Mixing Question: Problems getting healthy dynamics range, re: vocals
- Thread starter Tesgin
- Start date
miroslav
Cosmic Cowboy
Well, TBH...there was a lot of work needed with your original tracks before it would make sense to even start talking about plugin chains and all that, and do any actual mixing.
IOW...I simply wouldn't want to mix those tracks as they were...and rerecording new tracks or doing more involved editing of all your tracks to get them to the mixing stage, was not my plan. I just have too much other stuff going on.
I was mostly going to just fix your vocal track so it would not upset the dynamic range of your mix...and then let you get on with it.
I understand why jkuehlin re-recorded parts, and redid the drums, and tossed out things that weren't working...it made it quicker and easier to get to the mixing and the plugin chains and all that....and since he also tweaked your vocals, then I have nothing to add to this since I don't use Reaper or have the same plugins as you two guys.
I think if you want to learn how other people do things and compare mixes and all that...go hang out in the MP3 Clinic forum, or get involved in the Mix This! forum here on HR.
jkuehlin
New member
I did a lot of fiddling with the drums. I layered several snares and had to play with the internal controls to blend them, I also had to spend some time fiddling with the envelope and ASDR filters. Its a bit much to try and describe, would probably make more sense seeing the session. One thing I do to keep the drums snappy and powerful is never use reverbs on the kick, snare, or toms. Used this trick on all of the tracks on the website. EQ'd, compressed, and heavily saturated but always 100% dry. Similar to mixing recorded drums, I rely pretty heavily on room mics for width and image. All the verb that appears to be coming from the snare are layers of verb and more verb on the room mics only.
For me, the trick with the bass is to make obnoxious boosts. 12 to 18 db at times in the 700 range. Then mash it up with compression. I had to run 2 EQ's back to back because I couldn't get enough 700 hz out of one EQ with the boost wide open. Then I doubled the bass four times and applied heavy multi-band distortion to the parallel tracks with hi-pass filters engaged. Note that this only works because the only other thing happening in this mix is choppy guitars, vocals, and drums. So there's a lot of space to really ramp up the bass. I would have used the Vitamin if I'd realized that it wasn't cutting through on a laptop. The Vitamin is a good way to add harmonics that enhance the bass on a laptop and iPhone but without the added frequencies interfering with your mix on bigger systems.
The 1176 on the overheads is solely responsible for softening the harshness of the cymbals. I didn't even have to EQ them. The 1176 also draws out the tails of the sustain in the cymbals by acting sort of like a dynamics expander.
jkuehlin
New member
Yeah... that wasn't gonna happen lol.
That's what I thought too... surprise surprise lol.
I copy pasted the bass line into the verses, and tweaked the drum settings. I used his midi track.
The delete button went a long way.
Sure you do... go ahead and give it a shotI have nothing to add to this since I don't use Reaper or have the same plugins as you two guys.
Coquet-Shack
Member
WOW...I'M AMAZED!!!!!!!!!!
NO OTHER DAW CAN DO THAT!!!!!!!!!
You still have to decide on one or the other rate...or does Reaper read your mind and make the decision for you.
Samplitude does. Asks if you want to convert to project rate.
miroslav
Cosmic Cowboy
Johnny Don't!
New member
Yes, there are so many online resources to learn about recording, mixing, mastering, sampling, arranging...it's amazing. Ever heard of YouTube? Haha. And if you've got the cash, you can pay for all sorts of master classes online at various levels of pricing and experience...pretty sure Masterclass.com has a six-hour course on electronic music production from Deadmau5 for like $90. Just one example. And that's $15 a freakin' hour. That's what Amazon pays their employees, and you can pay that much for a class from a guy like Deadmau5. It's crazy.
That being said, I am not sure if anyone suggested this trick or not, but most mix engineers I know from many different levels in the industry, guys like Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Heartless Bastards, Leann Womack) and Johnny K (Disturbed, Finger Eleven, Megadeth, Plain White T's) and Manny Sanchez (Fallout Boy, Psy) all use at least two, if not three compressors on most vocals, especially lead vocals and lead harmonies. That would REALLY make it a lot easier to even out the final mix levels on your original track. They typically set the first compressor to a hard and fast setting to catch all the plosive sounds that peak out the meters, like 10:1 ratio with fast attack/release settings but only grabbing maybe 3-5 db of the signal...then the second one is set to smooth things out a bit, like 3:1, medium attack, slightly slower than medium release, and it should be consistently grabbing 7-10db. I prefer a Distressor on most male rock vocals. (This trick is also assuming the vocals were tracked through a compressor and touched just a bit by it on the way in. If not, then the first compressor assumes that function and the second one becomes the first one as described above and so forth.)
For the record, I wouldn't worry about the LRA or whatever that is; the difference between the quietest and loudest parts are almost irrelevant these days, unless you plan on going to terrestrial radio with it (ever heard "Today" by the Smashing Pumpkins on FM radio? It's hilarious how much louder the VERY quiet guitar intro becomes next to the HUGE entry of the full band as it is on the recording...not sure why Virgin didn't send out a single version mastered specifically for radio...they did that for my band when I was signed to them about ten years back). I would mainly consider the average and the peaks and try to smooth out the difference between the two a bit. But only a bit. Personally, I'm not a fan of how a lot of modern albums are mastered, as if having even a little *true* dynamic range would cause cancer or something. I think it's the mistaken human perception that louder is better. Balls, I say!
jkuehlin
New member
Ok... I have this thing ready to send this back to you.
How do I pack a Reaper file to send the thing back. Do I just zip the entire folder Amazing Grace Amazing Love folder and deliver the whole thing? Or is there a cleaner way to do it from inside Reaper?
Tesgin, you'll have a few plugins that won't load like the Anteres Autotune Pro and the UAD David Eden cab, but for anything that's not Scheps, Classics Comps, and stock Reaper etc... I have a duplicate track printed with the audio stems. You might not be able to study this in depth until you have those Waves, but let me send it to you anyway so you'll have it ready when they pop up on sale at Waves.
I would say pay close attention to how certain parameters were tweaked in XLN. A few quick notes, when you multi-out your kit pieces, you have to NOT include a split to the master. You want to be completely bypassing that XLN master for organizational purposes. You were actually sending a redundant parallel signal through your master chain. You do this by clicking the yellow arrow and at the bottom of the XLN mixer and saying pre fader not pre fader + master.
Link additional kicks and snares into flex 1, flex 2, and flex 3 slots by using the chain icon next to the kit piece picture. You click drag the little sideways figure 8 chain icon and drop it on the piece you want to link to. This is how you stack several kicks and snares. You may choose to route all linked snares to the same reaper channel. I didn't I sent the two different snare to two different reaper channels, but its perfectly acceptable to sum them.
When you look through addictive, I modded the pitch and envelope filters for the kick drum, and I tuned the balance of the kick through the overheads and room mics. To me thats a pretty important part of making it sound bigger.
I always start a mix with the master fader at unity. I usually start with the bus compression off, then add it toward the end, but thats preference. Some mix guys keep it on the entire mix.
How do I pack a Reaper file to send the thing back. Do I just zip the entire folder Amazing Grace Amazing Love folder and deliver the whole thing? Or is there a cleaner way to do it from inside Reaper?
Tesgin, you'll have a few plugins that won't load like the Anteres Autotune Pro and the UAD David Eden cab, but for anything that's not Scheps, Classics Comps, and stock Reaper etc... I have a duplicate track printed with the audio stems. You might not be able to study this in depth until you have those Waves, but let me send it to you anyway so you'll have it ready when they pop up on sale at Waves.
I would say pay close attention to how certain parameters were tweaked in XLN. A few quick notes, when you multi-out your kit pieces, you have to NOT include a split to the master. You want to be completely bypassing that XLN master for organizational purposes. You were actually sending a redundant parallel signal through your master chain. You do this by clicking the yellow arrow and at the bottom of the XLN mixer and saying pre fader not pre fader + master.
Link additional kicks and snares into flex 1, flex 2, and flex 3 slots by using the chain icon next to the kit piece picture. You click drag the little sideways figure 8 chain icon and drop it on the piece you want to link to. This is how you stack several kicks and snares. You may choose to route all linked snares to the same reaper channel. I didn't I sent the two different snare to two different reaper channels, but its perfectly acceptable to sum them.
When you look through addictive, I modded the pitch and envelope filters for the kick drum, and I tuned the balance of the kick through the overheads and room mics. To me thats a pretty important part of making it sound bigger.
I always start a mix with the master fader at unity. I usually start with the bus compression off, then add it toward the end, but thats preference. Some mix guys keep it on the entire mix.
Last edited:
ashcat_lt
Well-known member
No Reaper doesn't have any kind of "bundle" function. As long as you're sure that all of the necessary audio and/or midi files are in the project folder, just zip it up. While this is a form of file compression, it is completely different from audio file compression like MP3/AAC etc. It is completely lossless and actually doesn't usually end up compressing audio files much if at all. So the folder won't get much smaller, but it will be more portable.
Yeah, what ashcat said. Just zip it and WeTransfer the zip. You have my personal email.
Perfect. Thank you. No, I don't have the first two (is the UAD plug an amp sim?), and I don't have Schepps or the Classic Comps Bundle, but after talking with you, I will plan on getting those. I'll d/l the demo and purchase when the price drops. The lowest price I've seen for Schepps Omni is $29, which happens frequently; would anyone know what the lowest price is that the comps bundle goes for? Jonathan was thinking $55-ish. It would bug me to purchase it for $99 (today's price) only to see it drop $40 in a week. Ugh.
Thanks for this. Actually, in my initial posting of the song that's what I did, but then I started messing around with adding the master back in, as kind of a parallel buss. I'll make it go away!
THAT I did not know. I saw flex 1,2,3 but didn't know how to do it. Great feature.
THAT's what I want to learn how to do. I'll study closely what you did, cuz your kick and snare really cut thru and have a nice snap, nice presence.
I'm also eager to study what you did with the bass track. That was very nice.