please listen to my demo......

[eelizah]

ehhm...
i am talking about the mix obviously.


thanx

[djui5]

There's a mp3 upload section of this forum where you might get more attention.

I personally think the vocals are a bit too loud...maybe drop them about 3db or so...both the girl and the guy.
The mix is lacking bass....and really wouldn't hurt to be run through an analog box somewhere....like sending the mix through an analog console and tracking it back into pro-tools or to a cd player....it's just got a little too much digital sound to it I think. I do like the snyth's...though they could be thicker, but the verb on them sounds cool.

Overall you did great with the levels....I just think it need's some pumping up and the vocals are way too loud....

Nice work and keep it up...

[eelizah]

hi djui5,

so you think i should run it trough some analog devices...

problem here: i don't have any!

i think its very remarkable that you hear that its totaly out of the box!

maybe i should spend some cash on analog stuff.......
or maybe one knows some plugs that might help give it some more warmth.

the mix is done on a pc runnin vst plugins only btw.


thanks for reply

regards

ilan

[ixnys]

Well you also posted the mix in the Charles Dye forum...known for ITB mixing. So most likely people will presume it's an ITB mix.

[musicfool100]

Originally posted by ixnys
Well you also posted the mix in the Charles Dye forum...known for ITB mixing. So most likely people will presume it's an ITB mix.

I think it sounds great! The vocal is wonderful. The vocal is a little bit too loud for my taste but I low vocal mixes so my opinion is probably not valid. ITB? sounds like a radio songs to me. Alles klar!!!

[NeoVXR]

if you allow me to volunteer..
Listening to this you might find quite interesting.

it can be de-digitized to some extent (which I tried with the swiss knife), and it is really a good track, not far from production level. now, much depends on the one who will do the mastering, because the corrections may depend on what he is up to do.
e.g. I changed the voice in the "sexy" solo part.

you may like to enhance the transients of the drums and hihat.
the delay on the "sexy" is somewhat sharp.

[eelizah]

maybe my english is too bad but what does ITB mean?

sorry....

[NeoVXR]

ITB: Seems to say all sound stays in your computer box until everything ready, no routing through analog console or effects.

Here an example with further transient refining. This makes it sound one little step more like a ready mainstream production.

I would appreciate your comment. Not sure if the voice can hit your taste, but this way it sounds good for the genre.
Your voice is very special but to match this with a common hip-hop sound, it might need very well-considered changes at track level, e.g. a de-esser and enhancements somewhere in the range 5-7 khz, additionally to what I did in the sum.

[eelizah]

ey man,
i just listened to it on headphones on my lap top.(gotta check over speakers later)

whatever you did did the song a lot of good!
thumbsup its a bit overcompressed for my taste but i like the lowend now.

the voices are pretty nice, just a bit to hard for my personal taste....

can you tell me what exactly you did to it andwhat equipment you used on it?
because i think it sounds kinda good!


thank you very much
you might check out this one as well

EDIT:
sorry havent checked out your first version yet, just didnt see your reply....


http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showt...threadid=15267

[NeoVXR]

so...
what about the speakers telling?
(and try the ghetto-blaster! the second version is a change in the high end but I did not give the time to correct the low end to keep it symmetric, just wanted to show that there is something possible.)

your other song I can't comment too much. seems you found a "local maximum" (this is a phrase in mathematics science) and to change anything makes it worse. you may experiment from start and try very different versions. the total maximum may be much different and even much better.
somehow it reminds me on neneh cherry! you could listen through her early albums and compare what kinds of sounds are there ("manchild" and the like). It is also beautiful but does not sound ready. I did not have any idea what to do with it, compared to the first song. but I am not a professional.

----

my first advice is to check monitoring. if you need it professional, you might call the guy with the bruel&kjaer room analyzer and install and tune a 30-band eq just for the room and the monitors (one for each pair).
also the headphones are very critical, you might use 2 pairs, one that is very linear, and one like these horrible K55 that the kids listen in the big media shops where you have 30 CD players in one line, these have enormous bass.

in my opinion the most important thing at the moment is to get the bass right and make the voice thicker _and_ brighter with less audible effects.

then you could find an experienced friend to check through all your devices and plugins. some of them may sound very "digital" and can't be used without very good technical knowledge. it depends on the setting, you might identify presets that typically disturb the sound.
is there any 44/48 conversion happening in your system? when you are using 48k samples, you should do the whole thing in 48k and only convert when you burn the CD. if you have mixed samples you may decide to convert and correct the samples with the best software available so all is one sampling type.
so the sample player need not resample twice, i.e. once for the musical note and once for the other system sampling frequency.
depends on how sophisticated the technology in the stuff already is...

----

what I found is a spectrum that has many ripples, spikes and steps. not the other song, that was better. seems it is in the voice processing! maybe snare also. seems there are effects that sound nice in the first moment but disturb the spectrum.
after compression, there is also an amount of noise to be found. you could identify the track or effect where this comes from.

what I did: some tech stuff that needs knowledge of signal processing, and some bold changes by instinct, which I can't explain. just practising for fun.

- extensive analysing and flattening out the spikes with FFT and free-hand graph EQ.
- re-shaping the whole with 30-band eq which is a matter of style and taste. there I could revive the bass sounds (somehow..) and give the voice more personality
- soft de-esser
- a little short reverb from waves TrueVerb, with very narrow bandwidth (maximum 1k-4k, hipass for early=500hz)
this should glue the whole thing together, but is bad for the kick drum which I must live with, when having only the mix. you can try a second reverb with letting only some instruments out.
- overall old-style 3band eq
- a limiter ("peak master" by steinberg which is very brilliant for beginners and quite useful for many others!)

- second take: I did a process to change high end transients, above 7k. this runs in cool edit and is an algorithm I developed by myself. It can by some extent undo the damage the limiter does to the transients, and enhance poor material, like an exciter, but without being so non-linear. you could try different types of these transient designers, as well.
then a little brightness enhancement with a simple FFT curve.

----
well thats it
I'm happy you liked it! The best compliment is when people say that's a good song, when they did not realize this enough, before. I am looking forward to the final version.

[eelizah]

hi again NeoVXR,



the speakers tellin.....
i heard it over my genelecs(which i trust the most) and over those
the version that you loaded up sounded
like bad mp3 conversion or you resampled
and highcutted........

i dunno why i couldnt hear it on the headphones but one thing i know - never judge mixes on headphones (which i never do except in this case, sorry).

if its down to converting it to mp3 i would definetly like to hear it without that affect!




sorry, but thank you anyway

p.s. please tell me what you used for encoding mp3

[NeoVXR]

ah yes, I checked and the mp3 sounds different, and seems to stop at 16 kHz. many of my edits can't be mp3ed well.

at least you found the bass better and the voice interesting. I overdid it somewhat so it is more easy to analyze.

here is a snippet of the wav.
(I can send you the complete WAV if you like. I don't expect it is too perfect, but anyway fuller. there is shameless, multiple 16bit/44k processing, it was not my intention to take time and care of this and re-do all the trial changes in 2 totalized hi-res passes, as the question you came with was not in this area. - we could arrange wav exchg with PN mails. please tell me also your band name how it is written on the CD so I can find it and recommend to friends)

the purpose was to get rid of too much "digital" ITB sound and make it nicer for normal audience in the streets who don't care much for the extreme HF range, radio, walkman, portable mp3 and the like. labels/A&Rs have sometimes ghettoblasters to listen, it must be right between 80Hz and 12 kHz or so to work with these. they might say ok, song and voice are good and the sound we have the expertise to get it right. but in fact it was already the demo sound that impressed, because you hit the point to reach your audience.

some HF compression was done that makes it sound better with ghettoblasters and radios but maybe worse in the studio.
I ended up with a little corner around 14k because there was a needle that did not sound good to me. a pattern typical like this I found already in some other commercial releases in the genre. you can compare with the first take which is different here.

this depends on marketing also what kind of listening devices will your fans have? I observed typical quality compromise in mainstream, that follows this principle, so I wanted to show what might happen to your mix, and you can be prepared.
Its an example, but not ready nor professional.
To me, now it sounds like a good, near to ready song with a little weakness in the upper end of spectrum, like you say, bad mp3. people are used to this. before, it sounded just unmastered with weak bass und HF full until 20k, but somewhat harsh and ringing HF range.
you might do something about the "s" and this metallic rattling snare sound.

you can find out what the difference was that made it sound good in the headphones (+walkman), and check the ghettoblaster as well. with all different volume settings, it feels _totally_ different than your original, and thats the point I made. then you can make it right altogether so the merciless genelec monitor is also happy with it. but in my opinion HF quality is secondary to getting the mix work in bass and mid range, and I think in that state the project is at the moment, and this is what you sell in the end.

good luck!

[jagarinec]

Originally posted by NeoVXR

what I found is a spectrum that has many ripples, spikes and steps. not the other song, that was better. seems it is in the voice processing! maybe snare also.

neoVXR

what kind of analyzer do you use?

[NeoVXR]

cool edit - built in

and I mean that. tested many other demos with good reputation...
realtime and averaging between cue marks

with PAZ, only the stereo phase thing is somewhat interesting.
don't like the edgy asteroid game landscape...

not sure if I can take your question with optimism..?
but did me a great job many times.

[jagarinec]

hm, i use a mac. cool edit is - afaik - pc only.

i tried PAZ too and some freeware tools. but they´ve all got really small windows and not enough bands to see anything that could look like "ripples, spikes and steps" - unfortunatelly.

thanks for your answer

[NeoVXR]

welcome!
so what about this?
It is one of several combined settings I constructed and applied on the track, then documented with white noise.

[jagarinec]

man, this looks great. i´ve never seen a realtime software analyzer with higher resolution than that.

if i only could find something similar for my mac.

[NeoVXR]

well, what you see is not actually real time but 6 seconds averaged.
realtime can be somewhat jerky and the resolution is 1/2 or 1/4, but depends on the CPU, 1.6 Ghz in my case. still I can see what I hear.

[Guitarman]

Originally posted by eelizah
hi yall!

would like to play this to you guys
(esp. to charles )
and have some suggestions for optimisation by some pros!


thanx in advance for any comments

The mix is excellent. Congratulations!

[eelizah]

thanks.