Best way to tame single instrument peaks

M

mwarkentin

New member
So I was reading that Sonusman mixing tips thread, and he mentioned if there's any part of your mix that has peaks >6db higher than the rest, then you should go back and rework the mix. I assume he was talking about something like this.



Those spikes are on my kick and snare. He mentioned using a limiter to tame them, but what kind of settings would I be looking at using? How much attenuation? I wish I could play around with it, but it's rather late and my roommates are sleeping.. just looking for some experienced ideas here.

Thanks,
Mike
 
Well, that's not really the kind of spikes that "need" to be tamed. They are at every beat, and they are part of the natural sound of the sources (snare and kick).

I think what sonusman meant was more like a single spike or 2 in the entire song, that is something like 6db louder than everything else. That would just be a waste because these happen only once and twice, and they are probably so fast that you won't even notice them. You are however, losing alot of hearroom to these spikes. That's why they should be tamed. You could use something like a hard limiter with a quick release set at -3db or -5db or something like that to catch all the peaks of the snare and kick, but I'd only do that if I really couldn't get the signal up loud enough to sit well in the mix. Try to finish your mix more first, and if the drums are still not loud enough, use a limiter, but carefully. If you don't have a problem with the drums sitting not well in the mix at all, forget all about the spikes, they won't hurt you.
 
You could open up the track in your favorite wave editor and reduce the volume of the spikes one at a time. While this may take some time, it may sound more natural than using compression or limiting. Then, compression can be used, if need be, in a much gentler way that won't alter the sound of the track as much.
Bacially, it's usually better to mildly limit an occasional peak than it is to squash the hell out of a bunch of big ones.

Terry
 
I was just about to post a question about this-
mine is related, here:

Can anyone give me their approach on this:

Peak Control on the full mix
hi,
I was wondering how you all manipulate your peaks on the stereo full mix file?
Using gain envelopes that is. I have Sonar but I'm sure every program does something like this.

a)Do you zoom in real big and place the points at the beginning and end of the rise in a spike?
b)Or do you zoom out a bit and make a gentle smoother cuts that sort of surround the spike-

I wonder about this since (I'm guessing) it looks like my compressor and limiter look ahead !

Maybe if it were more gradual it would be better? I don't know. My ears can't tell, I'm mainly thinking of the best way not to excite the compressor unecessarily. .
Can you share your method and why?

thanks alot
 
Alan and Mike,

Find my $.02 on this in this thread to which I just replied on this very subject this morning:

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=160590

Mike, you do have one spike in the middle there that appears to be about 2-3dB stronger than the rest of the tempo spikes in the picture. I personally would probably tame that manually in the mastering phase just to bring that in-line with the rest of the peaks before applying any general compression or volume changes. This will tend to make whateve compression you might have to or want to apply to the whole mix afterwards sound more relaxed and natural. And whether you apply a lot of compresion or not, taming that "extreme" peak (and others like it that go above and beyond the avterage tempo peak height) will give you just that much more headroom to play with if you do any (*shudder*) RMS normalization or (*aaahhh!*) vanilla volume boosts. And deadening the extreme peaks by 3 or 4 dB costs practically nothing in terms of sound, and when it does, it's usually for the better.

G.
 
tkingen said:
You could open up the track in your favorite wave editor and reduce the volume of the spikes one at a time.
Terry
Click to expand...
Wait, wait! Can I do that in Sound Forge? I never thought of that! Brilliant! :eek:
 
lbanks said:
Wait, wait! Can I do that in Sound Forge? I never thought of that! Brilliant! :eek:
Click to expand...
Oh, baby, I make most of my money doing that kind of stuff in Sound Forge. :D

It's amazing how many pieces of wave editing software there are out there and how little wave editing is actually done because everybody wants to wave their magic plug-in wands and make their bad sounds disappear. :rolleyes:

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
It's amazing how many pieces of wave editing software there are out there and how little wave editing is actually done because everybody wants to wave their magic plug-in wands and make their bad sounds disappear. :rolleyes:
G.
Click to expand...
Haha - funny Glen...my editors are just an excuse to insert as many VST plugins as possible :D
 
Drummer4Life05 said:
Mix with your ears, not your eyes.
Click to expand...
True enough, for sure. But can your ears hear the difference between a -4dB transient and a -2dB transient? When that extra 2dB that lasts 2ms is keeping you from getting a good RMS level on your mixdown via comprssion, normalization, or other automated wizardry, sometimes it's best and fastest to look and see what your ears are missing and why the tools aren't tooling the way you'd expect.

But 99% of the rest of the time I'd agree with you completly :)

G.
 
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