I grew up in the analog age. When I began as an assistant at Bill Schnee’s Studio it was an analog world. But don’t think we loved it all. There were never ending debates about what console or tape machine was better than the other. Some differences were striking. The fact is that not all analog is good.
There’s a disturbing trend I’ve seen in the last few years. Some young engineers and producers will eagerly use any analog device, especially consoles and tape machines, without even listening critically to see if it’s better than their digital whatever. I understand it, and I admire their desire to make a better sounding album. But sometime the “cool factor” gets in the way of good judgment.
Recently someone called to ask my opinion of them wanting mix to a 15ips tape machine. It was a dreadful sounding semi-pro machine who’s true calling in life was to be a boat anchor. They were convinced it was a great idea because it was analog. My advice to him was to NOT use the wretched beast, but go with their digital output and get a good mastering engineer. The fact is that decent digital is sometimes much better than average analog.
All that to say, when considering an analog option LISTEN! As I said, bad analog has been around for decades. Don’t pick it JUST because it’s analog. Pick it because it’s better.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Recording Tip 6: When recording with a compressor go easy. Use lower ratios and less compression.
This is an extension of Tip #2 and assumes you feel good about recording with compression. But always remember when using compression it’s not only how much you compress, but how you compress.
Most compressors give you a range of compression ratios to use. Without getting too deep into the technicals of that, just know that 2:1 is a lighter setting than say 6:1 or 10:1, or 20:1. So what that means for you us that you get less squash with a lighter ratio. So a lot of compression at 2:1 may sound less severe than half that amount with a setting of 10:1. Find which you like, but unless you have some good experience, the lower ratios are more forgiving and like I said in Tip #2, it’s the most permanent thing you can do when recording, so go easy. There’s no undo.
The attack and release controls also will have a big factor in how compressed something may be. If you set too fast an attack, you’ll lose the front end of the transient and lose the power of the signal. If your release setting is too slow, then the compressed signal will be too slow in coming back up. You’ll need to play with these and see what’s right. But in general, keep the attack open enough for the front of the signal to pop thru and the release quick enough to come back in a natural way. By the way, the faster the song, usually the faster the release time.
Most compressors give you a range of compression ratios to use. Without getting too deep into the technicals of that, just know that 2:1 is a lighter setting than say 6:1 or 10:1, or 20:1. So what that means for you us that you get less squash with a lighter ratio. So a lot of compression at 2:1 may sound less severe than half that amount with a setting of 10:1. Find which you like, but unless you have some good experience, the lower ratios are more forgiving and like I said in Tip #2, it’s the most permanent thing you can do when recording, so go easy. There’s no undo.
The attack and release controls also will have a big factor in how compressed something may be. If you set too fast an attack, you’ll lose the front end of the transient and lose the power of the signal. If your release setting is too slow, then the compressed signal will be too slow in coming back up. You’ll need to play with these and see what’s right. But in general, keep the attack open enough for the front of the signal to pop thru and the release quick enough to come back in a natural way. By the way, the faster the song, usually the faster the release time.
Home Recording tip 5 Set recording levels without a compressor or anything else that changes gain in the signal path.
It’s really common sense and you may get away with not doing this at times. But to get your mic preamp at it’s best level, remove or bypass any gain changing devices in the signal path.
If you have anything in line, you don’t really know what level your preamp is giving you. For example, if the compressor is in the path and it’s input or output is low, the level at the DAW may look fine, but you may hear distortion because the preamp is too high. Remove the compressor and BAM! You find the levels are in the red. The reverse, preamp low, compressor output way up, can result in a noisy signal. So remove or bypass anything in the path when setting levels.
If you have anything in line, you don’t really know what level your preamp is giving you. For example, if the compressor is in the path and it’s input or output is low, the level at the DAW may look fine, but you may hear distortion because the preamp is too high. Remove the compressor and BAM! You find the levels are in the red. The reverse, preamp low, compressor output way up, can result in a noisy signal. So remove or bypass anything in the path when setting levels.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Home Recording Tip 3-4: Only drums and percussive instruments should come close to filling up the meters in ProTools or any DAW
Meters. Even back in the analog days knowing how to read them was a skill. The same is true today. Back then there was a process of apprenticeship where engineers would teach their assistants about such things. The how and why of why meters responded on various instruments would be explained, and engineers were taught what they were seeing. Today however, there is precious little of that. Musicians and wanna-be engineers buy various DAWs and jump right in, doing the best they can from what they learned on their own and from friends…and not always for the better.
The key is remembering that this is all about getting the best level from your mic preamp. It’s the first stage of amplification and most often where distortion originates. And the intent of this blog is to help you get the best performance from your mic preamp. Once that is set, everything else will work better. Be it compressors, eq, whatever.
Most meters in a DAW are a combination of peak and averaging meters. Some of you may not know what that means, so here’s a brief explanation: Peak meter only look at the peak of a signal. It only shows the highest point of voltage….nothing else. That’s a useful thing for percussive instruments, like drums, but not for other things like vocal, strings, keyboards, etc. For those instruments, an averaging meter is better. Such a meter is what it says…it displays the average level if a signal.
The old VU meters that you’ve seen on tape machines and analog consoles were almost always averaging meters. The peak information would never show and we engineers were trained to know that. We were taught that certain things like tambourines were not showing the true peaks which were occurring. So when we’d record them, -10dB was the proper level of a tambourine because their peaks were at least 10 dB above the meter response. Were we to allow the meters to hit 0 we knew it would end up with distortion in the recording, most of the time both at the mic preamp as well as the tape. However with other things like vocals and the like, 0 was correct. (I’m ignoring super-elevated tape levels…that’s a lesson beyond this conversation and not useful for digital recording.)
So when DAWs came out, a decision needed to be made about metering. The choice was correctly made to create meters which were a combination of peak and average metering. These digital meters are somewhat of a compromise between the two. They show peaks and average levels. So percussive instruments will show their peaks. No longer do you need to have tambourines at -10 for a proper level. A meter reading close to 0 is probably correct. (This is assuming your preamp has enough headroom) And the other non-percussive instruments should NOT go up to 0dB, anymore than you’d record a vocal all the way into the red.
So basically, things you hit, be it a drum, funky guitar parts…anything with strong transients, those things can fill up 70-80% or so of the DAW meter. Anything else, vocals, keys, power electric guitars, acoustic guitars, etc, should really stay around 60% of the meter. Now having said that the key thing is always USE YOUR EARS! Depending on the mic pre you have you may encounter distortion even at lower levels. Class A mic preamps, like vintage Neve mic preamps will distort earlier than other kinds. So be aware…there’s no need to push your mic preamps. Digital has plenty of headroom and no tape hiss problems, so there’s no need to ever fill up the meters.
The key is remembering that this is all about getting the best level from your mic preamp. It’s the first stage of amplification and most often where distortion originates. And the intent of this blog is to help you get the best performance from your mic preamp. Once that is set, everything else will work better. Be it compressors, eq, whatever.
Most meters in a DAW are a combination of peak and averaging meters. Some of you may not know what that means, so here’s a brief explanation: Peak meter only look at the peak of a signal. It only shows the highest point of voltage….nothing else. That’s a useful thing for percussive instruments, like drums, but not for other things like vocal, strings, keyboards, etc. For those instruments, an averaging meter is better. Such a meter is what it says…it displays the average level if a signal.
The old VU meters that you’ve seen on tape machines and analog consoles were almost always averaging meters. The peak information would never show and we engineers were trained to know that. We were taught that certain things like tambourines were not showing the true peaks which were occurring. So when we’d record them, -10dB was the proper level of a tambourine because their peaks were at least 10 dB above the meter response. Were we to allow the meters to hit 0 we knew it would end up with distortion in the recording, most of the time both at the mic preamp as well as the tape. However with other things like vocals and the like, 0 was correct. (I’m ignoring super-elevated tape levels…that’s a lesson beyond this conversation and not useful for digital recording.)
So when DAWs came out, a decision needed to be made about metering. The choice was correctly made to create meters which were a combination of peak and average metering. These digital meters are somewhat of a compromise between the two. They show peaks and average levels. So percussive instruments will show their peaks. No longer do you need to have tambourines at -10 for a proper level. A meter reading close to 0 is probably correct. (This is assuming your preamp has enough headroom) And the other non-percussive instruments should NOT go up to 0dB, anymore than you’d record a vocal all the way into the red.
So basically, things you hit, be it a drum, funky guitar parts…anything with strong transients, those things can fill up 70-80% or so of the DAW meter. Anything else, vocals, keys, power electric guitars, acoustic guitars, etc, should really stay around 60% of the meter. Now having said that the key thing is always USE YOUR EARS! Depending on the mic pre you have you may encounter distortion even at lower levels. Class A mic preamps, like vintage Neve mic preamps will distort earlier than other kinds. So be aware…there’s no need to push your mic preamps. Digital has plenty of headroom and no tape hiss problems, so there’s no need to ever fill up the meters.
Recording Tip 2 When in doubt don't compress. You can do that later
I recall one weekend night many years ago when I was an assistant my boss, Bill Schnee was mixing a song and one of the tracks of the mix was severely compressed. He kept working on it, trying to get it to sound the way he wanted with little success. Finally, in frustration he gave me one of the greatest lessons I ever learned. “Compression is the most permanent thing you can do.” He said. “Bad EQ, even distortion, can be gotten around. But when someone compresses things this hard, there’s absolutely nothing I can do with it!”
Bill has never been a fan of heavy compression. But even for those of you who do like it, the fact remains that when recording, it’s much better to use moderate compression so you’re not backed into a corner and screw things up. A 4:1 ratio, and 3 to 5 dB of compression should do it. This will give the mixer, even if that’s you, the freedom to compress it as much as you want later on. And you’ll then have the advantage if hearing it in context of the mix so you’ll know what’s best. But if you hit it too hard when recording, you can never take it back.
I’m not going to battle the idea of compression. If you want to have your final mix compressed to death that’s up to you. And I’m often one who will print effects as I go, but I rarely ever compress something to death unless it’s some sort of effect and there’s no doubt about it. But 99% of the time, since you’ll have the chance to compress when mixing, it’s really better to leave the final squash till mix….and avoid your mixer cursing your name and thinking you can’t engineer your way out of a paper bag.
Day 1! Welcome and thanks for coming by
Welcome to my blog. We'll discuss my posts and most anything interesting here. The site is a work in progress, but I didn't want to wait any longer to get it up and running. (The chase for perfection is in one of my recordingtips...more on that later) You'll see some things added as the days go by.
Peace and all the best!
Peace and all the best!
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Recording Tip 1 When in doubt, use an SM57
The most common mic you’ll ever see or use is the SM57. You see it in front of every Presidential speech, in almost every session on a snare or electric guitar, and almost every live gig. It’s easily the most popular mic ever made. No matter where I’ve worked, from the dumpiest home studio, all the way to Abbey Road, I’ve always found it. And found it not lying neglected deep in a mic locker, but in daily use.
I can be a bit of a mic snob and it’s easy to overlook such a pedestrian piece of equipment. But I’ll say this; In a pinch, this mic can give good results for almost any recording need in almost any genre except classical music. It’s really easier to say what it can’t do that what it can.
It’s terrific on almost any percussion instrument, from drums to congas. Electric guitar? Are you kidding? If the recording gods removed every recording which used an SM57 on electric guitar, we’d have maybe two hours of recorded music. Okay…that’s an exaggeration, but you get the point.
I’ll not blather on about what else it can do, but I’ll just say again, when in doubt, use an SM57. Don’t use it on a kick drum, overheads on drums, or most instruments you’d find in an orchestra. But on most anything else, it will do at least a decent job. There are better choices at times, and hopefully your mic cabinet has better solutions when the need arises. But when in a corner, I’d pick it in a heartbeat.
History of the SM57
I can be a bit of a mic snob and it’s easy to overlook such a pedestrian piece of equipment. But I’ll say this; In a pinch, this mic can give good results for almost any recording need in almost any genre except classical music. It’s really easier to say what it can’t do that what it can.
It’s terrific on almost any percussion instrument, from drums to congas. Electric guitar? Are you kidding? If the recording gods removed every recording which used an SM57 on electric guitar, we’d have maybe two hours of recorded music. Okay…that’s an exaggeration, but you get the point.
I’ll not blather on about what else it can do, but I’ll just say again, when in doubt, use an SM57. Don’t use it on a kick drum, overheads on drums, or most instruments you’d find in an orchestra. But on most anything else, it will do at least a decent job. There are better choices at times, and hopefully your mic cabinet has better solutions when the need arises. But when in a corner, I’d pick it in a heartbeat.
History of the SM57
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)