Week 10: Tip’s & Tricks For Producers & Mixer’s

1. Low Frequency Management:One of the most important tasks when mixing is to get the low end right. Kick and bass frequency often overlap and must me managed. The two most important tools here are reductive eq and sidechain compression. Both the kick and the bass should have the ultra low frequency trimmed with a low shelf. Typically I apply between .5 and 1 dB of reductive low shelf between 30 and 50 hZ. Many people like to use a HPF, but I find that it eats up too much of the good low end.Also, it is critical to side-chain the sub bass to the kick, so that the sub bass ducks just a bit when the kick sounds. Not only does this create a bounce in the groove, but it also keeps the speaker from getting congested in the low frequencies. I find that an attack of 1 ms and a release of 30-50 ms is a good starting point with a ratio of 6:1. Then filter the side chain input to make a tighter bounce, and adjust the amount of ducking with the threshold to taste.

2. Saturation: I cannot stress enough the importance of saturation. In the golden age of analog production of the 1970’s there was an abundance of saturation, i.e. tubes, tape, transformers and the like. Then as soon as digital appeared, all of the saturation vanished! Now saturation is reappearing in digital form. Saturation creates additional harmonics that thicken the sound and make it richer. An unsaturated mix sounds boring and sterile, while a well saturated mix sounds thick and full. The analog clip flavor in ablation’s saturator is extremely useful, with the most important controls being the drive and the wet/dry controls.

3. Reverb: Many people are confused as to how to set up reverb. Too often I see a mix project with 50 reverbs on insert of individual tracks. This is not only wasteful in terms of DSP, but it’s sonically confusing. Elements that share a reverb have a relatedness that can help unify the mix. Putting a small amount of small or medium room on everything creates an important cohesion. From there the mixer needs to start to place elements in either the front, middle or back of the mix. Elements that live in the front of the mix, e.g. lead vocals or melodic lead lines will typically take a plate reverb. Elements that live in the back of the mix will usually take a hall reverb. These shared reverb exist on return tracks and the amount of wetness is controlled by the send matrix.

Once in while it is of course ok to put the reverb directly on the individual element channel, like a kick explosion or dub effect, but for the majority of the mix the send/return matrix is the proper way to set up the reverb game.

Week 9: 1940's Speakers

The Western Electric 757A was designed as a monitor speaker for radio stations and recording studios in the late 1940s. It was never produced in large quantities, so few prime specimens survive today, and the status of the design among the cognoscenti is legendary. Since the speaker was introduced before stereo became the standard format, most 757A speakers were sold one at a time, so stereo pairs are extremely rare. When singles go on the market they sell for big bucks, and pairs go for a lot more, so when High End Audio Auctions' Adam Wexler came upon a well-cared-for pair in the possession of the original owner, he could hardly believe his good luck! He found a buyer just a few days later, but before he shipped them Wexler invited me over to his shop to listen.

757As aren't beauties, the grilles covering the woofers aren't original, but I'd say the speakers are in remarkably good condition for their age. The 757A is 20 inches (508mm) high and 30 inches (762mm) wide; it's a two-way design with a 12-inch (305mm) woofer and a cast aluminum horn-loaded tweeter. It was originally finished in gray enamel paint and has sound absorbing material affixed to the front baffle. The 757As are clear, open, and very lively. Stereo imaging was diffuse, but there was a nice sense of spatial depth.

Modern high-end speakers are more transparent, have deeper bass, and more detailed treble, but this 68-year-old speaker design isn't that far behind the best of today's high-end speakers. Sadly, few audiophiles will ever get a chance to hear a pair of 757A speakers, but it's sadder still that despite all the advances in technology, the sound quality of today's Bluetooth speakers is downright pitiful. The promise of ever-improving technology hasn't been fulfilled, so many people today are satisfied with the "good enough" sound of Bluetooth speakers.

For anyone interested in enjoying better sound at home on a tight budget, I recommend the Pioneer SP-BS22-LR or SP-FS52 speakers, paired with an Onkyo TX-8020 stereo receiver; that combination would be a massive sonic upgrade over similarly priced Bluetooth speakers.

Week 8: Issues Resolved in Pro Tools 10.3.10

When saving a session with Universal Audio plug-ins, these plug-ins would show up as missing when opening that session on a Windows system and visa versa. When you subsequently access the Insert menu the plug-in would be available. Input Monitoring works intermittently in Pro Tools 10.3.9.

In certain track orders, no warning dialog is posted for clip group deletion when cycling thru a track’s playlist view. Pro Tools records MIDI notes played during Count Off. All MIDI notes and events played during count off are clustered on the first beat of the recording pass.

When Field Recorder match Criteria are set to default, the Expand to new tracks command results in Pro Tools quiting unexpectedly. When one or more tracks of a soloed group are inactive and solo mode is X-OR, the Shift+S key command does not work as expected. When importing MXF files from Pro Tools into Media Composer, incorrect files maybe linked due to matching tape name, timecode, or matching sourceID.

In certain cases when using Tab To Transient, Pro Tools becomes unresponsive. With AudioSuite plug-ins, if the Selection Reference option is set to Clip List, the Use in Playlist button should automatically be disabled to ensure that you do not accidentally replace every occurrence of the clip in a session. After importing AAF from Media Composer, some audio does not match the video. Bypassed and inactive multi-mono plug-ins become partially bypassed after you reopen a session and activate the insert.

After recording, there is a gap between the end of the file that was just recorded and where the insertion point is located on the timeline. Automation lags when delay is induced by plug-ins further in the signal chain.