Need help with mixing

S

SWG

New member
Last night I did my first recording on my 880ex and was quite pleased with the results.
Only thing was when I burned to CD it ended up dry with loads of bass and little drums. The levels were all out of whack. When I was listening to it on the 880ex all 6 channels had great reverb. What I need to know is this. I bounced channels 1-6 to channels 7-8. Do I do the mixing then? Also, does the fader/edit button have to be orange to record wet? I am very new and learning this is driving me to drink, well it's driving me to drink more. The manuals that came with this are pitiful at best. Thanks in advance, Bill
 
Don't go crazy trying to decipher those Roland manuals, they are all terrible at best.

Try several of the application guides that are downloaded from Roland's site (www.rolandus.com) and do a search of this BBS in the Roland forum for posts with my username. I posted a link a while back to another useful 880 guide, but can't remember what the website was.

Now, the mixing problem you mentioned: You do the mixing when you bounce the tracks to a stereo pair for burning to CD. Doesn't really matter what you do with the levels on those two tracks when you burn the disc, whatever you bounce there will be exactly how it was when it was bounced. Orange is source mode I think (if it's like my older 880) and you have to have the stereo pair you are bouncing to (normally 7 and 8) armed red in order to record what you are bouncing. Whatever effects you have on each track will be on the two tracks that contain the bounce. If you heard the reverb while bouncing and it didn't show up on tracks 7 and 8, I'm not sure about that one. If you tried to add the reverb to 7 and 8 by turning on their effects and then burned the disc, that's the problem. Only what's recorded on 7 and 8 will be burned, effects and fader levels don't matter on those two tracks during the CD burning process. If you want reverb, you have to put in on the tracks you are boucing from while you do the bounce. If you want to apply the same reverb on the entire mix, then I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but I can't remember off the top of my head. I think I always just put it on each source track when bouncing to make it easy. Just throwing out everything I can think of to maybe help.

Those application papers and the guide I mentioned go through almost every application of this type step by step. Much better than the manual. Remember that the things I mention might not apply to you, as my 880 is the original model, not the EX that I guess you have.

[This message has been edited by Jon X (edited 05-07-2000).]
 
Thanks alot Jon for the info. I undid the first bounce and kept trying until I got something pretty close to what I wanted. The last time I burned to CD it came out pretty decent. Only thing is I'm doing this on a pair of headphones so the sound I get when I play it on my stereo isn't goin to be as good. Thanks again for the info on the guides, I'll download and see if I can get a better grasp that way.
Bill
 
Sounds like you are getting there with the Roland CD burning. I always disliked how Roland implemented that. You got it working faster than most people I've talked to about it. I also just remembered something in the CD burning manual that came with mine about using the Mix L and Mix R inputs on the stereo pair you are bouncing to in order to get the best results. Maybe you are doing that already, but thought I'd throw it out there.

FWIW, the best thing I ever did to improve the sound of the CDs I make (besides frequenting this BBS) was buy a SBLive (or any sound card with digital I/O) and record a stereo track into my PC using the digital output on the 880. Then I could work on the track using software like SoundForge and whatever plugins I can find. It also allows me to compare more directly to .wav files and MP3s I ripped from commercial CDs. Really made a difference in the levels that I got on disc, and made it easier to create a CD rather using the CD burner connected to the 880. I have the external Roland SCSI burner (1st one that came out) and just got a cheapo SCSI card for my PC and connected it that way. Also, if you have a few tracks that you want to do some heavy editing on, looking at the PC monitor is much easier then staring at that tiny Roland screeen for hours. Enough of my rambling...

BTW, do you have a new 880, and if so did you get the E-Magic software with it for connecting to the PC via midi? That might work as well for editing instead of transfering to the PC, but I haven't heard from anyone that has used it extensively yet. You are right about mixing with those headphones, but that's what I used for about the first year I did any recording until I saved money for decent monitors. I made a lot of versions on cassette first and listened in several different systems in order to gauge it better.

Good luck.

[This message has been edited by Jon X (edited 05-08-2000).]
 
Actually, I got my 880ex off of eBay for a cool $1000. It was only used a couple times through a link with another 880. The guy decided to sell them and get the 1680. I was thinking of going through my PC but I was completely bewildered by which sound card to get and what software to run with it. Plus the added $$$ for goin through the PC kinda pushed me away from it. All I think I need is a new soundcard with digital I/O and the software but they can run several hundred $$$ a piece. Eventually I'll end up goin through the PC but until then I'll just suffer with that little tiny LCD screen, good thing I ate my carrots when I was a kid :)
 
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