1khz to 4khz = annoying!

striked01

striked01

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Jul 11, 2010
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Queensland, Australia
strikesound.com.au
whenever i mix a heavy/heavyish song i am always fighting to keep this region under control, does anybody else experience this and what ways do you combat it?

I find alot of it comes from my guitars, yet it requires HUGE cuts to remove it, then the guitars sound like shit (i usually use x50 by tse, if that means anything). Lately i have been comprimising, and just settling for the extra high-mids in there, but i would love to be able to get it under control and create more balanced mixes. I haven't tried a multi-band comp yet, maybe that could be a good idea to strap over the guitar bus.

I am quadtracking, would that make a difference?

So yeah, just wondering if anybody else feels the same or has any tips!
 
Amp sims are notoriously bad in this region. Being able to scoop away the presence region yet retain power and intelligibility is one of the main reasons I use real tube rigs.

There is always something flat, harsh or otherwise unsavory with the sims and this space. Real amps and cabs are the best way to combat it, by far.
 
X50 and the 5150's add a lot of anoying high mids with the high knob set beyond 6, maybe that's or the impulses you're using is part of the problem.

and +1 to Ermz
 
thanks for the quick replies guys! im waiting til i get my reamp box and have a good month or so to practice before using real amps in any serious projects. but i guess this is another reason for why it will be so worth it haha. My fav impulse has been the ASEM Recto lately.

What about using a real preamp into an impulse? would that help to cure the problems in this dreaded region?
 
It's definitely an improvement, but it won't be a complete fix. It it was, I'd be doing it. For some reason impulses seem to have fixations in particular frequency regions, and they tend to create a cloud. Whenever I tried to process them in mixes there would always be too much or too little high mid... it never quite sounded right.

I'm working with Unicorn at the moment to hopefully develop a line of Nebula cab impulses that get around these dreaded problems.
 
My DAW computer is dead, so I can't try this, but would it help it all to use some heavy multiband compression on the 1k-4k region instead of EQing it? It works well enough for taming the low end without gutting the tone, seems to me like it should be useful.
 
amp sims doesnt work for me,use a real amp/cab or a preamp/poweramp/cab.
mic positions can solve your problems in general but EQ is always necessary especially for removing frequencies.
a notch filter will be great somewhere in the area that you mention.
i found this area annoying too but there's always something annoying or unnecessary in every instrument,so removing frequencies is a must.
 
Yep, amp sims are soo hard to make sit well in the mix. I just love to mic a real amp, use filters and max 2-3 notches, 1-2 boosts and you're done. I was never even 80% satisfied with results whenever I've used sims and impulses. I like them a lot for practising, 'cause on their own they sound sort of really close to the real deal (and always make me think for a moment that this time they're gonna deliver), but mixing them in is never ever easy.
 
Heavy Jerk said:
I like them a lot for practising, 'cause on their own they sound sort of really close to the real deal (and always make me think for a moment that this time they're gonna deliver), but mixing them in is never ever easy.
Click to expand...

Yes, this is part of the massive deception that they play. I get caught in this trap all the time, and am always disappointed by the results in the end. Even with with all real TS, preamp, power amp but only impulse cab.

Even now we're still trying, but have yet to get there. Nebula is close... but not close enough yet.
 
I've been thinking about this a lot today, and doing some rough tests too, but I think the central problem we have is that high-gain metal tones run through an impulse tend to produce whistling "stuck" frequencies all over the 2k-4k area. This causes both a perceived harshness that is impossible to EQ out and it clouds the "articulation" of the player, for wand of a better word.

So maybe we're just asking too much of one amp-sim? Might it be better to use two separate ampsim-cab channels in parallel, one handling the meat of the "metal" tone, with the other channel being much cleaner and focused on bringing out the articulation. This way we get all our articulate 2k-4k goodness from a relatively low-gain channel, which should hopefully be less problematic.

Try this, load up Amplitube, Revalver or whatever and make two chains:
-TS > 5150(or mesa) > cabsim
-TS(or some other light overdrive) > Fender(or whatever) > cabsim

set the tones up to compliment each other as i've described and blend to taste.
The Fender sim with the light overdrive should easily be able to bring out a nice "slithering" articulation in the playing.
I'll upload my own rough work later.
 
If you're saying that this problem is only present in hi gain stuff, I must say I disagree. Static-ness of impulse is there because of the technology how the impulse is captured (and is most noticeable in 1-4Khz region because that is the very same region that we, as humans, are most sensitive to), so I don't think it'll go. But by all means prove this statement wrong :)
 
Heavy Jerk said:
If you're saying that this problem is only present in hi gain stuff, I must say I disagree. Static-ness of impulse is there because of the technology how the impulse is captured (and is most noticeable in 1-4Khz region because that is the very same region that we, as humans, are most sensitive to), so I don't think it'll go. But by all means prove this statement wrong :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, of course the static-ness is present regardless of whether the tone is high-gain or not. what im saying is that high-gain tones emphasis and exagerate this staticness to the point where it becomes unbearable.
Low-gain tones dont suffer as badly from this effect, so we could possibly use both a high-gain and low-gain tones to "build" the final tone, separation of concerns and all that.

The cabsims are equally shit all the time, but perhaps we can alleviate some of the problems by not simply hammering a huge signal through a single cab-sim, and instead separating out the "articulation" we can into another channel. :)
 
TheDriller said:
The cabsims are equally shit all the time, but perhaps we can alleviate some of the problems by not simply hammering a huge signal through a single cab-sim, and instead separating out the "articulation" we can into another channel. :)
Click to expand...

Hours and hours of trial and error have taught me just that. I doubt there's any way to get just one sim to do everything you want it to do sonically anyways. Mixing and matching sims, using this one for a chunkier sound and that one for its clarity, really seems like the way to go. Of course you'll probably have to spend hours and hours finding the right combination, but, in the end, you'll end up getting a better sim tone than you would with using just one cab sim.
 
2k is my favourite frequency nowadays, but it's gotta be just right. Love 3k on kick too, with a rather loud master it just hits you.
 
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