tubesrawsom
New member
be more carefull next time, but you can use tht clipping to your advantage for some snare dist.
Light
New member
shackrock said:
Yeah, but if you know Aardy, he isn't so good with the whole abstinence thing.
I have to say, though, that if I didn't already know this shit, I would still be inclined to listen to Aardy. First of all, he knows his shit. He is talking about what happens in the real world. Sure, it would be nice to avoid all overs, all the time. But you know what? If your doing a mix for someone, you don't have that choice. You get what they send you, and if you don't like it, tough shit. Make it work. You may as well learn how to do it, because eventually your going to need to know.
Second, Aardy doesn't talk anything at all like someone just out of recording school. I have never met a recent recording school graduate who would EVER say that overs of any size were workable. Including myself, back in the day. "Ah, yeah, sorry about that Mr. Waits, sir. Your take was perfect, and I know you killed your voice doing it, but we got some transient overs, so would you mind doing it again?" Fuck that. You do your best, and then you use the best take. If you can make it work, make it work. In the end, the engineering is going to be noticed by the people on this board, on Gear Slutz, and NO ONE ELSE.
Third, Aardy has sold more gear than just about any two people on this board have ever owned. Literally. Why he sold his studio is an unbelievably inspiring story, but this is neither the time nor the place.
And then, of course, you always have to give props to a guy who can get a blow job while in the hospital from a striper whose name he doesn't even know yet. May not count for much in terms of audio knowledge, but I respect it none the less.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
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Light
New member
reshp1 said:Not only are you completely wrong about everything else, I'd just like to point out that the above would not work since the key input of the gate will OPEN the gate on every snare hit, not close it.
EDIT, and even if it did work the way you described, having an overhead track that cuts out everytime your snare hits is going to do wonders for your stereo image.
Ever heard of DUCKING.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
bigwillz24
New member
Light said:
Sure he has... hes been doing it the whole thread... Surely he's a pro at ducking by now!
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
I'll listen to anybody who doesn't talk nonsense, and even respect someone who can regularly talk sense.Light said:
But frankly his position and reasoning in this thread sound exactly like those of someone who knows just enough to get himself in trouble and not enough to know what it is that he doesn't know. That position has nothing to do with the viability of occasional transient clipping, it has to do with his advocation of extensive clipping as a legitimate recording technique. That is just plain unsellable. Do engineers sometimes have to push their stuff harder than they know they should because the chimpanzee on their back is telling them to? Yes, of course. Does that make it a recommendable technique? No. Just because something is done does not make it right; truth is not a matter of public behavior. As a supposed engineer, Aardvark should know better.
And BTW, if I had Tom Waits in my barn and there was an audible problem with the recording, you bet your ass I'd ask for a re-take, or at least suggest the possibility. It would be irresponsible not to. Tom could always decline, if he felt the performance was worth the cost of the glitch. But if he comes into the CR, listens to the playback of what you are saying is an OK take and then he hears a problem that I was ready to let pass, I have now become a non-engineer (or at least an amateur one) in his eyes, and I know I'd never get his business again.
G.
C
Cloneboy Studio
.
Light said:
I would tend to say that he *THINKS* he knows his shit, and has done a good job in convincing you that he does. However, he reminds me of one of those people that gets lost in the little details and misses the whole picture.
I've yet to get a response from his dumb ass about the intelligence of permanently losing data (clipping) for the sake of increasing other data (resolution) that is probably less important to the sound.
A
AGCurry
New member
I agree with Light, the voice of moderation.
I used to be in the "NEVER over" camp. It was demonstrated to my ears one time that one of my mixes sounded wimpy compared to a mix of the same stuff which was recorded hotter. My ears told me the truth. The mastering guy I use told me that a few quick overs are inconsequential in comparison to the dynamic-range issue.
When I record I try not to go over, but now I pay more attention to the flip side, which is that tracks should be as hot as possible WITHOUT going over. There's more to work with. And a little over now and then generally doesn't amount to a showstopper.
I used to be in the "NEVER over" camp. It was demonstrated to my ears one time that one of my mixes sounded wimpy compared to a mix of the same stuff which was recorded hotter. My ears told me the truth. The mastering guy I use told me that a few quick overs are inconsequential in comparison to the dynamic-range issue.
When I record I try not to go over, but now I pay more attention to the flip side, which is that tracks should be as hot as possible WITHOUT going over. There's more to work with. And a little over now and then generally doesn't amount to a showstopper.
reshp1
New member
Yes I have, it's done with a compressor, not a gate.Light said:
C
Cloneboy Studio
.
AGCurry said:
I see things exactly the opposite. Mixes recorded too hot sound thin to me.
Question: was the *playback* volume the same on those two mixes? Because if something is louder it automatically sounds "better" to our ears at short exposure compared to something lesser in volume.
If not, maybe A/B the "hot" mix versus the "cold" mix when their volume is the same and see what happens.
Light
New member
Cloneboy Studio said:
Actually, I've heard a fair bit of his shit. He's good. What else would you have me judge him on, pray tell?
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
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Light
New member
reshp1 said:
Well, I don't know about you, but every good studio I've ever worked in had a few of THESE, which is what I've always used for ducking. Scroll down a bit, you'll see it.
Yeah, right there. Where it says,
Probably the most common high end gate in the world, as near as I can tell.
Now, from the manual:
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
Light
New member
Cloneboy Studio said:
You do realize, don't your, that he never said anything of the kind, right? He said that a few occasional - small - overs are preferable to losing resolution. Now granted, a slight loss of resolution may not matter much when things are soloed at unity, but when you start cutting them back to fit into the mix, loosing MORE resolution (at least, in the digital domain), it starts to have a very real effect.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
He said more than that. if you read the next paragraph, he saysLight said:
This is the statement that I have a real problem with.AardvarkPSW said:
First it's a referral to the misguided "RMS wars" fad amongst producers and engineers these days who feel it's OK to sacrifice quality of sound for quantity of sound. And I'm not talking about an occaional 0.25ms transient that wants to go a half dB over what the data can handle, and neither is Aardvark at that point, whether he realizes it or not.
Second, it's technically false. Most "high-end mastering guys" do NOT push the RMS by going into digital saturation, they do it by pushing output gain and hard limiting before clipping. They do not clip, they squeeze. Big difference (though both ideas suck like an open chest wound
.) Third, the ones who do clip (and yes, I have occasionally seen it done blatently and extensively to some commercial tracks) are doing it either out of laziness or apathy. The amateurs who do it are doing it out of lack of knowledge or technique. You want to squeeze volume out of a recording there are much better ways to do it than to just crank it to 11, digital ceiling be damned. This is not something that should be advocated as a recommended technique on a learning exchange board like this one, and it needs to be struck down fast before people actually start believing otherwise.
G.
Farview
Well-known member
You only lose resolution during a mix if you are using fixed point math. If the DAW is processing at 32 bit float (most do), no resolution is lost. That is the idea behind the floating point.Light said:
Besides that, all of your equipment is meant to be run at line level with a certain amount of headroom. Line level translates to -12 to -15dbfs depending on the hardware involved. Some things in your chain will work fine being pushed past line level all the time, some things won't. The old Protools TDM systems are a perfect example, the converters started doing nasty things to your transients if you exeeded -4dbfs. From what I understand, it wasn't a converter problem as much as it was a problem with the analog circuitry leading up to it. Most likely, someone decided that since 0dbfs is as far as you can go, there is no point in designing an more headroom into the analog circuitry so as you approach 0dbfs, you were also approaching the limits of the hardware.
In a home recording context, not everyone has hardware that remains clean at +12 to +15dbvu. Most really good equipment will actually distort in a pleasing way, cheap equipment doesn't.
Maybe most good studios have a few Drawmers lying around but most people around here are stuck with the gates on their 3630s
M
mixsit
Well-known member
Let's take it a step further then. I my travels, I've gathered (note the tastefully place non-expert tag here ) that for the conversion process specifically, level does not matter. That as long as the analog noise floor is sufficiently higher than conversion errors, they are inaudible. Put another way, your threshold of resolution is defined by, and limited to... the analog noise floor. That the level related differences are in the analog hardware ends.
Thumbs up? Thumbs down?
Wayne
) that for the conversion process specifically, level does not matter. That as long as the analog noise floor is sufficiently higher than conversion errors, they are inaudible. Put another way, your threshold of resolution is defined by, and limited to... the analog noise floor. That the level related differences are in the analog hardware ends.Thumbs up? Thumbs down?
Wayne
C
Cloneboy Studio
.
Light said:
You do realize that information in those "overs" are PERMANENTLY LOST?
Hence you are losing critical data for the sake of a miniscule gain of non-essential data. In other words, it's a stupid idea.
Light said:
And that's why I'm wondering why he bothers to clip things out when he's just going to have to end up yanking everything down to -12 dbfs to arrive at a non-clipping mixdown. Unless, of course, he's clipping that so he can have his almighty resolution.
IMHO it's sloppy, misguided advice that is hurting his audio. Sure, someone could end up with something that sounded okay after all that audio destruction, but imagine how much better it would sound if he figured out that he was doing things wrong.
His "technique" causes WAY more harm than it does good. I see his point, but his solution is illogical.
M
mixandmaster
New member
Here's my 2¢ on clipping, not that anyone's going to change their minds...not all clipping is created equal. It can be said that some converters probably "clip" better than others. IMO, clipping on a digital bus inside a DAW is some of the ugliest clipping in existence.
And, yes, it is my understanding that many other mastering engineers will let some overs go (purposely), but remember, they are using HIGH end converters, and monitoring in a VERY controlled environment, AND nothing else (other than possibly dithering) will be done to the signal. Which is much different than clipping a Layla soundcard and listening on computer speakers (and there is a great deal of in between). I, personally, don't clip on purpose. I just don't trust it quite enough...If I were having a bad day (and didn't know it), I could send out something that wouldn't be up to my standards.
And, yes, it is my understanding that many other mastering engineers will let some overs go (purposely), but remember, they are using HIGH end converters, and monitoring in a VERY controlled environment, AND nothing else (other than possibly dithering) will be done to the signal. Which is much different than clipping a Layla soundcard and listening on computer speakers (and there is a great deal of in between). I, personally, don't clip on purpose. I just don't trust it quite enough...If I were having a bad day (and didn't know it), I could send out something that wouldn't be up to my standards.
reshp1
New member
Light said:
The original poster is using Protools, a fact that wasn't lost on Aardy based on his post talking about PT automation. If you stuck the Protools gate on a track and did what he suggested, it would most certainly not work. Just because a hardware unit called a gate (I would consider it more of a dynamics processor) can do ducking doesn't mean, to me anyway, that ducking is accomplished by an opening and closing gate triggered by a sidechain. You can of course argue it because you are manipulating gain based on a sidechain, which is a function of all dynamics processors whether they're limiters, compressors, expanders or gates, but to me gating means passing signals past a threshold, completely rejecting signals under it.
EDIT: Reading the Drawmer notes in more detail... There's a switch that needs to be flipped from "Gate" to "Duck" in order to use the ducking function, why would we need to switch from "Gate" to duck if you can duck using a "Gate"
Light
New member
reshp1 said:
Ducking is a GATE, and not a compression. Yes, the triggering is different, but a it is not program dependent, which is to say, there is no ratio of output voltage to trigger voltage. When the gate turns on to duck, the signal goes down by x (level of gain reduction) amount. When a compressor goes over a certain level, the output goes down by x times y, where x=level of gain reduction and y=level of input over threshold. There is NO setting on a compressor which will give you a Ducking effect. If your precious "Amateur Toys" program won't let you do that, then that is simply one more thing to complain to them about. But I would bet they have a way of using their gate for ducking.
What part of the difference are you having a problem with? Or have you just never ducked anything?
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
X
xstatic
New member
So far I think only Southside Glenn has been the only one to really hit this on the head. The biggest problem with "Aardy's" advice has been to recommend cliiping converters. In fact "aardy's" post did have some good information in it. My problem was that he would offer something good, and then immediately follow it with something off the wall. Experienced or not, half of his advice was just plain bad advice, the other half was great.
In the real world, clipped tracks happen. Especially when they are on drum tracks the option to retrack may not be available or viable. Sometimes we DO have to learn to fix things in the mix. VERY FEW albums have been cut where this has had to happen at some point. In a lot of ways, knowing how to do that is a very marketable and valuable skill as an engineer and is partly what seperates the big boys from the rest. But to purposely do that or use it as a justification of a clipped track is just wrong. IF you ahve a converter that actually contributes a tonal or sonic change in a way that you LIKE, hten it is OK to clip it. Otherwise, it makes much more sense to AVOID clipping the converters. As far as tracking goes, hitting a lot of level on your converters is way overrated. Avergae levels should typically be between -15 and -20 in the digital realm based on their specs. To keep your inout all the way at the top it means that you are constantly overdriving the intended sweet spot for your preamps (the whole unity voltage issue etc...) In a calibrated system, clipping a converter will usually mean that you are also clipping, or at least at the very end of the headroom for your preamp. If digital -18 correlates to analog unity (0), then clipping a converter means you are at +18 on your analog pre. Most pre's have somewhere around a +22 spec for outputs which means you are dangerously close to cliiping your converter and your pre at the same time.
In the real world, clipped tracks happen. Especially when they are on drum tracks the option to retrack may not be available or viable. Sometimes we DO have to learn to fix things in the mix. VERY FEW albums have been cut where this has had to happen at some point. In a lot of ways, knowing how to do that is a very marketable and valuable skill as an engineer and is partly what seperates the big boys from the rest. But to purposely do that or use it as a justification of a clipped track is just wrong. IF you ahve a converter that actually contributes a tonal or sonic change in a way that you LIKE, hten it is OK to clip it. Otherwise, it makes much more sense to AVOID clipping the converters. As far as tracking goes, hitting a lot of level on your converters is way overrated. Avergae levels should typically be between -15 and -20 in the digital realm based on their specs. To keep your inout all the way at the top it means that you are constantly overdriving the intended sweet spot for your preamps (the whole unity voltage issue etc...) In a calibrated system, clipping a converter will usually mean that you are also clipping, or at least at the very end of the headroom for your preamp. If digital -18 correlates to analog unity (0), then clipping a converter means you are at +18 on your analog pre. Most pre's have somewhere around a +22 spec for outputs which means you are dangerously close to cliiping your converter and your pre at the same time.