EQ/Mixing Question

  • Thread starter Thread starter JonPaulP
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JonPaulP said:
I'm trying to figure out how to get a similar sound to these vocals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fv-g6vT1uQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHOj622NMwo

It has a very rich bassy sound in the low notes and has a good tone with the higher notes.

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas as to what EQ settings or miking techniques were possibly used. Or is it the microphone?

Thanks!
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Well, it's not just an EQ thing.

It starts with an extraordinary singing voice backed by trained proper breathing technique. Then you hire a recording engineer who has 20+ years of event tracking experience and a well designed mobile unit. Now throw in a famous producer to aid with the mix back at the studio. They probably used a $500 mic and a $2000 compressor, (okay and a good EQ too.) They kick it around for a few days and then it gets sent to a superb mastering engineer for further polishing.

My point is...a few good compression tricks can improve upon a vocal track more so than EQ. I would go there first. But it takes a lot of learning, understanding, and experience to pull it off well. Don't ask me to explain it in one post. I am still learning it myself.
 
RawDepth said:
Well, it's not just an EQ thing.

It starts with an extraordinary singing voice backed by trained proper breathing technique. Then you hire a recording engineer who has 20+ years of event tracking experience and a well designed mobile unit. Now throw in a famous producer to aid with the mix back at the studio. They probably used a $500 mic and a $2000 compressor, (okay and a good EQ too.) They kick it around for a few days and then it gets sent to a superb mastering engineer for further polishing.

My point is...a few good compression tricks can improve upon a vocal track more so than EQ. I would go there first. But it takes a lot of learning, understanding, and experience to pull it off well. Don't ask me to explain it in one post. I am still learning it myself.
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I'm pretty sure the person who posted the first video took the audio from the album version and mixed it with the live footage video, so this was recorded in-studio.

Hmmm, a $2000 compressor? I thought compressors mainly just evened out the sound to make things sound more consistent. Do they contribute anything to the tone or sound of the vocal?
 
JonPaulP said:
Hmmm, a $2000 compressor? I thought compressors mainly just evened out the sound to make things sound more consistent. Do they contribute anything to the tone or sound of the vocal?
Click to expand...

Yes, they do. They all have different tonal qualities, and they all "color" the sound to a certain extent. There's a reason an Alesis 3630 is so cheap and others run in the 2,000+ range.

But, more importantly than that, and I think this is the point RawDepth was trying to make, is that getting a good vocal sound (or any sound) isn't a simple thing that comes down to just twiddling knobs on an EQ. 90% of a "good" sound comes from earlier on down the chain, way before it gets to a channel strip. It's about the vocalist, the room, the signal chain, mic placement, the mic and pre-amp combination, etc......

EQ, compression, reverb, echo, salt, pepper, are all just seasoning, but not the crutch that that too many newbies think they need to sound "pro". (I'm not directing that at you. Just generally speaking).
 
JonPaulP said:
I thought compressors mainly just evened out the sound to make things sound more consistent. Do they contribute anything to the tone or sound of the vocal?
Click to expand...
See for yourself. Run one of your own tracks with a high ratio, quick attack, slow release and compare it to the same with a fast release and the "dry" original.

Doesn't matter how much you paid for the compressor, it will alter the tone. If you have a firm grasp of how it all works, it often makes sense to eq with your compressor instead of your eq.

In fact, as you record better players you will use your compressors less and less to "level them out" since they played it properly in the first place. But you will still be reaching for them all the time for they way they manipulate the tone and impact.
 
RAMI said:
EQ, compression, reverb, echo, salt, pepper, are all just seasoning, but not the crutch that that too many newbies think they need to sound "pro".
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RAMI nailed it. It never clicked with me until I was lucky enough to sit in on a session start-to-finish in a multi-million dollar studio, but the finished tracks sound almost exactly like what is coming through the microphones before the engineer even hits record.
 
I see. What about software compressors...how do they compare to hardware ones?
 
JonPaulP said:
I see. What about software compressors...how do they compare to hardware ones?
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Don't even open THAT can of worms :mad:

The truth is, even SOFTWARE compressors sound different, even from the same company. Compare Waves C1 compressor to their Rennaissance Compressor, and even the two different modes in Renn Comp itself. Compare the ones from Sonalksis, Kjaerhus and Voxengo. They ALL sound different. The trick is to learn those differences and more importantly understand what they tend to flatter and what they don't.

For example, I oftentimes use my UAD based 1176LN on synth basses to give it a bit of a gentle distortion to help define mid-frequencies w/o making it obnoxious.

Also, keep in mind that there are compressors that are specifically designed to color as little as possible. However even then, they may for example suppress bass frequencies more than higher frequencies, simply because the lower frequencies tend to have higher amplitudes than higher frequencies to give them the same apparent volume. This will obviously shift the tonal balance of the audio being processed. It is not uncommon to place an EQ before AND after the compressor to either account for this shift, or to force the compressor to work more on certain frequencies than others.

Trust your ears and don't use your eyes.
 
Thanks for all the information! I did some playing around with compressor plug-ins tonight. Let me know if this test clip sounds sort of similar to the audio mix in the video clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fv-g6vT1uQ):

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=8229585

I found out that the compressor I was using (VSTDynamics, that came with Cubase) produced more of a hi-sound.

On this clip, I used the BLOCKFISH compressor with the close-up vocals preset. I like the full bassy sound from this plug-in, but it picks up a lot of hiss/background noise and makes the breaths loud. Any tips on what to do?

The Noise Gate feature in Cubase seems to kind of work, but sounds a little choppy.

Thanks again.
 
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JonPaulP said:
Thanks for all the information! I did some playing around with compressor plug-ins tonight. Let me know if this test clip sounds sort of similar to the audio mix in the video clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fv-g6vT1uQ):

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=8229585

I found out that the compressor I was using (VSTDynamics, that came with Cubase) produced more of a hi-sound.

On this clip, I used the BLOCKFISH compressor with the close-up vocals preset. I like the full bassy sound from this plug-in, but it picks up a lot of hiss/background noise and makes the breaths loud. Any tips on what to do?

The Noise Gate feature in Cubase seems to kind of work, but sounds a little choppy.

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

I'd say you're getting pretty close to your desired tone with just the voice alone! Great pipes but on a technical note don't trust presets, they're usually a good place to start but never "perfect" for any situation, mess with the settings until they're perfect, but if you end up liking the preset more....hell go with the preset!

-Barrett
 
JonPaulP said:
...but it picks up a lot of hiss/background noise and makes the breaths loud. Any tips on what to do?...
Click to expand...

By design, this is what a compressor does :)

Some of the vocals in that clip sound very compressed - well, I'm used to the sound of blockfish being pushed fairly hard and that's it. You can get away with very heavily compressing vocals (usually in several stages, not all at once), but you have to keep an eye on things like breathyness and pumping at each stage.

You could go through and cut out each breath by hand. This works well if you have the time!

You could also gate it... NOTE: before you compress it! You said this made it sound 'choppy', but you can usually get a gate sounding ok if you carefully set up the attack and release times (and obviously the threshold has to be set carefully as well, but that's just expected!). If the gate seems too harsh, maybe try an expander instead - in fact, I would probably go straight to the expander.

Also sounds like a de-esser could be helpful.
 
Yeah, I really think once you get a little more experience, you won't be happy with that vocal sound. That balance is fine, but it has tons of compression artifacts...it's pumping.

I gotta' say, though...while I'm not crazy with the amount of sibilance introduced, it's not a really grating sibilance like most software compressors introduce...kind of a nice sibilance, but just too much.
 
chrisharris said:
Yeah, I really think once you get a little more experience, you won't be happy with that vocal sound. That balance is fine, but it has tons of compression artifacts...it's pumping.

I gotta' say, though...while I'm not crazy with the amount of sibilance introduced, it's not a really grating sibilance like most software compressors introduce...kind of a nice sibilance, but just too much.
Click to expand...


mattr said:
By design, this is what a compressor does :)

Some of the vocals in that clip sound very compressed - well, I'm used to the sound of blockfish being pushed fairly hard and that's it. You can get away with very heavily compressing vocals (usually in several stages, not all at once), but you have to keep an eye on things like breathyness and pumping at each stage.

You could go through and cut out each breath by hand. This works well if you have the time!

You could also gate it... NOTE: before you compress it! You said this made it sound 'choppy', but you can usually get a gate sounding ok if you carefully set up the attack and release times (and obviously the threshold has to be set carefully as well, but that's just expected!). If the gate seems too harsh, maybe try an expander instead - in fact, I would probably go straight to the expander.

Also sounds like a de-esser could be helpful.
Click to expand...

I tried it again with the compressor that came with Cubase and I guess that compressor comes with a noise gate. I thought the BLOCKFISH one would've been similar, but I guess not.

Do you think that the clips above (where I used the BLOCKFISH) is a little too boomy/bassy?

Thanks again for listening!


Bguzaldo said:
I'd say you're getting pretty close to your desired tone with just the voice alone! Great pipes but on a technical note don't trust presets, they're usually a good place to start but never "perfect" for any situation, mess with the settings until they're perfect, but if you end up liking the preset more....hell go with the preset!

-Barrett
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot Barrett, that's certainly encouraging!

*EDIT:

After comparing the two compressors, it looks like the Cubase compressor produces a better tone. What do you think?

Cubase compressor (put through twice): http://soundclick.com/share?songid=8238489
BLOCKFISH compressor: http://soundclick.com/share?songid=8229585
 
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