Monitoring while Recording

[Oggy]

Recently I’ve put up a couple of posts about recording, what hardware, software file compatibility between DAW’s etc. I’ve had loads of feedback and advice, much appreciated – It’s helped me get a little further along the road and given me a better understanding of what to do and what’s needed to get a reasonable live demo recording(s) of my band.

I’ve been playing around a lot with raw files from a recording session we did at a studio a wee while ago and I’m now getting a real appreciation of just what a recording engineer can (has to) do to get a well balanced, decent sounding recording to a master track – It ain’t easy – lots of skill involved (I can see this is going to take me some time – if ever – to get anywhere close).

While I’ve been ‘attempting’ to alter track levels, add effects, mix tracks in relation to one another etc – I’ve used earphone (good quality) to monitor what I’m doing. I hear a lot of discussion on monitor speakers and understand that they can cost a fortune for professional quality ones. Using the earphones, I think, hasn’t done me any favours. After compiling and mixing I’ve created a master and burnt a CD only to hear that the result is somewhat different to what I hear through the earphones when played on a standard, reasonable CD player. With this in mind I’d like to hear some opinions on my next ‘bright idea’. I have a good quality CD player with two very nice compact, separate speakers - Panosonic (Dimensions +/- 12” H x 9” W x 12” D), when playing a ‘shop bought’ commercial CD I get really good reproduction Bass / Mids / Treble. How about I connect the Mac audio out to the AUX input on the player and use that for monitoring – the thinking being that what I hear from the player should be a good approximation sound of what I’ll hear from a Mix burn to a CD. I’ve not tried it yet – lame excuse is - I’ve got to fit a shelf above the Mac. Anyway, thoughts and feedback from you chaps would be very welcome.

Oggy

[bremen]

[quote name='Oggy' post='1268696' date='Jun 14 2011, 02:42 PM']How about I connect the Mac audio out to the AUX input on the player and use that for monitoring – the thinking being that what I hear from the player should be a good approximation sound of what I’ll hear from a Mix burn to a CD. I’ve not tried it yet – lame excuse is - I’ve got to fit a shelf above the Mac. Anyway, thoughts and feedback from you chaps would be very welcome.

Oggy [/quote]

Do that. Find a compromise between what sounds good on headphones and 'ordinary' speakers. Headphones can be very revealing, but it's easy to get a 'lush' sound on cans that sounds thin and orrible on speakers.

There's a competition ongoing at DV247 to win some monitors, good luck!

[Oggy]

[quote name='bremen' post='1268760' date='Jun 14 2011, 03:33 PM']Do that. Find a compromise between what sounds good on headphones and 'ordinary' speakers. Headphones can be very revealing, but it's easy to get a 'lush' sound on cans that sounds thin and orrible on speakers.

There's a competition ongoing at DV247 to win some monitors, good luck![/quote]

[i]"but it's easy to get a 'lush' sound on cans that sounds thin and orrible on speakers"[/i]

Funny you should say that - you've descibed my problem, well one of them anyway .

Thanks for the heads-up on DV247.

Oggy

[51m0n]

Get GOOD cans.

Get either [url="http://www.112db.com/redline/monitor/"]112dB monitor VST[/url] or something similar - focusrite bundle something like this with their interfaces. It mixes in some of the left to the right channel and vice versa, iut does a few other things as well.

Mix with this as the last effect in the stereo master buss.

Remove before rendering the mix. Buyrn a cd and listen on speakers.


OR get some Behringer truth monitors, the big active ones, they are far better than they have any right to be for the money, and search on gearslutz for tips on sorting out your room acoustics - basstraps, broadband absorbers and a a cloud all come to moind.

Because it really doesnt matter how good your monitors are if the room is acoustically gash then your mixes will not translate to other playback devices and situations.

[51m0n]

I mix almost exclusively on cans, and master on very large floorstanders.

My mixes never suffer from a lack of bass....

[Robert Manning]

The acoustics of your rooms are very important, so if you have a horrible sounding room then your in trouble!
studio monitors are designed to have a flat response over the whole FQ range. although this is not always the case, and there is not really a 'flat' (all monitor do have a slight harmonic characteristic to them) if that makes sense....

Reference is a key word. you need to know how your monitors sound inside out, (play your fave album over and over) your effectively referencing against the existing available material. as well as ruling out unwanted FQ within the individual sounds, ie, taking anything under 200k away from a guitar as that may be a nasty bassy hum, which is not want you want competing with your bass FQ. (very layman's terms)

Headphones are for tracking your stereo field initially and monitoring high pressure sounds, ei a Kick drum, although if your studio is lovely and nice sounding i think think your need them much in the mixing process

The stereo field on headphones is very lets say 'exaggerated', and most listener will be experiencing the music on HI FI speakers, which will be complimenting the sound, and sweetening!

dont use hi fi speakers for monitoring!

Headphones.... IF YOU WANT TO MIX ETC ON HEADPHONES... try this... [url="http://www.focusrite.com/products/audio_interfaces/vrm_box/"]http://www.focusrite.com/products/audio_interfaces/vrm_box/[/url]

mastering too... FYI is for MASTERING ENGINEERS! its a black art and the finest producer don't master there own music! you can sent your compleate mixes to RAK EMI [url="http://rakmastering.com/"]http://rakmastering.com/[/url]

hope this helps.

[Rimskidog]

In truth, do what you can afford. Good quality studio monitors make it easier to get a well balanced mix. The further you move away from a flat monitoring chain/environment (and I include the room acoustics in that), the more difficult you will find it to mix. That doesn't mean you wont ultimately arrive at the same place, it will just take you much longer to do so.

So, all that said, if you can only afford an rca lead to get the sound through your hifi speakers, do that (and assume the mix will go through a bunch of iterations before it's 'finished', if you can afford a little more get some room treatment first (as mentioned above this is important but can be DIY'd for little cash) and then by all means get some b***inger Truths (which tell anything but IMO), if you are serious about this game you'll need some decent monitors at some point such as the Adam A7x. When you get really serious about it you might get a pair of Barefoots, once you are obsessive about it you'll need a pair of ATC SCM300ASLs ;-)

FWIW I'd say don't rely solely on any pair of headphones, no matter how good. They will not (and indeed cannot) tell you whether you have any phase cancellation issues)

As ever ymmv

[Oggy]

Thank you guys for all the advice and suggestions it’s really helpful.

Looks as though for the time being I’ll have to persevere with the earphones; I’ll also hook up the CD player and see if that’ll help. When / if I can get some cash together I’ll invest in a pair of ‘proper’ monitor speakers, until then it looks as though Tesco will be doing a roaring trade in CD’s - with me doing multiple cut’s to try and get it sounding (almost) right.

Thanks again, appreciated

Oggy

[woodyratm]

Another thing that i've found can be helpful is to mix it down and burn to a cd and test it in a car and a normal stereo.

For some reason my car (stock speakers) shows up some stuff i'd not noticed.

[Oggy]

[quote name='woodyratm' post='1269925' date='Jun 15 2011, 12:17 PM']Another thing that i've found can be helpful is to mix it down and burn to a cd and test it in a car and a normal stereo.

For some reason my car (stock speakers) shows up some stuff i'd not noticed.[/quote]

Hi woody

A good few years ago I lived in Torquay; I got friendly (via the local pub) with a guy called Phil Dunne, not a well man at the time, I don’t know if he’s still around. Anyway, it came to light that Phil was the recording engineer who did most of the early Elton John and Chris Rea stuff, really interesting to chew the fat with and listen to his anecdotes – Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll – the stuff of legends.

At the time he was engineering the transition between vinyl and tape cassette was well under way. He told me that before they finalised a track he / them / they / the producer would stick it to tape and nip outside and play it on the car cassette player plus get it played at some odd time of night on a radio station (no idea what station) to hear the sound before it was pronounced the finished article.

Your idea of testing a master on the car CD player could be – the way forward.

I've been having a look at evelbay for studio monitor speakers; second hand prices are very good.

Oggy

[b]EDIT:[/b] Corrected the spelling for Dunn to Dunne (Recording engineer for early Gus Dudgeon RIP stuff)

Edited June 15, 2011 by Oggy

[Oggy]

[quote name='bremen' post='1268760' date='Jun 14 2011, 03:33 PM']Do that. Find a compromise between what sounds good on headphones and 'ordinary' speakers. Headphones can be very revealing, but it's easy to get a 'lush' sound on cans that sounds thin and orrible on speakers.

There's a competition ongoing at DV247 to win some monitors, good luck![/quote]

Hi bremen

[u][b]My First Attempt at Bedroom (Cheapo ) Mixing and Monitoring [/b][/u]

I tried it! Bought an M-Audio Fast Track (the cheap one, £49.99 on ebay), pair of Sony headphones £14.99 – these I bought so that I could listen to playback via the USB through the M-Audio into the headphones and still have the headphone-out from the Mac connected to the Aux-in on the Panasonic CD player. Doing the last little lot meant that I only had to go to[b] ‘Preferences > Sound’ [/b]on the Mac to swap between the earphone monitoring and Panasonic CD player monitoring via the earphone out connector. I took on board what you said about earphones giving a ‘Lush’ sound so decided to go for cheaper Sony ones that, I’m sure for the price, wouldn’t give such a good quality sound – more in keeping with what I’d hear through the CD player, that was the thinking anyway .

I fired up GarageBand and loaded the raw WAV files that the studio gave me, no effects added just straight. I had one off each Guitar, Bass, Snare (top and bottom), Kick Drum, Toms (two) and two drums overhead mic’s. I didn’t load up the Vox track because it was done separately and I don’t know yet how to sync it with the other tracks – more about that later. I had a listen to each track individually first (orrible) and where I thought things could be improved (IMO) made a few adjustments i.e I ended up with 3 copies of the Guitar track and adjusted the volume levels for solo sections, intro and outro, graphics, reverb, compression etc etc until I had a sound that I thought was OK. On one of the tracks I only had the Intro, Solo’s and Outro sections (cut and paste) and added further volume and a wee bit of shorus – the studio recorder sound on the WAV files was pretty thin so this was my attempt so ‘thicken’ it up a bit. I had the overall sound / balance that I wanted in my head and went through all the tracks tweaking, copying, cut and pasting until I was happy. All of the above was done via the headphones. I then set about balancing the tracks to one another and using the pan to position the sounds and get relativity between them all – Oh the fun of it. After about 5 hours, and sore ears from the headphones I switched to listening and making final adjustments through the CD player – with EQ on the player set to Treble 0 and Bass 0. The result is the MP3 attached minus vocals.

I’m not sure how the align the vocal track with the instrumental track – I’ll have to play with GaragBand a bit more – failing that it’ll be an overdub track done in the bedroom using the M-Audio Fast Track and my trusty SM58 (complete with sock over it to cut the pop and sssssssssss.

Anyway, have a listen and let me know what you think of my first (Cheapo) attempt at mixing and mastering.

[attachment=83566:Midnight...611__BT_.mp3]

Oggy

[ironside1966]

Good headphones are no substitute for good monitors but they are the best solution for any one on a budget. Even if you can afford good monitors you may need to sort out the acoustic environment.
Over the last year I have spent allot of time sorting out other peoples recordings. All the tracks have the same problem far too much EQ and compression, every track seem to be the same they sound good in isolation (I say that with my Tongue in my cheek) but not in a mix.
Compare you mixes to similar commercial tracks don’t expect the same polish but listing to the comparative volume of each instrument and depth of the track, if you play your tracks through speakers go out of the room and have a listen has this can reveal problems in you mix epically the vocals or the lead instrument
Last bit of advice whatever monitors, speakers, headphones you use get to know them and how they sound

[Robert Manning]

Stock iPod earphones: very good for the odd check. a lot of people, could potentially bee listing to your final mix with those.