What is too loud?

[keith.rogers]

Cool. Again it's completely different, yet I recognize some original. A tremolo sounds added. Are any of these you playing it? hhmmm so different. The chords that I hid in back you have out front strong. It is a better flow for the material. Is there anything I could do to the tracks during recording to allow them to mix better?

The project is upstairs and I'm only on my 2nd cup of coffee and wife says I have to go on an hour walk before I can plant myself, so details are fuzzy.

Nothing was added, and I probably did have EQ on different tracks. Because the tracks didn't appear to line up perfectly, I wasn't sure where things went, so I just got the EZD track set with whatever the default kit was for my old EZD2 stuff, and tinkered a little with timing the hits more metronomically. I used that to align some of the rhythm tracks and maybe bass - just minor stuff, but it was too loose for my ear.

I pasted a copy of the guitar regions together (end to end) or one track I also ran the guitars through some amp sims, probably just a Fender and Vox combo with more gain, and yes with amp reverb and tremolo. There's a little automation on volume and also on panning where I move the lead into the center more when it starts.

Yes, parts probably got slid around a bit as I was lining things up. But, as suggested, I started with the drums, then I added the bass, got happy, probably keys, next long rhythm guitar tracks, and finally lead guitar. A little bit of compression on the mix bus. iZotope "maximizer" to push it to that -12dB LUFS - kind of arbitrary but it seemed like you wanted something in the louder range.

Like I said, I didn't listen to anything else. I basically work from the rhythm, and I'd say the main thing I noticed (in your tracks) that created work at start was the timing is not sharp. I mean, this doesn't have to be perfect, like electronica stuff, but if there's a drummer, then the bass and the drummer need to really be in sync, and that main rhythm guitar has to lock in. Now, you can create space in the middle for the singer, leads, whatever, and they can go crazy, but it should really hang with just the basics.

P.S. (edit): screen shot of the project attached. I actually only put amp sims on guitars & bass, except 09-riff3-consolidated had nothing. No EQ or compression on individual tracks, but there is some one the master. The MIDI keys were mapped to a Steinway Grand (by default?) - I just left it there.

P.P.S. I did use Logic, too, but did not "quantize" any tracks. Just use "timeflex" FlexTime to individually do a little bit of stretch or squeeze in a couple places where I noticed it. I'm sure there's more or less that could be done, as different folks prefer.

 

[Papanate]

and I'd say the main thing I noticed (in your tracks) that created work at start was the timing is not sharp.

I corrected the timing in Logic. FlexTime and then Quantized the tracks.

 

[Papanate]

Here is another - the MP3 kind of screws with the track - deemphasis on the the rhythm parts - and increases the volume of the leads.

 

[LazerBeakShiek]

Thanks, Papanate that second one is really nice!

My timing is always off. I will research the latency buffer some more. Currently, the buffer is off. I measured and entered it manually in ms. It's something I am working on. Logic and Flextime are these tools you use? Flex time ? I will look into them. Is there a reverb that was added?

I started with the drums, then I added the bass, got happy, probably keys, next long rhythm guitar tracks, and finally lead guitar. A little bit of compression on the mix bus. iZotope "maximizer" to push it to that -12dB LUFS - kind of arbitrary but it seemed like you wanted something in the louder range.

Is there a reason you are using -12 instead of -16? iZoptope makes a maximizer. Is that something you recommend? What tools are you commonly using is the DAW?

I agree, my timing situation is under investigation.

 

[keith.rogers]

Is there a reason you are using -12 instead of -16? iZoptope makes a maximizer. Is that something you recommend? What tools are you commonly using is the DAW?

I just got the impression you were going for a louder mix. I have generally let iZotope's maximizer run for streaming, which defaults to -14dB LUFS as a target, but for a CD (e.g.) you might go louder. And, if you're going for more compressed music, I think those end up louder. This was just a number I picked - seemed to sound Ok.

TimeFlex FlexTime is part of Logic (I typo'd it and had it backwards as "timeflex" - twice! - fixed, I think..). I'm sure any DAW has something like it to adjust timing within a track.

I do use iZotope tools fairly regularly, though mostly Ozone and RX. I do use Neutron EQ on mixes usually because the Tonal Balance control lets me see how a track's frequencies contributes to the complete mix and within that tool I can tweak track or final mix EQ. In this case, I did not use Neutron because any EQ was just done on the final mix.

 

[Papanate]

Thanks, Papanate that second one is really nice!

My timing is always off. I will research the latency buffer some more. Currently, the buffer is off. I measured and entered it manually in ms. It's something I am working on. Logic and Flextime are these tools you use? Flex time ? I will look into them. Is there a reverb that was added?

Flextime is a Logic tool that lets you correct the Timing of the parts in different ways - it was important to process it this way - because you guitar parts were all the place. Yes I did add Space Designer (Logic Plugin) on Stereo Bus - parallel processing is the technique - using the SkinDrum setting. I also panned the guitars and keyboard - the lead parts with at 02 and -03 - the Keyboard and Chord strumming parts were at -18 and +18 - and the little stabs of guitars were at -24 and +24.

Then I added the Adaptive Limiter (Logic plugin) on the Mix Buss and Set it for -1db so it tightened up the output. In addition for the keyboards I used the Deluxe Modern Bright Mark II Rhodes with a pretty wide Tremolo - with the pan control it's more in the right channel than the left - but you can hear it fine - the Tremelo is timed to the rhythm.

 

[LazerBeakShiek]

Does this look or sound time fixed? I also deleted the hollow body guitar, being slightly out of tune.

pic



Every track has a HPF LPF set added. Guitars are 250-10,000hz., Bass is 80- up , Drums are 80-10,000Hz and a master limiter on the mains.

 

[Papanate]

Does this look or sound time fixed? I also deleted the hollow body guitar, being slightly out of tune.

pic

View attachment 111383

Not really - it's better but still out.

 

[Manslick]

Just listened to post 18 and it sounds nice up in here.

 

[LazerBeakShiek]

18 and 23 are both nice.

I chopped the song up too much, then decided to change the settings. Reaper is now at less than 2 seconds latency. The timing is fixed. The latency buffer in UA console was turned off. It needed to match the DAW and was set to medium. It adds samples and size to match, or at least needs to be turned on.

My idea was to upload the project for use and then have them upload their version they mixed, so I could see how they did it. They kind of told me in response. pretty cool to hear what they did. More people should upload the project so that people can check out what they did to make them sound so good.