Dave what about drum mults (also Colin England says hi)

Dave they would have you in the house in a month where I've been booked up and haven't logged on till the end of the month. Anyway, dont know if you would remember but I met you some years ago when I was in town for a convention with Colin in palm springs. I believe when Colin introduced us you were mixing at Larabee at the time. (You mixed some of Colin's shit when he was on motown)

Are there any goto plugs/ outboard chains that you use for drum mults

for example

lows (distressor/pultec
lowmid (api 550/160xt
mid
hi

etc...... for kick and snr

what about vocal mults

thanks for chiming in. Glad to have you around these parts.

[LumenStudio]

I'm very interested in this as well!

[djui5]

Yeah..good question.

I'm partially just trying to bump this thread up, but I also have more to add. Dave for someone on a mix plus system without many outboard verbs (like me) How would u recommend he approach achieving space in a mix. I notice u use a lot of different ffx in your chains like placing exciters, chorus etc on reverb returns and using say a separate PCM 70 on the left and right channels so that you can get them modulating differently. If you were in a situation where you were limited as I am, how would u approach it.

I'm considering going HD which would leave me alot more dsp, but I find that plugin verbs dont really do it for me. So I'm thinking of going for maybe a KSP8 for starter efficiency and then adding maybe an orville or something later. Right now I have plugins, Kurzweil Rumor, Spatializer retro,Behringer edison, Roland DeP5 and SE-50, and an alesis Q2

As you can see I'm pretty limited in processing and I know I've asked 2 totally different things in this thread, but hopefully your response will turn it into one hell of a thread where folks can turn for answers to alot of things without searching.


Peace.


(As I read your thread on bright mixes and listened to old Dats of Colin's stuff as well as your newer mixes I can hear exactly what you describe. Your mixes have a controlled high end where I can hear even siblance being used to your advantage. How ever your drums and vocals are so loud and in your face that it makes it not seem overly bright. I'm loving your work! You may not listen to your shit when you reference, but I do and it helps alot. One thing that you told me that always stuck in my head was that $100 spent at the record store would teach a hell of alot more than $100 spent in recording books and magazines, because it would teach you what to look for and give u a sense of what u were chasing. Recently, I have started listening to mixes via the waves C4 where I can hear one freq range at a time what is going on in mixes that I like. When you couple this with the Emes mini owl and how it allows you to analyze stereo info. This all adds up for a pretty thourough lesson in audio.

Anyway I'm rambling now. Thanx for hanging out and sifting through my rubbish I just typed

[Dave Pensado]

...what a great singer! Yeah I do remember you. I am gonna answer this question in several segments over the next few days. Like I have said before, it took a lot of time and experimenting to come up with the skills I have, and I can't type as much as it would take to answer quesions like this. Check out some of my mag interviews and answers to some of the other threads, because I have partially answered this. I like to use a combination of samples and gear on drums. For kiks and snares I rarely use pluggins. I know you don't want to hear that, but the out board gear I use is actually not too expensive. Let's take kiks today. I tap off a piece of the original sound, and split it to 3 tracks. The original I EQ with the board (SSL). On the second tap I run it thru a 160XT, ratio 6:1, and knock off enough to get the mid attack or thud to come thru (don't use the Over-Easy in). Run this into an API 550A. Next, take any compresser that has variable attack and release and use kinda fast A/R. Crank the threshold down to knock off 25 or so dB. Run this into any EQ and focus on the attack. You mite have to add 20dB at 10K. Experiment. Now combine all three tracks plus your samples (usually 808 type subby sound, or mid thump sample, etc.) Pick your samples so they don't change the original sound, just make it better. Before you knock this technique try it. I do the same with vocals, snares, bass, guitars, and damn near everything. The beauty of this is that you preserve the dynamics and transients, but still have compression! So your apparent loudness, clarity, and punch are still improved better than if you compressed and EQ'd only the original sound. Can I stop typing now...thanks! More to come on this later....

[tee boy]

Very interesting, Im look forward to reading the rest of this thread!

As it happens i do a very similar thing myself with kicks and snare ie considering the hit as a composite of 3 or 4 individual elements. Sometimes i use all different samples, othertimes the same just with different EQ / dynamic processing.

Think i will learn a lot in this one

(Don't know if you know it Dave, but Colin has to change his name because of complications with Motown, but He has a really nice album about to drop (that I'm mixing though he and I both would prefer It were U (hint Hint)))

Dave I appreciate the truth no matter how harsh it is. (I still remember asking if I should get Paris or ptools since paris was much cheaper LOL)

I've personally stopped trying to use plugs on drums/Bass/lead/BG vox also. (On BG I may use a plugin comp but the NTI EQ3 lives there for me) Because I only have 8 channels of quality I/O my goal of working and purchasing gear is to have enough gear to record 4 mults of 2 sounds at a time (say kick/snr first pass and then BG vox or BS next with the lead vox saved for last.)

so far the outboard that I'm using is
3 dbx 160xt (mainly drums)
Distressor with mod
NTI EQ3
Tube Tech CL1-B
Spl Transient Designer
dbx sub harmonic synth

My next gear purchase will probably be at least 2 API EQ's
and either a Tube Tech or Adesigns EQ and some kind of ffx like maybe a ksp8, orville or 2016

So if you have any gear specific hints hopefully I already have the gear or I have a close substitute


Please Keep Coming with the truth
no matter how harsh

[Alécio Costa]

Interesting how music production and mix are approached differently in every part of the globe. Here at the very south of Brazil if I start using mostly drum samples, zillion effects probably I WILL lose many clients-e
People do insist on clean over loud vocals and all acoustic stuff ( and they want the huge sound ), no matter if the drummer is crappy and anyway my assistant will probably spend hours editing and substituting crappy hits.
LOL