From the original SynthMaker forum (2004–2014), with its members’ names and dates.
mindplay ·
for years, I have been wondering how to make the "ideal" mix. mixing has always been one of the greatest challenges for any electronic musician, I think. One of the most ordinary problems is when, for example, you mix a bassline and a kickdrum - they sound great separately, but due to frequency cancellation, when you mix them, they sound flat together. Of course there are numerous techniques to "fix" this problem: adjust the phase of the kickdrum, apply compression after the fact, and so on.
but here's an idea...
when mixing two channels of audio, what if you had FFT analyzers
on both channels, and envelope-followers on every frequency-level.
and the same FFT analyzer on the resulting mix, with envelope-
followers on every frequency-level. let's call this the "normal"
envelope.
now, the envelopes on the mix will give you a picture of the
actual resulting mix, including all cancellations.
but if you add the envelopes from the first channel to the
envelopes of the second channel, what you have is a picture
of the mix as it would have been, if no frequency cancellation
or overlap occurred. let's call this the "ideal" envelope.
now, by dividing the "normal" envelope by the "ideal" envelope,
you get what we can call the "difference" envelope.
construct another FFT and apply the "difference" envelope to
the mixed output, and you should have the "ideal" mix - a pure
additive mix with no overlaps or cancellations.
of course it would be ridiculously slow 😉
but has anyone experimented with anything like this?
what do you think of the idea? does it make any sense?
mindplay ·
for that matter, strike all the additional envelope followers - the FFT in itself *is* a kind of envelope follower, so applying that separately probably does not make much sense in the first place...
MyCo ·
for me it is a little bit to "High tech". If there would be a plugin, that has to syncronised EQs, that would be enough. That would go this way:
2 waves in, 2 waves out, each channel got an EQ, and all frequences you remove from the first channel, will be added to the other channel. For Kick and bass, that's enough 😀
mindplay ·
"enough", sure - but not ideal. i'm pretty sure i've seen a plugin that did that - it gives a compressor-like effect, which is not what i'm after. I want a pure mix, something that has as little effect on dynamics as possible...
platinumears ·
IMO the key to acheiving a great mix is to start with a good arrangement: if you must have a really bassy kick drum and a really subby bassline, write the parts so that the two don't collide.
eg: the ubiquitous techno 4-to-the-floor kick drum plus syncopated bassline.
😉
lanrosta ·
This is exactly the reason I stick with actual audio gear instead of relying on a computer to handle my mixing. I love VST's and even Reason is sweet, but nothing out there (digitally) will sound better than actual hardware gear producing the tunes... The reason is obvious... Analog sound has no defined 'frequency range', it can record and reproduce sounds that a digital device cannot. These extra sounds make a huge difference in the audio quality and to the humar ear. The second important element, platinum ears has already addressed. Do it right on the composition and you wont need tools to 'clean it up'.
...Not that your idea is bad though, it is kinda a cool idea.
lanrosta
Nu Audio Science ·
Hahahahahahahahahahaha
I'm not laughing at you guys just the fact that these topics still go on and on and on and on.
You guys obviously know a lot more than my twenty years experience has allowed me to learn (I am a little dumb though)
I have never had to do anything special to make anything fit in a mix accept volume and pan and maybe a little EQ but that is rare, The mastering house never moans and neither do any of the labels i'm signed to.
Sorry if that sounds a little elitist but i do find it funny that all the people i can remember who brought up these topics over the years are no longer musicians, Now they probably just use class A amps and gold leads hahahahahah.
PS it used to be cheap hardware versus "Studio quality" hardware
Now it's software versus hardware
On a small aside, You guys must have mad respect for us DJs then ?
The way we mix tunes together so that they sound like one tune, I'll let you into a little secret, We use vol pan and very rarely EQ, And we make anything fit with anything.
There may be a lesson in that but i'm to old to care to be honest 😉
nix ·
Hey,
Please exscuse my ignorance, but what is FFT? I always thoght that sounds on the same frequency blurred into each other quite nicely. Compression is a foreign concept to my music yet. I'm still working on the mix rather than the mastering.
Cheers and happy musicking,
Nix 🙂
platinumears ·
Nu Audio Science wrote:
There may be a lesson in that but i'm to old to care to be honest 😉
Yeah: it doesn't require any skill to play other people's records..
😈
platinumears ·
nix wrote: what is FFT?
"Fast Fourier Transform". Check out http://www.dspguide.com/ if you want to know more..
nix wrote: Compression is a foreign concept to my music yet.
platinumears wrote:
Nu Audio Science wrote:
There may be a lesson in that but i'm to old to care to be honest 😉
Yeah: it doesn't require any skill to play other people's records..
😈
OK then try mixing two records together to sound like one new song, Then see how silly you feel.
Someday people will stop thinking that every DJ is Dave Lee Travis and just plays one record after another.
Perhaps you should look into DJing before making such silly statements, Sorry to get on one but being a scratch DJ for so long and having to put up with statements like that from people who know nothing about DJing whatsoever really does grind.
You know better than anyone Ears i'm not trying to kick off but really, We're not all Disco Ted with his 45s at the local social club 😉
platinumears ·
Nu Audio Science wrote:
OK then try mixing two records together to sound like one new song, Then see how silly you feel.
Ok.. but first I want you to create a track from raw recordings that have not already been mixed and mastered once, to find out how silly you feel. 😉
AngularMomentum ·
I am a DJ myself, mixing a lot of styles, and I relie heavily on EQ, specially if I want to fit 3 records on top of eachother making it sound like one...not to make an argument, I guess Nu Audioscience is just speaking from his platform of reality...there are many other realities out there though when it comes to producing music.
A perfect mix is pretty hard to do and I do not even know such a thing really exists, but it sure isn't an exact science. Every track I make needs another approach when it comes to mix, mastering etc...mostly I mix the whole arrangement to about -3db with all instruments just about the same level, then master it hot to about 0.3db for the record label.
Personally I haven't experimented with any of this suggested, but sure love to try out!!
Last thing is that I always eq the kick a bit higher up (with roll off) the spectrum then the bassline...compression on the kick I rarely use, except when I want a fat gated reverb after the kick I use compression to get more pumping gate effect.
nix ·
Okay, I think I've got got a basic idea about compression, explaining why my sound is so "cold", in opposition to hot, although this pro suggests turning up the monitors unless you're a mastering engineer. But, the function of FFT escapes me, I think I should read the whole book while undrunken, hey. Thanks for the links, this has really piqued my curiosity about what goes on behind the scenes in DSP.
Cheers, nix
infuzion ·
AngularMomentum wrote: Last thing is that I always eq the kick a bit higher up (with roll off) the spectrum then the bassline...compression on the kick I rarely use, except when I want a fat gated reverb after the kick I use compression to get more pumping gate effect.
From my 17 or so years for DJing experience, you'll need heavy compression if you're mixing old records with new, esp House & early Trance. They just didn't compress much (Armond Van Helden made it popular mid-90s), & base drums tended to be flat & clicky. Lots of early Techno & some harder Trance did have that deep ringy bass drum though.
AngularMomentum ·
From a DJ's perspective, as I was talking about how I do my studio produce, I never had to use any compression...never needed any...never found a mixer in any club that had compression (on the mixer, they do off course have occasionally compressors and exciters and what not in their setup), IMHO there is nothing that the EQ can't solve.
True that production got a bit over the top lately, with every production mastered louder then the last, but still I do not find any problems mixing older records with newer ones, it is even that I find that some older records sound way better in dynamics then the over the top produce lately.
infuzion ·
Good points... but I still want to spin old records & don't have them sound dated because the base sounds so weak.
AngularMomentum wrote: ...never found a mixer in any club that had compression
I'm not sure pioneers did as an effect... but I noticed many DJs will max out digital mixers, to have a sort of limiting put on it. But I think you're like me; keep the levels reasonably low to max dynamics?
AngularMomentum ·
Yep, I do keep notice of levels. With older records I would use a little more gain...to be honest I never mixed on digital mixers till now, but I can imagine that would give a bit of a softclip effect, which would make the sound some warmer, but indeed would screw up any dynamics, which to me is essential for a good mix of turntables and occasionally some studio equipment like my JX-305...I do mix occasionally on pioneers though and love the pitch shift effect in there!!
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