Lord Tim

So we went on a bit of a tour, and we released a bit of an album, and it's been a pretty big year so far for my band. We got some fans on the last tour to bring their phones along and film our set, and I cut the footage together to one of our new album songs. Lots of fun, lots of energy, and lots of tracks in CbB to make it all happen! Enjoy!

Just south of Sydney, Australia here 🇦🇺

It's a tricky one. On one hand I agree - the track is frozen and you're able to manipulate it, cut it up, add effects on the clip level... it's more or less like a standard WAV clip in that sense, so you'd expect it to respect the edits once it's unfrozen. However, if you think about it, this would be a logistical nightmare to do. Imagine you've frozen a drum track - a MIDI track feeding into VSTi. You do all of your edits on the frozen track and then decide that you want to unfreeze it to change the snare sample. What happens to the MIDI data? Does it make new data from scratch or try to extrapolate what you want to do? Or another situation would be freezing something that has a degree of random or externally modified controllers in the effects. That track + effects would be basically locked off in the state they were in when you hit the freeze button. If you unfreeze it, what should the track do with it then? If there was a random element, it would now sound different. I'm sure there's plenty of other better examples than these. The variables you'd need to take into account to make unfrozen tracks respect the edits on their frozen states would be enormous or impossible, so I definitely understand the decision to just go "welp, you froze it at X state, go back to the last thing it did before then."

Yep, this was always the case. When you unfreeze, it returns the track to the state it was in before you froze it, the side effect of that is any work you've done on the frozen track gets discarded.

For editing, I agree - I can see this being super handy! I'm looking forward to giving it a good spin over the next couple of weeks

This is one thing I'll be using CbB for very soon too - all live backing tracks and monitor routing to be set up and controlled inside CbB. Bumping a touchpad could spell disaster. I do like the feature though, it makes complete sense and I could see myself using it a lot, but it would be great to have it optional or keybindable.

Ah man, only just seeing this thread. Really sorry to hear that, Ken.

Wow, I actually grew a beard before I got to the end of that huge list of fixes and enhancements - that's crazy! 😐 Keen to give this a go when I get a free moment. Top work, guys!

Absolutely THIS. As I said, mine are in soffits with tuned wall cavities, etc. and they sound great. Out in the open... yeah, I've been with people who have had them just sit on a desk, and they were really hit and miss with both frequencies and image smearing. In some cases, like you said, they sounded fine, but you just couldn't really trust what you were hearing. You definitely lucked out with the longevity of them though. I actually think a lot of Behringer gear isn't really bad at all, sound wise - especially for the price. But the build quality is the thing that lets it down. You can luck out on having something be a workhorse for years, but then the next guy gets the same item and it fails in a few months.

I've got a pair of 2031As here. They're built into sofits and sound pretty good with how they're installed and the balanced room taken into consideration. However, I've already had one set fail on me after a few years and the second set are starting to show some of the same symptoms. For anyone here still after something in the short-term that can potentially sound really good depending on how they're installed in your space, they're great. But as a long-term investment, I'd avoid them.

Could it be the monitors themselves failing? That seems to be the one variable you haven't been able to test.

Don't be scared to run multiple reverbs on things too. Like, for example, having your general 2 second decay reverb on a vocal, but then also running a really thick 200ms one as well, but much quieter. You won't really hear the short one but it'll add body and a bit of "it's in the room" kind of vibe to the vocal. Typically I'll run just the one reverb, a tempo timed delay and also a stereo slapback delay of less than 100ms quietly under the vocal to thicken it up and add subtle width. Works great on all kinds of lead instruments or voices and doesn't get washy like a reverb would do.

A few good questions here! Like others have said, there's really no "proper" way to use reverb or any other effect, really. The end justifies the means. Does it sound how you want it to sound? Great - mission accomplished, end of story! But as for "best" ways to approach things, to make it more streamlined and save CPU, there's a few best practices that you can use. My advice is to set up a good general purpose reverb on an effects buss and set the mix on it to 100% wet. Then, for any track that you want to add reverb to, make a send to that buss and adjust to taste. Be prepared to use far less than you expect, especially on vocals. I usually have backing vocals summed together in some kind of buss or aux track (so set the output of all of those tracks to go to a single point) and add my reverb send on that, rather than doing it to each track individually. Ultimately it sounds more or less the same if you do it this way or on individual tracks, but when it comes time to mix and you go "you know, the Bvox are a bit wet" you don't have to turn down 12 separate effects sends, you just have the one summed track. Multiple reverbs are a can of worms. A lot of seasoned mixers use several different reverb types / lengths to get the sound they want. Sometimes you want that initial slap of a small room, sometimes you want a big washy plate. It's hard to give any advice in general for what to use. I'd suggest that for things in general, keep it simple - if you have a great sounding room reverb, say 1.5 / 2.0 seconds or something, use that us your default reverb send, to get it all in the same space (obviously adjusting send levels for each track going to that reverb, so it's not just everything getting a big wash). The more reverb, the more things are pushed back, so think 3 dimensionally - the things you want up front should have less send to the reverb buss, the things you want pushed back, have them a little more wet. I typically use a different reverb for drums because what sounds good on vocals can tend to sound a little thin if you want to add a good room crack to a snare, for example. Some synths can benefit from either leaving their built-in reverb on there because it's part of the sound, or disabling it and using your global reverb to help it fit into a space, or making an extra "special effects" reverb which may be good for super long tails, that sounds good on strings and pads, or accents on certain words or drum hits. There's really no rules other than understanding *why* you're sending to the reverb. Don't just put reverb on everything just because; ask why you want it on there. Does it need it? How much? What are you going for with this? I tend to use delay on its own buss (100% wet too) rather than combining it with the reverb directly. That way I can control how much or how little I send to it, and do fun tricks like automating its send to go off on single words or hits. A cool trick is to set up a send on the delay buss to go to the reverb buss, so each delay sounds like it's in the space too, rather than it sounding super dry compared to everything else. About the only other tip I can give, besides just being a little careful how much you use overall, is that aside from reverb feeling like it builds up a bit if you have too much everywhere is, it can make the mix sound a little muddy or foggy, especially if you're sending a lot of low frequency stuff or sibilant stuff through it. I'd suggest strapping an EQ over your reverb buss, but BEFORE the reverb plugin, and rolling off both the lows and highs to taste. You'd be surprised at how much you can remove in the low end before it's noticeable in the mix, but it seriously makes a big difference to your mix clarity at the end. Ultimately though, everyone has their own way of working and there's no right or wrong way to do this. Some really great advice posted above too - it should get you on the right track.

I could definitely see how a "Smooth Tempo" function would be handy. Imagine dragging a track onto the time ruler and having Melodyne detect the tempo of it. Most of the time it does a pretty good job but sometimes you'll get the odd section where things wildly swing all over the place measure-to-measure if the detection gets a bit iffy. Working out an average between sections would get you to the same place, and eliminate those rogue values, but you have to do it manually like Jono did. Imagine selecting a tempo range in the Tempo View and right-clicking and choosing Smooth Tempo Map and having it essentially take the average of everything between those points, or have logic in there to work out what may be an intentional change. I reckon that' s a good feature request right there!

Yep, THIS. ^^ I always include this in my mastering fee. Doesn't take long but is much more pro and saves a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth later.

Pfft, you can fix all of that stuff in the master - don't let that "actually playing the song" business hold you up! 😁

Haha! Actually, there kinda is: There was a big 200 page band history that came with our 25th anniversary box set and one chapter went into the recording of our Resurrection album in 1999. I somehow managed to make a Studer + Neve + vintage gear + brilliant sounding room sound like such a mess that even the head mastering guy at Studios 301 couldn't rescue it. 😑 It's all a learning experience, some more expensive than others...! 😒 But that's what's great about places like this forum - there's a wealth of information and different perspectives you can get from here - FOR FREE - from people who have made these mistakes already so you don't have to. I'm still learning new ways to do things from being here.

Some really great advice here, and as you can see there's a lot of different ways to approach things. Like @Craig Anderton touched on, everyone will have their own checklist of things that they do, or they recommend against other people trying, but it's all down to whatever process works best for you at the end of the day. That said (and I'll add this next bit with a huge serving of irony), it's usually best to mix in one process and master in another, in a different environment, preferably with someone giving it a listen with fresh ears. Going to a proper mastering room that's purpose made to have everything entirely flat, run by someone who is used to that environment (that's a big thing) and isn't subject to all of the fun things that can happen when you do it all in the same studio as the mix. Unless you know your studio is dead flat, and your monitors are accurate, mastering elsewhere is great for catching those things that you can miss during the mix. If your lows are overhyped, for example, you'll never know that if you master in the same space. The irony is that I don't do any of that - I mix and master in the same process, and in the same space! HAHA! But to put that in the proper perspective, my room is acoustically tuned and I know it really well - limitations of the space included. Years of experience has given me a workflow (with a lot of absolute clunkers along the way, mind you!) that lets me have a process where I know what will happen to a mix once I put certain effects on there. I usually have at least a mastering limiter strapped over the master out because I know that the mix will be slammed later, and likely some kind of stereo widening. These won't be the final effects, but there as a way to hear how certain level and panning adjustments will react at the end once I start tuning things properly. The key for me is to have great reference material of the same ballpark style on hand. Give yourself sanity checks during the mix by referring to the stuff you're comparing it to - it's easy to get caught up in "your" sound, until you realise your ears are playing tricks on you and "your" sound changed many revisions ago, and will sound weird when you put it up against other commercial mixes. Get your mix sounding good, then when you start strapping over your mastering effects, you want to set up a final metering buss (ie: a buss with some kind of metering plugin that lets you check RMS, LUFS, phase, frequency spectrum, etc.) so you can see what your mix/master is doing, and then actually import in your reference tracks and send them directly to the meters, so you can easily switch between your master buss, and each reference track, and you can take note of how different the levels are, is there any frequency that's really popping out, etc. Where this is good is you're able to go back and make proper fine tuning in the mix itself immediately, rather than trying to fix things in the master. It's easy enough to drop 85hz on your master if you're getting too much subs, but what is that taking out? Maybe it's just your kick drum that's too thuddy but your bass sounds fine? Cutting everything at the master is nuking both things from orbit, rather than going and fixing the actual problem, and doing it all in the one process is much quicker than going back to a mix, making adjustments, reimporting back into a master session, etc. Once you have the one track mastered and sounding great, you now have YOUR sound to master the rest of the album to. Even if each song is different, sonically they should all kind of sound like a coherent piece, so using the level and EQ plot from one of your own songs will definitely go a long way to getting you there for all of the others, even if you may likely need to tweak further for each one. Eventually this will give you the full album. If you're like Craig and have like a long continuous thing going, drag all of those mastered files back into CbB and do all of your fades, etc. (it's worth putting a limiter on the master buss again just to make sure any crossfades don't accidentally put you over FS if you're doing a particularly loud master), and that'll give you one big WAV file. Import that into CD Architect, Studio One, etc. and start chopping up and adding track markers, etc. (Or if it's all separate songs, skip that step and just import each one in individually). Add your UPC/EAN and ISRC, CD Text, etc. if you want to get your distro happening properly, and you're away! Then go off and check it on EVERYTHING! Before too long, you'll either be happy or sick of it... and it's done! ... TL;DR version: do it somewhere else, but if you don't, use reference tracks and meters. Could have just said that in the first place, dude! 🙄

Just as a point of reference, I'm also using a 16x08 (current firmware and drivers) and I haven't seen anything like that happen here, either in ASIO or WASAPI modes. But that said, I've heard other users have big issues with this interface so it's probably a good idea to test with something else if you can.

"Tim will have prune juice!" But apparently donuts are off the menu.

Dunno if it was was fury, but man was it loud! 😐 Every one of those Marshalls were indeed plugged in and turned up...!

Have toured with Malmsteen. Can confirm the only thing more over the top than his rig is his ego. 😒

Yeah, that's a serious amount of work! Very awesome stuff!

It does, but only when the module is in Large mode. When it's in Small mode, there's no indicator. That can also be fixed in the Theme Editor too, which I regularly do. It'd be nice if it came like that by default though.

If you right-click or long tap on the broken image and open it up in a new tab, it'll do a spam protection dance first (which is what's stopping it from being embedded here) and then show the image.