Hatstand

Seeing that picture reminded me of my youth where I used to buy a home electronics magazine that had projects in it like how to build your own volume pedal and distortion unit and so on and so on. Stood me in good stead later when on the road being able to fix amps with my trusty 'dering iron.

More recently I bought an audio interface for parts or spares and fixed it for 90p (two new caps inc. postage). It brought back memories and gave me an immense feeling of satisfaction getting it to work again.

Yes @Simeon Amburgey's missus will be pleased to know the ear pads don't disintegrate after a couple of years

and thanks from me also @Reid Rosefelt

I think I will probably stick to using the AKG's for mixing as I like to mix as flat as possible, but will definitely use these for tracking, sanity checking bass levels and probably just for general listening as well as they do sound good vanilla particularly for the enhanced bass end.

Once I am used to their characteristics I could probably start using them for mixing as they are very comfortable just need to be careful not to overcook the mids and undercook the bass.

Sonarworks got back to me to say they used 4 pairs to determine their profile. I wonder whether they got a bad batch or parts have changed since they calibrated them as that 500Hz boost still sounds like overcompensation to me. I am going to spend some time listening to my reference tracks to do some more a/b ing.

Status got back to me and pointed to this article which they said may be of interest.

https://ledgernote.com/reviews/status-audio-cb-1/

Hi all, once again thanks for your comments. It turns out I was heading in the right direction as it is aimed at an Anime audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwxbelTTsjE

this is a good example so supposedly I wasn't far off the mark so all good.

Finding out more about this genre is opening my horizons as to what is considered to be "popular" a sort of modern day Spaghetti western and we all know where Ennio Morricone went from there so there is hope that my ears haven't failed me....yet

Maestro, I agree, I think my circumstances were that I had no idea at the time when I installed them. How huge the libraries are and by that time the only option I had after finding out using WinDirStat, was to move them. I did try to point the vst at the new location but tbh it was easier and quicker for me at least to install a link.

3 minutes ago, Bajan Blue said:

Sounds good to me as well, although I do agree re the slight over compression - if I read it right, did you have inflator and CA2A and Tape on the master bus for mix down? That could be the issue before Ozone - on all tracks, I mix into a bus compressor only - I use The Glue but any good bus compressor works - and I keep it pretty light

But I do like the track - good job

Nigel

 

Cheers Nigel nice to hear that coming from you. Yes I think perhaps in hindsight the inflator is overkill for this genre. I am so used to using it on more contemporary stuff it is like an addiction

1 hour ago, daryl1968 said:

what sort of levels are the mix before master? Why use dither and reduce down to 16 bit? Soundcloud excepts 24bit wavs 

Hi Daryl to answer your questions, export of mix was at max of -6db. The reason for bringing it down to 44.1/16 was because it was also going to other places, so safer to drop to the lowest common denominator. I don't normally put stuff on Soundcloud (if I do it is normally private) as you can see from the profile. but as this mix was not in my comfort zone, I thought I would take advantage and elicit views from this forum.

Starise thanks for the comments, yes you are totally correct regarding the cinematic direction. It is aimed to work well coming out of a TV or games console as opposed to high end audio (although I did do a surround mix which works well with the impacts and risers). The use of the plate reverb and the IR were purely used for when the instrument was dry. On some tracks I did not add any additional reverb (Tuba, Trombone, Clarinet).  I only added reverb to specific tracks to make everything (hopefully)  sit in the same spatial space.

1 hour ago, daryl1968 said:

Hi Hatstand - this is a great composition but I agree, it does sound somewhat squashed. Did you master an exported wav file or stick Ozone on the mix bus?

Hi Daryl, exported 48/24 wav then mastered in Ozone separately down to 41/16 with dither. Compression was very light apart from the drum buss and you can see in the screenshot that the CA-2A was barely breaking a sweat. It could be that the maximiser on Ozone was hitting too hard. No overs that I could see and the headroom isn't maxed out (aimed for -14 LUFS with -1db ceiling). Perhaps the other thing could be the Inflator which is giving that squashed vibe.

I will try backing it off and see if it makes a difference. I do like what it adds to the sound characteristics though.

My bread and butter is normally mixing and mastering different genres than orchestral/soundtrack, hence why I value the opinions of the people on here.

Thanks for your thoughts.

3 hours ago, David Sprouse said:

This is really good hatstand   it has enough ethnic versimilitude to make it legit.  I noticed that it was slightly too squashed for my taste (too much compression) .   It also might brighten up if you put a smiley eq on the mix bus.  

Cheers David, I was hoping you would give it a listen. Agree re: the compression but the drums and impact hits needed something to keep them under control.

I did the mastering in Ozone 9 and did play with the smiley face but felt it lost some of the definition and character of the horns and cellos.

Thanks for the positive comments.

Welcome George, this does sound like a system issue. Perhaps look at downloading LatencyMon or looking at task manager to see if there is a bottleneck somewhere. 

It might also help if you can say what sound card and drivers you are using and what the configuration is (sample rate and bit depth)

I would agree with John here, Running at 192 is  a bit over the top and could cause issues once the track count piles up. 48/24bit should be more than enough. 192 and 96 are usually used for high quality sampling or on very top end systems that can handle it but not necessary for making songs.

And if possible it is preferable to  use the sound card manufacturers latest drivers rather than ASIO4ALL.

I don't use EZDRUMMER but if it is anything like other drum vsts you often get the midi file triggering both the individual tracks and the vst itself which results in the weird doubling up sound. I wouldn't have thought you would need to bounce the tracks to audio and remove the midi file, I am sure there are other EZDRUMMER users on here that have the answer. It may just be a simple as turning off input echo once you have the midi recorded.

Hi Jack, threw the kitchen sink at this one

Not really, most of the tracks just required high pass and compression, apart from the horns which had some dynamic eq. A couple were widened with Polyverse Wider and had Slate Fresh Air on the flute. Used Vocal Rider on the choir and Pancake for the riser.

Busses had the pro channel buss compressor on them but only just hitting. I ran a buss with an R4 plate reverb on it and a buss with a waves IR using Royal Festival hall Row K seat 22 as the IR for a longer reverb and used track sends to blend it in .

The vocals had H delay on the first vox and another reverb on the vocal buss with an extra plate using a touch of Pro channel Breverb and R Vox was also on the vocal buss.

Oxford Inflator on the pre-master fx with additional pro channel modules enabled for  light CA-2A compression and gain control followed by Tape.

Note with Tape you get the best results IMO raising the Rec Level so that it peaks around +1db and then reducing the PB Level back to match to the same gain when bypassed.

I have most if not all of the AIR and Sonivox plugins although rarely used. I have just checked and Hybrid 3 V 3.07.19200 is working fine on my Win10  V 2004 build 19041 782

Admittedly they were installed a while back. I did start updating  recently until I realised the last update was mainly to deal with compatibility with the latest Mac OS.

In regards to the installation path, yes the resultant folders are huge but I was able to move the data files off the main drive and use a folder redirect to fool the vst.

From memory there is some info out there (youtube video?) on how to do this.

I know there are Anti-Ilokkers out there who don't like the whole PACE thing, given that it is always running on the system but tbh I now have so many other vendors that use I Lok such as soundtoys, eventide, Izotope, zynaptic and slate that I have just accepted it as a way of life.

Should have said, the screen shot is Ozone 9 eq but I am sure it can be mimicked in others and whacked on the master buss or the send to the cans.

Ignore the grey area that is just the audio at the time I took the screenshot not the resultant audio.

Now at least if a singer drops them after a take or a guitarist sits on them, it will only cost them 30 quid

Still wouldn't give them to a drummer, they will have to make do with two baked bean cans and a length of string!

Bass players like Bapu of course will still be the most disrespected thing in the studio...

Now they are sounding nice! good starting point for you all. Don't forget to bypass before you export

based on what I gleaned from SW and Github and then tweaked to taste. I have got in touch with SW.

Thanks Simeon! They are sounding pretty pretty good now. (by good I mean flatish based on an a/b with my usual ref tracks)

29 minutes ago, Simeon Amburgey said:

Here is a very interesting project on Github with measurements for just about every headphone imaginable. Here is a link referencing the Status CB-1, with lots of detail, impulse responses, EQ settings, etc.

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/tree/master/results/innerfidelity/innerfidelity_harman_over-ear_2018/Status Audio SM-CB1

The curves do look similar to the Sonarworks calibration but whilst the github shows drops of around 3db at around 500Hz , Sonarworks is boosting  by 7db in that region to compensate for what it thinks is a 7db drop

I got mine today and for the money they are good value, nicely built and comfortable however If you are looking at using them for mixing be careful.

I tried them listening to my reference tracks using the Sonarworks profile and without and to be honest IMO they sound better without.

The Sonarworks profile suggests they are really undercooked in the 500Hz and 1.2 KHz range so boosts them, which results in a really unpleasant honky sound.

Without the calibration they are a lot more pleasant but have that bass end boost you get with closed backs which is nice for listening, but less so for mixing as you have to second guess.

I will stick to my AKG open backs for mixing but these will be handy for tracking as there is very little bleed. They might need to burn in, as most headphones do (unless it is my ears that need burning in) but I suspect the characteristics won't change that much.

I will get in touch with Sonarworks and Status to see if there is any chance of getting a recalibration.

I just tried to use it on the Cahon and Bongos to see if they would pay me $100, but no dice

Hi There, I don't normally post songs but I was looking for opinions on this one. I am not an orchestrator so have no idea whether I have the balance right on this mix.

If anyone with orchestral experience wants to suggest anything. it would be most welcome. If not enjoy anyway hopefully.

I have succumbed! used the code, came up as $40.80 US as I am in the UK I got free shipping so the UK cost  less than £30

7 hours ago, Larry Shelby said:

For what it's worth, this is more than my annual income...and that's not a joke

Is that Before GAS or After GAS?

this is the profile for the cb1's in Sonarworks. I thought as closed backs they would be good value for vocal work, as I prefer open backs for mixing but they have bleed for recording.

Interested to hear what the bleed is on these cans when recording.

cant buy mine until after 8pm GMT when the lottery is drawn

no discount if you use the code "GROUP"?

One of the guys who does tutorials has a way to set up a Kontakt template which makes things a bit easier and I have also seen a video with Vikings composer Trevor Morris where he shows how he basically has a template with everything ready to go in Kontakt but with everything disabled(in cakewalk language - archived).

He does have assistants to do the heavy lifting for him though