Motherload

[pauli]

Yeah, I was breaking in some new speakers while mixing this so my perception was definitely off... but the main reason for the spectral skew is that adding the room mics in even a little bit has really serious phase consequences in the guitar and vocal tracks. All-pass filters, phase rotators, timing alignment... nothing fixed the low mid cancellation without breaking something else. All the time I hear about "mixing into" the room tracks, and I always throw my hands up and flip over my desk whenever I try it. Room tracks sound like hell 90% of the time anyway and this is no exception. Another oddity I found in the room mics was that it tended to cause the lead vocal to wander from side to side across the stereo image.

The really odd thing about the tracking here is that when you read the session notes, you'll learn they'd newly installed a permanent decca tree fixture in the tracking room. Using that strategy on such a small ensemble makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever, and would be much more appropriate for a large ensemble like an orchestra.

[HbGuitar]

One thing I wanted to ask HB: I'm not sure why cutting 500 hZ would help with harshness... if anything it would probably expose it even more. Did you mean 5000?

Ahh Pauli, now you want me to get all technical.....And first up, yes I meant 500Hz.

To my ears your mix was getting a bit "mid-rangey" and from my own anecdotal experience with mixing vocals and acoustic instruments this occurs in the 250-2000hz area. Now maybe my description of "harsh" threw you but its the opposite of the word smooth - which is what i personally want a mix to sound like, especially in this critical area of the lower mids where most of the lower order harmonics reside.

As i mentioned, I processed your mix in my DAW using these settings (a wide (q=0.25) 2 db cut in master buss EQ centered at 500Hz), and to my ears your mix sounded smoother and more pleasing. You may not like the effect or maybe aren't looking for your mix to sound that way so I was only offering some empirical data to support my observation and offering a possible solution.

The thinking behind this EQ cut is that a build-up of low-mids puts the spectral balance out of whack with both the top and bottom ends of the frequency spectrum.....so a solution would be to add both top and bottom shelving boosts to balance tonality, followed by a cut in gain to normalize levels.

However, the nature of most digital EQ's - and certainly my native parametric eq - is that they aren't often that musical and using boosts can result in some unwanted EQ -processing artifacts. So I'll use a single shelving cut instead (that replicates the top and bottom boosts) and add an appropriate amount of make-up gain.

Cheers

(btw did you say you had new speakers?)

[The_Metallurgist]

...... and it seems like the upright bass is really hard to pin down anyway. Main issue is that working with room mics can be a real drag, even with such nice recordings. Really limits what you can do to the individual instruments without getting that puke-sounding phase coloration..

going back to what i said earlier, it's possible to work out where the instruments are within the room, and pan them in the DAW as is appropriate, and fixing the close mic levels accordingly.

you've not done this, it appears to me. i pulled the multi down and took a quick look to see what all the fuss was about? clearly the upright, which i'll mention specifically because you were having issues with it, isn't in the center of the room - that's "center" as far as the Decca Tree is concerned, but is hanging around off-center to the left. this means that if you place this instrument anywhere else other than where it should be according to the mike placements (off-center left), you will incur penalties in the mix quality. you've put it right down the middle!!

it's not simply a case of dropping the Decca Tree mikes out of the equation either, because of mic bleed from the other instruments in the room..... if you place the acoustic guitar, for example, on the wrong side (worse case scenario), you're going to cause all sorts of havoc similar to your experiences with the upright bass et al.

imagine a situation where a client insists that he wants the Decca's included...and he/she/they won't take no for an answer.....

'am looking forward to V2 with interest

[pauli]

Thanks for your input Dave, this is indeed a tricky one, for me at least. I'm not 100% sure why I'm having this issue, but placing the instruments on the virtual stage is giving me all sorts of trouble, mainly because a few of the instruments seem to meander a bit from left to right, and different (important) parts of each instrument's tone seem to be more represented on one side than the other... and the bass literally swallows everything. The bass being off to the side took some time to figure out, but when I did hear it, I wound up cutting from 125 down on the decca buss's sides channel to hopefully allow me to center the bass a bit more. Didn't work I s'pose. It doesn't help either that the spacial relationships established by the decca don't make sense when you compare them to the bleed... the accordion and banjo are bleeding very heavily into mics that the decca tree suggests are opposite one another on the soundstage, which makes panning things widely pretty hazardous.

Having said all this, the Telefunken mix sounds very nice, so they clearly had a plan when setting up the mics, and probably did a bit of premixing to make sure it'd work before they started tracking, but knowing nothing of their plan vonfirms your Sherlocke Holmes allusion -- this is detective work. Excellent practice, but frustrating.

I still can't understand the decision to include the decca from a technical perspective... but maybe that strategy was the best way to accommodate MerryGold's on-stage setup. A comfortable tracking session can make a big difference in the quality of the output.

[The_Metallurgist]

.... It doesn't help either that the spacial relationships established by the decca don't make sense when you compare them to the bleed... the accordion and banjo are bleeding very heavily into mics that the decca tree suggests are opposite one another on the soundstage, which makes panning things widely pretty hazardous.

did you consider the Decca's might not be labelled correctly? the coffee boy might have been tasked with plugging the gear in and labeling the tracks....it wouldn't be the first time, eh?

..... and probably did a bit of premixing to make sure it'd work before they started tracking, but knowing nothing of their plan vonfirms your Sherlocke Holmes allusion -- this is detective work. Excellent practice, but frustrating.

i think it's a complete waste of time without the mike layout details; this is what i find frustrating....even irritating. i'd rather watch cricket, and i never watch cricket!

full credit to you for having a really good bash at it though. excellent practice indeed.

[pauli]

did you consider the Decca's might not be labelled correctly? the coffee boy might have been tasked with plugging the gear in and labeling the tracks....it wouldn't be the first time, eh?

Gotta start somewhere I guess Tea boy to tape reel?

It's not surprising though... banjos are notorious fiends about bleeding into condensers since the transients are so sharp (and rather rudely ricochet all around the room), and accordions produce something of a non-directional sound, like a roundish cloud of sound around the performer much like a saxophone, so mic placement is only going to help so much in avoiding spill. This vocalist evidently has a powerful voice, too, because her voice is leaking into everything really heavily, too.... more on that in a minute.

i think it's a complete waste of time without the mike layout details; this is what i find frustrating....even irritating. i'd rather watch cricket, and i never watch cricket!

full credit to you for having a really good bash at it though. excellent practice indeed.

What the heck is cricket?

I'll have a new version posted soon. One of the biggest issues with the decca configuration in this case is the overabundance of lead vocal in every single one of the mics, so purely relying on the decca tree for ambiance unacceptably distances the lead vocal. Not cool in almost any genre, but definitely not cool for this... vocal's got to be up front and center. That's part of why a decca tree doesn't make sense to me for music of this style... great for orchestral music where blend is more important than clarity... I could go on and on. The accordion bleeds into just about everything, too... miking it separately is a bit of an unnecessary formality, but I found a use for it...

[loweche6]

I swear they ran her voice through a PA. . . .

[pauli]

I swear they ran her voice through a PA. . . .

LOL.

It's just about impossible to keep her forward in the mix without a bit of surgery IMHO... given that she's so present in the room mics.

Just turn her up, they say... but the entire ensemble is bleeding heavily into her mic, so there's no way that's going to work.

I'm still picking at this mix, but it's frustrating and I want to have time to work on the puremix contest... right now it seems like the solution is to keep the room mics very, very low, and wet-up everyone but the lead singer with an impulse reverb that matches the room mics. Easier said than done, though! Thanks for dropping in.

[loweche6]

I actually pumped the room mics into the main reverb, at a pretty high level, but low in the actual level of the room mics.

[pauli]

Yeah, I'm toying with that approach as well... reverb is tricky. Sparse acoustic arrangements either stand or fall on how well you handle the room.