Help me improve my recorded tone.

Ramirez

wayneirie said:

Don't normalize stuff it never sound goods 

Nonsense, it doesn't change the sound at all; it just gets rid of the headroom. That headroom is, however, crucial while mixing. You could easily have your individual tracks peaking at 0dBFS and work with your faders really low so that individual tracks are around -18dBFS to -12dBFS if you wanted to, it wouldn't make much difference.

To take Dave's point, whilst I agree that it's good to level-match tracks for reference, I'm not sure what the benefit of doing this with a single guitar track would be, as a lot of the perceived 'power' of guitars can often be about the mix itself, and the interaction and space created by other instruments.

The suggestion of a hi-pass filter is a very good and important one - set at 100Hz as suggested, it simply filters out frequencies below that figure, leaving space in the low end for bass drum and bass guitar etc. While the fudamentals on an electric guitar goes down lower than 100Hz, the bass guitar will often fill this out (also bear in mind that a hi-pass doesn't simply 'remove' everything below, it just attenuates it). Play around with the frequency once you have the other instruments in - the guitars may sound slightly lacking in isolation, but it affords extra welly to bass and drums.

In Reaper, simply use the ReaEQ plugin: the first band is, IIRC, a low shelving filter, which is almost what you want. There should be a drop down menu to change it to a low-pass filter. After that, drag the '1' blob on the screen to the desired frequency (or type in the frequency below), and drag it down to cut the frequencies. The graphic display should give you a representation of what you're doing - i.e. everything should be flat above 100Hz (or to the right of 100Hz as you're looking) with a steep drop below (or to the left on the display).

If that's confusing I'll try again!

viz

I think it sounds excellent! Imagine drums suddenly starting - duggaduggaduggaduggaduggadugga blam tsi tsi duggadugga tsi tsi dooff - it would sound wicked. I think it just sounds a bit sterile because it's on its own, it probably needs a bit more treble, but actually when you add the other parts it probably won't.

ThePrettyDamned

viz said:

I think it sounds excellent! Imagine drums suddenly starting - duggaduggaduggaduggaduggadugga blam tsi tsi duggadugga tsi tsi dooff - it would sound wicked. I think it just sounds a bit sterile because it's on its own, it probably needs a bit more treble, but actually when you add the other parts it probably won't.

I'm really quite flattered, but it has a slight fizz I don't like (which is likely too much gain) and it's kinda... Not flubby, but something like it.  

Anyway, I'll mess about tomorrow.  Got the day off  

BTW, how did you know what sort of drums I had in mind?  Uncanny...

I'll look for a tutorial on applying a hi pass filter, but I suspect I'll leave that out until I'm adding bass - then it will probably be more necessary, but I'd like to start with a good, raw tone to begin with if that makes sense

wayneirie

Add it at the start, it will help get a cleaner recording. But try both ways and see which you prefer.@ramirez I generally avoid normalisation it shouldn't be necessary if the gain is structured correctly. But what ever floats your boat.

Ramirez

wayneirie said:

@ramirez I generally avoid normalisation it shouldn't be necessary if the gain is structured correctly. But what ever floats your boat.

Absolutely, I completely agree. I almost never normalise apart from a quick fix to raise the level of something. It was the "never sounds good" that I was objecting to, as it doesn't change the sound.

It would be strange practise to normalise then work with very low fader levels as I mentioned, but I don't think any sound quality would be sacrificed as such.

Regarding the high-pass, no problems adding that at the mixing stage. No point doing it while recording as you might want to change it, and that sub-100Hz (or whatever frequency) stuff isn't going to mess much with your gain structure unless someone's driving tanks over TNT down the road.

wayneirie

It raises the level of everything, including any noise, hum etc without discrimination that's my main objection to it. So I view it as bad practice all round.

Ramirez

wayneirie said:

It raises the level of everything, including any noise, hum etc without discrimination that's my main objection to it. So I view it as bad practice all round.

Exactly, it doesn't change anything apart from the level, which can easily be attenuated again. It just does what a fader would do - raise the level of the signal going through it. No more, no less. No change to the again.

But we're in agreement that it's not something to be used in this situation, and that it would be bad practice. It's a perfectly valid way of removing any unwanted headroom, however - though during a mix is usually not the place to do that in order to maintain healthy fader positions.

ChrisMusic

Hey TPD, there is a basic explanation on hi-pass filtering on the second Pete Thorn video at 5:45

http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/10586/pete-thorn-s-new-studio-and-recording-tips

He is in the control room talking about mic preamps into Logic from 3:40

Hope that helps clarify things a bit.

ThePrettyDamned

ChrisMusic said:

Hey TPD, there is a basic explanation on hi-pass filtering on the second Pete Thorn video at 5:45

http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/10586/pete-thorn-s-new-studio-and-recording-tips

He is in the control room talking about mic preamps into Logic from 3:40

Hope that helps clarify things a bit.

Just saw it after reading your earlier post, wisdom awarded!

PolarityMan

wayneirie said:

Don't normalize stuff it never sound goods your levels want to be between -18dbfs and minus 12dbfs. Also use a hi pass filter at about 100hz. Especially if you are going to be adding bass and drums later. You want to leave room for kick, floor toms bass guitar etc. your goal should be to be able to push up the faders and it sound pretty good with no compression, eq etc. then think of all that as icing on the cake. If you want big metal guitars a lot of it is layers of varying dirt. Also don't pan things extreme left and right. You lose power pushing it hard left and right and it can sound unnatural and not work with some peoples setups. When you do get to mixing bus all four into a subgroup and try adding compression there instead of on the channel.

I dont actually subscribe to cutting everythign at 100hz, for low tunings the fundamental is below that frequency, i tend to place my high pass much lower.

wayneirie

You're correct the fundamental is below a 100hz, but when there's multitudes of guitar tracks, bass and drums. It can get a little crowded there in my experience. There's no right answer it depends on the track. I'm sure the OP will find what's best for him, and his music.

PolarityMan

im not saying dont high pass, im jsut saying for the style of music he;s doing the internet wisdom of putting at 100hz probably isnt the best idea.

guitarfishbay

What is more important is knowing what the highpass does, and what it sounds like.  Once you have all your instruments tracked you can start sweeping your high pass to find where the guitar sounds good and fits in with the bass and kick drum.  It could be 100, could be below, could be above.  High passing it out of context might mean a setting of 60hz sounds great but if you add in bass and kick the guitar might have too much low end, hence you'd move the highpass filter up higher.

wayneirie

PolarityMan;161418" said:

im not saying dont high pass, im jsut saying for the style of music he;s doing the internet wisdom of putting at 100hz probably isnt the best idea.

In my original post I stated about 100hz, generally I use a 6db slope. I find it makes mixing easier, especially when tracking live. Different strokes for different folks my friend.

citizen68

Great playing on this & good that you've managed to get a fairly uncoloured sound with no aforementioned boxiness in the recorded track. I'd agree that there's maybe a touch too much gain - probably sounds massive in the room but the sound your ears hear ain't what the microphone's 'hearing'. Try 2x 3x or 4x tracking with different tones but a lot cleaner than this one - combined they will sound BIG

ecc83

FFS! I said I was NOT talking about normalizing!

The point I was trying to make, the ONLY point! Was that the POSTED level was peaking at about neg 12. Now, virtually ANYTHING else you get off the infernalnet WILL be slammed to 0.1dBFS and so,by comparison the OP's post will come over as weaker and "flatter".

JUST that! I was not trying to start a debate about tracking or mixing levels! I run 24 bits and average neg 18 and try to keep peaks at below -6 as an absolute max. Others might have a different MO. Not bovvered! In THIS particular case I just wanted to point out that it is a basic requirement when making audio judgements that you keep levels comparable. JUST that.

And FYI. In Samplitude, my most used DAW, you can tweak track volumes very easily on the "waveform".

Dave.

Ramirez

ecc83 said:

FFS! I said I was NOT talking about normalizing!

Fair enough, my bad for following down that road!

ecc83

Ramirez said:

ecc83 said:

FFS! I said I was NOT talking about normalizing!

Cheers Ramy! Sorry for the rant!

 

Dave.

Fair enough, my bad for following down that road!

ThePrettyDamned

Won't be recording for a bit after all.  I've had to take a few days off work because of illness and don't get paid for it. which means I cannot afford new strings.

And I really, really need some new strings - intonation has wandered and I'm getting nasty overtones.  

LastMantra

PARALLEL COMPRESSION!! Compression/limiting in general to increase headroom and maybe a touch of transient reduction to tighten it up? 

I'd say it is more to do with mixing trickery as the recording is fine. Totally depends on what sound you have in your head though.

This is well worth a read.