June's Mix Hurdles

[Jeronimo Mora]

My turn to make the thread. The problems I had with this mix (not very many). Were removing the sibilance without sucking the life out of the vocals. I thought about replacing the snare, but I stuck with it for the hell of it. What about you guys?

[wireman957]

My main issues were with the overheads. Listening to them by themselves they sounded pretty good. Listening with the rest of the kit, they sounded okay, too, but when I started pulling up other mix elements they started sounding a little "washy". Could never quite figure it out and EQ didn't seem to do much except make things worse. Anyone else notice that or have any suggestions? Maybe it's just me...

[bobbybovine]

Biggest mix issue for me was drum timing. I spent about 2 hours editing the kick and snare to get the groove a little more solid. I left some of the flaws in there though so it wouldn't be too obvious. Other than that most of my issues were self inflicted. I had a sibilance on the vox in the breakdown that was just nasty before I tracked it down to a verb send that I didn't know was not muted

[m24p]

My main issues were with the overheads. Listening to them by themselves they sounded pretty good. Listening with the rest of the kit, they sounded okay, too, but when I started pulling up other mix elements they started sounding a little "washy". Could never quite figure it out and EQ didn't seem to do much except make things worse. Anyone else notice that or have any suggestions? Maybe it's just me...

The mics were out of phase. I needed to nudge stuff over a bit. It's one of the first things I did so I almost forgot it happened.

[JoshERTW]

My main issues were with the overheads. Listening to them by themselves they sounded pretty good. Listening with the rest of the kit, they sounded okay, too, but when I started pulling up other mix elements they started sounding a little "washy". Could never quite figure it out and EQ didn't seem to do much except make things worse. Anyone else notice that or have any suggestions? Maybe it's just me...

I know some people swear up and down that you shouldn't compress overheads, but I love adding about 3-4 dB of reduction on the big hits. I don't know if that's why, but I never have washy overheads. Could be a connection? If I ever start this mix I'll let you know, all I've done so far is import and colour code my tracks

Feels like this month is gonna be another last minute job as I've got a client consultation this weekend, and another paid project that started last weekend which I've made no headway on (my first experience telling the client they have to go home and prepare better... for their own good - kind of scary but likely to save all of us time and frustration and money in the end)

[wireman957]

The mics were out of phase. I needed to nudge stuff over a bit. It's one of the first things I did so I almost forgot it happened.

Interesting. That was my first thought because of the washiness but I didn't hear much difference when I mono'd them. I even tried inverting the phase of the overhead tracks, but didn't notice much if any improvement. I need to listen and try it again. Or did you mean the timing was off by a few ms.? I thought I checked that, too...maybe not. Thanks for the reply!

[wireman957]

Josh - at least you're making some money at this crazy game! Good for you!

[m24p]

Interesting. That was my first thought because of the washiness but I didn't hear much difference when I mono'd them. I even tried inverting the phase of the overhead tracks, but didn't notice much if any improvement. I need to listen and try it again. Or did you mean the timing was off by a few ms.? I thought I checked that, too...maybe not. Thanks for the reply!

Timing and phase basically mean the same thing. Well, depending on the context. The mic positions were not quite where they should have been (IMO), leaving minor time issues which show up as weird phase-y behavior. Nudging them in time helped the sound a lot before I even bothered EQing. Just flipping the phase didn't help on my end either: you're just change which frequencies are problematic.

[Jjsodarock]

removing the sibilance without sucking the life out of the vocals. ?

.....Yes, I've been fooling around with 4 differnt De-ssser plugs. Hell I think I have one or more on each vocal track, the verb retuns, and the Vox mix buss. They are all set at diff frequincies like 10.3K on the mix buss, and 3.6k ish and 6.5K ish on
the vocal tracks. I'm using a stock Pro Tools, the Waves r-de-ess, Sonnox , and another Waves. What I would like to find is a Multi-Lingual De-esser. I need to hit Fabio up for his. So far no real progress, at least nothing I've printed.
I'm having a blast thow. Jojo

[wireman957]

Timing and phase basically mean the same thing. Well, depending on the context. The mic positions were not quite where they should have been (IMO), leaving minor time issues which show up as weird phase-y behavior. Nudging them in time helped the sound a lot before I even bothered EQing. Just flipping the phase didn't help on my end either: you're just change which frequencies are problematic.

You're right of course - my bad for interchanging phase and polarity. Anyway, I just got home and zoomed waaaayyyy in on the OH and snare tracks to compare the timing of the snare as picked up by the overheads (that's usually where I start since the snare is often louder with a better transient than other drums in the OH's) and sure as shit - the OH's needed to be nudged up by 2ms. I'm embarrassed to say I didn't catch that and it drove me crazy. I just made the change and it's a huge difference. Thanks m24!

[redworks]

You're right of course - my bad for interchanging phase and polarity. Anyway, I just got home and zoomed waaaayyyy in on the OH and snare tracks to compare the timing of the snare as picked up by the overheads (that's usually where I start since the snare is often louder with a better transient than other drums in the OH's) and sure as shit - the OH's needed to be nudged up by 2ms. I'm embarrassed to say I didn't catch that and it drove me crazy. I just made the change and it's a huge difference. Thanks m24!

yes that is embarrassing wireman maybe almost as embarrassing as i have never done that and have never even thought to do it. right on dudes chalk this up as another learning experience. this is why i love these discussions. thanks.

[BillyBoBBizWorth]

My DAW kept was crashing quite abit from the amount of tracks/plugin's and thanks to 32bit Windows.

Other than that,i got abit extreme with EQ'ing and am going back to basics,which is how i usually go about things.

Cheers

[JoshERTW]

You're right of course - my bad for interchanging phase and polarity. Anyway, I just got home and zoomed waaaayyyy in on the OH and snare tracks to compare the timing of the snare as picked up by the overheads (that's usually where I start since the snare is often louder with a better transient than other drums in the OH's) and sure as shit - the OH's needed to be nudged up by 2ms. I'm embarrassed to say I didn't catch that and it drove me crazy. I just made the change and it's a huge difference. Thanks m24!

Just remember - flip waves for polarity, and slide waves to get in phase. And don't feel bad either as it took me roughly 5 minutes to write this two line post because I had to read that over about 6 times to make sure it was right.

[m24p]

My DAW kept was crashing quite abit from the amount of tracks/plugin's and thanks to 32bit Windows.

Other than that,i got abit extreme with EQ'ing and am going back to basics,which is how i usually go about things.

Cheers

I'm on 32-bit and my computer did struggle a little keeping up with everything. No crashes, though. Reaper's pretty stable so long as you don't use the wrong plugins. Free plugins, especially made with synthedit, can be pretty shady, though.

[BillyBoBBizWorth]

I'm on 32-bit and my computer did struggle a little keeping up with everything. No crashes, though. Reaper's pretty stable so long as you don't use the wrong plugins. Free plugins, especially made with synthedit, can be pretty shady, though.

The main reason why its crashing is because im only able to use 3 out of 8 gigs of ram i have,before the most recent format and install of windows i had a copy of 64bit Windows 7 and it ran alot better,so i think i need to go back to 64bit or its going to continue to happen,sucks.

Cheers

[fHumble fHingaz]

My DAW kept was crashing quite abit from the amount of tracks/plugin's and thanks to 32bit Windows.

Hey Billy - Have you tried freezing tracks to ease up on the cpu/ram load? I used to do it all the time when I had a slower computer - it works a treat.

[BillyBoBBizWorth]

Hey Billy - Have you tried freezing tracks to ease up on the cpu/ram load? I used to do it all the time when I had a slower computer - it works a treat.

Yer,i sure have fHumble,thats one trick i use to work around the problem.I probably wouldn't be able to mix at all if i didn't do that actually,thing is i dont have a real crappy computer.Thanks for the suggestion nonetheless.

Ill work with the set-up i have until i get to the point where i cant mix and export tracks or when im not enjoying it anymore,then do a reinstall of 64bit Windows 7 to unlock the rest of my RAM.

Cheers

[Jjsodarock]

Yer,i sure have fHumble,thats one trick i use to work around the problem.I probably wouldn't be able to mix at all if i didn't do that actually,thing is i dont have a real crappy computer.Thanks for the suggestion nonetheless.

Ill work with the set-up i have until i get to the point where i cant mix and export tracks or when im not enjoying it anymore,then do a reinstall of 64bit Windows 7 to unlock the rest of my RAM.

Cheers

-----Hey Billy, Do you know if the 32 bit Windows will let you use 'Ready Boost". I have an old Compaq laptop that has 3Gigs of ram total. I stumbled on to the readyboost option. By putting a SD card (the one for my camra) it is a 4 gig card, into the card slot thingy, It is reading aand righting to the card as if it were ram. However I am not using this lap top for any kind of audio. Well not totally true, I will listen to a song on it to hear how it is translateing to multi-media speakers. Good luck Billy I hope you get it all cleared up, Jojo

[BillyBoBBizWorth]

Hey Billy, Do you know if the 32 bit Windows will let you use 'Ready Boost". I have an old Compaq laptop that has 3Gigs of ram total. I stumbled on to the readyboost option. By putting a SD card (the one for my camra) it is a 4 gig card, into the card slot thingy, It is reading aand righting to the card as if it were ram. However I am not using this lap top for any kind of audio. Well not totally true, I will listen to a song on it to hear how it is translateing to multi-media speakers. Good luck Billy I hope you get it all cleared up, Jojo

Hey Jjsodarock,thanks for the suggestion.I actually just finished up a windows 7 64bit version reinstall.I read back my own post about waiting to install 64bit and said,"bugger it" and got to work.Mainly just reinstalling some of the programs i was using back on my rig,after that i cant wait to dig into another track to mix with my original set-up again.Hopefully i wont have any issues and can mix without crashing my DAW anymore,that's the plan anyways.

Cheers

[danmanisa]

As posted stupidly in "July's" mix hurdles (Man I was tired.........)

My major hurdle, asides from my well documented move and overloaded work month, was that damned bridge section. I simply found the performance too time consuming and honestly very difficult to edit into something decent. I think my time constraints benefited me in one sense, as all sonic decisions were made quickly, yet editing suffered accordingly.
I did not really think about chopping it out altogether, as I would have thought it would have been against the (loose) rules, but that was recommended to me by a couple of reviewers. Vocally I found it ok, yet I do deal with many layered vocals a lot. I found selecting a good guitar tone in the bridge a pain and I did not solve that.

The high pitched synths were also a pain and I did not use the direct signal of either, but just the reverb effected send of it instead. This seemed to remove all harshness and added a nice war.... w a r m t h to it. I would have loved a few more hours with it, but bulldozers at my doorstep were quite intimidating!