COBOT: The Album [NEW THREAD]

You can easily hear the difference between you guys (The Album Vol. 4) and any song of Andy Sneap forum where they spent hours in mastering.

Well duh.

But I mean yeah it'd be nice to have some one person do mastering and maybe mixing for the whole COBOT album, but as usual we keep talking about it and it never happens.
 
Ok here we go!

Mart: And you said it wasn't that good? Dude, you always come up with real nice melodies and your playing just keeps getting better and better, I don't think there's any of your songs I don't like. And while you still have room for improvement the tone on this one is your best so far imo, you always used to have too much of a bassy tone for my taste and this one is much clearer and nice.
Crzy_Aus: The song itself I think it's better than your last song, but as Arcane said you really should dig a bit into mixing because it kind of ruins the thing. You hear the ideas, but it's too crammed and sounds too much like a ball to distinguish much. If you want send me the individual tracks to each thing (drums, bass, left guitar, right guitar, violin, vocals, keys) and I can give it a go to try and show you what I mean, because it'd make your songs much more pleasant to listen. The ideas are cool tho.
zirkonflex: Wow! The writing is real good, and the riffs in the middle are just great, but I can't get over your tone dude! That was just amazing. It sounds so powerful and so good, how did you do that? Drums sound really nice too, I really liked the song, Ensi had told me that you had a really good song coming but I dind't imagine this!
Mitch: Dude, I already told you, but that was great! Sure not your best tone, but still real nice and some sound solos and melodies, and again, the last solo leaves you wanting for more even though the song is already 6 minutes long haha. If one day I ever get to play half as clean and accurate as you do I'll finally be able to die happily. Also, where the fuck is that part you say is off tempo? There's none of that to be found :lol:
Twisha: I agree with Arcane, your best song so far, and in all fields. Good writing (which you usually have) and particularly much better tone and playing than the last times imo, you've improved significantly in both. Not as melodic as your other songs maybe, but really nice one, and Michael's vocals were quite nice too, good effort, I enjoyed it!
Derpsickle: Kind of a creepy/evil vibe, black metal stuff going on, but I must say that was a good way to get yourself introduced haha. Good playing and, while BM is not exactly my cup of tea, I must say that vocals and overall production sound pretty nice. It shows that BM doesn't need to have crappy sound, it can be done too with some nice, ear pleasant tones too.
Ensi: At first it really freaked me out, I was like WTF??? Then I read the description in the lyrics and all fell into place, and I must say that you really acomplished it, great mix going on and I really loved the viking part. Although I have to admit that the black metal/metalcore mockery was the part that made my day. I really enjoyed this one and once again you surprised, good job. Also, good mixing and mastering by Mr Lowburger.


I'm proud COBOT, we put together another decent album :kickass:
 
Ooh, wanna mix my song for me? Where were you before the release? I usually like to leave mixing to someone who actually knows WTF is going on lol. I'll see if I can send you the tracks sometime today or tomorrow. Not sure what you mean by "left guitar, right guitar" since there's only one guitar track in the song.
 
I see some confusion here.

You guys aren't understanding what mixing is and what mastering is.

Your problems lie in your mixing skills and the source of your recorded tones.

In really really laymans terms: Mixing is not just levels and panning, it involves major EQ work that is beyond just "this needs more treble" or "this needs more bass", making sure instruments are fitting together not conflicting in a negative way on the frequency spectrum. Mixing also includes effects such as compression, delays, reverb, added to instruments and vocals to enhance/transform/ the sound of your recorded audio.

If you guys want to improve your mixing skills, I would highly recommend doing research about EQing instuments to fit in a mix and getting to know how to use a paragraphic EQ plugin to make these changes.

The second problem you guys are having is the actual recorded audio quality of your instruments. If you have crummy tones from the start, chances are its going to sound crummy no matter what you do. You cant polish a turd.


basic basic basic "Mastering" as we may do it ourselves (professional recordings are mastered by professional mastering engineers, so this is just an explanation of 'mastering' as the recording hobbyist would do himself) would include light to medium compression to the entire mix, some EQ if necessary (its better to fix the problem in mixing), and then usually a limiter to get commercial loudness.

songs generally sound 90% complete and great before being mastered, mastering is not to fix things


So my recommendations for you guys who want to start improving their recording skills.

1. Get better tones from the start
2. Learn about EQ in the context of mixing
 
Well I thought Snowy was doing it. Ah, I thought Dave would've sent you two guitar tracks, if there's just one then send me that one and I'll see what I can do.

wut di dut? I was busy making money, recording some band :D
and fighting in the loudness war. of course on the dark side, I dont give a shit about dynamic as long as the little teens dont hear that there is none.

Also I'm drunk a lot
He was going to, I guess. Then he disappeared.

theres a pm function


Well, let say mixing involves making fit all the tracks together and mastering means making fit all the songs together.

mastering starts with the mix, there isnt always a point where you start master if you do it by yourself. If some mastering studio is doing it for you..yeah you're right, but the mastering still starts with your mix.


@Lowdude

+1
yeah, EQing the things to make room for other stuff (frequency-wise) is f00king important.
Also: SHIT IN = SHIT OUT. I know not everybody has the chance,money or whatever to do it but guys, get amps and mics and stop recording with gearbox and stuff like that :p
 
Gearbox and digital amps are not the problem, they work as well as anything else.
They will obviously always miss that little bit of awesomeness that a real miced up cab has, but the diffrence is usually not audible.
For a thing like cobot or a demo in general id always favor them over real amps because getting a real amp to sound as good as a easily set up revalver preset is NOT easy, will take two ours or so and require not only a good set equipment but also a damn good room.

I can also say that I offered my help for mixing countless times and I recieved a total of 0 pm's. Stop whining about no one being here and you wanting to get it done by someone good. It's a community and when sending shit around a little means better sound, you gotta send your shit around man.
I have not been able to listen to the record yet, but I guess its probably gonna be chainsaws and machineguns again.
Thats no problem when you want to do your stuff on your own, but bitching about no one being there is no excuse this time.

/ Mastering AFTER mixing is just fucking unimportant in cases like cobot :D


I used revalver for guitars on my song, the solos (that didn't make it :D) where done on a boosted bugera 6262 thru a V30 cab.
Revalver guitars are 6505+ with Recabinet impulses.
No mixing miracles on guitars.
Bass guitar is fucking loud and compressed+distorted like shit, sounds nice.
Drums are a preset I made in Superior Metal Foundry, enhanced with Softube Trident A-Range and the Tubetech Compressor.
The rest is all REAPER's native Plugins (EQ,Compressor,Sidechaining,Limiter etc.).
Writing/Recording ("On the fly technique :D) took me about 45 minutes, mixing around two hours (spend over two days).

Oh yeah, actual guitars where ESP ltd Ninja 600 stlk (stock JB's, just put covers on), and a Harley Benton cheapass bass (I sometimes think im Webster, but I can't play base for shit).
Bass was played all fingerstyle, no pleck was harmed :D

Tuning was drop B, so 5-string bass.
 
It's a community and when sending shit around a little means better sound, you gotta send your shit around man.

Perhaps you are correct. I'm just more used to forums where people respond ITT not using PM.

Personally, I don't have an issue with my mixing because it's sure as hell better than what I had for COBOT3, so I'm learning.
 
You could always send me your individual song tracks, ill have a go with it and tell you what I did.
General EQ and the right use of compression is the key for something like cobot where you don't wanna spend 5 hours on mixing.
A 10 band master EQ would have really helped a lot of the Cobot songs in recent years and could have been applied in minutes :D

I will take you up on that offer mate, but not for this song because I didn't save the tracks, I just deleted the whole CEP session when I'd saved the mp3.

I'll record the intro of a Murderdolls song or something and upload it. :)
 
Gearbox and digital amps are not the problem, they work as well as anything else.
They will obviously always miss that little bit of awesomeness that a real miced up cab has, but the diffrence is usually not audible.
For a thing like cobot or a demo in general id always favor them over real amps because getting a real amp to sound as good as a easily set up revalver preset is NOT easy, will take two ours or so and require not only a good set equipment but also a damn good room.

I was more referring to those people who have ''already found their tone in gearbox'' which is full of reverb and delay and stuff.

I just dont like that Digital Amp stuff eventhough I know that its better to pick some preset or even selfmade setting in gear box etc for a project like that because there is no danger of fucking up the amp micing.
but yeah whatever...ah!and it's way more often the case that the inferior quality of those amps is audible though. Otherwise nobody would mic those cabs anymore.
 
The reason most people don't mic their amps I think is not because they can't, but because most of us don't have enough money to get a decent, awesome sounding amp.
 
yeah yeah I know that, you cant expect everybody to have some mics and great amp