Reflections of Twilight - Piano and strings - Updated

[jwnicholson78]

A short piece with piano and strings.

Any thoughts on how to tame some of the piano transients?  Some of them are very sharp, and when I listen on my phone I find it overloads the little speaker.  I don't want to squash the dynamic range, but I find I can't add anymore than a dB or so of compression with hating the sound of it. 

Update - it took me a while to get back to this, since  I was traveling last week.  I think a combination of narrow eq's to target some of the piano resonances along with some active eq using the really cool (and free!) TDR Nova has helped a lot.

 

 

Edited September 3, 2022 by jwnicholson78

[KSband]

Sound good to me, very pretty song.

[Hidden Symmetry]

Enjoyed the composition. The mix sounded good in my cans, didn't seem sharp, sounded warm/ full.

[Bajan Blue]

enjoyed this and I also didn't notice the piano too much just occasionally perhaps - but if you worried about it did you try EQ - or there is a new Free Plug in that might help

https://freevstplugins.net/wavegrove-vastaus/

I only downloaded this a while ago and tried it on a few things - on some it did seem to make a difference - its a bit like Oeksound Soothe but considerably cheaper?

Nigel

 

[jwnicholson78]

On 8/20/2022 at 2:17 PM, KSband said:

Sound good to me, very pretty song.

Thanks, so much!

[jwnicholson78]

14 hours ago, Hidden Symmetry said:

Enjoyed the composition. The mix sounded good in my cans, didn't seem sharp, sounded warm/ full.

Thanks!  Appreciate the feedback!

Jeff

[jwnicholson78]

9 hours ago, Bajan Blue said:

enjoyed this and I also didn't notice the piano too much just occasionally perhaps - but if you worried about it did you try EQ - or there is a new Free Plug in that might help

https://freevstplugins.net/wavegrove-vastaus/

I only downloaded this a while ago and tried it on a few things - on some it did seem to make a difference - its a bit like Oeksound Soothe but considerably cheaper?

Nigel

 

Thanks!  I did spend a fair amount of time farting around with EQ but didn't really come up with anything I liked better.  Appreciate the suggestion.  I'll give it a try.

[antler]

Very pretty, somehow makes me feel pensive.

For the piano transients, maybe try a multiband compressor or dynamic EQ on target frequencies. Maybe a standard transient shaper might help too.

[Larry T.]

beautiful....to bring down any transient on my stuff i just use the CbB volume control on each individual track and manually adjust each violator down to an acceptable level ????

[Wookiee]

Pleasant composition, not sure if they are format compression artifices but I am getting a few complaints on my A7x's.

As suggest by Nigel try  a little EQ, if you have access to one you might even find an active EQ might be better or even multiband compression.

[DeeringAmps]

No issues on the DT990's here, but bear in mind that at 70 my "top end" is pretty well hosed...

t

oh, and I enjoyed the piece!

[Chandler]

Sounds good to me. The piano did stick out a bit in parts. If you are recording using midi, sometimes just reducing the level of the midi a bit can help. Turning down the midi velocity, but turning up the volume can make things smoothers. Also using a different mic can help. If you can do either of those because you recorded a live piano try using a dynamic EQ to tame the frequencies between 2khz-4khz. Every time it gets to harsh the dynamic EQ will bring that level down. 

[freddy j]

A beautiful song!  Admittedly my geriatric ears are somewhat challenged but the mix sounds good to me!

[steve@baselines.com]

On 8/20/2022 at 10:49 AM, jwnicholson78 said:

A short piece with piano and strings.

Any thoughts on how to tame some of the piano transients?  Some of them are very sharp, and when I listen on my phone I find it overloads the little speaker.  I don't want to squash the dynamic range, but I find I can't add anymore than a dB or so of compression with hating the sound of it. 

Jeff

 

Sounds good to me.  I hear a couple of spots on the piano.  If you have Neutron 4, I bet it would highlight what frequencies are problematic.

[Ron_Pko]

I also don't complain about the mix. I actually think it is pretty good. Composition is beautiful!  

[Old Joad]

Beautiful is the word. nice job?

[Dream Art Scientists]

Sounds really good to me!

[jwnicholson78]

Thanks everyone for the feedback and suggestions.  The comments on active EQ were especially helpful.  I think a combination of some surgical EQ to tame some of the specific piano resonances, along with additional active EQ really helped.  Because of the suggestions, I ended up finding the really outstanding TDR Nova plugin which, as an added bonus, is free.

In addition, much to my chagrin, after many hours futzing around, I discovered that I had inadvertently enabled the eq on  the audio app that I use on my phone to listen to my tracks and that, too, was contributing to the piano resonances.  Whoops!  Wonder how much time I lost to that....

Hopefully folks think the new version is an improvement.

Jeff

[noynekker]

Great sounding piece Jeff !  I listened on my small iLoud speaker and it comes across as a great and balanced piano sound. Never understood trying to get a "good" sound on teeny iPhone speakers, as you mention in your original post . . . maybe not engineered for high transient material like a piano ?

One thing I've always used to zero in on high transients is to turn on Cakewalk's Peak Marker (in the meter settings) . . . which seeks out and actually flags the rogue peaks . . . then you can go in and destroy them all as needed, and actually saves some time in finding them. Maybe this will help what you're hearing ?

[markno999]

Jeff,

Really fine work.  The mix sounds good to me.    As others have mentioned, Soothe is a great solution for taming peaks.    You could also darken up your reverb but I think this updated track sounds good as is.

 

Regards