16-12-2018, 11:50 AM
(This post was last modified: 16-12-2018, 12:52 PM by OctopusOnFire.)
I'm afraid the clipping is coming mostly from the bass (listen to 1:49)
Probably due to the setup I'm using emulating an analog board... I'll have to get familiar with it and find the proper gain staging. AW plugins usually allow you to abuse them further than other brands, past the point of distortion, so I think it could be a compressor that is now receiving more signal than it was before, so it's acting up like that.
[EDIT]
Okay so I went back to the session. It wasn't the toms or bass specifically. There was no problem until the very last stage of the master bus. The problem was the way I was using ADClip and Stealth Limiter. They were badly set up and, of course, the toms and bass were making them work harder than they should. I'll take a mental note for the future, in these type of mixes, when you go for loudness and low dynamic range, you need to keep everything under control right from the tracks, not letting the stuff in the master buss do all, or most of the work. Especially with elements that have a lot of energy such as toms and bass. I also realized that stuff that lives in the higher mid range such as the voice and the overheads, can get ugly when cranked up this way.
The song I was referencing has a dynamic range of 6dB, sometimes 4dB. It's amazing how they can still make it sound clear, open, clip-free and punchy. Trying to emulate this is a nice challenge and learning experience.
I'll update the attachment in the main post.
Probably due to the setup I'm using emulating an analog board... I'll have to get familiar with it and find the proper gain staging. AW plugins usually allow you to abuse them further than other brands, past the point of distortion, so I think it could be a compressor that is now receiving more signal than it was before, so it's acting up like that.
[EDIT]
Okay so I went back to the session. It wasn't the toms or bass specifically. There was no problem until the very last stage of the master bus. The problem was the way I was using ADClip and Stealth Limiter. They were badly set up and, of course, the toms and bass were making them work harder than they should. I'll take a mental note for the future, in these type of mixes, when you go for loudness and low dynamic range, you need to keep everything under control right from the tracks, not letting the stuff in the master buss do all, or most of the work. Especially with elements that have a lot of energy such as toms and bass. I also realized that stuff that lives in the higher mid range such as the voice and the overheads, can get ugly when cranked up this way.
The song I was referencing has a dynamic range of 6dB, sometimes 4dB. It's amazing how they can still make it sound clear, open, clip-free and punchy. Trying to emulate this is a nice challenge and learning experience.
I'll update the attachment in the main post.
ITB Setup: Reaper, Airwindows, IK Multimedia TR5, XLN AD2 ATrigger and RC-20, Waves.
Monitoring: Dynaudio BM5 mkIII, Behritone, Sennheiser HD 650. Semi-treated room.
Monitoring: Dynaudio BM5 mkIII, Behritone, Sennheiser HD 650. Semi-treated room.