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anonymous 7 July 2009

hello,

I try to make music with synths and romplers but everything gets very confused. I try to raise the volume to distinguish sounds but everything gets even more mangled.
What should I do to avoid this?

Thanks!

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Codemonkey Tue, 07/07/2009 - 15:49

Listening now, that was just a filler tip until I can come up with something.

Well, I think that with that sample, it starts well, but your 2nd part comes in to be too strong. Eats up the lower synth quickly.

What I like to do is cut the volume of a part by about 6dB (turn the gain down or something) and see if you can still hear it. If you can still hear it clearly, it's too loud and you need to keep some of those 6dB off. If you've lost the part totally, you need to add back more than 6.

YMMV

Codemonkey Tue, 07/07/2009 - 22:23

True dat.

It's definitely wise to look into a way to hear speakers which aren't labelled "creative" or "logitech". This way, you can hear a flat mix, so the hyped XX range doesn't obscure your ability to hear the YY range, etc.

Then you can teach your ears to hear particular ranges, and you can say "I should consider cutting from offensive regions, because the mix in quesiton has an undesirable abundance of sound in such regions which is non-beneficial to the clarity of instruments".
Except that in your head, it'll sound less poncy.

You *could* try teaching your ears in a poor monitoring environment, but it'll lie to you. The room is echoey (believe it or not) and that hypes certain frequencies, so they'll affect the way you hear things. If your room is bassy (small with thick-ish walls) then your mixes will end up thin as you over-cut the low end to make it sound clearer.

Welcome to the slippery slope. Grab an interface, and some bass trapping, and don't forget the second mortgage on your way down.

anonymous Wed, 07/08/2009 - 03:49

the problem is me, not my gear. I've got some better than "creative" listening gear (handmade reference 3-way speakers by a pro and telefunken amplifier A-50) ok now I already see your comments going against my speakers but they sound good, at least this is what a pro-audio live technician told me while listening to them. it's simply that I don't have the skills. yet. I'll try your suggestions and post another sample. thanks everybody. =)

edit: and YES I don't have a proper room, it's just my sleeping room filled with audio equipment. I have an audiocard (although not very good) which is the Line6 Toneport UX2.

anonymous Wed, 07/08/2009 - 04:31

ouzo77 wrote: [quote=fsx]I have an audiocard (although not very good) which is the Line6 Toneport UX2.

the toneport is fine. i use my toneport gx for almost everything.
i think it's eq'ing and panning, or the lack of it, what causes the problems. and probably your room.

honestly I have grown very unsatisfied with the Toneport, its AD/DA sucks big time, the latency sucks as well (and I have a decent PC bought and assembled 7 days ago).

ouzo77 Wed, 07/08/2009 - 04:48

i haven't had any latency issues with it. but i've never used it with a windows pc.

you can't compare the converters to the ones from rme or apogee, but they're decent. i do use an external mic pre, though. the toneport gx has no xlr-inputs.

nevertheless, try to get the best sound possible with what you have, and then upgrade to something better. this way you will appreciate the better converters even more, because if your skills are not good, then even the best hardware won't help you.

anonymous Wed, 07/08/2009 - 05:08

ouzo77 wrote: i haven't had any latency issues with it. but i've never used it with a windows pc.

you can't compare the converters to the ones from rme or apogee, but they're decent. i do use an external mic pre, though. the toneport gx has no xlr-inputs.

nevertheless, try to get the best sound possible with what you have, and then upgrade to something better. this way you will appreciate the better converters even more, because if your skills are not good, then even the best hardware won't help you.

thanks. my problem with the AD/DA is that when I connect my Access VIRUS it distorts completely unless I keep the synth volume at 1/4, which sucks.

ouzo77 Wed, 07/08/2009 - 06:03

fsx wrote: thanks. my problem with the AD/DA is that when I connect my Access VIRUS it distorts completely unless I keep the synth volume at 1/4, which sucks.

that's not a problem of the AD/DA's. it's a gain problem. can't you lower the input gain of the line-in's?
if there is no gain knob on the toneport set the input gain inside the gearbox/podfarm software so that you get a healthy but non-clipping level.

anonymous Wed, 07/08/2009 - 06:58

ouzo77 wrote: [quote=fsx]thanks. my problem with the AD/DA is that when I connect my Access VIRUS it distorts completely unless I keep the synth volume at 1/4, which sucks.

that's not a problem of the AD/DA's. it's a gain problem. can't you lower the input gain of the line-in's?
if there is no gain knob on the toneport set the input gain inside the gearbox/podfarm software so that you get a healthy but non-clipping level.

thanks, I'll try this later when I'm at home =) btw I'm not using gearbox because I don't like how it sounds, I'm using the toneport as a bare audiocard... hope there's some gain thing somewhere...

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