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Hi all,

I'm about to undertake a Hard rock album, which is generally not what i do, so its all a bit new to me.

I remember reading somewhere that some engineers add white noise to their mix to enhance the 'Wall of guitars' effect. Is this common practice? if so what should i look out for?

Thanks for any help

Henri

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anonymous Sat, 11/26/2005 - 12:43

dude, you're talking about "dithering." they used actual noise generators back in the day,,,, now-a-days there's usually a dither feature in the software that is set to do the trick,,, the sound difference is not much if everything's recorded really well,, what it was "in theory" supposed to do, was "fill in the gaps" of the EQ spectrum, and the detail, kinda like a primer before painting,, when you zoom in on an audio file, you can see the little "squares" that are touching and connected to make a the main "line" that is your recording. Dithering will smooth it out somewhat , make it sound more like a smooth line rather than a bunch of squares(samples).

HERES THE THING: DITHERING IS FOR THE MASTERING ENGINEER!!! if you're not going to be mastering this (i never recommend this to be done by the same guy who recorded the song), dont do it,, a good mastering engineer will take care of it,, if fact,, i've always read that Dithering is THE ABSOLUTE LAST thing applied to a mix in the mastering process.

hope that clears things up for ya!

-ktek-

McCheese Sun, 11/27/2005 - 00:25

Dude, he's not talking about dithering.

What he's talking about is using white noise to thicken your guitars. I've fooled around with it a couple of times. Get a track of white noise, then put a gate on it. Set your guitar track to openthe gate.

It's simple enough to get going, but to get it to sound decent is a different story. Thanks for bringing it up, I may play around with it some more.

Cucco Sun, 11/27/2005 - 14:19

McCheese wrote: Dude, he's not talking about dithering.

What he's talking about is using white noise to thicken your guitars. I've fooled around with it a couple of times. Get a track of white noise, then put a gate on it. Set your guitar track to openthe gate.

This can also be an interesting effect on snare too.