sonusman, gimmie advice

  • Thread starter Thread starter dbho
  • Start date Start date
D

dbho

New member
OK, I went back a read some of your posts. This is to you and any other real recording engineers out there.

Let me start with my gear:

Mackie DB8
Neumann 149
Focusrite green compressor
very good guitars (Taylors 9** acoustic and Les Paul Customs)
Kurtzweil with VirusB
etc. blah blah

OK, I have been recording my own cd for over a year now and I am almost done (I never would have thought it would take this long).
Anyway, I record to pc via lighpipe in 24bit/4800 Yeah I know, Im digital. However, digital is the only way for a home recording person. The gains of editing outweigh the loss of some signal. (for most of us who are NOT a master of each instrument)

OK, so I have all my songs tracked. I play them back to my Mackie on seperate channels. i.e. Drums to 1/2 bass on 3/4 guitar on 5/6 etc down to vocals. I mix between the main instruments. I do mixing of the individual instruments, like drums, in my project so on the mixer I am only mixing the overall drum sound.

I assign all the played back tracks to a bus and record that bus back to my computer. From there I am playing in T-Racks for mastering. My question is this.

Should I continue my route in the digital domain or should I now take these final tracks out to a rented/borrowed compressor (or will my Focusrite handle this). I have already lost what I will loose by recording digital so why not process with progs such as T-Racks? Or should I take the recorded tracks (not bounces) to an analog person to mix and master for me? There are a thousand options and to be honest with you, I WANT TO BE DONE and Im broke. :) Look forward to reading more of your past posts.

DBHO
 
p.s. If going all digital means I can sound like NIN "The Fragile" then Im fine with it :) Recorded completly using Pro Tools (which I dont like). From an analog point of view it may lack but I havn't really noticed as I was more drawn into the songs. Maybe I will listen to it from a recording point of view and compare it to some old recordings. There is no doubt that recording on an old 100,000 console with tube everything to tape rocks all but who can afford that? :)
 
I would not go the T-Racks route for mastering. In fact, if you really care about how your project is going to turn out, you may really consider a good mastering house. Look for somebody that believe's in the concept of "Once digital, stay digital" for mastering. A lot of guys out there are trying to use high end D/A converters, run the audio through analog gear, then back into the computer through great A/D converters. This can sound okay, unless you compare it to mastered audio that utilized all digital processing for mastering.

I use Wavelab with some very high end plug in's, many of which use double bit processing. double bit processing produces a much better finished result then regular old 24 bit processing does. Plus, Wavelab has a really decent dithering algorythm, so once I am done processing my 24 bit files (true 24 bit if I mixed it because I use a true 24 bit soundcard for mixing) with 48 bit processors, the dithered audio at 16 bits is not a degregation of 16 bits with dithering, but more or less a true 16 bits.

If you don't have software that supports a true 24 bit 48KHz sampling rate environment, then have someone else master it who does, IF, you really care to retain much of your original fidelity.

I think you just need to go to www.digido.com and read up on DSP issues that Bob Katz covers over there. I think that once you read his articles, that if you understand them, you will probably have a much better idea of the perils of mixing in the digital environment. I will NEVER use a digital mixer until every function on it is at least 72 bit processing. It is bad enough to record digital, but the effects of 24 bit DSP is just a little too much for me. I HAVE to have some kind of analog in the mix. If I was to use all digital, I would be more comfortable with doing that with really high internal bit precision. Until I can afford a digital mixer that meets this criteria, I will stick with my Soundcraft Ghost console, or some other quality analog mixing desk.

Anyway, get some real mastering software with the high dollar plugin's if you want to master yourself, and you care about the audio. If not, well, T-Racks will butcher up your finales just fine.... :)

Ed
 
Hey Ed, what are the "really high end" plug ins you're using? I'm very curious. And what do you think about this: I usually record to an Otari 1/2" 8 track, then make a stereo mix of that straight into the computer on Cubase. Then I'll do whatever overdubs on other tracks in Cubase and make the final mix out of that (staying on the computer the whole time-just "create file" for the mix). Is this mixing of tracks on the computer an affront to all audio quality? Are bits getting lopped off like crazy or what? I generally never use any effects or anything like that, i try not to even change gain if i can help it. Thanks.
 
Ed - Define butcher in terms of the T-Racks program. Just curious.
 
The Waves Native Power Pack, and the Steiberg Mastering Edition plug in bundles are excellent.

By "butcher" I mean that if I was to try to produce the kind of gain increase with T-Racks that I can get with some of my plug in's using Wavelab, it would sound overcompressed, and bloated in comparison. Also, T-Racks as I recall only can deal with 16 bit files, and does not have that great of a dithering scheme, so you can't master at 24 bits, and fade outs are going to sound kind of weird.

Ed
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top