How to improve sound quality?

L

lembit_pet

New member
I am playing around in my home studio and it sounds allright. I have the basic stuff. The rooms is acoustically allright and I got the monitors on speaker stands and it sounds balanced. The problem is that I do not think it sounds good enough. Too sharp, too digital, too porridgelike, not enough air, not clear enough, not enough crisp or punchy.

Obviously it could be my mixing skills, but using eq, compression, side chain, etc does not make it sound more... analogue?

As I said, my setup is on basic level. My sound card is a M-audio 2496, I have a Mackie Tapco Blend 6 mixer, Behringer 2031A speakers, ADK A-51 mic. I use the Tapco as pre mic amp. I use Cubase and some VST synths and plugins.

I feel it is time to upgrade somewhere! A Digidesign HD with 192 I/O, a few vintage channel strips and compressors and a analogue summing mixer could do the trick. However, it's still a hobby and I am not a millionaire...

Any tips on where to start? Would a better sound card improve sound quality? Would an extarnal limiter on the final mix make it sound better? However, that would mean that the signal have to go through the D/A converter on my sound card twice... or should I store the final mix on a CD instead of the harddrive? How do you route your signals? Are software plugins really good enough?

This was a long text, but any tips on making the sound more vivid is helpful. Thanks.
 
Have you tried without the mixer? I've always found Mackie pre-amps to be a bit "brittle" and certainly lacking "warmth". If you can beg/borrow/steal something else to use as a pre-amp, that might be worth a try.

Similarly, I don't know your particular microphone but Chinese ones can be somewhat variable--it the mic is leaning the same direction as the Tapco, that could be another issue.

Basically, my suggestion would be to consider the signal chain right at the start (mic and pre-amp) and make sure you're happy with these before you think about extra processing.

Bob
 
Upgrading is not the answer . . . at least with respect to the interface, channel strips and so on. Even your mike, mixer and monitors should give you reasonable results.

If you are not getting the sound you want, think first about the room and what it is doing to the sound, then think about mike placement. Importantly, think about the performance. The better you can get the source, and how you capture the source, the easier the task becomes afterwards.

There is no need to go through the complications of storing a final mix on a CD (except as back-up), or sending a signal to an external limiter. A plug-in will work just fine, and most software plugins are ok.
 
kassie said:
hi lembit_pet,

A lot of computers today have really good sound circuitry right on the motherboard.
Click to expand...

With the utmost respect, that is simply not true. The on-board sound (typically something like Realtek) is, without exception, very poor quality--suitable only for things like Youtube playback and Skype calls. They are certainly not suitable for any serious music recording--the pre amps on the inputs are very noisy and low quality, have very limited headroom and the circuits live in an electrically noisy area so background noise is almost always an issue when you listen on decent monitors.

In any case, the original poster has an M-Audio 2496 which IS a very good specialist multi track card.
 
Get a good DA converter like a Benchmark DAC-1 (the new BLA DAC's look good too) and some better monitors. Those Behringers will just keep you guessing.

And I'm willing to bet your room is not "alright" as you put it.

Only once you remedy your monitoring chain and optimize your monitoring environment will you be able to eliminate the guessing game from your situation.

Cheers :)
 
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