linuxaudio.org

On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 09:28:44PM -0400, Monty Montgomery wrote:

quoted text
> OK, one last take.  This one tries a little harder to keep the punch,

> backs off on the reverb and compression, and also tries harder to

> limit/level the bass so there aren't places where the mid-bass

> suddenly booms right through the mix.  It also brings the loudness up

> a bit more to match typical contemporary music, though I tried not to

> overdo it.

>

> http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/lahar/foie-A-test3.ogg

> http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/lahar/ginseng-A-test3.ogg

>

> Unfortunately with the multiband compression bringing some of the

> treble detail more forward, it's clear the original instrumental

> tracks have clipping in places (or some clipping happened somewhere in

> mixdown).  I think that's where the clicking in the sax and some of

> the guitar in Foie is coming from, and in most of the second half of

> Ginseng the snare is very buzzy/distorted as if clipped. It's like

> that in the track before I started messing with it, just much less

> noticable.

Wow, your ears are good!
There is a soft clip on the attack the snare bottom mic:
http://lahar.s3.amazonaws.com/snareclip.png
Couldn't hear it, but sure can see it.
What you're seeing is the raw WAV file, no processing, which was recorded in my friend's studio on ProTools, using some kind of tube compressor going into a Digi firewire interface, then imported into Ardour.
It's nowhere near digital clipping, so perhaps the clip was in the compressor or the preamp? I dunno. Maybe I'll try running it through postfish's "declip".
>

quoted text
> This is mostly for my own amusement, I haven't gotten to do any

> armchair mastering in a long time :-)  I know it's not particularly

> 'pro'. And I''m too in love with reverb.

>

> (I'll take the tracks down in a day or two.  Or immediately if Ken prefers.)

> 

Yeah, you can probably pull them now.
So it turns out there were HUGE modes in THREE instruments in the 70-200Hz low mids. The main sound of the guitar was 180Hz! The fundamental of the kick is 80Hz and the bass has a huge booming resonant mode around 120Hz.
Here is a remixed Ginseng Strut with 120Hz hauled out of the bass, 80Hz hauled out of the kick, and around 180Hz hauled out of the guitar:
http://lahar.s3.amazonaws.com/scratchmixes-basic/ginseng-A.ogg
I'm trying to decide if I should go through all the tracks and do this EQ trick on these three instruments, or just fix it at the mastering stage.
Also, thanks for pointing me to postfix. I love it. TEN bands of compression instead of three, and I like the UI better than JAMIN (i.e. thresholds and meters in the same place). Bummer it doesn't do JACK, but I like the idea of doing mastering in batch mode after the mix stage anyway.
-ken

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