I Am Cassettes: 'Believe'

[thedon]

hi Don,

the original arrangement has a shocking amount of treble focused around the 8kHz mark, much of this is contained within the vocal sibilance and of course the cymbals were abundant in treble generally, just to add to the difficulties presented to us.

the major problem with the song, as i saw it, was getting the vocal's spectral balance to fit snugly with the instrumentation's spectral balance while creating a sensible illusion of space, especially in the depth field. however, there's an over abundance of low-mids in the vocal too (read "overdose of early reflections"!) which is unnatural and judging from the huge dose of 200Hz and a mega steep low cut just before it, i suspect some mischief has been going on. the artifacts contained in the vocal also signal that it's been messed with from pitch correction. this aside, if we try and tame the sibilance, the vocal loses proximity and pushes the vocal back into the depth field. if we try and nail the abundant low-mids, the vocal sounds washed out. the missing mid range of the vocal's spectrum can't be addressed, or at least not without adding brittleness to it, and the sibilance, one way or another must be fixed. leaving the 8kHz lump isn't an option because of the fatigue it induces. HD600's will tend to smooth over this issue...so be on your guard

i personally came to the conclusion that the vocal wasn't mixable owing to it's nightmare spectral balance. and whatever we do, losing the captured "small room ambiance" by the microphone (sounded from the tracking like the guy was in a broom cupboard with foam on the walls!), even if fed into a bigger room emu, will sound a mess because of the ambiguity. small room (early reflections) will totally contradict any sort of decay/delay for example. the orchestra suggested a large hall, with the vocal at the opposite end of the size scale. some Barry White material makes interesting listening...

anyways, catch ya laters..

Thanks for having a listen Dave ,I only spent about 2 hrs and decided to leave as is and have another shot later after more practice,but feel better knowing i'm not the only one having a hard time with the vocals.
You are right about the HD 600's, i will be on my guard !
Thanks