Preamps .VS. Coverters Upgrade?

[CPhoenix]

If your friends have cleaner recordings than you, but you have more expensive hardware/software... I think you just described what the issue is.

The most important thing is to become very good at mixing. That's the key. If you buy a better preamp or converters... I wouldn't expect an overnight improvement here. Your Profire should be more than enough to get clean recordings. What equipment are your friends working with?


In all honesty... people who say they have the Waves Mercury bundle usually (and I mean *USUALLY*... no disrepect to you, i'm just being honest about the situation.. if you spent the $3k to buy it legit... kudos to you)... they usually pirated the software and have already pirated tons of other software. The Mercury bundle has an amazing amount of plugs in it that most people seriously do NOT need. Having it and slapping some of the plugs on doesn't automatically make your recordings clean, as you are probably bearing witness to. The bundle's tools are mostly for rare-situations.... and also, there are mulitples of the same tool (ie, tens of different compressors, eqs, etc)... that have different tonalities.... etc. So.... if you're on semi-pro gear (granted.. very good semi-pro gear w/ the profire) and you are not in a great acoustic sounding room with awesome Focal or DynAudio monitors and a superior listening setup, and you are not a big-budget mixing engineer who actually needs that type of variety of tones b/c your artist needs a picture-perfect recording.... then you probably don't benefit from even having the bundle.


If you want your clean sound you're after, you're going to need to re-arrange your thought process. Think simple. Less processing is more when it comes to music. I learned this the hard way. I was the guy slapping compressors on things and I didn't even know why lol.

Each song is unique. When recorded dry... it has certain flaws. (Maybe a bassline clashes with a kick.... maybe the voice doesn't have strength... maybe certain parts of the vox are too loud and some too soft.) Your job as a mixing engineer (which you are if you want that clean recording) is to:

1) Hear and Determine those flaws
- This is not easy. You need to clear your brain and focus on just the characteristics of the sound. Do A/Bing with industry music and pick apart what the differences are. Can you feel the kick of the industry song in the middle of your chest everytime it thumps... but you can't feel your kick? Is their song much louder, but still doesn't distort for some odd reason? Is their bassline actually not as loud as you thought it was? Determine these differences first
2) Identify your common tools. You only really need maybe 2-3 good compressors (one clean, one character, one clean bus), maybe 2 EQs (one with set frequencies for ease of use... the other as a parametric one so yo ucan get surgical), 1 reverb, 1 good limiter, and an ease to use delay. Everything else is nice to have... but not 100% necessary. Saturation plugs are nice to have also
3) Learn how to use your tools
- Learn what every single knob on the tool is, how to use it, and how it's applied. Do tests to see if you can hear the difference when your attack time on the compressor is adjusted. Stuff like that.
4) Pick the right tool ONLY to fix a problem in your mix.


Once you get the mix good... it should not be loud yet. (This was a big mistake I made). The only purpose of your mix is to get the levels even. it has nothing to do with loudness. After you mix... your song should sound nowhere near a professionally recorded song in terms of loudness.... only in terms of quality. If you need to hear it loud at the mixing stage... just turn the monitors up. DON'T mix it too hot.

Use a VU meter to measure how loud your individual sounds are. Set it to maybe K-14 or so. Why a VU meter and not yoru DAW's fader meters? Well... good question. The Fader meter is a digital meter. It tells you how loud a sound is at every given sample point. it's very "literal" so to speak. It's too accurate!! The issue is.. your ears aren't that accurate. In fact... you ears hear things on an "average". It takes all of that sound information in, and processes it on an average. So... you want to use a VU meter b/c this tells you what your ears are hearing on an average. (This was probably the single most important detail I ever learned since i've learned how to proeprly mix. I'm now at a point where I've outgrown my gear and can finally warrants purchasing some more expensive hardware.)

Now... once your mix is great... that's when you make the adjustments on your master out. Use a good bus compressor and a limiter to get the loudness you want. If any adjustments need to be made from adding these... maybe an EQ or some saturation will fix it... but only use those after you use yoru bus compressor and limiter.


I hope i'm not offending you in anyway by saying all of this. I have no idea what your experience is.... or what you're capable of. But the moment I saw you mention "my friends mixes sound clearer even though they have inferior gear"... and then you mentioned you had the mercury bundle... that prompted me to share my 2 cents w/ you... b/c I was in that exact same boat.

The reason why your friends stuff sounds cleaning is either 1) they know how to mix better... which probably isn't the case... or 2) they're doing less processing. And remember... less processing is good. You only want to do processing that is absolutely necessary.


Hope this helps. I'd become a student of mixing before I went out a spent more money on gear. You're only setting yoruself up to get pissed off in the end when you buy more equipment and it still doesn't sound how you want it.

[CJ Mastering]

Do I need to think about upgrading to newer/better preamps or maybe just buy a nicer converter unit? I'm kinda lost with what to do.

What you have is more than capable of recording profession instrument tracks/vocals.

If your not getting results your happy with, i would look hard at other things like the room your recording in. Your room and where you record in the room plays a huge role in the sounds you record.

Cj

[kafka]

Nobody is making a 'bad' converter these days, and I'd be surprised if the preamps in the newer M-Audio stuff are significant limiters. What's in your mic locker? Spend a lot of time on mic positioning and proper leveling before you upgrade another piece of equipment. I forget who said it, but yellow is the new red. Keep all you levels bouncing around at no more than about -18dB, and then report on your clarity.

[CPhoenix]

Also... if you're recording in 24bit, you can stay green as well. Apparently the nosie floor is less of an issue. I can't say I understand the technical side of that, but in practice I commonly record poetry i nthe green and it comes out as quiet as I needed, low noise.

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Originally Posted by AJBoy239

First off, Rig rundown...

M-Audio Profire 2626 running 44.1k
M-Audio Octanes x2 running via Wordclock
(I also have a ART Pro Channel that I use mainly for vocals)

I have a decent mic locker and running PT9 with Waves Mercury bundle.

I have a lot of friends who are into recording, some with gear not even as nice as what I have (not that my stuff is awesome but they just have cheaper stuff). It seems like the recordings I hear from them always have more clarity, not a EQ kind of clarity but a preamp/converter clarity.

Given your description, I would try a couple of recording changes rather than spend any money out of the gate. I'd have to try some moving of mics around, changes in the recording chain, simplifying things, definitely taking any effects and eq out of the chain and the preamp too, all before I spent a dime. I don't know your interface, but I'm betting that the issue is easy to solve by making some changes rather than spending money. With $6300 invested in plug ins, I can understand wanting to move into a nicer interface. But if the budget/client work doesn't support it, why spend the money?

[Big Zimm]

I agree with what's been said before. Spend time getting things sou ding really good as you're recording. Don't count on "fixing" it when you mix. Cuz you don't fix anything you just compromise and are left with a mix that is lacking. Also look at what your levels are when tracking. -16db to - 20db is where you wanna be.
You already have decent gear, if you're not making g your mixes happen. With what you've got than more gear won't fix the problem.

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