The old stuff is being remastered to bring it up to modern "spec".

Look at this Youtube video about the original Nirvana album vs. the remastered one:

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What is this "modern spec"?
To me the new version loses all the dynamics.
Which is what I hear between MP3 and wav files.
Were both of those released on CD?

Thats exactly what happens to sound when you level it like that. Once you take the transients off that close to the wall, it looses all the life and sparkle. But I don't think that example is the best mastering either.

I bought the last Katy Perry album. I usually buy top selling artists to keep up on what they are doing. I thought I was going to be impressed over the mixing and mastering, I wanted to be moved by it so badly. Man, is it terrible. Its so smashed and boring. I am so dumbfounded over this because I think her songs sound really good on the radio. Listening close to them in Sequoia, and looking at the wave file, there is nothing but a wall. Pop is really only about the vocal and the wall behind it now.

And to those following this thread regarding HPF, the vocals on her album must roll off around 400hz or higher. In fact, start listening to most pop songs to see if you can hear anything in the VOX tracks below that. If you want big bottom end and the wall of sound, thats what they are doing. HPF everything but the bass and then hammering it to the max.

Yes. 'modern spec' mean brickwalled until it sounds like shit.

You know, LOUDER!!!

Which is BETTER, right?

Man...Katy Perry!...at your age audiokid!...hehe...sorry I just had to say that.
I listen to new stuff too....but I don't consider any of that style very good pop....it's terrible, but I don't think the kids that love this stuff like we loved the Beatles really care or can hear any of that technical stuff.
In fact I believe most of this is about the video and costumes and visual imagery and the audio is just meh...pablum.

If you get a chance listen to this Gotye song.
I really like this because it has simple sparse instrumentation, dynamics and a feel along with great imagery.
The boy/girl mix is also very powerful as a duet theme as are both there vocals....Kimbra kinda looks like Katy too!

Gotye - Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra) - official video - YouTube

Lol,

I played Top 40 for 18 years. 6 nights a week, 48 months none stop. I never had a home in 18 years. I grew to love pop music, studies the sounds and how it all happened. I have 3 girls that love her. And they are all going to be in this business so I pay attention to it. I'm in this business to make money so I follow the money makers.

Hehe! I was expecting you to ask! Now you know. But I love classical and all the other styles. I just love music.

The thing I listen for in pop music isn't the sound quality as much as it is what they do in the production end of it. The Pop business is changing. Engineers that can mix/produce and master are in the pocket. That is the new engineers role.

Thanks for the link, I'll listen now!

Which really brings me to a comment (maybe off topic or maybe not) about how multiple tracks being mixed end up fighting for a spot in a good song. It seems less is better and less causes less mud and better definition.

Oh, I know, I love this guy and that song. I listen to the writer of this song on CBC radio a few months back. He is really cool. He makes all his sounds and have a very cool POV on this business. Very similar to my ideas. . Very interesting guy. Thanks!

djmukilteo, post: 387744 wrote: Which really brings me to a comment (maybe off topic or maybe not) about how multiple tracks being mixed end up fighting for a spot in a good song. It seems less is better and less causes less mud and better definition.

Absolutely! The key IMO is to get the harmonic vibe flowing. Once you connect with that, the song lives! everything becomes bigger. Its also why I love analog more and more because the harmonic energy lives in the copper. Less is more. I'd love to hear how others describe this harmonic vibe.

Well if the girls like Katy then they'll like this!....I think they played this song on Glee!
Which BTW I don't watch....just heard it on a Glee commercial.
After hearing Gotye and some of his other stuff, I'm starting to feel like there is still hope out there for good stuff.

djmukilteo, post: 387747 wrote: Well if the girls like Katy then they'll like this!....I think they played this song on Glee!
Which BTW I don't watch....just heard it on a Glee commercial.
After hearing Gotye and some of his other stuff, I'm starting to feel like there is still hope out there for good stuff.

Every so often a great artist like to happens. I'll look for the podcast of his interview.

here:

CBC.ca | Q | Gotye on Q

Perhaps that's something John's song could be tested with.
Trim out all the extra tracks and work strictly with the key elements.
I know this isn't the song John originally created, but it might be interesting.

I've been doing this with his song and it sounds much better. But the more simplified the tracks, the more I hear the distortion on all the tracks left over. I can actually hear the VOX tracks hitting their limit on the converters.. There is no room for harmonic space. Its a similar thing ME talk about when they tell us to leave some room for them too. I was going to ask John where his level was when recording?

If your AD lacks the openess, its not easy to get that "less is more" harmonic richness.

When I bought Pro Tools 24, I found I wanted to do a lot of vocal layering like this song because my vocals never sounded full on their own. I tried all sorts of plug-ins and that only made it worse. So I resorted to layering.
But all it did was make more phasy music that was hard to mix clear, it killed the bass. The trick is duping them and aligning the vox tracks a bit away from each other rather than singing over them. But thats just one way around it. If you sing the doubles, you have to be really tight and learn to play off the first track. And then you cannot mess with the levels. If you do, it screws with the dynamic of the layer. After about 8 tracks like that, your 2-bus starts piling up and then the bad stuff starts happening to the entire song because you have to start pulling the faders down.

Thus why I mix OTB.

Another person doing the double is much better, they fit better. But when its the same person, it becomes a very identifiable sound that can be a good thing or bad thing.

For an experiment,

(Expired Link Removed)

This is how clear I am trying to get Johns vocals in this mix and the only way you do this, is with a HPF. If johns vocal sounds clear to you, then you have serious monitoring issues and/or you need to be enlightened on how clear vocals should sound . These are a bit bright for me in this video but pretty damn close. Its what I do too.

JohnTodd, post: 387736 wrote: The old stuff is being remastered to bring it up to modern "spec".

Look at this Youtube video about the original Nirvana album vs. the remastered one:

">

This is a great video with Bruce Swedien. Compression is for Kids lol!
I must admit I love compression but don't use compression to compress something like most people, I use it for the added copper in a track or the two bus and for modeling a certain area. Once a track is smashed it kills everything but it sure makes drums sound great.

I love this Video.

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.youtube…"]#15 - Engineering Legend Bruce Swedien - YouTube[/]="http://www.youtube…"]#15 - Engineering Legend Bruce Swedien - YouTube[/]

Here is what not to do, or at least what educated engineers that hear never do, especially prior to mastering. If you give a mastering engineer something like this, forget it. It sounds like total shit. All the transients are chopped and pulverized. This track is extremely loud at low volume but that means nothing.
If you can't hear it , you can see it. If you can't hear it after you read this and watch this video, and still believe the audio sounds great, you need to pack it in. No mastering engineer could ever save this track. It has been destroyed compared to the example below. There are no highs left in this song. All that is left is mud. All the sparkle and life lives in those transients. The transients are what give a song life and dynamics.
This is what Bruce Swedien is talking about and what people who cannot hear what they are doing, are doing to music. All in the name of making it loud at low volumes. The war to see who can make a song the loudest at level 1. Thats all this is.

If any of your tracks look like this as individuals, your have absolutely destroyed it. Many newbies do this to each track and then again during mastering! If someone is going to do this to one of my songs, it sure as hell won't be me.

----------------------------------------------------

Here is the same track but not smashed as bad, its close to crap but more acceptable.

Attached files

I'm cleaning my dropbox out so all tracks relevant to this thread on my behalf are gone.

Thanks for sharing your tracks John!

And thank you everyone for playing, its been very informative.

On to another song.

Cheers!

(y)

Interesting discussion. I never can get my masters as loud as the commercial ones, but I noticed that my waves still have peaks and valleys in them, unlike the brickwalls the commercial music does.

And thank you all for playing, too! I really appreciate hearing the different interps of my song, and the discussion of how much my recordings suck. LOL!

No offense taken! I'm always looking to improve things around here.

You heard my vocals hitting the limit on my converters? I never noticed it before - I'll turn the gain down and try softer levels. With 24 bit we have a little more wiggle room on levels.

A little acoustic treatment, backing off the mic, tightening up my performance, these are all things I needed to know.

Thank you everyone for sharing your insights with me and us!

Have a good'un!
-Johntodd

Hey John,

The solutions to gaining audible level are obviously more complicated than a simple answer, but because I see a common curse many are all suffering from, and I believe to be unaware of, excessive bass in a mix, results in less overall room for detailed volume in a mix. Our thread moves to here: http://recording.org/track-talk/52476-how-low-can-you-hear.html#post387787

Thanks John for providing the tracks to your song for us to experiment with.
I enjoyed trying my hand at mixing them and it was a great song.
It showed me the problems I have with my mixing ITB and monitoring.
I pretty much knew the problems, but for my purposes it is what it is.

audiokid is in a good place to provide some real benchmarks and knowledge and I thank him as we all should for having this forum and getting us to actually make some audio and incorporating that into the forum.
After all we chat a lot here...but we don't "listen" much. The technology of being able to upload and download hi-rez audio files is really remarkable and finding suitable formats to compare is something being talked about everywhere now!
I made that remark to BT earlier and I think he has created this pretty great experiment towards having more actual audio passed around which is being listened to.
It gives more to the chat.
After all there's only so much you can talk about...lets use or ears too!
I hope we do more of this!

Final thoughts to me are "the spaces"
A "recording studio" has always required a good room to record something in....real sound studios have always been that way...it all starts right there.
A "control room" to listen to those recordings in...with some really good speakers is the other thing you have to have.
Those two things really haven't changed much. You will always need good acoustic spaces to get good audio recordings. Everything in recording will always improve with the right spaces.
Without them you are just guessing.

To be honest. This song is killing me. LOL. I've heard it way too many times. Still, I cleaned up the background a bit and squashed every bit of life out of it. It's still stuck in my head, even when I sleep. Here's my last attempt. Not a good one but I'm at the point of stop or start again from scratch so, I'm gonna just stop now. There is some distortion in the main vocal. It's my fault. I know that it's there and it was semi-intentional. I don't know how bad it really sounds and I still don't hear the bass as well as I'd like to so any problems down there are just beyond my listening environment.

(Expired Link Removed)

Ah, Hueseph, you are still with us, right on.
You have the bass much better! What did you do? HPF? smoke Yes, its still phasy but waaaay better!!! You have a handle on it now. Bravo!

If you guys kept going I would help you through some stuff. For instance, the acoustic G that are in the middle, need to be panned more so you have room for the main VOX in the middle, and.... I would kill one of them actually and double it, rather that have two phasy versions. Better to have "one" phasy version and duplicate it, then shift them slightly away from each other to get a better stereo image. Do you know what I mean?

Thats the trick to this song IMHO.

The only way to get the bass better is to kill the drums and add your own kit. Its all a mess down there and thats why I did what I did. I then dipped the Bass around 140 and HPF it around 60hz just until you loose the woooooooffy drone, then added about 6db at 1k. It tightened right up.
There is also a cymbal that really effected the vocals in the harmonies that I just couldn't get around.

All the VOX are HPF up to 250 or more and then I dipped the lower mids down on all of them from 350 to 700 about 6 db even more from there. There is so much lower mids in the VOX and guitar areas, some had to go too so making space by dipping it out of the VOX tracks added a pocked for the guitars to sit better.

Then added 10k on all the VOX until they started to sound clear. But not too much because I also added a bit more to the entire track during the Mastering. When songs are this muddy, I personally think its better to clean the mud up on all the tracks and then add the bass back in on the 2-bus.

A huge difference was using a HPF on the verb. I wanted more verb, as Don wanted, but you got to have shinny tracks for good verb effect, otherwise it turns grease into lard, you don't need more low end verb feeding the problem.
I used compression for my drums but hardly touched it everywhere else. Didn't need to kill the dynamics anymore than it was.

Those were the basic steps I did.

I removed all my tracks here ( not that it matters ), making way for our next mix fest but I uploaded an archive onto Soundcloud. This is a version which I regretted adding a bit too much verb on but its all that remains of this track for a reference to what I'm describing above and my contribution.
[MEDIA=soundcloud]audiokid/illbethere-master-mix11

audiokid;

Question:

You mentioned "one phasey guitar". I've noticed through testing with headphones that my mic will pick up a phasey sound on an accoustic, but it's because of my right arm strumming the strings, hence moving. How can I get rid of that? Have to strum it somehow.

-Johntodd

I don't hear phase issues. What I hear is a guitar that has bad intonation. This usually happens when the guitar is set up for light gauged strings or if the guitar is set for a higher gauged string and a lighter gauge is being used or vice versa. The neck bows easier and causes the guitar to go out of tune or is just generally poorly intonated because the strings are not applying the appropriate tension causing the string length to be less or more than is needed for proper intonation.

Happy Easter John!

Comb filtering issue I bet. I don't think its your arm but if it is that noticeable, maybe you need to have a less directional approach. Hard to say from here. Bandwidth is an enemy. Not enough room in your gear because everything is so mid range can't help.

The phase I'm hearing is the overdub doubling in the tracks. I bet your doubling work would be more effective, sound a lot more vibrant and lush if you used different mics and/or a different spot for those sections. I think a more unique perspective rather than two unison versions of the same tone is not helping, which IMHO, is creating an un natural sound. I find duplicating and jogging tracks a bit away from each other sounds tighter for the sound you are going for. I'm not a big fan unision overdubs all the way through a song. Its great as an effect, but when you do this to multiple tracks all the way though their parts its too much for me and very hard to mix tight unless your take drastic and definite measures with " carving out spots for everything to sit in. The more tracks, the more everything has to be in sync or work together.

The best way I sum this up. A great piano tuner doesn't tune a piano perfect. They compromise the tuning from top to bottom ( there is a term for this). TheJackAttack could shed light on this.
When you are doubling tracks by the same person in the same room, same mics ( although I know you used the Nady for the mains), same pre, converters that all have a sound to them ( not transparent) in the same control room that everything was recorded in, the battle is separation and phase. Thats how I see it.

Things like converters have to be wide open and transparent otherwise everything has a pink shade that you just can't get rid of. That pink is like water colours, an ingredient to adds a harmonic value to everything in the entire soundscape. Like giving the song the Flue. Everything is sick.

So Hue, nice to hear your mix. I cannot agree more about converters. They are the single most important part of the recording chain that seperate the hobbiest from the pros. Maybe we can agree a bit more that pro tools mixes are all starting to sound like pro tools, or digital mixes are all sounding like digital mixes. As big as the music seems ITB, its still all in the same box so the key is breaking up that perfect digital line with tools and techniques that do what the master piano tuner is doing.

The last 2% that the majority of engineers think doesn't matter.... I believe that is a bigger difference that meets the eye.

Big topic but thats how I see music.

All being said, you are doing great and have a great talent.

hueseph, post: 387878 wrote: I don't hear phase issues. What I hear is a guitar that has bad intonation. This usually happens when the guitar is set up for light gauged strings or if the guitar is set for a higher gauged string and a lighter gauge is being used or vice versa. The neck bows easier and causes the guitar to go out of tune or is just generally poorly intonated because the strings are not applying the appropriate tension causing the string length to be less or more than is needed for proper intonation.

The intonation is definitely part of the problem but there is a bigger problem ( or what we are striving for) that goes beyond. Add all these issues together and you have a wall of phasey out of tune sounding music. Especially if you are jamming it all in the middle or side by side etc and all sound is coming from the same source, same space, same DAW, same pre, same coloured converter etc etc etc.

You aren't seeing the depth to what I am talking about but maybe you are and I have my own way of explaining this.

Here is a good question for us all to try and answer. If music isn't harmonically vibing ( in tune, flowing whatever), what is it? What cause's a phasey sound and how do you mix music that is like this?

I have to be honest though. My last mix sounds thin to me. Not the whole thing, just the lead vox. Even when I compare to commercial mixes it sounds thin. In fact, I think I was happier with my 4th or 5th mix with exception to the overabundant kick and limp bass. I'm using Sonar X1 and adding quite a bit.....too much analog emulation. A lot of saturation going on and you can hear it. Tube emulation on the lead vox and tape emulation on the master bus. I don't think it's one of my better mixes but that's just me.

There is some intentional phasiness to the bg vox. I added a chorus. I was trying to go with John's vibe in that respect.

Ya, but you will never get it to sound like a commercial mix because it was never tracked well in the first place to ever get it to that level. This is the impossible dream, especially with all the tracks it has and all the compression and midrange that is in the VOX's and acoustic instruments ( which I think the wave plug-in enforced and made it even more impossible) .

You cannot get an $80 ribbon mic through low end converters and mic pre to sound like a Neumann though a NEVE into a Lavry converter. The only thing you can do is try and clean up the mud everywhere so the tracks will at least be distinguishable from one and other and not warble all over the place in a mid heavy ( narrow bandwidth) space.
There is very little harmonic juice left to attach other parts of music together for this. Much like recording a string section all playing in a closet with dead strings using tools that can only pick up 400hz to 8k adequately. Everything below and above it artificial. You think there is substance there but it isn't usful acoustic information. It is distortion and noise, Non musical. Adding chorus' and reverb' just makes more mud and masks it all for what it is. You may think this is helping but you are only fooling yourself. You will spend your entire life spinning your wheels trying to wonder how they do it.

Exactly like adding way too much salt in a broth.

I agree that the mixes would be nice if they were bigger but that will never happen in a million years beyond the repair needed to remove the salt , thus make it all clear. It is what it is and this is the task at hand. What you have remaining is all you have to work with.

What should be very simple, If you think the lead VOX needs a bit more low end, add it in. Should be simple right? But everytime I did that, it started competing with everything else. The problem with the entire recording is missing clarity and space. Nothing has sheen to it right from the get go. There is only so much eq you can do.

I wish REMY would try and take this on. It would be interesting to see how an old analog console could open this up a bit more than my analog summing amp. I doubt many could get it much past what we've accomplished without retracking the real stuff. It will either be too bassy or too thin. The bandwidth just isn't there. And that being said, gear does make a difference.

C'mon Remy! I know you can do it!

I found it really difficult to get the bass to sound decent. There's no real attack but I guess that's because it was synth. This was a challenge for me altogether with the low end. I don't normally find it that hard to get the bottom straight but for some reason this one just pinned me to the wall.

Do you think there would be less mud and phasiness and a clearer mix if there were only a few single mono tracks instead of all the doubles?

Something I've noticed over the years working with digital gear.

You can hear a very obvious difference between the two worlds. Its a challenge trying to get real acoustic tracks to fit naturally into the virtual domain. The less bandwidth you have to play with ( AD ), the harder it is to marry the two together ITB. Another reason why I think hybrid rules. Remy, come on. Show us some light!

djmukilteo, post: 387891 wrote: Do you think there would be less mud and phasiness and a clearer mix if there were only a few single mono tracks instead of all the doubles?

Absolutely, and even more beautiful if the mono tracks were produced with a wider bandwidth and in tune. We all know how beautiful one vocal and one guitar sounds if both are in tune and in a open acoustic room. This is what we are all trying to make happen in a pretend world right now. Instead of breaking it down and tightening it up, you all are trying to add more and more stuff to it all. Its all in the performance and the harmonic structure.

So I am removing crud and searching for the harmonics.

I agree with your comment about just adding more and more on top of a track.
The DAW needs to be just the tape deck. It records the audio and plays it back.
All these digital plugins really just add "stuff" on top of that recorded track.

You'll always need the good performance going in.
From there it either stands on its own or it gets "sauced".
But then plenty of famous songs have been made by adding "sauce".

Do you want steak sauce or ketchup?
Either merely masks the true flavor of the meat!

Yup, and I still "think " I hear something happen when we add plug-ins. You gain editing abilities but I think you loose harmonic. The harmonics of the sound that make it stand on its own rather than being part of the box.

But let me say this. I asked a question on the Sequoia private forum just last night. Their new 64bit Sequoia seems to sound tighter and clearer. I don't know if its my eyes playing tricks on me or what but I'm waiting for a few others to clarify this. We all know how our eyes play tricks on us.

Here is what I use and its well worth watching this free tutorial and a couple more on this monitoring system. When I watched these I started realizing I couldn't be hearing my mixes accurately.

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.puremix…"]Dangerous ST: Monitoring - PUREMIX[/]="http://www.puremix…"]Dangerous ST: Monitoring - PUREMIX[/]

And this is the entire setup for those actually considering this set-up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=wVkZmKNvAGg