Page 49 - Zone Magazine Issue 007

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A1-2 Audio Tech Session 004
Thanks again for joining me at zone-magazines tech section. I'm going to continue on from previous articles and burn the ear off you about stuff that you probably should be doing on an everyday basis to prevent you from absolutely ruining mixes. I've accumulated a serious number of software compressors, EQ’s, reverbs, delays and every other sort of tool capable of ruining a mix in a very short amount of time and I have committed some of the worst audio atrocities committed to binary over the years.
Thankfully I'm not in the habit of doing this anymore, through processes that have made me really think about and listen to what I’m doing to the audio I'm presented with. The first thing I had to do which might sound obvious was to LISTEN!!! Sometimes this eludes us because we're watching all those fancy meters in front of us and not using the most important thing associated with audio, our ears. We've all sat with a sound in solo mode made it sound absolutely astounding only to drop it back into the mix and it disappears into oblivion, not enough low, not enough mid, way too much high. I rarely if ever these days use solo mode and I definitely don't spend any more than a couple of seconds in there trying to resolve a problematic frequency. What I suppose it all comes down to is listening, does a sound need EQ or compression? Does it need reverb or delay? Before I really started to listen I used to apply very broad brush strokes with all the processes I've just mentioned, like everything in life I firmly believe you have to do this in the first place to realise what a God awful mess of a mix one can truly make.
So how did I overcome making bad decisions? I had to go back to the start and understand that whilst a seemingly high track count sounds great in theory, mixing it so that it sounded cohesive and punchy was something totally different. So I had to start looking at sound choice's and aspects of the arrangement, often the most over looked part of the process and what I mean by that is this. When we have laboured over a track and arrive at the point where it no longer excites us anymore.
This happens for a number of reasons, ear fatigue (monitors or headphones are dangerously loud) sound source selection (samples library sounds already maxed out at 0db) and that old chestnut of whether your hardware synth or plugin sounds better, personally they all sound
great to me. I think we've come a long way from
the early days of VST instruments, yes they sounded awful and nothing like what they purported to be modelled on. But thankfully we are no longer in the place. We add clutter as we start to lose the vibe with something, adding in layers of unnecessary sounds trying to bulk to it so it gives you the sense of excitement that it once did. The best thing you can do is to try to pare it back.
When I approach a mix nowadays, there are a number of simple tasks that I set out at the start. I will generally listen through the mix a couple of times and have a listen for obvious issues, bad crossfades, timing, tuning, masking or clashing of sounds in similar frequency ranges. These are more common issues if the person is monitoring on grannies old Hi-fi we discussed in early articles.
My second port of call is to make sure that what's coming into the DAW isn't over cooking the plugins, you’re probably wondering about this.
We'll as I mentioned earlier a lot of sample libraries, synths and VST instruments for some reason feel the need to burn the arse out of the signal on the way in, consider this. If you’re thinking about doing some cuts and then a fairly healthy boost you’re probably going to start to run out of headroom. I normally start with a trim plugin and take stuff back by a healthy 12 to 16db, pending on how close to 0db the signal is. If you multiply this by the number of tracks you have in your mix you will realise just how much extra headroom you have over you entire mix. I've found this method to be hugely helpful in maintaining a very healthy dynamic range and a much more open sound.
The next element of the mix I look at is EQ, again I no longer use solo mode to make corrections. I will generally apply cuts first and add boosts later once all the sounds are sitting together in the mix a bit better it results in a smoother more cohesive, natural sound, everything will have its place and your mix won't sound like it has massive holes in it, from over EQ-ing in solo mode. I tend to use Sonnox EQ’s for corrective stuff as they are very precise and able to notch out even the most problematic frequencies, boosting on the other hand will normally be looked after by something which has a bit more colour and vibe to it. I find the TubeTech Classic Channel to be hugely powerful for giving sounds weight and vibe that standard digital EQ’s aren't capable of, again I have a healthy collection of modelled plugins that are really great for adding colour. That's the
way I think about EQ, colour lots of colour.
I'm a huge fan of parallel processing and will often use sends and returns to dial in compression to give a sound more presence, of course you can use inserts but I always feel being able to blend between the original and the compressed is a better way to, unless the processor is capable of processing the original and the compressed then your good to go. I'm using less and less compression these days, tending to focus more on automating things more if they become swallowed up in a mix.
Again in every area of my mix practices these days I've reigned in the excesses, soupy delays have been replaced by sharp punctuated compressed versions that don't take over the middle section of the mix. So I will normally set up dual mono delays with compressors to control how loud they bounce around in the mix. If I'm using reverbs again I will tend to do the same and automate to taste. I'm a fan of pitch shifting for introducing a sense of stereo and depth on group channels for sounds that are a bit 2 dimensional, pads and background sounds will thank you for it.
I used to be a devil for slamming the 2 buss compressor, nowadays I'm happy with 1 to 1.5 dB of reduction and find that more than adequate, again I suppose it depends on what kinda flavour your looking for, some like a bit more vibe on the 2 buss. I've grown out of it as I've learned to control my over indulgence in compression unless I really need it.
It's all about listening, critical listening. It will stand to you in the long run, always have reference mixes at hand and don't be too worried about the loudness of commercially released material. They have the best mastering houses at their disposal, so don't stress about it. My main reason in putting this article together is after many years I find it much easier to get to the place I need to get to. If I'd been told all those years ago about proper gain structuring it would have saved me many hours of head scratching, bad mixes and heart ache.
There are a bunch of ways to get stuff to sound loud and punchy these days, hopefully this article might point you in the right direction. I'm particularly fond of the Sonnox Inflator, Sonnox Limiter. I suggest you check out trial versions of these amazing plugins.
I've tried to cover a bit of everything in this article, hopefully you'll get some useful pointers from it.
ESSENTIALDANCEMUSIC 49
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