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The bass guitar is an important element of every contemporary mix even though it rarely plays a prominent role. Sometimes the bass is felt rather than heard while other mixes have the bass in a much more audible sonic space. Your home recording studio is well equipped to shape your bass tracks as long as you have a basic equalizer and compressor. Show me how

Mixing Audio: Concepts, Practices and Tools price check

UPDATE: This book is now available. A new book on mixing techniques is coming out in January 2008. The press release on the book makes it look like a potentially valuable resource. The book promises to cover techniques from basic to advanced and should appeal to home recording enthusiasts as well as studio professionals. The book comes with a DVD of audio examples including four full mixes to play with. The mixes are rock, hip hop, techno, and drum and bass. These mixes are used in examples and tutorials throughout the book.

Quick review:

This book covers a lot of higher level concepts without as much rubber meets the road type advice. A large portion of the book is devoted to talking about tools (as the title implies) with an entire chapter devoted to describing the function of controls found on a typical mixer. This book is absolutely recommended to beginners, but has pockets of information that can be enjoyed by more experienced mixers looking to hone their chops a bit. One of the greatest aspects of the included DVD is the library of sound clips demonstrating critical listening.

More books about mixing

Continued from New York Style Parallel Compression (Part 1)

Step 3: The parallel drum compressor

Waves Mercury Bundle price check The API plugins from waves sound great and are used to create the sounds for this article. They are a bit pricey but well worth every penny.

Time to have some fun and add the compressor! You can use just about any compressor for your NYC effect. I prefer the Waves model of the API 2500 but any compression plugin with do. We are after kind of a dirty sound so even a lot of the free compressor plugins you can find on the net will work great. The key is to try a bunch out and evaluate their sound. Stick with what works for you!

Add the compressor as an insert on your NYC track. Solo the NYC track for now (assuming your DAW does it the cool way, see step 2). As previously mentioned, we want a very dirty kind of sound. This is not the time for subtlety or the kind of transparent compression you often read about. We want a very noticeable effect here. This is how I set up the API 2500 compressor:

New York compression settings

If you’ve been around a compressor and back a few times, you may notice instantly that these are not nice settings. The attack is set all the way down to 0.03ms (yes, three hundredths of a millisecond, very fast). The release is set to 0.05sec (50ms) which is also very fast for a release. The ratio is set to 10:1 which is very close to hard limiting on this compressor. There aren’t a lot of things you’re going to compress at 10:1 in everyday mixing. These are extreme compression settings which will cause a lot of very audible pumping… Awesome!

Find the Thresh (or Threshold) control of your compressor. Next you will want to locate the Gain Reduction meter of your compressor plugin. The one in the Waves API 2500 looks like this (notice GR is lit to signify Gain Reduction). The Thresh and GR Meter work together. Though I show a VU type meter for my plugin, sometimes it is a vertical “bar graph” type meter, or just a numeric reading. All three are fine, just make sure you find it.

Gain reduction meter (notice the GR is lit)

Now start playback of your track (remember, we have the NYC track solo’ed). Start moving your Thresh control up and down and watch how it affects the GR display. The GR display should be showing you how much compression, or gain reduction, is taking place at any given time. As you move the Thresh setting you should see the GR meter start to jump every time there is a drum hit. I like to adjust the Thresh so I am getting at least 6dB of compression on almost every drum hit. Depending on the plugin, this could be read as either positive 6dB or -6dB. I don’t mind if the gain reduction is even up to 12dB or more on the very loudest parts, I’m just looking for a min of around 6dB with an average between 6dB and 12dB. I put emphasis on the around because this is not an exact science. Just get it it really dirty sounding.

Speaking of sound, you may have noticed your solo’ed NYC track is starting to sound like something off a hip hop record. This is exactly the effect we’re looking for. If your compressor has settings for the shape or knee, then go for the hard setting for an even more pronounced sound.

Step 4: EQ on the NYC drum track

This step should be considered optional but I really like the results so try it and decide for yourself. We’re going to play with a little bit of EQ on our NYC track. I really like the Waves API 2500 compressor for the NYC track because it can get very dirty and analog but still retain clarity. For the same reasons, I like using the Waves API-550B equalizer on the NYC track, but again, any cool EQ plugin will do! Again, we are not exactly looking for subtlety here so don’t be afraid to try some free EQ plugins too. I like to add some extra oomph to the lows and some extra sizzle to the highs. Remember, we are eq-ing the kit as a whole (from the submix into the NYC track) so this isn’t the kind of thing where we are targeting a specific drum. Here are my EQ settings:

Low Shelf

High Shelf

Again you can see some very extreme settings. Both bands are boosted 9dB, the lows at 100Hz and the highs at 7K. Remember, these are set up as shelving bands so they don’t just affect the set frequency, but every frequency below 100Hz and every frequency above 7KHz too. You may need (or want) to adjust these frequency points, but you should immediately hear a lot more oomph from the kick and lower end of snare and toms, while getting a lot more of that live feel out of the hats, cymbals, and sizzle of the snare drum. We should still have the NYC track solo’d and it should still sound a bit like a stereotypical Beck record.

Step 5: Mixing in the parellel compression

Sounding like a rap record is great and all, but it’s time to get down to business and use this track as seasoning rather than a main course. Un-solo the NYC track and pull its fader all the way down. Playback should now sound no different than if you never added the NYC track to begin with. For this step it can be fun to just solo the submix and NYC tracks and play around, but for the real mixing you will always want to do this step with all the other instruments playing. That is the only way to gauge the correct NYC level for your particular mix. So go ahead and start playing your track. Listen closely to how the drums interact with all the other instruments, particularly the bass.

As your track plays back, slowly bring up the fader on the NYC track. At some point you’ll just start to wonder if you hear it. Keep bringing it up and you will think you are sure you hear it. Bring it up a bit more and it is suddenly too loud and your band has turned into a DMX tribute act. The sweet spot is somewhere in between the “think you hear it” and “wow that sounds like rap!” Just keep finessing the NYC track fader up and down until you find that sweet spot.

Parallel New York Compression

That is really all there is to it. If this is your first time playing with parallel compression then I hope you had a good time and maybe even learned a trick or two. You will most likely want to play with a few settings here and there to see what you can dial in. The EQ frequency points are probably going to have the biggest effect on your final sound. Try moving them up or down a notch at a time and see what happens. Conduct your own audio experiments and post your findings and comments!

Taming vocals can be a very tough job. I have a few techniques that I use based on the song I’m mixing and the vocalist on record. A few ways to tame a vocalist are “riding” the fader, compressors, other dynamics processors, EQ, and even reverb. Sometimes you will use a combination of all of them to tame your vocals. This article is going to focus on one particular application of compressors to tame vocals. That is the use of multiple compressors in series.

It is rare for me to mix a project where I don’t use compression of some sort on the vocals. If you are mixing something very sparse, like an intimate singer/songwriter demo, then leaving off compression can be a good decision. I was recently mixing a fairly loud rock project and needed to tame the vocals to a very consistent level throughout the song. This song and vocal track needed to go a bit beyond the limits of typical compression. The sound of the spoken voice is probably more familiar to any human than any other sound. The sound of a singing voice is probably the second most familiar sound to us as humans. People know what a singer should sound like. It can be fairly easy for a listener to detect a heavily compressed vocal track because they can spot the unnatural character right away. Even worse is the tendency for carelessly applied compressors to pump and heave.

Using multiple compressors in series can really help to alleviate this problem. Chaining compressors together one after another will let you achieve higher reduction levels without crossing over too far into the land of pumps-ville. I was looking for 8dB of gain reduction on this vocal track. What I did was use two compressors in series, shooting for around 4dB of gain reduction in each.

Plugins used in this tutorial

• Waves Renaissance Compressor
• Waves Renaissance Vox

Waves Renaissance Maxx Native Bundle Powerhouse audio processing with incredible accuracy, fidelity, and flexibility is what Waves Renaissance Maxx is all about. It brings together Waves’ most acclaimed audio processors in one package that includes the Renaissance Channel, Renaissance Compressor, Renaissance Reverberator, Renaissance Equalizer, Renaissance Vox, Renaissance Bass, Renaissance DeEsser, and IR-L Convolution Reverb Light.

Step 1: The First Vocal Compressor

We will get the ball rolling by adding a general purpose compressor the vocal track. This first compressor will be the Waves Renaissance Compressor. I use the mono version since I’m mixing a mono vocal track. If you recorded your vocal stereo then you will use the standard stereo version. Figure 1 shows my initial settings for the compressor.

Figure 1

The ARC (Auto Release Control) is turned on, the compressor is in Electro mode (vs. Opto) and it is set to Warm (instead of Smooth). I’m using a compression ration of 2.5 with attack at 5ms and release at 50ms. To set the threshold we need to do some playback. Start playback and adjust the Thresh slider (on the Input column) down until you are seeing about -4dB on the attenuation meter (see Figure 2).


Figure 2

That’s it for the first compressor. It is important to listen through to your whole track. Try not to get sidetracked by academic advice and mixing with your eyes. Always let your ears guide you. That said, it is now time to add compressor two.

Step 2: The Second Vocal Compressor

We will use the Waves Renaissance Vox for the second compressor. Again I will use the mono version but you should use the version appropriate for your track. The Renaissance Vox plugin is a beautiful exercise in simplicity. It is a “one knob” compressor. Since we are looking for another 4dB of reduction, all we need to do is start playback and bring down the Comp control until you are getting around -4dB on the attenuation meter (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

Again, always observe the three L’s of mixing: listen, listen, and listen…

Conclusion: Vocals Are Consistent!

With our two compressors in series (one after another) we are now using each of them to do half the work for our targeted 8dB of gain reduction in dynamic range. We’ve managed to make the loudest parts of our vocal track 8dB closer in volume to the quieter parts without introducing any unnatural pumping.

Waves Renaissance Maxx price check This bundle includes the Renaissance Compressor, Renaissance Vox and Renaissance EQ. Those are three of my favorite vocal plugins.

This technique will definitely help your home studio vocals get the professional recording studio sound.

Continued from Getting The Late 80s CD Sound (Part 1)

Step 5: Mastering Reverb In Ozone 3

A mastering reverb can really help tie your mix together and put a nice polish on it. Mastering reverb is quite a bit different from track reverb. The goal of track reverb is typically to add an audible effect to the source. Mastering reverb has a more transparent goal in mind. Done right, the listener would never be able to detect the actual reverb. However, an A/B comparison should reveal an extra something about the mix with a good mastering reverb applied. You may not be able to put your finger on what that extra something is, but it will be there. We are looking for a subtle, almost undetectable, effect on our mix.

Ozone 3 has a nice mastering reverb built right in, and that is what we will use. Show the reverb by clicking the red circle next to Mastering Reverb and turn it on by clicking next to Active (Figure 9). I like a very natural sheen glossed on top of our mix. The goal is to make the mix sound like you are listening to it in a great sounding room. It should sound like you are listening in a great sounding room even when you are in a bad sounding room. Mastering reverb is one of the steps to accomplishing this. Make sure the reverb is set to Room and not Plate (Figure 10).

Begin with my settings on your reverb (Figure 11). The Room Size is turned down to 0.3 so it won’t have the sound of a very big room. The goal is subtle so I don’t want to add the sheen of an unnaturally large space. The Room Width is slightly up because our reverb signal is going to be quite low and I want it to have just a touch of extra weight. I like the sound at the default Room Damping level so we will leave it alone. The Pre-delay is set at 3.5 milliseconds to give our room a very live and natural sound. A pre-delay setting this low is similar to the pre-delay characteristic of a bathroom. If you have ever listened to your stereo in the bathroom you may have noticed the music sounding a bit more alive and vibrant. It is a very nice effect to mimic with our mastering reverb. Keep the dry level at 100% and set the wet signal to a mere 10% in keeping with our goal of extreme subtlety (Figure 12). The natural reverberations you hear when you speak or listen to music in a room are so subtle as to be nearly unnoticed by the listener. Keep this in mind as you are auditioning your mastering reverb. There is a natural tendency to want to crank the mastering reverb wet signal louder because it sounds great. Your listeners rooms will add another layer of reverb on top of this so too high a wet level can really work against your mix as a final product.

Figure 9	Figure 11	Figure 12
Figure 10

Step 6: Tuning The Reverb Response.

We talked quite a bit about bass mask in Step 2 of Modern Mastering and adding reverb to the bass frequencies can work against us here. Goose the low frequency cutoff up to 100Hz (Figure 13). This makes sure the fundemental core tones of the kick, bass and low guitar notes will not get muddied up by our reverb. While setting up the basic room sound I alluded to the bathroom sound and that it was a good thing. You may have found yourself thinking, “Yeah, but aren’t bathrooms typically a little bright and harsh sounding?” Yes, quite often they are. The low pass filter will come in handy now. Bring it down to around 5.00kHz to combat this tendency toward harsh brightness(Figure 14). Setting up the reverb bandpass this way will confine the reverberations to the densest portion of our mix and help to widen them a bit. You put a lot of hard work during mixing (right?) to get the lows and highs sounding great so we don’t want to muck them up during mastering! Solo the reverb signal (Figure 15) and have a listen to your mix. Concentrate on the lows and highs to see if there is any mud or harsh glass sounds. Adjust the low and high cutoff points to fix these frequencies if they need it.

Figure 13

Figure 14

Figure 15

Step 7: Enhancing The Stereo Image

A nice stereo image is an asset to almost any mix. The tricky part is not overdoing it not getting too carried away. Ozone 3 provides us with a nice multi-band stereo imaging module. Show the stereo imaging controls by clicking the red circle next to Multiband Stereo Imaging and turn it on by clicking next to Active (Figure 16). The default frequency bands at 120Hz, 2.0kHz, and 10.0kHz are great for almost any mix but I do like to bring the bass band up a little bit for reasons we are about to discuss. For this mix I increased the bass band crossover to about 150Hz (Figure 17).

Figure 16

Figure 17

Bass frequencies tend to be perceived by the human ear as very mono-directional. This means we do not have much ability to determine where sources of bass frequencies are coming from. That is why you can stick the subwoofer of your home theater anywhere you want. As long as you can hear the lows, your brain will match them up with the action on screen because it can’t tell where the thumping is exactly coming from. Adding a stereo image to our low frequencies will work against us. I keep ringing the bell of protecting our lows because it is a very important concept to keep in mind at all points during the production process. Conversely, our ears and minds are very good at hearing imaging information in progressively higher frequencies. We are going to use this information to focus our stereo enhancement where it really counts.

Since bass frequencies are mono-directional and can actually be harmed by stereo image, reduce this band to full mono (Figure 18). The bass frequencies should aquire some extra definition and punch from listening positions all around the room. The mid frequencies are going to receive only moderate widening. The lower mids are where you will find the meat of most of the instruments and vocals. Give this band a slightly wider stereo effect (Figure 19). The upper mids contain a lot of the higher harmonics of your instruments and vocals. This frequency band will stand a bit more widening without sounding unnatural (Figure 20). The high band is where most of the air and shimmer comes from. This frequency band will stand the most widening at all and I like to go almost all the way (Figure 21).

Figure 18

Figure 19

Figure 20

Figure 21

Our mix is sounding very full with a subtle, yet pleasant, stereo image. We have done all we are going to do with Ozone 3 and are now going to focus on the Waves MultiMaximizer.

Continued in Getting The Late 80s CD Sound (Part 3)