What am I Forgetting?

[dan the spectre]

I have a Fostex VF80 (typical 8 track digital workstation), SM57s, some $40 mics from all over the place, a few Shure condenser mics, and Magix Audio Studio 7 for mastering. Over time, I've gotten the mic placement right and my mixes/guitar sounds are good. The issue is that once I'm through, what sounded good on headphones and should be a fairly nice recording strikes me as "old" sounding. The mids can be pretty painful, especially on the fuzz guitar I recorded with the SM57s. I compress it carefully and use EQ with a treble enhancing plugin when I master, but in the end it sounds like I took a mediocre, muffled tape recording and ripped out all the midrange.

Now, I don't have a very good equalizer for my individual tracks. The Fostex built-in one is two bands (nearly worthless) and the machine has no Aux sends. I also don't own a real enhancer for the mastering stage, and the only mic preamps I have are the crude ones on the machine. Is this my problem or am I missing something else?

 

[vestast]

what sounded good on headphones and should be a fairly nice recording strikes me as "old" sounding. The mids can be pretty painful, especially on the fuzz guitar I recorded with the SM57s. I compress it carefully and use EQ with a treble enhancing plugin when I master, but in the end it sounds like I took a mediocre, muffled tape recording and ripped out all the midrange......

Mixing with headphones will not give you a good representation of what your mix is really doing.

See Blue Bears article here :

http://www3.sympatico.ca/bvaleria/bluebear/articles/headphones.htm

If I were you I would invest in a set of monitors...

Cheers

Dave

 

[manning1]

dan i use magix audio studio as well as powertracks.
in mixer view - click M on the kbd to bring it up.
and right click over the eq on any channel strip and the para eq for that channel will appear. you can high light a section of audio eg those mids and work with the q control and para eq setting while playing the highlighted section in a continuous loop. also NOTE in the master section you can view the waveform while its playing to help zero in on frequencies.
so between the para eq and freq display you can change the eq make up
of a track or master. try this , do a narrow q , and CUT (not boost)
and sweep the frequencies and see if you get something more pleasing.
out of interest why arent you using magix for multitracking and the fostex just for the mic preamps ? out of curioosity.
i get more tracks than i ever need using audio studio.
even on a friends humble ancient laptop we got 18 tracks.
if you need any more tips just post.
if you need monitors check out yorkvilles which can be run by as home hi fi.
hope this helps.
ps - on fuzz guitar try cutting back a bit on the eq in the 2k to 4k region and see if it helps.

 

[manning1]

also i forgot to mention . if you recorded all your tracks on the computer
then you could use magixes para eq on each track instead of being limited.
just an idea.

 

[dan the spectre]

also i forgot to mention . if you recorded all your tracks on the computer
then you could use magixes para eq on each track instead of being limited.
just an idea.

I prefer not to track directly onto the computer for a number of reasons.

1. Other people in the household use it so I can't hog all the HD space.
2. I don't have an exceptional sound card.
3. To my knowledge it's a bad idea to use a hi-z cable (computer mic style) with a lo-z microphone.
4. I don't have the necessary interface (MOTU kinda thing).

I use Magix just to master the songs after I mix them down. Perhaps that's not entirely what it was made for but it masters well for the price.

 

[A Reel Person]

I wanna send a shout out to you other guys who use MAGIX.

I use Magix Music Studio, although for 2-track mixdown recording, like our first user. Yes, I know it's fully capable multitrack software, but I do a lot in analog on the front end.

Shout out to Magix Music/Audio Studio users! Hey!

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

If your audio needs radical EQ to sound right it's not being recorded properly or the sounds you are dialing in just aren't happening.

Generally I try to do two things when tracking: make it sound fat and make it a little brighter than you may need. It's easy to thin a track out, and it is easy to dull it a bit--but it is hard to make it MORE fat or MORE bright.

 

[manning1]

dan if you ever get a bit of extra cash. consider running musicx studio on an athlon of your own with a delta 44 sound card and say use the preamps in the fostex.
a new amd athlon with the right had will do 80 tracks. if you shop around you can get one for about 500 bucks or less.
a friend hjust got a used duron for 100 bucks. does 40 tracks.
if you want a really really cheap sound card like 100 bucks that also does 24 bit. try hoontech or tracertek.com.
i see your prob what with family , but a used system with a new tracer or hoon soundcard prolly will set you back only 250 bucks. just a
idea.

 

[vestast]

Am I missing something ?

How is software going to make up for a poor monitoring chain ?

My understanding of the question was that it sounds great on headphones, but lousy everywhere else.

How can anyone mix and "master" on headphones ?

If I missunderstood the question then correct me. But regardless of what software is being used, it ain't going to happen with just headphones.

 

[dave in toledo]

headphones

if thats all you have, then listen to the mix on three or four different cd players, in the car wherever, take notes on the mix, and then make those adjustments you heard needed and noted on your track sheet, and burn a new cd and compare it on a few machines, after a while you get what you are looking for, not the best way, but if thats all you have, use it to its greattest potential

 

[dan the spectre]

if thats all you have, then listen to the mix on three or four different cd players, in the car wherever, take notes on the mix, and then make those adjustments you heard needed and noted on your track sheet, and burn a new cd and compare it on a few machines, after a while you get what you are looking for, not the best way, but if thats all you have, use it to its greattest potential

Well, I use monitors too, if a home stereo with all effects and EQ turned off qualifies as a monitor. That's the point where it doesn't sound so hot anymore.

Regarding what Cloneboy said, the SM57 stuff is indeed bright. In fact, it can be too bright. It's sort of "fizzy." I could try to make it rounder with the EQ, but like I said, my equalizer isn't very useful and I don't have an Aux send to use another one. Should I first get a good Mic Preamp to improve the sounds on the way in? I always thought recordings typically sounded like St Anger till they were mastered but now I'm thinking I may have this all wrong.

 

[A Reel Person]

Yeah, all that.

There are beautiful tid bits of wisdom, sprinkled throughout this thread.

I agree with Clone Boy, in that a bit of pre-emphasis is (often) necessary, on the input-side of the equation, to make up for certain frequency roll-off's you might experience in the recording/reproduce process. I, especially, take this to heart, as I work mainly in the analog realm. That's a philosophy I've taken to heart and used, for many, many years, already.

I also caught Vestast's note about, (para), how can you produce a good mix on a known flawed monitoring system? Well, I'm glad to say, in my own case, that I have ultimate faith in the nearly-flat reproduction I get in my monitor system and environment, and it's something I've worked hard to achieve,... mainly through rigorous EQ of the monitor/speaker/room environment, as monitored real-time on a spectrum analyzer display. You'll never get it perfectly flat, mind you, but I've gotten my monitors/room dialed in, as such, to produce a nearly flat response,... and boy,... it really makes a difference. I have standard settings, which I mark down, but I've been known to retest occasionally, and fine tune the monitor/room listening environment.

All that wisdom, I've taken to heart, but it does not absolutely preclude the possibility that I'd make a sucky mix, from time to time,... but that's more the human element, I suppose. No two sessions or tracks are exactly alike, and attention has to be paid to each factor in recording/reproduction signal chain, adjustment, and all that, to get consistently good results. There's no "set it and forget it" magic setting, in most cases.

/DA

 

[jfrog]

if thats all you have, then listen to the mix on three or four different cd players, in the car wherever, take notes on the mix, and then make those adjustments you heard needed and noted on your track sheet, and burn a new cd and compare it on a few machines, after a while you get what you are looking for, not the best way, but if thats all you have, use it to its greattest potential

That's what I've been doing, with pretty decent success. I get it close with the headphones (so I can work for hours without bugging the rest of the family) and tweek the mix on my home stereo, which has excellent speakers. I'll also burn a CD and play it in my car to see how it plays on a different system.

If the built-in eq on your VF doesn't do enough for your tracks - have you tried eq'ing your amp to compensate for whatever you're trying to cut or boost? (I know, stupid question)

 

[dan the spectre]

If the built-in eq on your VF doesn't do enough for your tracks - have you tried eq'ing your amp to compensate for whatever you're trying to cut or boost? (I know, stupid question)

Well I do adjust the amp EQ. Some of the time I'm actually just doing it for the fourth or fifth (or sixth and seventh, considering I use two mics) guitar tracks to fatten things up.