u/Poopypantsplanet

Listen to David Palmer's vocals on Steely Dan's "Dirty Work". During the verses, the saturation becomes more apparent when his voice increases in volume, yet it never creates an unpleasant harshness. It's round, and warm, and thickens parts of the vocal.

I find that even plug-ins that are given high praise, that emulate saturation from old consoles, such as Decapitator, can sometimes have a brittle digital quality to them when pushed even just a touch too far.

What are some ways to avoid this and add more body to saturation so that it has a more uniform warm fuzziness to it like analog recordings? Tone shaping before Saturation? Have the voice of an angel recorded in a pristine treated room?

Just a quick question. Who uses stem splitters to extract a vocal or an instrument just so you can listen to it isolated as a clearer reference?

Example:

Your client, or you, want the vocal to sound similar to such and such, so you split such and such, and then you can kind of reference the vocal a little easier.

EDIT: I understand that the most important thing is how a certain part sounds in the context of the mix. But if you were dead set on having your vocals sound like John Denver in Country Roads, for example, and you wanted to just hear how those vocals sound on their own so you could get the plate reverb right or something, you could split the vocal out of the mix and use that as a reference, and then just use that as a starting point. From then on, let the context of the mix lead the way or mix the other parts around that vocal, since it's the focal point anyways.

And yes, stems have artifacts. But we also have ears. Those artifacts aren't going jumpt out of the reference and crawl into your mix. You're not literally copying the reference. That's why it's called a reference. It's a tool to give you perspective.

EDIT: Another application would just be to practice mixing certain parts. Like, you could split out the vocals of a song you like, and then record your own, for fun. And see if you could mix yourself into a song that you love.

I don't know why this is getting so much immediate hate. It's just a thought, and it seems like there are some interesting ways that it could have educational value, or just give you some perspective on how something sound outside of the context of it's own mix. What's wrong with that?

I'm working on an album, and I will be hiring people to play some instruments. I could probably do bass myself, but I'd rather leave it in the hands of a pro.

My sonic target for what I want my bass and drums to sound like at the source is the album "Harvest" by Neil Young. I'm not trying to recreate it meticulously. That's just my starting point, and from their I'll let the arrangments and mixes lead where they lead.

I am not a drummer but I want to be able to give clear direction to the drummer and studio when recording since for that part, I will be hiring a drummer and paying for studio time remotely.

So far, from what I've read, taking off the front head of the kick and muffling it with some kind of pillow or blanket, will help achieve that thumpy dry sound. What kind of mic setup though? I have read through what I can find about the recording session for Harvest but can't find anything specifics on mic configuration. Again, not trying to recreate this, just using as a starting point.

As far as bass, what I've read is it is a P-Bass, DI, with flatwound strings. But when I have worked with DI recordings, they often don't sound nearly as warm or round as something from the 70s.

As far as mixing goes, I'm gonna really need to do some research and practice becuase I don't have much experience with actual recorded drums or bass. Any helpful tips or standard fail safe starting points for processing drums and bass that are recorded in ideal conditions, where the target is a fairly dry, transparent, but warm sound?

I'm in a new situation where I need a soundbooth to record some vocals and acoustic guitar because the outside noise is basically unacceptable for recording without it. I'm not gonna sugar coat it. There's an airport nearby, a car wash right across the street that regularly pressure washes, traffic, people talking loudly at all hours of the day in the streets outside the window, cats fighting, dogs barking, neighbors arguing, etc.

The soundbooth I am looking at has an interior of 136 x 136 cm. If I sit or stand near one corner, I think there would be a decent amount of room to hold the guitar, with a mic on the opposite corner. I can't fit a much bigger soundbooth than this in the avaliable space.

I have never recorded acoustic guitar in a soundbooth before, though I am aware that even in a well treated soundbooth, the boominess of the guitar can be an issue, and there can be some issues with lower frequencies building up in corners. Is that correct?

If so, what can I do to mitigate this. Should I get some extra acoustic foam and place it diagonally in corners? Put some pyramid shaped chunks in the ceiling corners? Floor corners?

What can I do to make the most of this situation?

This is what happens: Somebody asks a question about something specific, like which synth plugin might be better for a getting X sound like their favorite artist on a specific song, or what kind of gear was used to record X drums on X album, etc.

Then some people kindly offer up their opinion or some knowledge and move on, leaving the rest in the hands of the person that asked, trusting that the person who asked the question knows what do with that information.

But you can always expect at least a a few people that take it upon themselves to deconstruct your entire approach before offering any help at all, with a condescending girth of assumptions about what you already know, without knowing anything about you at all. It goes something like this:

"You're approach is all wrong. Instead of looking for a specific piece of gear or plugin, what you really need to do if you want to sound like X is to is focus first on songwriting and arrangment. Then you need to get it right at the source. Try focusing on recording first, mic placement, room treatment, etc. Then when you are mixing, instead of looking for a setting, just trust your ears and find what serves the song, instead of chasing another person's sound and Stop trying to polish a turd."

EDIT: "And why would you even want to sound like X, when you could just sound like youself and do what serves the song?"

Now techinically, that's good advice, in a vaccuum, like audioengineering 101, if you KNOW that person is a beginner. But it's absolutely useless advice when somebody comes to you asking for a SPECIFIC thing, that already knows the fundamentals. They came to a sub about audioengineering after all, not songwriting or composing, or musical fucking philosophy.

And you have no idea if somebody has already done those things or not. It grinds my gears when somebody starts assuming that I haven't FIRST done all of those things, because I have. Some of us are just looking for other's ideas of how to achieve that last 1-5% of whatever we are trying to achieve, and we don't need an entire sermon about how our entire way of makig music is ass-backwards, from a stranger on the internet that knows nothing about us.

It's like you come to this sub to ask for an apple, and you'll get at least a couple people start preaching about how "you actually want an orange" according to their professional degree in the philsophy of fruit dynamics. It's exhausting.

Like, if somebody asked which brand of mayo was better, are you going to start chastising them about how they need to go back to sandwhich school?

If you don't have anything constructive to say and would rather try to deconstruct somebody else's entire philosophy behind how they make music than offer a straight forward answer to their question, then it's better you please just stfu.

I've got a nice Martin with retro monel strings, a good recording space, and I'm an advanced fingerpicker. I don't have a km84 to compare to or the desire to spend 8000 dollars, but since basically all of my favorite record's acoustic guitar was likely recorded with a km84, I would like to approximate it as close to the source as possible to make mixing easier to fit my old school taste.

How can I transform my km184s into something closer to a km84. What adjustments can I make with an EQ while tracking or as the first insert to make my km184s sound just a little more classic and warm?

EDIT: Or what about mic sim plugin or a impulse response? There is one plugin called MMicSim that turns some mics into other mics, but I haven't tried it. You select your mic from a list and then select the one you want to simulate.

Besides the selling power of obvious charismatic favorites like T-Rex, I can't help but feel that most dinosaur documentaries stick to the cretaceous in part because you can sort of get away with filming in real locations and kind of just pretend the environment is accurate (even though it really isn't). At least flowering plants existed then.

But, In order to create a convincing carboniferous forest, for example, you really would need to recreate the environment plant by plant for it to be even close to accurate. The trees are so distinct, you just couldn't film a convincing scene anywhere on earth.

I love paleoart becuase the best paleoartists not only pay close attention to the accuracy of the creatures they are depicting, but also to the environment they are inhabiting. I've always loved the monkey puzzle trees, tree ferns, and various cycads that show up in different dinosaur paintings. It helps to remind us that it was quite a different world back then.

I wish paleo documentaries paid as much attention to the flora as the fauna, to help create a more believable immersive experience, not just "3D dinosaur asset pasted into geographically ambiguous scenery".

This year there seems to be a growing interest in using a workflow with artificial limitations to simulate using a tape machine. Tape 16 and GCS Model 8 are both new DAWs that behave like old tape machines, have limited features, and simplified workflows. I haven't tried Tape16 but I did download the beta version of GCS Model 8, and so far I like it alot.

I'm always on the hunt for things that can create a more analog sound in the box, and at least form my first impressions, the tape sound is pretty darn good.

Anybody tried any of these?

If you were going to make a longer album (15-20 songs), what are some pitfalls to avoid in order for it to not drag on?

And in most cases of having a lot of songs that fit a certain ethos, vibe, or sound, is it just better to release two albums instead of one? Like a B-sides later on.

EDIT: And how does this change if it is concept album with a very clear theme?

EDIT: I think it's fair that most people tend to say "shorter is better", "trim the fat" etc. And if that is based on the (most likely correct) assumption that not all songs on the album are bangers, that's totally fair.

But if you were to suspend your disbelief for a second and imagine a long album where every single song stands out in a good way but fits the theme of the album, would that change your answer?

Basically, if every song is a banger, then can it get away with being much longer or even then does it still need to be shortened?