I’m more on the techno’ish/hous’ish side of life and I often discover that (I’m not sure if its the right terminology) when preparing kicks for a bassline, the kick has its fullest fullness when in drum synth mode but only until I record it. It sometimes just vanishes in existing soundscapes.
So what are your tricks to prevent this from happening. Is my bassline too loud or too bassy? In master (T4) L/R are at 99 and drive and release not higher then 40. Relase is often a bit beneath drive.
I’m wondering if the OP-Z also has this narrow width on sound.
I’ve noticed that before, particularly when recording on non-standard tape speeds. I usually lift everything before recording so, if I am not happy, I can drop the old take back. Try recording the kick louder than you think it should be and see if it falls back into the mix, but with more emphasis than before. Experiment for a while until you develop better intuition for the difference. between instrument and tape volumes. Always lift/drop before recording, though.
I think there are a few things going on…
for 1 the tape is mono & for 2 like you said, not a lot of headroom.
I’ve been turning things down…this has helped a lot. Also I just read, which totally seems to be the case with the Op-1, that low-mid frequencies take up a lot of headroom…maybe filter some out, especially in things like hi hats, snares, melodies…
Maybe try making your own side chain too, like when the kick hits lower the volume of the bass…or maybe add the filter to the bass with an lfo & try to modulate it so the hipass turns up when the kick hits?
These are things I’ve been playing with, I’ll let you know if I come across anything else.
You guys have me thinking…
So you are saying that the synth instrument is more defined, clearer, than after recording to Tape. Especially when overdubbing a track.
Well the tape tracks do have their own limiter, which the instrument may well bypass in the signal flow. You hear this when a track is hitting red on the recording, seen on the mixer page. So maybe that’s why people do report this phenomenon of tape smearing or robbing clarity of the instrument. Maybe try not hitting the red on individual tracks.(?)
@Spheric_El said:
You guys have me thinking…
So you are saying that the synth instrument is more defined, clearer, than after recording to Tape. Especially when overdubbing a track.
Well the tape tracks do have their own limiter, which the instrument may well bypass in the signal flow. You hear this when a track is hitting red on the recording, seen on the mixer page. So maybe that’s why people do report this phenomenon of tape smearing or robbing clarity of the instrument. Maybe try not hitting the red on individual tracks.(?)
I think its not about clipping…sounds sometimes just get eaten up.
Try to make a deep bassline and then add a kick to it. When the bass is in the low-mid frequency range, the kick will just be swallowed…until you turn down the bass volume by quite a whole…
But maybe we should just work with less volume? And amplify later. Idk
You have to go easy on the bass, like on every mixing system : low frequencies tend to eat up all the dynamics quite quickly.
The “Drive” in OP-1 is a compressor : kick and bass occupy the same frequencies for their major part.
If you want to avoid bass to eat the kick dynamics, best thing is to have a slightly low attack on the bass, letting the time for the kick to fade before it takes the low freq dynamics…
A good reading regarding mixing is Mike Senior’s “Mixing secrets”. Really open the eyes/ears about such problems, and many more.
@LyingDalai said:
You have to go easy on the bass, like on every mixing system : low frequencies tend to eat up all the dynamics quite quickly.
The “Drive” in OP-1 is a compressor : kick and bass occupy the same frequencies for their major part.
If you want to avoid bass to eat the kick dynamics, best thing is to have a slightly low attack on the bass, letting the time for the kick to fade before it takes the low freq dynamics…
A good reading regarding mixing is Mike Senior’s “Mixing secrets”. Really open the eyes/ears about such problems, and many more.
@Spheric_El said:
Yeah it seems there’s a dynamic algorithm on tape tracks,especially in the final 20%. The final red line on mixer page.
Like a pseudo tape dynamics.
Hey dude, how do you know it’s more in the final 20%? So I took another look at the mixer page shift + mixer & I was wondering if that final line going red means clipping or not. Tbh, to my ears the output sounds great when it cranks. It’s more a saturation than a bad digital sounding clipping.
@ludicrouSpeed I was guessing that red line amount. Although there is an unrelated hint about headroom in manual suggesting mixer levels of 80 as a starting point.
Red dots still a mystery. @Adge three thirds sounds good but I’m all over the place coz I’m mixing the sounds via Red input level.
@Spheric_El said: @ludicrouSpeed I was guessing that red line amount. Although there is an unrelated hint about headroom in manual suggesting mixer levels of 80 as a starting point.
Red dots still a mystery. @Adge three thirds sounds good but I’m all over the place coz I’m mixing the sounds via Red input level.
I was referring to the “red input level”
Wait!
Can someone maybe explain the connection between the “red input level” + (T1) of master screen (mixer levels) + (T4) L/R channel levels
how does this all get together?
Its a bit confusing that I can set the level of the tracks 2 times. First with the red input level and then through the mixer screen Master(T1)
one thing that might help here – run a high pass filter on bass and kick. the idea is to remove the really deep bottom end frequencies that you can’t hear or can barely hear, but take up massive amounts of headroom.
the nitro effect has a low and high pass filter, right? at least that’s how i’ve been using it.
i’ve noted this elsehwere – often my bass sounds way better (louder) and sits in the mix when i turn it down.
ah yeah…good point. fav track is “feel the bass” by dj pierre.
i just turn the high pass on the nitro a little bit. i don’t hear any difference but figure it must be cutting something.
too bad we can only assign one filter. I sometimes already have an effect on something which would then still need to be filtered…well I can resample it.
