More clarity on the loudness wars

[51m0n]

[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!

[lowdown]

[quote name='51m0n' post='1367366' date='Sep 9 2011, 10:13 AM']tape saturation emulation on nearly every track & every group too[/quote]

Have you checked this out?
Raving about it over at gearsluz.
So little CPU, use it on every track & Buss. Its a neat little tool and does sound good.

[url="http://dsp.sonimus.com/products/satson/"]Satson[/url]



Garry

[BOD2]

I occasionally help out a friend to do disco/parties for friends. We played one a couple of weeks ago where a large part of the evening's music was to be from the sixties. So we got a hold of some sixties compilation CDs from Amazon and off we went...

I was watching the level LEDs on the DJ mixer (this was all CDs - no vinyl). When we played the sixties CDs the LEDs were bouncing about in time to music, just occasionally peaking into the orange and the sound was vibrant with occasional peaks. When we put on more "current" dance music (i.e. from the last 10 years or so) the levels just stayed constant - hardly any movement - and the difference in sound was immediately obvious, and actually quite irritating.

The current music was not any louder - the peaks were the same as the sixties music - but it was just always up there and in your face. No variation - just full on constantly.

[flyfisher]

[quote name='51m0n' post='1367366' date='Sep 9 2011, 10:13 AM']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.[/quote]

Interesting stuff. Can you expand a bit on why you use a compressor [u]and[/u] a tape saturation emulation if they are both ways of achieving the same thing?

[51m0n]

[quote name='lowdown' post='1367408' date='Sep 9 2011, 10:53 AM']Have you checked this out?
Raving about it over at gearsluz.
So little CPU, use it on every track & Buss. Its a neat little tool and does sound good.

[url="http://dsp.sonimus.com/products/satson/"]Satson[/url]



Garry[/quote]


Nice, hadnt seen it on GS, I am a complete cheapskate though, AFAIAC you can do as well with ReaEq (for filtering), ReaComp (for squishing), K-meter (or SPAN) - for metering, FerricTDS for tape saturation and TesslaPro for transformer style dynamics aware saturation (I only ever use this occasionally on groups), I also use several 'character' comps (DensityII, Molot, Blockfish, Attack and a few others very very occasionally)

No doubt this adds up on CPU, but the metering is not really required once you are happy, and if its really heavy I just render the track.

[51m0n]

[quote name='flyfisher' post='1367484' date='Sep 9 2011, 11:56 AM']Interesting stuff. Can you expand a bit on why you use a compressor [u]and[/u] a tape saturation emulation if they are both ways of achieving the same thing?[/quote]

Meeting done

OK so a tape saturation emulation with dynamics control is going to be attempting to mimic what tape does, but in the same way that people used compressors all the time with tape I use compressors all the time with tape emulation too.

I use varying amounts of the dynamics control verses the saturation artificats on FerricTDS (they are independant controls) depending on what works best for the source, but I'm also constantly working the envelope of the sound with careful compression to get it to work better in the mix.

Often I dont think in terms of simply changing dynamic when compressing so much, I tend to use automation for that, instead I use compressors to change the transient, when a sound gets loudest, how the sound behaves after the initial peak and so forth, to make space in a mix. Its hard to explain, but if I trap the transient of a bass guitar, with a very fast high threshold/ratio compressor, and let the transient of a kick through with a slow attack compressor, then you would hear the kick more than the bass. Not necessarily what I would do, but you get the idea.

It may be that the dynamics control of a tape saturation emulator (which tends to soften transients) is exactly what I dont want, but the saturation is working very well anyway, in this case I can use the comrpessor to get what I want working with the envelope of the sound, and the saturation effect helps to bringt he sound forward a bit too.

I'd rather use several compressors to do different things in series/parallel than try and achieve the same result in one go - mainly because you cant do what I am talking about with any one compressor.

Again on drum groups I quite often have a really hard pumping working compressor in parallel, maybe filtered too, and smashing the hell out of the signal, then just mixed back in enough so you cant hear it, but its doing something really good.

A lot of the time small amounts of saturation at many different levels of grouping gives a far nicer result than more saturation just at one place. Its hard to explain, but I just prefer the sound as a result. However using the same generic tape emulation dynamics processing in lots of differnt places will kill your mix dead. Just how it is. You would never have always driven everything super hard into the tape back in the day (well Iggy Pop did, but no one else), not always, but there is always a hint of the way the tape couldnt quite replay what you put into it, and it helps gel a mix wonderfully.

I use a lot of automation of levels, and thresholds and ratios too if necessary to get changes in sounds during a song. One of the tracks I recently mixed for Silddx involved automation of about 30 or 40 lanes of parameters on a drum kit through the song to seriously change the way the kit sounds, it starts of dark and muted and very obviously 'controlled' and yet punchy as, with a ton of subtle delay processing, then at another stage in the song it becomes far more natural with very little punch enhancement whilst the delay processing becomes at first more then far less overt, until in the final crescendo in the song the drums morph again to be very very hard hitting and in your face with no delay processing.

The places the controls end up are derived from the emotional point in the song, and the way the drums needed to sound to best convey that emotional aspect, to give the most to the song as possible, everything changes, yet If I didnt tell you this happened you would probably not pick out the drum processing as the big wow on the track, that is the vocals, but it really helps make the vocals what they are (the BV processing is quite the head turner too as it goes). I control aux sends, fx level, dry levels, group buss fx, ratios, thresholds, makeup gains and sauration/dynamics level on amost all the drum tracks and groups and subgroups to get the desired effect. Mixing like this, for the song, to get the biggest payback at the important moments, takes a long time, and painstaking attention to detail, but the result is amazing.

Edited September 9, 2011 by 51m0n

[51m0n]

[quote name='BOD2' post='1367456' date='Sep 9 2011, 11:34 AM']The current music was not any louder - the peaks were the same as the sixties music - but it was just always up there and in your face. No variation - just full on constantly.[/quote]

But the average level of the current music WAS louder.......

Thats the point!

[Skol303]

[quote name='51m0n' post='1367389' date='Sep 9 2011, 10:30 AM']Lucky guy, nice studio, and nice way to make a living![/quote]

^ Not 'arf!

I really liked his spring reverb thingy... never seen one of those before, but then my experience of studios is limited.

He comes across very well though - I liked it when he described heavily compressed tracks as being like 'rectangles', very true (although I prefer the term "a string of sausages" myself!).

[flyfisher]

[quote name='51m0n' post='1367534' date='Sep 9 2011, 12:33 PM']Meeting done

[snip][/quote]

Thanks very much for posting that description . . . so much to learn, so little time!

[GЯДИКФЯ]

Here's two versions of an Absu track I have. The top one is the original version and the second is the 'remaster'. The remaster sounds like sh*t!

[daz]

[quote name='51m0n' post='1366328' date='Sep 8 2011, 01:02 PM']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]


I have that same item. With the sounds put through a quality hi-fi it is very obvious. But even on my computer speakers the difference is there to hear.

[b][url="http://turnmeup.org/"]Turn me up[/url][/b]

Edited September 11, 2011 by daz