brandondrury

Hmm, pretty cool sounds for sure man. Thanks for the video! I about jumped out of my seat with that TT Meter pegged on solid red bars ... I guess that's how you consistently get the -6dB RMS you talk about. Makes me think of Satan putting a choke-hold on Mother Theresa though ...

I about jumped out of my seat with that TT Meter pegged on solid red bars ...

That pegged in the red portion was an accident. I find it difficult to conduct the video, say what I need to say, and mix like I normally would. I seem to make a lot of mistakes and that was one of them.

-6dB RMS on the TT is actually where the the video screenshot is. (Maybe -6.5dB RMS). This is competition level and that's a major point. The drums are VERY VERY there (like it or not) and they are doing it within the confines of modern loudness parameters.

Metal today is often squashed more than this. I don't get too wound up about the Loudness Wars of 1999, but when things start to sound like you ran 'em through a guitar amp that's where I draw the line.

I used to have a working link to the Free Download for TT Meter, which worked as recently as March 2012. I have since reformatted my hard-drive, but neglected to save that plug-in (and my bookmarks...) and a few other freebies which I didn't care about as much since I never used them. Anyone know where I can grab it now, or a similar DR meter?

I'm not sure to get the trick here....But the idea is to increase a tons the attack of the snare with a compressor and let the brickwall to kill it on the master bus? Am I on the right path?

Originally Posted by JoshERTW

I used to have a working link to the Free Download for TT Meter, which worked as recently as March 2012. I have since reformatted my hard-drive, but neglected to save that plug-in (and my bookmarks...) and a few other freebies which I didn't care about as much since I never used them. Anyone know where I can grab it now, or a similar DR meter?

I use this sometimes and like it pretty good also, and the plugin window isn't nearly so huge so you can fit it in with many other 2-bus/mastering plugins during final mix, or just keep it there throughout the mix process, and it's FREE!
Sonalksis Ltd.

That's pretty cool Brandon. I think I may have misunderstood you when we spoke about this the other day. I made a quick 8 minute video to show you how I do things. It's rendering now....I'll post it up as soon as it's done.

See what ya think of that....crappy production, but it's the thought that counts.

+1 on the gated snare. I never really stopped using it. Like all techniques people always gravitate to the most extreme cases like the Phil Collins when a tactic has a zillion uses when used in less extreme cases.

Danny, awesome video!

I'm curious on your peak levels with the snare track using the Transient Designer. I know that thing can skyrocket the attack in a hurry. Obviously, you were controlling it with the Fatso to keep it in line. That "keeping it in line" business is what seems to make my experiment seem weird. The brickwall limiter on the 2bus generally shouldn't be where you'd knock 10dB off the snare's peak.

I'm not sure to get the trick here....But the idea is to increase a tons the attack of the snare with a compressor and let the brickwall to kill it on the master bus? Am I on the right path?

I should have prepared my video better. (Which means I'd get to it in August. )

The before and after is an absurd amount of "more there-ness" in the snare but also huge attack. Again, I'm not positive I've got a magic secret, but it was a sound worth exploring. (You've got to hit on a few 15 years olds and get arrested to learn sometimes. )

I definitely like what Danny's up to and will play around.

One downside that I've NOT liked at all to my trick is that I all my brickwall limiters are high latency. If I want to use 128 sample latency for synth production or guitar DI stuff (using emulators) that snare of mine is obnoxious when it's not limited.

I also seem to have under emphasized the importance of the SSL 4k which was on my 2bus. It was pulling in quite a bit of the squashed room sound in a very good way.

Lastly, I was mixing a super heavy metal thing (not my "toy metal") and the trick flat out didn't work. I HATE when that happens, but at least it's a place I'm used to.

Are you guys duking it out over skrilly ??
You should just sample that snare, keep things simple.

"Shit hold on" haha !
Hmmm, the initial pop on a snare from what I learned is a transient :-??
Dann zig, I hear a ringing at 5:12 what is that?

I cant comment 0n my video because my microphone cable is in Romania, and I haven't needed one yet.

But yea, hope I nailed down the snare sound.

The mouse tries to explain whats going on, basically 3 layered samples make up the body, pop and definition of the snare (1 for each). One has a pitch shift, than they all run through 2 buses.
First there all made mono, first bus spreads the mono on stereo than limits, compresses, expands, ****s. The second one just compresses. No eqing done .

Originally Posted by brandondrury

+1 on the gated snare. I never really stopped using it. Like all techniques people always gravitate to the most extreme cases like the Phil Collins when a tactic has a zillion uses when used in less extreme cases.

Danny, awesome video!

I'm curious on your peak levels with the snare track using the Transient Designer. I know that thing can skyrocket the attack in a hurry. Obviously, you were controlling it with the Fatso to keep it in line. That "keeping it in line" business is what seems to make my experiment seem weird. The brickwall limiter on the 2bus generally shouldn't be where you'd knock 10dB off the snare's peak.

Glad you liked the vid, thanks! I'm also glad you didn't take it as me trying to step on your toes or to say "no, don't do it like that". LOL! I was just offering another possibility that sort of gives the same results.

As for the peak levels, believe it or not Brandon, I never even look at them unless I physically hear something that sound like clipping or something that may be degrading the sound. Sonar has a crap load of overhead...so even if my meters are reading clips...I'm still safe unless I hear that horrible clipping sound. When I'm mixing, I try my best to keep things out of the red but don't really care or hear a difference if a meter happens to have an over at say +0.5dB or so. If it sounds ok, I leave it because I know at 24/48, I got plenty of headroom in Sonar and an over is pretty much warning me that I'm getting hot as opposed to "you dude, you're now clipping and mixing the sound of ass". LOL!

I didn't pay close attention to anything in that file in the video other than "hey, this sounds pretty cool for a 15-20 minute throw together". So there may be more hot points in tracks than I would normally allow. For the most part, when I DO work with snare drums using the Fatso to keep things in check, as long as it stays between -2dB and 0dB, I usually leave it alone. If I find that there is an over, I listen to it and see if it's an over that makes a difference in sound quality or a huge spike that needs to be tamed. But other than that, I never spend much time looking at meters.

Originally Posted by Danny Danzi

yeah danny that is what i think every time i see other people in videos working on other daw's. don't they want the great layout and a channel strip with every track and bus.

Hey acid has a great layout and supports custom winxp themes.
And I have a channel strip with meters on every channel and sends and i/o and out and inserts and ....
Still havent figured out how to get pink meters though :/


Ya sonar does look really pretty, and if I had to sleep with a daw itd either be reaper or sonar.

Forget the snare!! How did you get that ballsy bass tone???

Forget the snare!! How did you get that ballsy bass tone???

I'm gonna assume you are talking to Danny but answer the question anyway.

I've been spending quite a bit of time experimenting with bass recording as it applies to metal here lately. I get two layers of guitars that usable in terms of tone (not necessarily performance). Then, I think like a recording guy who has total control (which I rarely do) and do quite a bit of tweaking.

I'm using my $138 SX bass with new strings through the Axe FX. I'm not sure how the Axe FX presets are on bass. I never found them or really cared to. I remember a thread where Danny was talking about making a bass "piano like". I really liked that phrase as it makes a lot more sense than my usually "midrange definition".

As I'm making one 20 second piece of metal noise per day it took me 3-4 days before I found something that was working for me. I was a bit too distorted and too midrangy. By sucking all the low end out it made the tone rather boxy and that kinda just took a crap on the guitars. So I shifted more towards a less-undeep tone and got what you hear on this clip.

I don't think the Axe FX is necessarily a magical box on bass (never found such a thing) but what it does do is give you enough options to get what you need for many, many styles. I started with the same preset (which actually had the bass setting on "2.5") for a jam band last night. The bass player thought it was a little thin for his tastes (no wall of guitars to cut through) so we bumped the low end to 5. He was happy.

I did run the Axe FX through an LA3a compressor, but that's kinda sorta 1% stuff that I don't really want to endorse.

No I was actually talking about your clip. When I heard that bass tone, especially when the playback stops but the bass continues for half a second there, I had an eargasm. This is some ballsy bass! love it

Cool video!

Looked into this, since with my limited drum processing (it scares me) knowledge, the snare is disappearing without leaving a trace and I'm just starting to get around my head that it is my responsibility to chase her down, bring her back home and ground her for the rest of my days!

Gotta be honest, still don't understand much about compression on drums. I might qualify to be one of those backward thinking ones Brandon referred to a moon back or so.

Bit off topic: The TT Meter in action is fuckin sexy, especially without asking for coin. Unfortunately the Daw of mine doesn't like her, so I had to move on and start anew with approaching Sonalkis FreeG and downloading her.

Good watch! Cool to see you pro's also have a number of plugin windows "onscreen" at the same time.

What surprised me is to see so many plugins on the 2 Buss Channel! Next up: Interview with Danny. It's on!

What surprised me is to see so many plugins on the 2 Buss Channel!

Well, just for clarity's sake I was trying out Slate FG-X, Ozone, my usual Brickwall Limiter (UAD Maximizer) and something else. All of them but one were disabled. So that may be part of it.

These days the usual 2bus is Cambridge EQ (optional....usually used to tame 80-120hz this week), Ozone 5 imagining to mono-ize the low end, SSL 4k bus compressor barely doing anything, UAD Multiband barely doing anything, whatever brickwall limiter I'm trying out, TT Loudness Meter, SPAN RTA meter.

Brandon

Huh, monoize the low end. That sounds interesting! In your chest! i suppose

I can imagine monoized bass to pull away the floor under ones feet. The idea of having bass coming from * just below * makes possibly sense to me