A thread for asking the things you should know by now but don't

[MarkRB]

Originally Posted by redddog

Side Chaining.

How and why?

There I said it.

Side chaining is used to make a unit (compressor or gate mainly) react to a different audio signal than the original signal you are hearing.

For instance if you had a loud guitar you wanted to drop in level when the vocals come in (and were too lazy to pull that heavy fader down) you would apply a compressor over the guitar but feed the vocal into the side chain input so the compressor will only start to compress when the vocal is present. This is also known as ducking and radio stations use it all the time for the music and the DJ's voice.

Or you can get that cut up stuttery effect by feeding a staccato signal into a gate's side chain input so the gate opens and closes in a rhythmic fashion. Lots of uses.

[Hxd Ped]

[quote=Jeff16years;1924166]I still don't understand Midi....

MIDI does not carry audio. It took me a long time to get that through my head.

Think of MIDI as sheet music. It tells something else what sounds to play (the sound module); it does not make sound itself. It is only performance data, not sound.

I started understanding how MIDI worked when I started working with MIDI hardware instead of inside the computer. Outside the computer you can follow the cords instead of clicking and hoping it works. Unfortunately, MIDI hardware is becoming less economical to get.

[loujudson]

Originally Posted by vernier

Honestly, I can't think of anything that I should know but don't. And I don't know what I think I should know, at least by now. But maybe tomorrow I might be asking something that I don't know now, but should. What do you think. ?

Ahh, gee not sure. Can you play iy again?

[TOFT]

Can I make a beautiful stereo recording with one OMNI mic and one figure of 8?

Or with one card and one omni mic?

paul

[loujudson]

Originally Posted by macc

why is the standard panning arrangement always 'as the player sees it' for each and every given instrument in a mix? It seems weird to me that, generally, we all mix as if we are sat behind each and every instrument when this is physically impossible. I love those old recordings where it sounds like you are sitting in the room with the drummer over there, the bass player over there, the horn in front of you etc...

When and why did this become The Way of doing things?

It ISN'T! Where do you get that idea? Theon ly time I would ever mix things from the stage perspective is if the drummer is producing, as he will insist the snare be on the left.

Just yesterday, doing first rough mixes for a piano player's live recording, I asked him if it was correct the way the piano was mic'd with the highs on the left and the lows on the right. He said certainly, sounds perfect. It's the audience that counts!

The listener does not want to be lookng over the band's shoulder, they look at the band from the front!

Examples of recordings from stage perspective, please? Maybe I'm too old school.
Lou

[TOFT]

Originally Posted by Unclenny

How do they get those amazing supermarket mixes?
snare followed by 'Rock & Roll Music' with Lennon filling the whole place out of those tiny speakers.

How do they do that?

Perhaps Lennon is not dead, but living above the supermarket performing the song live.

[Chapiro]

Whats an opto compressor and how it differs from a vari mu or other types of compressor?

[Dr Bob]

Originally Posted by TOFT

Can I make a beautiful stereo recording with one OMNI mic and one figure of 8?

Or with one card and one omni mic?

paul

You most certainly can with am omni and a figure of 8 using Mid-Side (M/S) mic technique. Often the mid mic is a cardiod pattern in M/S setups, but it doesn't have to be. The mid-mic in an M/S set up can be any pattern. If the room sounds "good" and you are in a situation where you might record with omni mics any way, M/S where an Omni is the mid channel and the figure eight is the side mic can work really well.

I don't know of a standard technique for a single card and an omni, but if you have TWO cards and an omni you can point the two cards opposite to each other and pretend they are the two "lobes" of a fig 8 mic. You can then use those two signals as the side mic for a mid/side signal. (Flip the phase on one of the cards.) Then use the omni as your mid mic as outlined above and you are good to go.

Bob Miller

[loujudson]

Originally Posted by Dr Bob

I don't know of a standard technique for a single card and an omni, but if you have TWO cards and an omni you can point the two cards opposite to each other and pretend they are the two "lobes" of a fig 8 mic. You can then use those two signals as the side mic for a mid/side signal. (Flip the phase on one of the cards.) Then use the omni as your mid mic as outlined above and you are good to go.

Bob Miller

Umm, Bob, I don't think so. The phase of the two side mics are already out - if you flip them it will sound very wierd. You only flip the phase if it is one single diaphragm figure 8. Try it and see.

On the other hand, using the pair as ORTF stereo with a cardioid or omni center mic can be a pwerful, if unorthodox, combination...

Lou

[johndykstra]

Alright, I'll show my experience level. What's parallel compression? Remember I'm a live guy; this studio stuff is new to me.

[richardswag]

Originally Posted by staudio

Melodyne DNA,

.......

Magic of math.

Nerd power.

German engineering prowess.

Can I rearrange that slighly to read...

"The magic of German nerd power".


(That's the first remix I ever did for free).

[loujudson]

Originally Posted by dykstraster@gmai

Alright, I'll show my experience level. What's parallel compression? Remember I'm a live guy; this studio stuff is new to me.

Hey, you can do parallel compression live. I've even done it by accident! But a sound to the main bus, and also to a comp aux bus. Makes a beefier sound at low levels without hurting too much when they play loud.

Parallel comp is when you have uncompressed sound mixed with the same thing compressed, say duplicate the track, comp on one and not the other...

Lou

[nine99nine]

Originally Posted by willythekid

what is summing, and what do u do with a summing box?

Summing is very common to a point that when you set two tracks to the same buss or output, you are combining the signals (summing) together. that is what i perceive summing to be on a very basic level. What I believe you are talking about is "summing" during a mix or mixdown. Summing is taking the multiple tracks you have in a session and combining them all together(summing) into a stereo track. There is a large debate between whether analogue summing (mixing all the tracks to your master or 2-buss) sounds better than digital summing (bouncing down a file in protools or creating an audio mixdown in cubase...all sorts of names). I will leave the debate to the other threads on here (a search of analogue summing will help). The reason why summing boxes are offered is because analogue signal in general is said to carry certain characteristics in its sound. When you are summing in the analogue realm, you are technically adding instantaneous signal voltages together. So basically an analog summing box will take multiple inputs and combine them together to make a stereo (or mono in some cases) signal. Some of the characteristics of analogue summing that seem to be wanted are harmonic distortion and "musical" distortion due to overdriving the signal.

[nine99nine]

Originally Posted by loujudson

Hey, you can do parallel compression live. I've even done it by accident! But a sound to the main bus, and also to a comp aux bus. Makes a beefier sound at low levels without hurting too much when they play loud.

Parallel comp is when you have uncompressed sound mixed with the same thing compressed, say duplicate the track, comp on one and not the other...

Lou

Wasn't this referred to as the "new york" style of mixing?

[diamondjim]

Originally Posted by MarkRB

Or you can get that cut up stuttery effect by feeding a staccato signal into a gate's side chain input so the gate opens and closes in a rhythmic fashion. Lots of uses.

I have a question that has been bugging me for a long time. Why is stutter (s t u t t e r ) flagged as a "bad" word on this forum? Is this some kind of pc censorship? I know it certainly annoys me, but only when my DAW does it.

[nine99nine]

Originally Posted by MarkRB

Side chaining is used to make a unit (compressor or gate mainly) react to a different audio signal than the original signal you are hearing.

For instance if you had a loud guitar you wanted to drop in level when the vocals come in (and were too lazy to pull that heavy fader down) you would apply a compressor over the guitar but feed the vocal into the side chain input so the compressor will only start to compress when the vocal is present. This is also known as ducking and radio stations use it all the time for the music and the DJ's voice.

Or you can get that cut up stuttery effect by feeding a staccato signal into a gate's side chain input so the gate opens and closes in a rhythmic fashion. Lots of uses.

My earliest and simplest reason to side-chain was for de-essing. (also known as broadband de-essing) Basically you feed the same signal to an eq and a compressor. On the eq you make the signal sound as sibilant as possible and then plug it into the side chain of the compressor. The compressor will only act when that frequency range crosses the threshold, thus reducing your sibilance! I love puzzles like that.

[nine99nine]

Originally Posted by Chapiro

Whats an opto compressor and how it differs from a vari mu or other types of compressor?

Straight from Mercenary Audio's own Fletcher "An optical compressor performs gain reduction control via a light source into a photo sensitive cell... as the light source gets brigher, the photo sensitive cell tells the amplifiers to turn down the volume... hence less dynamic range, or what is known as a compressed signal."

As for why they are different, i believe it is because they have a non-linear approach as where FET based compressors have a linear approach. The louder the signal gets in the optical compressor, the brighter the light will be and the more the amplifier will turn down the volume, basically giving you a ratio x:(<1), where x=your ratio number.

Please correct me if im wrong, but this is how i understand it!

[travisbrown]

Originally Posted by dykstraster@gmai

Alright, I'll show my experience level. What's parallel compression? Remember I'm a live guy; this studio stuff is new to me.

Parallel compression is a godsend for live.

Take a line out or an aux send from your drum sub and smash it through a compressor, then run it back into the mix. Will really add punch to the mix, especially with weaker or inconsistent drummers.

You can do the same with bass and vox. I find it helps pop things out in the mix without losing all the pretty transients.

[Francis Vaughan]

Originally Posted by diamondjim

I have a question that has been bugging me for a long time. Why is stutter (s t u t t e r ) flagged as a "bad" word on this forum? Is this some kind of pc censorship? I know it certainly annoys me, but only when my DAW does it.

It isn't flagged as a bad word. This particular forum has a peculiarly broken way of inserting emoticons. It uses a a simple textural name. Whereas most other forums will use a name with some escape characters wrapped around the name (typically colons) here it just looks for the string. St utter contains the sub-string "t u t t" which is the name for this little guy: tutt So you get stutter.

They seem to have tried to find names for the emoticons that do not appear in words, but it isn't at all foolproof. Some emoticons are denoted by nonsense jumbles of letters, other by simple miss-spellings.

[willythekid]

Originally Posted by nine99nine

Summing is very common to a point that when you set two tracks to the same buss or output, you are combining the signals (summing) together. that is what i perceive summing to be on a very basic level. What I believe you are talking about is "summing" during a mix or mixdown. Summing is taking the multiple tracks you have in a session and combining them all together(summing) into a stereo track. There is a large debate between whether analogue summing (mixing all the tracks to your master or 2-buss) sounds better than digital summing (bouncing down a file in protools or creating an audio mixdown in cubase...all sorts of names). I will leave the debate to the other threads on here (a search of analogue summing will help). The reason why summing boxes are offered is because analogue signal in general is said to carry certain characteristics in its sound. When you are summing in the analogue realm, you are technically adding instantaneous signal voltages together. So basically an analog summing box will take multiple inputs and combine them together to make a stereo (or mono in some cases) signal. Some of the characteristics of analogue summing that seem to be wanted are harmonic distortion and "musical" distortion due to overdriving the signal.

thanks, always wondered about that.
-wtk

[unsung]

What is a discrete amplifier?

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by MarkRB

Side chaining is used to make a unit (compressor or gate mainly) react to a different audio signal than the original signal you are hearing.

For instance if you had a loud guitar you wanted to drop in level when the vocals come in (and were too lazy to pull that heavy fader down) you would apply a compressor over the guitar but feed the vocal into the side chain input so the compressor will only start to compress when the vocal is present. This is also known as ducking and radio stations use it all the time for the music and the DJ's voice.

Or you can get that cut up stuttery effect by feeding a staccato signal into a gate's side chain input so the gate opens and closes in a rhythmic fashion. Lots of uses.

"side chain" is strictly speaking the term for the signal that actually triggers the compressor.

For example, when you use the high pass filter on a drawmer gate, you don't actually HEAR the filter (unless you choose key listen - in this case, key means the same as sidechain). Instead, the signal is split in two, one part is processed by the gate (and is the signal at the audio output), and the other part triggers the action of the gate. It's this 2nd part that is replaced by an "external sidechain" (the correct terminology for the answer above) when creating the stuttery effect, or is filtered so excessive bass doesn't cause too much compression.

When you link 2 sides of a gate or compressor the 2 signals get summed, and it's this sum that's used in the side chain to trigger the compression for both sides, so the stereo image doesn't move. Again, you never hear this mono sum.

[joeq]

Originally Posted by Francis Vaughan

It isn't flagged as a bad word. This particular forum has a peculiarly broken way of inserting emoticons. It uses a a simple textural name. Whereas most other forums will use a name with some escape characters wrapped around the name (typically colons) here it just looks for the string. St utter contains the sub-string "t u t t" which is the name for this little guy: tutt So you get stutter.

They seem to have tried to find names for the emoticons that do not appear in words, but it isn't at all foolproof. Some emoticons are denoted by nonsense jumbles of letters, other by simple miss-spellings.

another one that is not misspelled is b o i n g - "my spring reverb is very y "

-I trigger that one a lot as "b o i n g y" is a meaningful descriptor for me.


I've got XLR cables up the y i n g y a n g. I've got XLR cables up the



which band is better, M e g a d e t h _or_ D e t h k l o k?

which band is better, Mega or klok?

(actually I cheated there... Deth with a capital "D" will not trigger the emoticon)

[macc]

Originally Posted by loujudson

It ISN'T! Where do you get that idea? Theon ly time I would ever mix things from the stage perspective is if the drummer is producing, as he will insist the snare be on the left.

Just yesterday, doing first rough mixes for a piano player's live recording, I asked him if it was correct the way the piano was mic'd with the highs on the left and the lows on the right. He said certainly, sounds perfect. It's the audience that counts!

The listener does not want to be lookng over the band's shoulder, they look at the band from the front!

Examples of recordings from stage perspective, please? Maybe I'm too old school.
Lou

I think - while you're quite correct in pointing out my error, you missed the general point of my post.

The point was that whether you mike from player or audience perspective, you can't sit in front of/behind all the instruments at once. That is, in your example with the piano, high to low, left to right. For a drum kit (assuming the drummer isn't producing ), the snare will be a little left, with the cymbals all round, left to right. So in effect you're sitting in front of both the piano AND the drum kit.


Studio recordings are by and large done this way, with piano going full stereo width, and drums also using full stereo width. When you are sitting in the front row, the drummer may be over to your left and the pianist over to your right. There will be a directional spread from the instruments, but it will be small. You aren't sitting right in front of (or behind for that matter) every instrument all at the same time.

It sounds cool and big and everything, but it's not realistic - it is kind of putting you in several places at one time, whereas (for example) Miles Davis' Nefertiti has you sitting on the studio floor with Tony Williams over there, and Herbie Hancock over the other side.

Does this make my original question any clearer? I just love that sound, it sounds WAY more open to me than the contemporary approach. But then 'maybe I am too old school'

[vernier]

There is a large debate between whether analogue summing (mixing all the tracks to your master or 2-buss) sounds better than digital summing (bouncing down a file in protools or creating an audio mixdown in cubase...all sorts of names).

Analog stomps digital regarding this ...I don't think there's anything to debate.

[Savernake]

Tell me about stuff that are '500 series' - I get that they seem to be these 'lunchbox' type things, like the API set and purple pro, I think the SSL x rack too. But why do they get the name of 500 series?

In fact I don't know any of these numbered names, and I hear people reffering to then all the time - this is a made up number, but things like 1176 or whatever - is there a kind of set of 'rules' on what these are called?

Im glad there's the 500 series shootout soon too, that'll be cool.

[SkunkWorks]

Originally Posted by nine99nine

Wasn't this referred to as the "new york" style of mixing?

Yup. And the "motown trick" is similar but involves a frequency EQ component as well as the parallel compression.

[inthemix]

I mainly record 1 track at a time through an apogee AD then into my computer card.. SPDIF in

I have a choice in my computer to select the clock:

Internal
SPDIF or
Wordclock

right now I'm using the SPDIF clock because I dont have a wordclock cable yet.. (just got the apogee)

Would there be a difference in the SPDIF and Wordclock? Is one better than the other?

[FireMoon]

Originally Posted by unsung

What is a discrete amplifier?

They come in various forms...There is one that quietly tells you you played a load of bum notes and missed the entrance to the chorus others don't tell your spouse you were performing jiggerty jiggerty with someone else on top of them after a gig..

MIDI actually means... Make It Digitally Inane..... and was invented so anally retentive musicians could wipe any sort of *feel* out of music and replace it with perfect timing...

The quantise facility was originally called...Guess what a real musician would play

[raal]

favorite tubes on pultecs and LA2s and why?