Are you kidding me?! I think Let Go is one of the greatest sounding contemporary recordings. . .IMO. . . damn!

I am going to go off topic for one second and do battle with the sickening hipsters.

Green Day's "American Idiot" sounds ****ing great. I would venture to say that no one who has posted on this particular thread up to and including me could do that tomorrow bright and early and ready for playback at around tea time.

Be hip and trash all you want. What have YOU done?

I listened, and my first thought was...well, i dont remember anything about the song except for some electronic drum beat, no melody, or lyric...so it was kinda blah blah blah, as far as your mix, it didnt sound bad, I wish I could hear a less compressed version, like in the sense of a not mp3 to hear more details left out by soundclick streams

whats great about all these opinions on how to mix is just that, opinion, dont take everything to the heart, everyone has their own opinions and how to mix a song, or how to write/record one...

oh yeah, i remember the autotune too now, i was wondering if that was suppose to be so noticeable like its a vocoder or something, or no one noticed or what...

but what was the vocal chain??? I'm wondering what they ran Ben through.

TRANSATLANTICISM - I love the stereo drums on The New Year.

I have this MP3 player with a cranky hedfone socket: The jack kinda springs out slightly and the sound goes mono. BUT what also happens is the middle information completely disappears.

The interesting thing is that The New Year, you can still hear the drums like this, which means they are totally stereo: No kick panned down the middle as per tradition

So I reckon they must've used 2 mics for the whole kit. Its punchy as hell! And the hihats sound glorious; Do you reckon that's an SSL type comp?

then it's not mono. what you're hearing is the left minus right, iow, flip polarity on one channel and combine it with the other. the result is a mono signal, but everything center-panned in the mix disappears (it cancels itself), leaving you with info that is panned. the harder something is panned, the more you hear it.

it's a great way to listen to recordings. you can hear all the fx gimmickry and stuff that is really buried in the production. lots of eye-openers.


gregoire
del ubik

Ah Ok... That makes sense.

So somehow the polarity of one side is flipped... Yes you can hear all the side information really clearly . Amazing. I listened to the whole of Transatlanticism an dsome other stuff .You can hear any flange/chorus/short stereo delay vocal effects really clearly!

The recording on Death Cab sounds utterly 'average' to me.
One COULD argue that suits them and their style to a t.
But it's still bog standard sounding.

Jimmy Tamborello's main synth is a nord modular this is what you hear all over the postal service record.

can't help with the vocal chain.

death cab used to tour with an access virus KB but i'm not sure if they still do or if that's what they use on records.

On PLANS
Chris Walla notes that Soundelux iFet7 was a favorite, I think they said on vocals. I feel like them had to have high shelfed or done something to add that magic high end on PLANS it seems artificial in some ways. But it is GORGEOUS. If Death Cab for Cutie Transatlantisism sounds average, I strive for AVERAGE! It is beautiful to me. Their older stuff sounds somewhat amatuer and hurts my ears at times. They got good though. Very much so!

quick check for dcfc drum recording

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/ind...c287b7f5b0bd60

i really love the vocal sound, too. This is the level of quality i am striving for. If i can surpass it...cool. but just getting to that level...man.

does your pearlman sound like it's in this league? Me and my friends listen to this album and they go...

"man the vocals on this sound awesome! I wish our vocals sounded like that. They sound really smooth."

and i hear what they mean. The vocals sound so warm and smooth.
I get close with my sm7, but i believe a tube mic would put me in the game.


I think alot of the sound is attributed to compression, though.
let me know about the pearlman.

The track "Transatlantacism" sounds f*cking incredible. Great vocal, guitar, drums, dynamics and DEPTH. The ambient industrial-type sounds at the top of the track are great too.

Oh, I definately think it is getting there. It really has to do alot with how you sing it. You should actually be glad that you did wait to grab the pearlman, because the model I had didn't have the hi-cut, but the current one does. I just got the mod, and let me tell you, when doing vocals on my own voice, I will be leaving the hicut on. I REALLY REALLY dig the mic. I would really love to know what plugs or outboard were used on his voice on PLANS. As I think I said, it seems almost like a harmonic exciter or something on the high end. Maybe this 'sheen' was added during mastering, or at least brought out. You know, I actually wouldn't be floored if I found out it was a waves C4 on pop vocal preset. It almost seems like that.
But what are you complaning about. Your vox sound great. They made me want an SM7, which I can't grab at the moment, but I DO want one.
I am curious about whether they used a super clean pre on ben's vox, or a neveish or maybe even an API pre.
I know they used a Chandler, I did read that somewhere. Maybe that is on the vox.
Who knows, but, that sound, on PLANS, If I could get to that level, I would forget the address to gearslutz! LOL Have a good day.

well, i am kind of a newbie, but it just sounds like the mic and some good compression to me...and also a high pass filter. His voice always seems to sound thin....i believe that's the high pass.

i think i'm at a cross roads...

i sung through a sdc (shure ksm137)...which i was testing for acoustic guitar.

i sounded awesome on that....i thought.

It got me REALLY close to the deathcab/postal sound.

so i don't know which will get me closer...

the mic...or a compressor.




I'm gonna go with the Pearlman. i need a good acoustic mic anyways.

TRULY, i do not in any way intend to be flippant or dismissive of your goals. i do wish to ask you: why not go for your own sound, one whose goodness is not measured by its similarity to an established artist?

no need to answer, just food for thought. fwiw, i recognize that it's a good sound you're benchmarking.


gregoire
del ubik

i understand what you're saying, but i just meant that i wanted to have at least that level of production when it comes to my sound.

i could have said the same thing about the new Cardigans album...
i just love the vocal sound they got there. i think that's even better than the deathcab sound.

i would like to have recordings that sound at least as good as deathcab.

that's all i meant.

from the people in the industry that lay down the mics and those that push 'record' and ok those that strum the guitar in the first place in a stoner camp site to make these songs, nice ****ing record. Transatlanticism is a classic.

great song.

[quote=mixman499;385403]

alot of the mixes I do trying to emulate TLA and the like has my SSL quad bus pegging up to 10 db reduction at a 4:1 ratio....

[quote]


Wow...I've played with that bus compression a few times, and I always gravitate quickly back to about .5 - 2db of reduction...maybe I'm nuts but there seems to be a sweet spot in there somewhere.

Nick

Hate to revive a very old thread and post, but man... are we hearing the same version of Let Go? I think it's AMAZING! I LOVE the production/sound of the record. Brilliant. Best band ever, too.

DCFC, Nada Surf, and Jimmy Eat World are three bands that consistently make great records, again and again and again.... tasty.

TRANSATLANTICISM has a "cheap" sound to it probably because it was recorded on sub par gear. The guitarist in that band has been recording them from the start and with each record he got better and so did the gear. The PLANS record was a huge step forward for them, and of course it was recorded with an IZ Radar, a set of QuadEight preamps, and the use of a Telefunken type mic for vocals, as I recall from reading an article on the production of the record. Great drum sound as well. Their album after that, Narrow Stairs, didn't sound as good to my ears.

I dont think Transatlanticism sounds cheap at all. Together with the Photo Album it is in Fact my favorite DCFC album.

I really like how 'Transatlatnticism' sounds too. I do agree that Chris Walla seems to have gotten better at the sonics with experience though.

Interestingly their latest record, 'Codes & Keys' was recorded not on a Radar setup but in Logic Pro (it says so in the liner notes).

Which mic was used on "Follow You Into The Dark?" ? Anybody have a link to an article on this song. I know that I read it at one time ,years ago, but it looks like the article was pulled.

I thought Transatlanticism sounded great. So did Plans. The latest album Codes & Keys is harsh and overcompressed; what a shame.

For what it's worth, I was working on a live radio performance thing featuring them a few years ago and, commenting on Ben's vocal track having a lot of plosives, one of their crew mentioned that because of that they actually used an SM7 with the giant pop filter than comes with it for his vocal on the latest album. I think that was the Plans era. I've actually never seen anyone use that filter!

I got into them around 2001 as The Photo Album+The Stability EP (which I love) were coming out and they were amazing live—I remember songs like "As We Laugh Indoors" sounding live exactly like it did on the album.

I wasn't crazy with anything they put out after that—I like the song "License and Registration" and a couple of others but Transatlanticism has a lot of pop fluff on it and their stuff started sounding more homogenous after that to me.

"We Have The Facts and We're Voting Yes" is actually my favorite album of theirs overall. It's rather lo-fi sonically but done with extreme taste and care over a long time.

In any case—though tastes may have changed over the years since this thread began—I don't think Transatlanticism sounds overcompressed.

No way, the pictures I've seem from the "Plans" record show him in front of a Telefunken 251 type of mic. Might be a copy mic, or one inspired by the Telefunken 251. I'm looking for written confirmation from an article, but I guess it's no longer on the internet.

I did a little research and the above conversation would have been right after the Narrow Stairs album came out.

Tranatlanticism sounds great to my ears, it has a nice sheen, yet also a scratchy, lo-fi sound. As for it being compressed, maybe it did sound compressed back in 2005, but by today's standards it sounds pre-loudness war!