JJ sings???? Well, yeah, I have my own record I am making also.....
- Thread starter jjinvegas
- Start date
That is just me. Appreciate the commentary, and I am working on an album but have become a little sidetracked helping others. But the benefits of collaboration include a bit of capital to improve my arsenal, and the joys of playing and producing without the bellybutton gazing of my own output.......
andrushkiwt
Well-known member
this is great man. excellent vocal performance and arrangement. your ride sounds great to me, snare too. i doubt i can offer much assistance here, everything is spaced well, even, and balanced. great job, looking forward to hearing more from you.
Overall I thought it was pretty good. Good performances all around and the tone is nice.
Like your other tune, the drums are extremely compressed and I'm hearing clipping.
The other thing that struck me was that it seemed that everything was trying to be the center of attention. The guitars and vocal were getting in each other's way.
Like your other tune, the drums are extremely compressed and I'm hearing clipping.
The other thing that struck me was that it seemed that everything was trying to be the center of attention. The guitars and vocal were getting in each other's way.
I am sort of confused about what you mean by clipping, as it traditionally meant overloaded to the point of audible distortion. Now, is there some dynamic processing at work, yes. I grew up recording to tape, mostly 16trk two inch, with drums slammed to get that brickwall effect, and I try to emulate that as best I can with the tools I can find in the freeware domain. And in the days of ballistic metering part of the component of the classic snare sound is definitely distortion, if the drum is peaking at, say, 0db on the meter, there is a good chance that is closer to plus twenty. On this particular song, if memory serves, there is a pretty gentle compressor on the drum summing bus, like maybe 3 db, and I typically mix through some mastering-style limiting, as I have found that it is more efficient and less troublesome than finding out later that getting mixes to generally agree with the competition from the big boys in terms of level and dynamic range caused my mix to change drastically once it was squashed to contemporary thinking. But there are lots of competing ideas on this, since neither I nor my small group of regular clients has the inclination or cash for separate mastering this seems to be the best compromise. My main issue is whether or not things translate to various listening devices and environments, on that score I am pretty happy with this approach, from crappy all-in-one computer monitoring to the car to my bloated hi-fi overkill set-up, it seems to sound about the same.....
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
The whole mix is clipping all over the place. Sometimes converting to mp3 can alter things and cause minor clipping, but this is more than that. The RMS level of 7.3dB is pretty hot for this style. I think 14dB of dynamic range would be just about right. What's your mastering procedure?
Mix is a little busy: I'd simplify the congas. Vocals get lost in places, and I think this style needs the vocals on top of the mix. Bass is ever so slightly boomy. I don't know if I'd cut something around 100Hz or back it off a little and find a "definition" frequency (in the 500-2k range?) to boost. There's something about the groove that seems a little off. I can't put my finger on it.
This is all said in light of the fact that it sounds basically great to begin with.
Mix is a little busy: I'd simplify the congas. Vocals get lost in places, and I think this style needs the vocals on top of the mix. Bass is ever so slightly boomy. I don't know if I'd cut something around 100Hz or back it off a little and find a "definition" frequency (in the 500-2k range?) to boost. There's something about the groove that seems a little off. I can't put my finger on it.
This is all said in light of the fact that it sounds basically great to begin with.
I definitely agree about the bass content, but I have been distracted working on other things and haven't gotten around to fixing it. And I didn't have a bass guitar until a couple of weeks ago, so this is a rompler and has some notes that are lower than a bass guitar can get to. I never listened to the MP3, tell me from this source if you think it is clipping.......https://soundcloud.com/jjinvegas/dont-leave-me-behind-jj-johnson-and-the-cyberunknowns-mix-1
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
Mixing into a limiter is okay, I guess. I don't do it. I master my own stuff most of the time, as a separate process in a different room. If mastering reveals a problem then I go back to the mix and address it. Part of mastering an album is adjusting for the differences between songs. Putting your mastering processors in your mix projects obstructs that critical part of the job. You could bypass them when exporting your stereo file, make a note of the settings and use that as a starting point in a separate mastering project.
I mean it like it's usually meant (and as you understand it). I'm hearing distortion (clipping) on quite a few of the snare hits. I suspect that the snare, all by itself, might not be clipping. But with everything else in the mix playing, I can hear clipping.
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
Well, I don't have a clip light to confirm it but it sounds about the same, sort of a hint of harshness all around plus a distinct crack on all peaks. Some DA converters will distort quite badly with these clipping peaks and some won't. It could sound fine to me and awful on another system. I wouldn't mind hearing this with the master bus processing bypassed.
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
The sound of the clipping itself is subtle. I suspect the less forgiving converters would have a more analog distortion sound. They simply don't have the headroom to accommodate intersample peaks. That's why it's common practice to leave a tiny amount of headroom in mastering. The two common values are -0.1dB and -0.3dB. I use -0.3dB.
The sound of the clipping itself is subtle. I suspect the less forgiving converters would have a more analog distortion sound.... Yeah, my system didn't pick it up on either set of monitors. So I pulled it up and looked first at the time it was mixed, gee, 2:30 a.m., not always the best time to be judging audio but when I get on a roll time is sort of meaningless. Then I looked at the mixbus, lo and behold, I didn't have my master treatment set up in my usual fashion, no limiter and protection (Limiter 6) and no hi-pass filter either. See if this doesn't work better, I am so used to the sound of that huge muff bass in this song that lowering it very much completely alters the blend of the rest of the instruments, so instead I tamed it down with a filter. It still reveals too much about the electric piano, but I can deal with it. And I took the congas out of all except the first half of verses, I always intended to replace the fake ones with real but I have recorded about twenty songs in the six weeks since I did this song so things are always getting pushed back on the stove. I wish to thank those that chimed in, we all work in a vacuum and lately I am just rushing through things to get them up and going, figuring I will pay closer attention when I decide I have all the songs recorded in a fashion that I feel confident about. I didn't get sufficient I/O to record drums until shortly before I tracked this song, so it was early in the latest incarnation of what I am doing....cheers!!!!! Here is hopefully a file that has the fixes needed.....
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
I only had a short listen but I like where the vocal is sitting better. I'll have another listen later.
The thing is, a huge blog could arise around just this song and the Fletcher-Munson curve, available headroom and voltage compromises at the mixbus, and the real difficulties of mixing, which haven't changed since consoles had more than two inputs. Because just something so simple as reducing the bass content of a single track changes the voltage at the L/R bus that an entire mix changes radically when you take that additional headroom availability and use it to push the mix forward. Suddenly, the vocal sounds too up front, the guitar has all these extra details that may be less desireable, and the entire curve of the mix and the listening experience changes drastically. When you see someone walking around Hollywood sort of mumbling and twitching and listening to a radio only they can hear, chances are that they are former engineers wondering what the HECK????!!!!!
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
Okay then.
On a lighter note, I am fairly familiar with Boulder, back in the day I played the Kollege Klub and the Blue Note, The Pioneer Inn, as well as Sam's on Lookout Mountain, and all over that region. I still have good friends in the area, Radio Pete (also known as Mark Bleisner) who got into management, and Nona Gandlemann, who must have retired as an agent by now. I used to play with Dick Ramada before he was dick'n the chicks, well he was but wasn't called that....smile.
VomitHatSteve
Hat STYLE. Not contents.
The second mix does sound like it has the vocals in a better place.
The only thing that really sticks out to me is that something is weird with the congas. I think they're cutting through the mix is a weird way. They actually sound like clips more than a drum half the time, but I suspect that's a weird frequency thing rather than actual volume.
The only thing that really sticks out to me is that something is weird with the congas. I think they're cutting through the mix is a weird way. They actually sound like clips more than a drum half the time, but I suspect that's a weird frequency thing rather than actual volume.
Bruthish
Hair Metal Roxx!
Really cool song. Really love the vibe you have going. Between both mixes... the second sounds better. Vocals are perfect and the drums do not sound overly compressed like the first mix. I do think that the guitars seem to have come up in volume due to your cuts. They are more in your face now, so I think they need to be dialed back some.