11 Apr
2010
11 Apr
'10
7:30 a.m.
Excerpts from Ken Restivo's message of 2010-04-11 04:47:55 +0200:
On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 05:51:00PM -0400, Monty
Montgomery wrote:
Thanks! And also thanks for the mastered/reverbed files. If you used JAMIN, I'd love
to see the actual *.jam files to see exactly what you did so I can learn from that.
So, replying kind of to everyone:
As for bass rolloff, I'm rolling off with Glame Highpass 4-pole filter at 38Hz right
now. There ain't nothing below that.
The kick is boosted by 1.5dB at 50Hz. The bass is boosted by similar amount at 60Hz.
I'll play around with different values, also rolling off 80Hz on bass.
The kick DOES have compression, SC4, from memory: 5ms, 4:1, 100ms release, and it grabs
from 2dB to 8dB of gain reduction. Bass is just limited with a nice tube compressor at
recording time; the bass player's fingers are their own compression (he's got an
active preamp bass, and he plays loud).
As for clips, I sure hope there aren't any on the guitar, and I'd be surprised if
there were. What you're hearing on the sax is the "slap" of the reed he was
using. I've got a compressor on that too.
The snare is mic'ed top and bottom (phase adjusted in Ardour), and there's
compression on both of those channels.
I'll try messing around with 100Hz and figuring out what's in that range, also
maybe notching it out.
As for compression, I don't understand how it could solve the "car stereo
problem". I am NOT hearing sudden peaks of energy on car stereos, I'm hearing
just way too much kick, ALL the time, and also way too much bass, ALL the time. Come to
think of it, I'm hearing way too much low mids all around on car stereos and club
systems, even the guitar and vocals... starting to point towards that 100Hz area...
perhaps I'll try hauling those out.
Thanks everyone for the comments!
-ken
I agree
with the suggestion to make sure you rid yourself of anything
below 50hz. I'm not sure, but this could be what's causing the trouble
on some systems.
Heh, well, the problem with car bass and clubs is usually they're very
very underdamped and also very peaky. They want to seem powerful.
It's way easier to get Big Volume at 100Hz than 50, so guess what
cheapy systems do... When you hear a Honda with the hood rattling from
bass, I'd bet a hamburger it's around 100-125Hz.
That said, even with the peaky response and the lack of damping, the
original recording isn't compressing/leveling the bass much/at all.
The notes and hits are varying in power by maybe a factor of three or
four. Compression is usually the way to even that out and make sure
you don't have a mix of 'OK' and 'way too hot'. It's hard to do
that
in a recording without having the instruments in seperate tracks, so I
didn't really try in the version I sent to the list. It's all the
multiband smoothing it out, and that works better above bass. From what I remember from the days I spent at a
(admittedly small)
studio I'd say forget everything below 50Hz. You know how
filters work,
-3dB at cutoff and then it depends how steep the filter is, so if you
set it at 50Hz you'll still have some stuff below that.
Purely from what I remember I'd say you're playing with too low
frequencies. I think of bass at 100Hz+. Kick is a different story, it's
character is at way higher frequencies and its bass may not matter at
all.
This is all very generalised, of course. I didn't play with the mixes at
all, just listening as I type. I don't even have anything set up to do a
proper level/volume matched A/B comparison and Montys mixes are far louder.
Hope it helps anyway.
Oh, and nice music ;)
Regards,
Philipp