Never mix/produce when you've had a few...

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Never mix/produce when you've had a few...

Message Board > Music Chitchat - General ( Indie, Jazz, World, Electronic etc.) > Never mix/produce when you've had a few...

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_Griphin_
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I proved that mixing a CD isn't the brightest thing to do when your loaded. It sounds decent when your gunned, but when you sober up the next day it usually sounds like shit. I proved this re-mastering Dreadnaut-Deliverance (or trying to), only when I was sober and out of hospital did the mix sound like it should (always try to fit the peaks into those lines you find in WaveLab/Sound Forge/Goldwave, I posted an example so you know what I'm talking about). - Fri, 1 Jun 2007 1:27pm Edited: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 1:30pm

Danielle
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Griphin!!! Drunk? Hospital? WTF? Are being bad? - Fri, 1 Jun 2007 2:54pm

_Griphin_
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No, no, see I remixed and burned Dreadnaut (Jake from The Remanes played guitar, same with Quin) for Jake a few years ago when my ego was talking a lot, I spent 3 days after I got back from the bar to mix that, it sounded great when I heard it gooned (I tried to make it sound CD loud, that didn't work), I never realized the screwup till days later, when I was out of the hospital (2 and a half years ago) I was sober enough to reset the levels (I actually remembered the conversation), which I did, now it sounds the way it should of sounded like. But I burned 17 CDs with the bad mix on them, makes you humble REAL quick after realizing it. I did a VERY NICE job on the packaging though (I posted the cover). Oh and I burned off a proper mix of the CD and got it to Jake, once you drop the levels the mix sounds AWESOME!!! - Fri, 1 Jun 2007 5:31pm Edited: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 11:30pm

Meantime Mike
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Damn man post some mp3's I havent heard the Dreadnaut in a long time, lost my tape year ago. I still have a sticker of them though. - Sat, 2 Jun 2007 11:39am

_Griphin_
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Well send me an E-Mail, and I'll burn it to CD for you. I'd love to be able to post MP3s, but I need permission from the people that were in the band to do that (not my work). - Sat, 2 Jun 2007 4:53pm

Meantime Mike
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aight, although Im sure Jake and Quin wouldnt really care considering they are both computer illiterate :D - Sun, 3 Jun 2007 12:53pm Edited: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 12:53pm

_Griphin_
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I dunno... - Sun, 3 Jun 2007 11:14pm

Mean Mike
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you dunno what? if they are computer illiterate? trust me.. they are! lol - Tue, 5 Jun 2007 7:55am

lonemonk
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That sound file shown in the first post, even if you were to 'Drop the levels', has already had all musical life compressed out of it. It's a perfect example of absolutely no subtle dynamics whatsoever. Hopefully it didn't come out of the studio looking like that.

Griph; Why would it matter whether someone is asking for a CD or electronic copy if you don't have bands approval in either case? Not that I give a shit, but I don't understand the distinction. Technically, you need band approval for CDs as much as you would for electronic distro. Hell, If the band is as non-technical as Mean Mike says, presumably CD approval is *more* relevant than Inter-nerd...
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Anyway, carry on people! I just don't understand most of what goes on around here.
. - Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:00pm Edited: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:23pm

_Griphin_
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Errr... well regardless of what medium the media is, I ask for permission cause I'm being nice, but I've always been this way. The example I gave was just to explain what I meant, more then anything.

Example #2: What the audio file should look actually look like. Notice how the peaks just go past the lines, but not way over the lines. This was normalized to -2 dB if I can remember. - Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:45pm Edited: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:56pm

_Griphin_
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Here is the same audio file but with a normalized audio level (-0 dB). This may sound louder, but at this point high/low ends shred. When I did the Dreadnaut I normalized it to +4 dB (which is impossible with the newer versions of WaveLab). - Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:57pm Edited: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:58pm

lonemonk
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Yep, those are nicer looking. Normalize is not always your friend. You are better off with a soundcard that has level meters so that you can record stuff into the computer at as high a level as possible without going over. That way you don't have to do as much normalize/compression nothing.

Anything that has been semi-professionally recorded, or has already been mastered is not going to benefit from further dynamic processing.

It's been talked about on Livevic before. Trying to emulate the Massive Loud CDs that you hear on the market is both futile and perpetuates a situation that is despicable in the first place. Music needs dynamics.
. - Wed, 6 Jun 2007 10:35am Edited: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 10:38am

Mi*coll*
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I haven't posted on this board in quite a while, but I couldn't resist a talk about audio!

Normalizing to +4? You would never want to do that -- you'll just be nastily distorting the signal. If you want the mix to be 4 db louder, use a hard limiter like the Waves L2 or something like that. But a better choice would be to simply normalize to 0 db and leave any signal processing to a mastering engineer.

The only reason you would normalize to less-than 0 db would be because the listener's DA coverters are crappy and can't handle 0 db signals. However, you aren't compromising the signal in any way by normalizing to 0 db. In other words, you could normalize the signal to 0 db and send it to someone to master it without any problems.

I'd tend to disagree with lonemonk when he says to send a hot signal into your soundcard. Most crappy soundcards will distort even at levels below -5 dbs. Reducing the bit-depth by normalizing a 16 bit, quiet signal is probably a smaller problem than distorting the signal with a subpar AD conversion.

That said, you should really record a 24 bit signal, that way you can normalize without losing bit depth. Once you have normalized and processed the signal, dither down to 16 bit -- voila!

Mike - Sat, 9 Jun 2007 12:49pm

_Griphin_
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Regarding that Dreadnaut demo, if you login to S0ulseek I put the demo up there for people to download. So Mike, let me know when you download it. Usually I don't run Soulseek as I might of had issues with the application before. I also put up the demos from Atrocity, House of Commons, Red Tide (all 3 demos), Sludge Confrontations and Suburban Menace. - Sun, 10 Jun 2007 10:24pm Edited: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 10:25pm

lonemonk
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Nobody should be doing semi-archival transfers with shitty sound cards anyway Mi*Coll*. And yes, doing higher bit-rate inputs would absolutely help the resolution and allow better headroom, but the bigger point I was making was to avoid the need to use a lot of dynamics-effecting plugins where possible.

Remember, Griphin is working 100% with music that has already been 'released', if you want to call it that. - Tue, 12 Jun 2007 8:54am

_Griphin_
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I work with pre-recorded music from demos. I've heard the Soundblaster ain't the greatest copying analog, but it's not that the audio I work with is the greatest. Now if I was say, Garry Brainless, I'd use a different sound card to record and process live audio. - Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:54am

WILLEM
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[url]http://www.esnips.com/doc/68ac8022-cff4-4e32-abf9-013040b929b0/WILLEM-WEISS-MY-TOILET-SUCKS-SHIT![/url]

I agree! - Mon, 6 Aug 2007 9:17am

WILLEM
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bastard censorship - Mon, 6 Aug 2007 9:18am

WILLEM
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they be fuckin wit ma program yo! - Mon, 6 Aug 2007 9:18am

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