Hey guys,
This isn't the shoot-out I've been promising forever... that's yet to come. What I wanted to go over here was my experience mixing my first project using VCC, from the ground up.
It's a radio rock type CD, so a perfect opportunity to test the Brit 4k algorithm. I went through printing almost every single one of the tracks in the mix through my outboard, with an instance of VCC Channel preceding each chain. I used 4x oversampling exclusively, as I found only that gave the desired amount of high-softening. The idea was to avoid sounding like an ITB mix entirely.
So I had been at the mix for a few days (kinda unusual), and I just couldn't get it to where I wanted it to go. It seems no matter how much EQ, how much compression, nor balancing I did things just weren't shaping up. Mind you at this point, I'd capitulated and used Nebula 4k saturation on the overheads and guitars, as that has the effect of immediately clearing up the high mids, fattening them up, and creating this sense of 3d space.
So... at the end of my wits, I thought 'screw it, got nothing to lose', and I instantiated the Mix Bus instance of Nebula 4k saturation on the 2-bus. And then it happened. The mix went from 'arghggh!!' to 'finished' in the space of 3 seconds.
Now, I'm not sure which one of the two is more accurate to the actual desks... but there is a certain something I lost by not using Nebula on my mix. That became obvious the moment I instantiated it on the 2-bus. The kicker here is that Nebula doesn't do transient handling as well as VCC does... that's still a weak spot for it. So I've found my ideal workflow is a hybridization of the two.
I'll likely print Nebula directly to tracks as I always have - it literally just makes the mix come together faster and feel so much more fun - but then use VCC on busses for its transient handling. I think the combination of the two can bring one closer to proper analogue desk mixing better than anything else I know of.
Cheers for bearing with me. Just wanted to report those results. Basically if I had to summarize it I'd say it like this:
I greatly prefer the spectral colouring and '3dness' of Nebula, but greatly prefer the transient handling of VCC. Together the two may well be the shiz.
This isn't the shoot-out I've been promising forever... that's yet to come. What I wanted to go over here was my experience mixing my first project using VCC, from the ground up.
It's a radio rock type CD, so a perfect opportunity to test the Brit 4k algorithm. I went through printing almost every single one of the tracks in the mix through my outboard, with an instance of VCC Channel preceding each chain. I used 4x oversampling exclusively, as I found only that gave the desired amount of high-softening. The idea was to avoid sounding like an ITB mix entirely.
So I had been at the mix for a few days (kinda unusual), and I just couldn't get it to where I wanted it to go. It seems no matter how much EQ, how much compression, nor balancing I did things just weren't shaping up. Mind you at this point, I'd capitulated and used Nebula 4k saturation on the overheads and guitars, as that has the effect of immediately clearing up the high mids, fattening them up, and creating this sense of 3d space.
So... at the end of my wits, I thought 'screw it, got nothing to lose', and I instantiated the Mix Bus instance of Nebula 4k saturation on the 2-bus. And then it happened. The mix went from 'arghggh!!' to 'finished' in the space of 3 seconds.
Now, I'm not sure which one of the two is more accurate to the actual desks... but there is a certain something I lost by not using Nebula on my mix. That became obvious the moment I instantiated it on the 2-bus. The kicker here is that Nebula doesn't do transient handling as well as VCC does... that's still a weak spot for it. So I've found my ideal workflow is a hybridization of the two.
I'll likely print Nebula directly to tracks as I always have - it literally just makes the mix come together faster and feel so much more fun - but then use VCC on busses for its transient handling. I think the combination of the two can bring one closer to proper analogue desk mixing better than anything else I know of.
Cheers for bearing with me. Just wanted to report those results. Basically if I had to summarize it I'd say it like this:
I greatly prefer the spectral colouring and '3dness' of Nebula, but greatly prefer the transient handling of VCC. Together the two may well be the shiz.
