Integrated Outboard and More Accurate Monitoring

[DwaneHollands]

I'm about 70-80% finished my new project studio setup. Finally can use most of my outboard gear in the mix, using Reapers ReaInsert to route to my gear. Loving the workflow! Renamed in the in's and out's on the interface to my outboard gear, which makes it real easy to know what's what.

Once I'm finished I'll post some photo's. Me and the old man created 3 6RU wooden boxes for the gear. My monitor speakers go on two and the display on the middle one. As soon as I took them off my stands and put them on the boxes, I could hear all kinds of ugly things in my old mixes! They sounded all doughy like.

So I've played a bit in the studio with a clip that I had previously mixed ITB and with the old monitoring setup. Now I've had a chance to use the UBK Fatso, API 550B and 527 to remix it. (vocals are pretty bad btw).

Before
http://www.hollands.com.au/R21Studios/A ... Before.mp3

After
http://www.hollands.com.au/R21Studios/A ... _After.mp3

Any comments, good or bad. (what's that annoying hi-hat, or doughy kick doing etc?)

P.S. We made a keyboard/piano stand too, which means my keys are finally at the right height! (too high before and was a pain to play)

[Hybrid88]

Good stuff, I'm more into electronic type music, but I quite like this style of Rock.

I also had a listen to your mixes. Let me just say first, that I'm listening through the worlds shittiest laptop speakers, so take with a galaxy sized grain of salt, but strangely I liked the first version better. Sounded fuller in general, there is some low mid cut on the vox in the second demo perhaps? I'm not trying to be critical here, cause the second demo probably sounds the ducks nuts on a good set of monitors but just give it the old shitty stereo test and see what you think. Also is there any compression on the Vox? Could perhaps do with a touch of brick-wall style level taming, just to even it out a bit more.

But overall, better than what I could do - very good vibe

[DwaneHollands]

Hey Richard,

Seriously man thanks for the comments! It helps me more when people point out what bugs them or stands out as wrong with the recording so that I know what to work on.

And yeah, if the first one sounded fuller than that's a great observation. Helps me hone my perception. I'm going to try and re-mix it again with louder guitars and re-eq them so they're not as hard. I did pull some 240hz out on the mix buss by 2db. I might reverse that a bit.

Yeah the vocals were compressed on the way in, and I really cut the bottom on it while recording to take the room out of it. I then further cut it while mixing and compressed. But I think the idea of a peak limiter is good, because I found that I had to sit it back in the mix so that it would gell. I'd prefer to run the vocals louder. So I'll look at that aswell.

Thanks for the comments Richard! Appreciate it!

[Sammas]

Hey Dwane.

Some very unscientific observations.

- The vocals in the second mix sound like they are suffering from some phase problems. Possibly caused by the addition of effects? It
has an almost chorus like quality to it. Mono'ing the mix and they disappear quite a bit. This doesn't happen in the first.

- I preferred the snare in the first. The second one isn't bad but the gated reverb sound to me always sounded like snare rattles.

- The first definitely has a lot of "meat", but it is a little murky down there. In the second though, the guitars are a little brittle.

I dig it. More personal choice than anything.

[DwaneHollands]

Hey Dwane.

Some very unscientific observations.

- The vocals in the second mix sound like they are suffering from some phase problems. Possibly caused by the addition of effects? It
has an almost chorus like quality to it. Mono'ing the mix and they disappear quite a bit. This doesn't happen in the first.

- I preferred the snare in the first. The second one isn't bad but the gated reverb sound to me always sounded like snare rattles.

- The first definitely has a lot of "meat", but it is a little murky down there. In the second though, the guitars are a little brittle.

I dig it. More personal choice than anything.

Hey Sammas!

Thanks for the comments. Yeah the vocals had a stereo widener on them in the second one. Gonna kill that. The second one's snare sounds gated becaucse I squashed the ambient, Room and oh's and lined them up. I am getting quite sick of that snare sound! And the guitars are very brittle. I played around with it yesterday a bit, and made the main guitars less brittle. Took the top end of 'em off and boosted some lows. Moved them up in the mix a lot louder, but it was a poor performance so I think I'm at the limit of this mix test.

But thanks for your observations, it helps me greatly!

[Sammas]

Hey Dwane.

Some very unscientific observations.

- The vocals in the second mix sound like they are suffering from some phase problems. Possibly caused by the addition of effects? It
has an almost chorus like quality to it. Mono'ing the mix and they disappear quite a bit. This doesn't happen in the first.

- I preferred the snare in the first. The second one isn't bad but the gated reverb sound to me always sounded like snare rattles.

- The first definitely has a lot of "meat", but it is a little murky down there. In the second though, the guitars are a little brittle.

I dig it. More personal choice than anything.

Hey Sammas!

Thanks for the comments. Yeah the vocals had a stereo widener on them in the second one. Gonna kill that. The second one's snare sounds gated becaucse I squashed the ambient, Room and oh's and lined them up. I am getting quite sick of that snare sound! And the guitars are very brittle. I played around with it yesterday a bit, and made the main guitars less brittle. Took the top end of 'em off and boosted some lows. Moved them up in the mix a lot louder, but it was a poor performance so I think I'm at the limit of this mix test.

But thanks for your observations, it helps me greatly!

I don't know if the stereo widening is totally out a place. It definitely has it origins in that kind of music. It is a little too full on though. There is the old eventide effect that is quite subtle. If you duplicate the vocal track so you have 3 copies, keep one as the original but for the other two: Pan one left, pitchshift it down by 6cents and shift it forward by 6 milliseconds (negative delay? -6ms). For the other copy, pan it right shift it up in pitch by 6cents and delay it by 6ms. If you group the two shifted tracks together and mix them in under the main vocal track it gets a subtle widening effect. Experiment. You can change the delay times and pitch shifting to create more extreme results but use the mono button to check the phase.

I think every mix reaches its limits. I am awfully prone to spending too much time working on something... always thinking "oh. I could do that little bit better...". It would be all well and good, but I end up just messing it up! I'll listen back weeks later and the first one I did still sounded the best.

Forest and the trees... loss of direction... tired ears... I dunno. If only there were a plugin with a counter down. As soon as it hits zero a big "STOP" is displayed.

Where is the "banging head against the wall" smiley when you need it?

[DwaneHollands]

Yeah the counter is a great idea. I know what you mean about the ruining the mix!

I'm gonna try that delay and pitch adjustment. Sounds great! Thanks for the tips!