Followed some Slate tips, clip inside

[abyssofdreams]

here's a short lameass riff clip I just finished mixing:

http://sneapforum.CeltiaProductions.co.uk/abyssofdreams/wagner_sharp.mp3

I tried to keep the drums punchy but still give the guitars a wide spectrum and back them up with a humming bass (ghetto that is) that growls a lil bit...

Well, I tried.... lol.
You be the judge.

But I really like where it's going to...
Done on my shitty headphones again which do not translate the lowend very well but I hope it's not too boomy/woofy whatever...

Also, RMS peaks are around 9-8,5 leaving some space for dynamics using the clipping method discussed here before. However I've got some nasty artifacts left and I couldn't find the source yet.

Anyways, what do you think of the guitar tone and the overall sound?

Guitars are Wagner Sharp with Mesa impulses.

 

[Manicompression]

I am listening on a poopy laptop but it sounds good so far, i cant really hear the bass but thats probably what im using to listen.

 

[JBroll]

Also, RMS peaks are around 9-8,5 leaving some space for dynamics using the clipping method discussed here before. However I've got some nasty artifacts left and I couldn't find the source yet.

What clipper are you using? GClip has 'Softness', which really helps keep the hard edges down, and the '2X Oversampling' is a must. Remember that you only want to have GClip trimming away tiny little bits - you don't want to use it like a distortion pedal, think of it more like filing nails (or, if you're a straight male, sanding rough edges off of wood) - and cutting back any time you hear anything remotely crackly. I don't know if I had a ramble or two in the thread you're referring to, but I should probably start working on loudness after the Tube Screamer thing gets finished.

Jeff

 

[abyssofdreams]

haha, funny you mention the softness filter, I played around with it for the last 30 minutes...
yeah, I use Gclip, actually I'm trimming like down to 80%-70% on kick and snare, I guess that was too much.
But I believe the clipping/noises come from the Timeworks Mastering compressor,
because on mixdown there's not a single noise, even if I crank the fader to +6db.

Anyways, I'll try to not clip that hard/often, less is more, right? It feels like cheating haha.
Amen to you for the TubeScreamer and following loudness stuff, that'll be killer for sure!

 

[JBroll]

Think of the way a guitar amp distorts a signal - it gets there using several stages of amplification, each with a slight amount of saturation. Now think of the way a Fuzz Face sounds - beat the fuck out of one little transistor and you have 60's fuzz. I would recommend using the clipper to 'trim' nasty peaks so that a dedicated compressor doesn't start pumping, and let a compressor - whose sole purpose in life is to do exactly what you're going for - do the bulk of the work. Clippers, in my opinion, work best at taming the things that make compressors turn icky. Also, spend time with a chain of about five pairs of clip/compress and figure out how to stage them well. The more you reduce the load of one individual stage, the less you'll notice nasty nonsense.

I'd steer clear of anything with 'Mastering' in the name, because what I've tried has only tried to do what has been explained in the threads and accomplished little more than taking control out of my hands. Granted, I'm the fucker who gets multiband compression out of splitting tracks into their constituent frequency bands and separately compressing all of the fragments, so maybe I'm a little bit of a control freak, but I'd rather have my hands on every knob that could possibly exist.

Jeff

 

[abyssofdreams]

Good advice!
What about that staging?
You mean like running 2-3 Gclip (or whatever) side by side instead of using 1 full throttle?
I see, I see... to be honest, I've even read that somewhere already but I forgot, too much stuff to think of...

Here's a clip with less clipping (or my ears are shit) and less bass I think:
http://www.keinezeit.de/mp3s/wagner_less_bass.mp3

 

[JBroll]

Right, clipper to tame, then compression. Compressors pull the volume up without actually distorting it, so you'll have less processing to do afterwards than you would with a clipper, because the clipper works by literally chopping the top and bottom of the waveform off. While good clippers like GClip will attempt to smooth out the resulting edges (which are heard as 'crackle' or 'fizz'), it's better to just not need that treatment in the first place if you can help it. I don't think I've ever run into a situation where running three clippers after each other seemed like a good idea. It's really best to have all of your tracks tamed before master, and then maybe a little bit of compression on the whole mix if things don't feel 'together', than to have all of your tracks shoved in and mangled together.

Jeff

 

[AStacy2]

For GClip try 2x oversampling and Softness at around 50%. Timeworks leaves a lot more artifacts than GClip in my opinion, so I'd ditch Timeworks if you're having an issue with that.

 

[abyssofdreams]

thanks! I think I'm getting there...
Also Voxengo Elephant made a HUGE difference, just tried the demo, here's a result:

http://www.keinezeit.de/mp3s/test22.mp3