26-10-2014, 09:23 PM
Hey azwayne. I've been looking into this and relooking into this mix, as I'm aware of this issue. I'm coming to some conclusions about the very issues you're mentioning that may help you and others who are about to attack this project. To be honest, I think the high quality of the recordings is what's tripping many of us up, especially since most of us are more used to source material that wasn't recorded in such ideal conditions and good equipment... it catches us off guard, or it did me at least.
In the vocal multimic situation, it's becoming clear to me that if you want to use all the mics, it's going to be necessary to apply careful compression to each track individually for control of the dynamics and stereo symmetry (assuming you're spreading them out), and compress the group channels for each set of mics to glue them together.... and obviously that could well turn into a disaster unless you spend a few hours carefully adjusting the timing and tuning. Without that sort of aggressive dynamic control, I dunno if it's going to be possible to properly bring the vocal forward in a way that will respond well to compression during mastering. Automating the level of the vocal could make mastering a thorny, thorny issue if you have to boost the level more than a dB or two....
Now I almost always jump at the opportunity to use vocal multimic setups to create a big, wide vocal spreads during the choruses, love that sound... but I'm not really sure this mix needs it, the more I consider. I think the backing vocals will create plenty of width during the choruses when panned in opposition, and they'll stand up a lot better to the sort of dynamic abuse I'm talking about. Careful timing/tuning edits, when applied across an entire mix, can really strangle a song like this... it should sound natural and maintain a certain level of human error. If that means sacrificing a bit of width in the vocal, well, it's worth it for me
The bridge/prechorus bank of mics seems to require a significant bit of multing/automation to put everything to work without really mangling the dynamics, too. A few of those tracks provide different harmonic/supportive in different parts of the song, , and it's just too easy to be lazy about things like that.
And yeah... those cymbals, huh? I completely ditched the ride mic, it was just making the mix exhausting... I've been using the tom mics as something supplemental to the overheads when the toms aren't playing, but I'm obviously going to have to trim that out... the drummer for this ensemble is really digging into the cymbals
In the vocal multimic situation, it's becoming clear to me that if you want to use all the mics, it's going to be necessary to apply careful compression to each track individually for control of the dynamics and stereo symmetry (assuming you're spreading them out), and compress the group channels for each set of mics to glue them together.... and obviously that could well turn into a disaster unless you spend a few hours carefully adjusting the timing and tuning. Without that sort of aggressive dynamic control, I dunno if it's going to be possible to properly bring the vocal forward in a way that will respond well to compression during mastering. Automating the level of the vocal could make mastering a thorny, thorny issue if you have to boost the level more than a dB or two....
Now I almost always jump at the opportunity to use vocal multimic setups to create a big, wide vocal spreads during the choruses, love that sound... but I'm not really sure this mix needs it, the more I consider. I think the backing vocals will create plenty of width during the choruses when panned in opposition, and they'll stand up a lot better to the sort of dynamic abuse I'm talking about. Careful timing/tuning edits, when applied across an entire mix, can really strangle a song like this... it should sound natural and maintain a certain level of human error. If that means sacrificing a bit of width in the vocal, well, it's worth it for me
The bridge/prechorus bank of mics seems to require a significant bit of multing/automation to put everything to work without really mangling the dynamics, too. A few of those tracks provide different harmonic/supportive in different parts of the song, , and it's just too easy to be lazy about things like that.
And yeah... those cymbals, huh? I completely ditched the ride mic, it was just making the mix exhausting... I've been using the tom mics as something supplemental to the overheads when the toms aren't playing, but I'm obviously going to have to trim that out... the drummer for this ensemble is really digging into the cymbals
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!