Tracking Technique

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drstawl

drstawl

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When setting the mic-pre gain level for one mic (one channel) in a mix, do you need to have all the sound sources that will be active in that space during the tracking of that channel playing while you twiddle to find the highest level you can achieve while leaving some headroom for the occasional stray peak? Or can (should?) this be done with the instrument soloed in the recording space, compensating for the additional background noise with an across-the-board gain cut?
 
Everyone using more than one mic at a time has to go over this bridge. So what'd you tell the troll underneath as you went by?
 
Cool Edit's got a pretty reliable onscreen meter - one jittering red bar for each track. If a track clips, a red indicator comes on which WON'T GO AWAY.

So I set each track one at a time, roughly allowing for the inevitable spill, and then launch into a test run of the song, keeping an eye on the levels. If it clips, I ease back on the too hot track and then do the song for real.

On this album I'm doing now, I'm doing one track at a time usually. Not as satisfying in some ways, but oh so simple for things like levels and mixing later on.
 
I'm talking about a situation (fairly common I should think) where there's a miced bass, a miced guitar, a miced (maybe even PA'ed)vocalist, a basket of mics on the drums and maybe a keyboard that wants a miced cabinet as well. In a perfect world, or one just somewhat more like a recording studio, these all could be isolated and supplied headphone mixes to play against.
Live, this just isn't much of an option.
 
Hey Doc.

I think I know what you are asking here.

Usually when setting the mic preamp gain, it is to optimize the audio for the signal path and to create the best sound to noise ratio possible with that channel. From there, you get into a few considerations that must be addressed.

First, you have to consider whether that audio source will need the FULL range of the fader on the channel. If it is a source that will be turned up and down a lot, or is going to be faded out over a period of time, you may need to set the preamp gain so that with the fader at unity the source is where you want it in the mix. Then, you get a very linear fade out potential on the fader. As you know, faders are not really linear in practice. The farther down the fader goes, the more drastic effect it has on the audio. At or near unity, it is possible to do fader moves that are as little as a 1/10 of a dB!!! But as you start turning down the fader, even a little move of the fader will create a much bigger dB drop or raise.

So, in the case that you have an instrument that you don't anticipate having to make minute adjustments with in a mix, you can afford to optimize the preamp level and just turn the fader down so the audio is where you want it at in the mix and leave it alone. But if you have an instrument that will need some tweeking in volume, you may need that capability more than an optimized gain level in the channel, so you would lower your preamp gain to get more versatility in the fader.

While mixing on my Ghost, I utilize the Tape Return's Gain knob on sources that come back really loud to the console that I know I need the full taper of the fader with. If the source won't need that, I leave the Gain knob alone and just turn down the fader. Works pretty well, and I will assume that many other engineers follow this practice.

Ed
 
Doc, I always solo up each channel and set the peak level *well* below my out-of-headroom crunch point: people usually laugh at how much I sandbag, in fact.

How much is a function of the type of music and talent. If I'm tracking a rock band with only moderate isolation, I'll usually leave 12dB extra headroom on every channel that's open to the room, and 18dB extra for the vox (if they are tracking live) and the snare. Bassists are usually less over-the-top, so maybe I'll leave only 6-8dB extra. Fact is that when everybody's working at once, pretty much _everyone_ will kick about 12dB harder. So I trim them that way so that I'm not surprised. It works remarkably well for most artists.

Really well-practiced pros need less sandbagging, younger players need even more: this is simply trying to compensate for human nature. Even a well-coached babershop quartet in a quiet room can be expected to suddenly push out 6dB more level when they know the tape is rolling!

12dB is my standard sandbagging for headroom, until I get to know the players. 18dB for snare, because that's what I have to do for *me*... and I know better, or try to...

Ed's center-the-faders-on-unity trick is a great one- being able to put a signal in the right place on the taper for mixdown is one of the big reasons I just got my Ghost, in fact (;-). But my finding has been that sandbagging the *hell* out of the initial level setting for tracking can save the first take (it's easier to boost a few dB than to try to get rid of that infernal crunch!). And working live, the first take is all you _get_ sometimes.
 
Hey skippy, congrats on getting a Ghost!!! Mixing on anything less will never impress you ever again....:) Let me know if you figure out a way to get change that "needed for nothing" aux 8 send to a high pass filter okay? :)

The preamp I am using tends to dictate for me how far I will push levels if I am going for max level without distortion to tape. The Ghost preamps which I seldom use for tracking tend to handle those jumps quite well, and sometimes, the tad of distortion really adds an exciting sound. I think Doc is using a Allen and Heath Mix Wizard. My experience with the A&H preamps is that they handle distortion eloquently in most cases. I tend to use ART's quite a bit, and depending on the source, they handle distortion alright. My TL Audio Classic tube pre handles distortion VERY nice. I have found that Drawmers don't handle it too well for some reason, but they definately have a very open sound to them so I don't need to push them. Focusrite stuff doesn't seem to handle distortion at all...:( The Oram I was using for a while didn't handle it too well, but like the Drawmer, it had a very open up front sound so I didn't need to push it.

My experience has been that with certain instruments you really need to watch the amount of headroom you leave. Vocals come to mind. Bass guitar come to mind. Distorted guitars don't move the meters much if the tone and mic placement are really good. I always blast away on snare drums because if the dude hits something a lot louder I need the distortion to tame that transient. Since I have worked with few drummers that can really hit consistently, I sacrifice a bit of the transient to make sure I get good full meters. Kick drums are really tricky because the low frequencies tend to make very annoying distortion and the sound seems to shrink away when it distorts.

I think Doc the key is to find which instruments tend to get away from you the most. My experience has been that Bass guitar, Acoustic guitar, Kick drums, Vocals, and lousy keyboard players are the stuff to watch the most for.

In live situations, decent Peak Limiters, like on the Behringer Composer Pro work out pretty good. I usually won't use it for compression while tracking, but for limiting they seem to work well enough (my thought is that everything is a demo until it sells 10K units....:)) so I am willing to take a little dirt in the sound if it means more stable metering and higher resolution, which is important in 16 bit recordings for sure!!!

One thing I have found pretty common, with even just "decent" players, is if my meters are jumping all over the place, I probably don't have the mic in the right spot and will be cutting a lot of garbage freq's at mix time....:( In unfamiliar rooms (control rooms that is) I tend to rely on what I am seeing a lot because I know I can't rely much on the sound I am getting on the monitors at first. Even in familiar rooms, I still look at the metering with a criticle eye to make sure stuff that "shouldn't" be jumping up and down on the meters doesn't.

Just some stuff to think about.

Ed
 
Definite good stuff. Let's keep this going! It's interesting to see the differences in our working styles, and there's clearly a *lot* of modern technique that I need to experiment with and perhaps incorporate. I've got a lot of new stuff to learn, since getting back into this stuff.

The way I learned the art in the 70s is that the electronics in the tracking chain must never, and I mean _never_, be allowed to distort. It's based in more of a jazz/classical engineering style, I think. You can punch the living, breathing *bejeezus* out of the snare track *at the tape*, but all you're going for is tape saturation: the signal has to be pristine right up to the head gap. I've so seldom heard electronic gear that distorted in a pleasing way that I still stay away from it like the plague. Especially now that we're mostly tracking to 24bit, I feel comfortable leaving a little extra headroom on the table in exchange for a lighter workload. There's also the fact that a lot of my recording is done either live, or as one-take-wonders in the studio: that light workload is key to sanity and survival!

Now, having said that: I'm not getting _any_ of the transient taming, distortion effects, warming, thickening, fattening, and whatnot that Ed is talking about here while tracking, and that's arguably a failing on my part. Modern gear often really *is* designed to let you whack it pretty hard, before the converters- just to get away from that supposedly "sterile" digital sound. Boy, that's the advanced course, for me... Intellectually, I know that there are a whole range of sonic possibilities out there that I'm not taking advantage of. I'm still trying to print "squeaky clean" tracks, and then mung 'em later. You can always mung more, but you can never unmung: that's the way I learned it, and it's hard to shake that training! I can still imagine that steel ruler whistling towards my knuckles when the needles go into the red too much...

I really do need to trust this modern gear to do better things than I'm accustomed to when I push it hard- for some musical styles, anway. It's just gonna take me a long time to get there... The first tape machine I ever worked with was an old Ampex 1" 8-track with seriously hotrodded tube electronics, and it had some ungodly amount of headroom: you could pound on the tape until you would swear you were burning holes in it, and it'd just come back _sweet_. And then I started working with more modern solid-state tape machines that just didn't like that kind of treatment any more, where you'd crunch the record head driver amps trying to print 425nWb/m. Yucko.

But that's ancient history. The first thing I have to do is to build some iron boxes, I think: some 1:1 transformers of varying quality that I can patch in, hammer on, and get that nice even-harmonic distortion thing happening. If only it could sound like the heads on that old Ampex heating up to the point of smelling like cooked bakelite- now, _that_ is a sound a mother could love!

And I am very amused with how usable the limiter section is in the Composer Pro, although I suspect that I'll be replacing my pair of them with Drawmer DL241s before my next live date. When you hit the Behringers a little too hard, it gets downright _ugly_.

Anybody else? I'm soaking this stuff up like a sponge!
 
Hey skippy, you might even look into the Drawmer MX30's. They are those comp/limiters that only have threshold and ratio, but the limiters on those puppies also seem to work very well!

I agree that the Composers can get a little ugly when you hit them too hard. What is cool though is that they don't seem to crap out too soon for me. I sort of go back to what I was saying about the sources tone and the mic selection and placement. If all that stuff is right, I seem to get a pretty good open sound to my A/D's with only light limiting and distortion.

I am there with you on the old days when the goal was to keep everything clean as a hospital floor!!! I have been working exclusively digital for about 5 years now and am starting to get away for the "clean is best" thinking for the most part, but do catch myself fighting it from time to time. It just doesn't seem right!!! LOL. I am screwed if I ever go back to analog tape!!! :)

In live mixing for bands, I still try to practice all the common headroom techniques and find they work very well there. It is almost batty when I forget that I need to use different techniques for different applications when I am bouncing back and forth between them so much. So much to think about....:eek: But damn, I just eat this stuff up!!!

Ed
 
sonusman said:
Hey skippy, congrats on getting a Ghost!!! Mixing on anything less will never impress you ever again....:) Let me know if you figure out a way to get change that "needed for nothing" aux 8 send to a high pass filter okay? :)

The preamp I am using tends to dictate for me how far I will push levels if I am going for max level without distortion to tape. The Ghost preamps which I seldom use for tracking tend to handle those jumps quite well, and sometimes, the tad of distortion really adds an exciting sound. I think Doc is using a Allen and Heath Mix Wizard. My experience with the A&H preamps is that they handle distortion eloquently in most cases. I tend to use ART's quite a bit, and depending on the source, they handle distortion alright. My TL Audio Classic tube pre handles distortion VERY nice. I have found that Drawmers don't handle it too well for some reason, but they definately have a very open sound to them so I don't need to push them. Focusrite stuff doesn't seem to handle distortion at all...:( The Oram I was using for a while didn't handle it too well, but like the Drawmer, it had a very open up front sound so I didn't need to push it.

My experience has been that with certain instruments you really need to watch the amount of headroom you leave. Vocals come to mind. Bass guitar come to mind. Distorted guitars don't move the meters much if the tone and mic placement are really good. I always blast away on snare drums because if the dude hits something a lot louder I need the distortion to tame that transient. Since I have worked with few drummers that can really hit consistently, I sacrifice a bit of the transient to make sure I get good full meters. Kick drums are really tricky because the low frequencies tend to make very annoying distortion and the sound seems to shrink away when it distorts.

I think Doc the key is to find which instruments tend to get away from you the most. My experience has been that Bass guitar, Acoustic guitar, Kick drums, Vocals, and lousy keyboard players are the stuff to watch the most for.

In live situations, decent Peak Limiters, like on the Behringer Composer Pro work out pretty good. I usually won't use it for compression while tracking, but for limiting they seem to work well enough (my thought is that everything is a demo until it sells 10K units....:)) so I am willing to take a little dirt in the sound if it means more stable metering and higher resolution, which is important in 16 bit recordings for sure!!!

One thing I have found pretty common, with even just "decent" players, is if my meters are jumping all over the place, I probably don't have the mic in the right spot and will be cutting a lot of garbage freq's at mix time....:( In unfamiliar rooms (control rooms that is) I tend to rely on what I am seeing a lot because I know I can't rely much on the sound I am getting on the monitors at first. Even in familiar rooms, I still look at the metering with a criticle eye to make sure stuff that "shouldn't" be jumping up and down on the meters doesn't.

Just some stuff to think about.

Ed
Click to expand...


Ive been thinking abut getting a spirit M12 mixer. The spirit M series has the same pres as the ghost. Ive heard the ghost pres and thought they sounded good--accurate, musical, etc. Just wondering why you dont use them?

Gus
 
Hey Gus.

It would take a very long time to explain how my studios setup was configured for tracking. I from time to time DO use the Ghost's preamps, but because of the way I use the console for control room monitoring, and sending monitor mixes to the performers, the whole process is much easier when I use outboard mic preamps. I have always had enough outboard pre's to track what I need, and in a lot of cases, even with how good the Ghost's pre's are, these other pre's offer AT LEAST as good of a sound, if not better. If I was stuck with pre's that were not as good as the Ghost's, I would probably sacrifice the ease of use in my setup and use the Ghost's pre's. But I have the luxury most of the time to track with outboard preamps, and a lot of times with one's that are better than the Ghost's pre's.

It is my opinion that the Pro mic pre's contained on Soundcraft products are much more musical sounding than many other "budget" mixing boards preamps, and feel good recommending them as the best bang for the buck, as far as preamps go. Whether a Soundcraft product can deliver all the functions you need for recording and/or mixing at a good price point is not equated in this. I tend to favor products that offer quality sound and get enough of what I need to function. Other feel that they are willing to sacrifice a bit of sound quality to gain function at the same price. That is a question that each person must answer for themselves, and lately I have avoided trying to sway people either way.

All that aside, I really like the Pro mic preamp on Soundcraft products and certainly use them if no better alternative is available to me.

Ed
 
Always good to see you MISTERYQCLUE, my brother from another mother!!! :)

Ed
 
Gentlemen,thank you all for a VERY informative post.
Ed,re Soundcraft remarks.Any thought about Brit vs USA boards in general?I have heard for years praises for Soundcraft boards.
Tom
 
Well Tom, Neve, Soundcraft, Oram, Trident, Allen and Heath. What more can be said about European consoles? :)

Ed
 
Why do you think that is?I think of Rolls Royce mechanics sipping tea and handcrafting burled walnut masterpieces on the dash, while over at Ford the line is running at full blast cranking out a serviceable but lessor car.Different mindset,maybe.
Tom
 
QUOTE;
"While mixing on my Ghost, I utilize the Tape Return's Gain knob on sources that come back really loud"

Ed or Skippy,
I have Soundcraft's Spirit Studio 8 buss which I think was the fore-runner to the Ghost, so I may be off the mark here........I run the console's "track send" to my Fostex D160. The D160's out back to the console's "track return". (The small amount of recording we have done so far has been set-up with faders on "0" and using the channels' gain for adjustment)..........so are you saying that I should be able to adjust the return signal's gain with the "Tape Trim" controls as well as the faders?

ChrisO :cool:
 
Oh, absolutely. The tape trims offer a reasonable range of gain and attenuation- so whatever signal you're dropping into the mix, you can set the fader up to run at 0 _at mix time_ as well.

Very important. Let's say you've got some background track like a string pad that needs to be way the heck down there, 30dB or so under everything else. And you want to duck it under the vocals just a bit more, and then pop it back up after. If you bring it in at full-scale tape level (peaking at -6dB or so), you'll have to run the fader way down at -30dB: barely off the stop. But due to the logarithmic taper of the fader, just a teeny move will give you a 5-6dB level change when you run that low (especially on the 60mm faders used on budget boards): the level changes *very* abruptly down there on your way to "outta here". You're out of the sweet spot, and it is very hard to not overduck or overpop: it's just too tweeky down there.

So instead of having awkward fader moves to do, you use the tape trim to give you the 30dB of attenuation you need to set the rough level, and you can run the fader right at 0- where the small moves you need are easy to do: there, they are _large_ moves, because of the taper. Think about it: this is a trick everybody should know.

Ideally, your faders ought to be at 0 for tracking, to minimize noise. And they ought to be at 0 for mixing, to maximize control. The tape trims let you separate the "level setting" and "mix balance control" functions entirely at mixdown time. Until you've worked with a board that offers it (or try faking it using the line ins and the line in gains on a board with no trims), it's hard to explain- but it makes life _vastly_ easier.

I like to end up a mix with the faders all between 0 and -5dB. Time doesn't always permit, and sometimes I get lazy: but a board with faders that are pretty much straight up 0s at the end of a mix tells me I was doing my job right.... It's not something to get all neurotic about, but it can have a major (positive!) impact on your workload and stress level when doing tweeky things. Your mileage may vary, though.
 
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Thanks for all of your replies. Besides answering the question you brought up some other tracking issues that I hadn't considered.

18 dB of sandbagging? I think if I have to do this that hard, I'd request that the offender be put in another room, or another county. :)
 
I hear you! Seriously, though, it happens so consistently that I've just made it part of my style. You do a quick level check, an the singer goes "whoooa heyy" and the drummer goes "tap tap". And then they kick into the first 8, and the singer goes "WHOA FRIKKIN' HEY BAAAAY-BEEE!" and the drummer goes "WHAM WHAM" and starts to dig into the rim on the snare just a bit. And their channels crunch all to hellandgone. Happens damned near every time, for rock and roll anyway...

Vocalists are _always_ good for +12s over whatever they did in the level checks, every bleedin' one of them. And I know that I get +12s without even thinking about it when I start catching the snare rim for that extra "splat". You know, that "up to 11" thing you have to do to really push it over the edge. (;-) Human nature.

I can rescue a track that only peaks at -12s without losing much sleep over it at all. I can't do *jack* about one that has 10 hard crunches in the first 8 bars, before I noticed the red lights flashing and could grab the channel gains to back 'em down! And one of the first rules I learned was "do no harm": you should never burn a take because of a screwup on the part of the engineer. So I always over-sandbag, and I suspect that I always will...
 
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