'Hot' Recording Levels vs. SOUND QUALITY Experiment

Using "band-aid" tools (exciters, harmonic enhancers, MBC, etc.) during the mastering phase is almost always to make up for a poor mixing job. A *good sounding mix* usually reuqires nothing more than a tiny bit of polish - Not bodywork.

Using "band-aid" tools in the mixing phase is almost always to make up for a bad core sound during tracking.

*Great sounding instruments* rarely need little more than a quality microphone and a quality preamp to make them sound good.

Some of the better sounding records I've worked on had maybe a couple compressors and outboard EQ on them, and only minimal EQ at the track level.

The best tools are the ones you DON'T NEED to use.

Tonight, I'm working on a rather crunchy metal project. It sounds very nice... about ONE dB of gain reduction on the V-Mu and another dB of peak limiting on the Dominator. That after a very mild EQ pass (with the UAD Precision EQ plug, BTW) to make up for what the Mu and the Dominator are going to mess with. 3 cuts, 1dB each and one .5dB boost which is making a world of difference.

The problem with this project is distorted transients - Distorted vocals, etc. It's exactly what the mix engineer and producer wanted though.

MY job isn't to change it - It's to get the most out of it while changing it as little as possible. So far I've re-drawn about 200 transients that were messing with the limiter. Re-drawing sounds better than the limiter, so there it is.

If it sounded like crap, then yeah - Maybe I'd put an exciter across it or something. Maybe some MBC would actually do something *positive* to it -

But not as positive as asking the mix engineer for a remix...

They're tools that I have - They're not tools that I'd want to use though. They come only as a last resort.

Warmth, clarity, airiness, fullness - Those should all be in place before the "RECORD" button is ever pressed.
 
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MASSIVE Mastering said:
Harmonic exciters are the only thing I can't stand more than MBC. :D
What is your beef with them by the way? :)

(other than the usual if-you-benefit-from-them-you-prolly-did-something-wrong-earlier argument:))
 
Well, I... Uh... Umm....

Ever heard one? :bigeyes:

Back in the tape days, they came in handy - a little... Analog transfers, overcooked tape, etc. Today, you get a bass player with old strings or something that needs some "ping" in the highs or something, maybe. But for the most part, they encapsulate everything that everyone is always trying to avoid in digital - Harsh high end, floppy lows, short-term hearing fatigue.

I don't think I've heard one that sounds better than a proper application of EQ. Even the really nice ones.
 
MASSIVE Mastering said:
Ever heard one? :bigeyes:
Nah..
I rarely try anything outside my standard set of tools, and i won't touch harmonics with a 10-foot pole:) besides it's, like, a common opinion that exciters suck.
I was just kinda curious why, and wanted to hear an educated opinion:)
 
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Okay, I'll give you (moses) the SPL...

But then again, almost anyone who has one is going to understand how & when to use it correctly. :D
 
Well I use Hypersonic and, Edirol orchestral a lot and the edirol sounds really good, but most of the hypersonic sounds i need to put a high shelf EQ on for some reason. But I mean if your samples don't have warmth then is that when you would use band-aid tools (this is in the mixing process), another question too is how do you make your songs sound loud if all you do is add a bit of compression during the mastering stage, and a bit of limiter? usually my mixes come out to about -20db RMS but I heard that -10 to -11db RMS is about good
 
-10dBRMS is "crazy" loud. There isn't a mix in the world at -10dBRMS that wouldn't sound infinitely better at -14dBRMS if it *can* take it or not.

Not that there aren't an awful lot of (mostly awful) recordings out there at that type of volume... I'm forced to go there a lot more than I'd like to myself.

The other part - It's a cross between the gear and the volume *potential* of the mix. Most mixes will never be able to attain ear-splitting levels like that without falling apart completely.

MOST mixes that can acheive mega-hot levels are incredibly large budgeted productions with teams of professionals on the job from start-to-finish, recording on the very best quality gear available.

Can it come close on the cheap? Sure. But the core sounds have to be *right on* from the first step, and incredible care has to be taken at every step after it's captured.
 
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most of the best audiophile-reference tracks are not compressed at all (like Gabor Szabo, old Santana records, ect...). loudness is not a device, loudness is a very relative and subjective thing. if you ask me from a listeners standpoint, i want as much dynamic range as possible. my jazz records are definetly the loudest for me, BECAUSE OF THE DYNAMIC RANGE.

a brain is needed to create contrasts in the mix, no device can do that. a 5 min megacompressed/limited hiphop track is not loud at all. why? our ears adapt very fast to new levels, and are bored if the levels don't change anymore. dynamic range is not the enemy, it's our best friend. try to make a crisp & transparent mix using as much (long-term) dynamic range as possible (that means the less compression possible) and it will be good.

forget the average-level.
 
Ok cool, I can respect that.

Another one for ya... On individual tracks its it good to use exciters,tube emulators, etc to spice things up. Not to be used as a direct effect (tube for example to make something sound 60s or whatever) but just to warm up a vocal or piano or something?

and Massive, where did u learn all this information, college?
 
I'm still a "get it right at the input" type, but if things need to be tweaked at the track level, anything goes, I suppose.

That pretty much goes for anything - I know I seem like a bit "anti-MBC" and "anti-exciter" type, but they do come in handy - The point in my case is to *not need them* if you can help it -

Education? School of Hard Knocks U. Personally, I don't feel that I have near the knowledge I should have.
 
Tube emulation and saturation plugins and things like that I'd rather use as distortion plugins rather than tools to add "warmth". They can add a different character to a sound but I wouldn't use the tools for "warmth". Best using eq to keep what you want and get what you don't want.

If you have a thin-sounding sound then remove some of the frequencies that make the instrument sound thin and go from there. This is assuming that the sound has some properties that sound good so you shouldn't need to boost much except the levels if eq brought that down a bit.

I like using exciters lightly sometimes. Mainly on vocals really. Never anything too excessive or noticeable. It's not a go-to thing though and usually I don't need it. It can help give some people's vocals a little energy. I don't recally using an exciter on anything else but vocals though. And definitely, don't stick a "warmth" or exciter plugin on the master channel. If you do, expect it to muddy up your sound and be ready to do some eq'ing after to get rid of some of that. Much of that EQ'ing is much of which shouldn't be happening in the master bus anyways.
 
I have a question then, what should the spectrum look like at the master bus? Should it be pretty much flat? Would that mean that I have a good use of freq. range and mixed pretty well?
 
Don't look at it. It's not supposed to "look" like anything. If it sounds right, you'll hear it. Even similarly *sounding* mixes can have drastically different "looking" spectrums under analysis.

However, if you're looking at it and it looks flat, you're probably in a heap of trouble...
 
spectrum analysers are there to find faults you hear and can't determin (fast) the origin. For the rest, trust your ears and use a good set up (good monitoring/acoustics/ears)
 
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