on to this click, then record one without it straight afterwards. The improvements I've had like this in bands have always been nothing short of spectacular, all the feel and none of the timing oddities....

HJ, first time I met you I thave to say I did think, "Well he's a ringer for Bazzer White he is" nice to see I wasn't going mad....

I think you carry it off really well without a click. If you arent in to editing the result (and even if you are, not having a click never stopped me editing if it was necessary) and nothing is running off midi, then as long as you convey the emotion of the song to the listenr think hard about [i]needing[/i] a click track. If you are off the groove as a band then anything that can help is a good thing, but thats at all not what I thought listening to the tracks here. Biting Point is my favourite, such a nice guitar sound, and a great riff (stringest one there for me), good arrangement, sounding fine. The killer fo ryou is to make that guitar let more through and get out of the awy without damaging that lovely tone. It can be done, but you are going to have to be really careful. I'd also like to say this is an excellent, excellent process to put yourselves through, the whole 'proper' preproduction, recording the songs to polish them up will do wonders for your final production. Well done!

Nice songs, good effort! Some thoughts.... You've got a lot of build up in the low mid/upper bass, basically the bass, kick and bottom of the guitar are all fightinglike mad in that region. Which is then detrimental to the vocal I think. PAN!!! This is almost mono. A big bit of getting seperation is PAN. Basically you have 3 definite points you can put an instrumetn in, Left, Right or Center. Anything else is kinda washy and indistinct. Thats the nature of stereo. There is a 'rule' for a good mix, only the kick, snare, bass and vocal should be dead centre. Everything else needs to be panned out of the way. The most important thing is the vocal, whatever most compete with the vocal frequency wise needs panning the furthest you can away. So in your case your guitar need to be hard left and/or right. To help keep balance multitrack the guitar parts (avoid ADT if at all possible), but dont be afraid to have unbalanced mixes for parts of songs, so drop to just the left guitar for verses, both for choruses or whatever. I think you could make more of her voice, its rather good, and I feel you haven't presented it as well as it might be, spend a lot more time working on it, eq where necessary (which may well mean cutting space for her out of other instruments she is up against in the same area), she needs a little more presence, and a better sense of a 'space' - currently the space she is in is engulfed in guitar, which though 'good' is really becaus eof the lack of seperation in the mix for her. The reverb treatment on there (when it can be made out) doesnt quite fit for me. This is really tricky stuff, you need the right ambience for her to be in, and at the moment I think it could be better. Like the BVs, make more of them, they are a tad too buried (that guitar again). Personally I find the non-positional aspect of not panning hard works well for bvs , you can really spread them into the middlle of the stereo field (so half left and out to left, and half right and out to right), and they become 'less', they could be a bit louder, whats the point of bvs if they dont give the arrangement a kick? Good guitar sound on Biting Point, geting close to Corrosion of Conformity, nice one! Its getting in the way of the vocal a bit (did I mention that), but its very nice The drums are not bad at all, nothing wrong with 4 dynamics for a drum kit, old school, but a well tuned kit in a decent space can sound good with carefully placed mics (or luckily placed ones) of almost any type IME. The arrangements are getting there arent they, I reckon some more BVs at the Raging Flood bit at the end of Biting POint to give it another lift would be good. But I love BVs and what they do to a mix. There are some fairly obvious compression artifacts going on, have you pushed this through a brickwall limiter to get level? Careful.... Question for you, why the need to record with a click, you guys groove hard, why not be organic and let the tempo breathe a bit??

They are great. but if you dont know what you are doing they cant perform magic. They are a decent tool for a good enginneer to use to get more consistent results with. If you get the time to do the full room sweeps with them and store the results away they can make subsequent setups far faster, but nothing ever means you can stop using your ears!

Why is that weird? Seemd perfectly reasonably and musical to me - maybe I'm weird. Mind you I dig a lot of found percussion and early electronica so its probably a given that I'm a bit more open minded (rather than weird). For instance, you may not find this very musical, but to me, its genius..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1teSrZ1LE7M Oh, you absolutely must have very very decent speakers to get anything out of this at all (and a very quiet listening space). If you really like [b]bass[/b] you'll love it too

Joe Meek FloorQ - love the 'feel' of the squish on this. Anything that has a full range of controls can be set to damned squishy, if you know what you are doing. Its all about attack and release settings and curves. If you get the threshold down to just under the peaks, and the ratio up to around 4:1, then you should be able to get whatever you need by careful settings on the attack and release IME. As for robbing you of tone and dynamics, then in that case you are not setting up the compressor to be transparent. It can be done, but without metering you cant hear it out of a mix (otherwiseits not transparent). Which makes it almost impossible to do without good metering IMO. Its totally different from comrpession for effect (hearing the squish).

The dbx Driverack is another great tool for PA setup, not cheap at all, but can really do a lot to manager your PA, get it flatter and help manager feedback spikes (when the lead vocalist is a tool and drops the mic in to the monitors), and all sorts of gerneal limiting and protection type stuff. Its a lot more than a crossover, and an eq, and a limiter, and a feedback destroyer....

You can cut some of the honkiness out by a smidgeon of mid cut, but so much less than most people go for, and dont do it unless you are actually in tthe mix at war volume so you can judge that you arent sucking outenough to start to lose presence and clarity in the mix.

Heeeeyyyyyyyyyyy, just like Fonzy....

Firstly the main problem in most venues is the acoustics suck. If it were up to me there would be at least some decent bass trapping, and broadband absorption. That would make evryhing else so much easier. Second most spaces have a definite maximum volume before you can't get a good mix. I saw suicide support Iggy pop last year, and even in a big auditorium hey went beyond the limitbofhe venue. How? The whole place was vibrating and resonating - literally panels on the walls were trying to tear themselves free and making a terribly detrimental racket as they did so. So firstly, just because you have x amount of gain before feedback' dont think you must use it all. Second do tune the pa up with a mixture of good reference material and pink noise to get a pretty even response, not too hyped. Watch for harsh top end an eq it out, or mushy bass, bin anything nasty. Then rig up all he vox mic an tune the eq further to be rid of any feedback. In his Case he didn't understand frequency separation when mixing, leaving a huge low mid/upper bass build p of mush. Careful use of high pass filters at 80 to 120 hz on everything but bass and kick would help. Sucking a load of 250hz out of he kick, and below 80hz out of he bass can help these fit. By it is different for every venue, ban and gig. So the thing is to use your ears. If it sounds great in the mix, then its good. Learn to eq in the mix, not soloed, as its the mix that counts

Another +1 for the Senn 835 or 845 - good quality, robust enough and decent rejection

But are you using ASIO drivers? I dont think so if you're using Direct Sound....

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1351949540' post='1857191'] Once you have managed to get "Everything louder than everything else." turn the whole lot down. Most bands are now far to loud due to low cost powerful gear. More watts mean more headroom, not more volume. If your punters are standing along the back wall, or not dancing down the front with the band, then it is too loud. [/quote] Cant agree with this enough! Brilliant point well put. I saw Plux's band play last night in a club in Brighton. The PA was massive, floor to ceiling type thing. The sound was utter utter dross. The band couldnt hear themselves on stage (depsite a binch of monitors), the punters were subjected to a wall of noise so loud that the cider in my glass was vibrating like it wanted to go for a walk. I know I am old, but i really appreciate great sound, and this was awful, the high frequencies were hars, the low frequencies were mud, there was no, 0 , seperation in the low end between bass, kick and guitar, it was just unpleasant mud. Even playing back CDs this rig sounded dreadful, but as a live rig it was apalling. And painfully loud (and I've enjoyed Motorhead, so I know loud can be good too). Irt was 'tuned' as a club rig for this kind of playback, but typically over egging the pudding, massive subs with no definition or punch just pouring out huge dollops of unpleasant WRMMMMMMM WMEMMMMMMEMRMRMMM, which meant that the kick, and bass were indistinct lumps of sub. Nasty fizzy mid tops with really harsh timbre. The dufus doing sound really didnt have a clue what he was doing, it was pitiful. On a positive note (and this is scraping the barrel) there was only one spike of feedback the whole night. We are thankful for small mercies....