Opinions on Slate Digital FG-X?

Once again another "my master limiter isn't working" -thread where the mix itself was to blaim. :) It's always the low end problems that people don't take care of which will kill the loudness. The toms were the most obvious one there.

I use the FG-X because of the constant gain monitoring. That's just epic!!

And about Ozone vs FG-X. I'd say it's digital vs modeled analog. Ozone does well with overproduced uber-loud in your face stuff. Then again FG-X will give you a very natural sound.

To be fair... I don't hear a big difference nor did my friends when we A/B'd them. We just liked what my meters showed us more with the Ozone.
 
Slate said:
So, I'm quite surprised after hearing the original mix. If the Ozone attempt was to make a louder version of the original mix, it was way off to my ears. The stereo image was completely collapsed, the definition and separation of the stereo guitars is gone, there is an overall mirkiness and boominess to the sound as if there as cloth over it, and the hi hat is harsher, brighter, and sounds nothing like its original version which audibly 'rings' like a hi hat should. I'm not bashing the Ozone, I'm just telling you what I hear as compared to the original mix.

Matt thanks for posting the FG-X settings. When listening to your song, the first thing I noticed was that there was a lot of low end. Therefore, I chose to be very conservative with compression, lo punch, and didn't use any Dynamic perception on the FG-X. I pulled down the ITP a bit to avoid very audible crackling, although one more notch down would have really cleaned it up at the expense of a little bit of snap. Overall, I would have like to have peaked this out at -9.5RMS, but for the sake of this thread, I went louder... although I think anyone who goes to -7.5RMS is doing their music a GREAT disservice and I plead you to not do it.

Here are my FG-X settings:
www.stevenslate.com/limiter/settings.png

Here is my mix.. I did put a hi pass filter before the FG-X at around 40Hz to improve the headroom going into the processor.
www.stevenslate.com/limiter/FGXSlateEQ2.wav

Overall, I think the clarity, dynamics, imaging, depth, bottom tightness, and top end are far superior. Again, at -9.5RMS this would be extremely punchy and likely not far off at all from the original mix.. At -7.5 RMS there is a bit of compromise but if I had to go this loud, I'd certainly choose this one by a long shot. If you level match with the mix, it's no contest as to which preserves the original's frequency response and dynamics better.

I'll do another pass later where I'll filter the bottom a bit cleaner which will allow the FG-X to perform a bit better. Overall, what this is showing me is that we need to improve the ease of use and automatic detection for the next FG-X version.. We have some ideas to help this along.

Cheers,
Steven
Click to expand...

Steven, I much appreciate you taking the time to help us understand your process of working with FGX. I think the main issue I am hearing with it in my mixes as well as yours is the distortion/crackling. I can hear it in your mix as the solo comes in. Is my assumption then correct that the higher the ITP slider is, the more transient punch possibly at the cost of that crackling? If that's the case, it should be easy to move that slider until I get the mix as clean as I would like it to sound. It's that crackling that stops me from being able to push FGX as loud as I would like it.

As you mentioned, I think it would be great to have something automated, (take the control away from the user) that will automatically eliminate any of that crackling and if it's at the cost of some of the punchiness in the mix, so be it. The crackling is unacceptable to me. Is there a way for the algorithm to tell the user if that crackling is occurring similar to a clip light going on? That might be useful as well.

BTW... I do agree the mix is awfully squashed here as well as was my previous Ozone test. My test was just to show that I could still push Ozone far beyond where I felt comfortable and the mix stayed fairly clean.

It would be nice to hear a master from you with a more conventional -9.5RMS that is totally clean of any crackling distortion.

Thanks again! :worship:
 
Hi Matt, what needs to happen with that mix is an M/S equalizer that cleans up the lows.. Trying to get a mix to -7.5RMS with that type of low end with any type of saturation processing is tough. As I said, one notch down on the ITP cleaned it up, but I preferred the snap with it as is. When you are pushing the song that loud, my strategy would be use the lesser of two evils.. given the damage that Ozone did to the clarity and articulation, I'd still say FG-X. Of course if I were mastering this for real, I'd just automate the ITP (now with the RAVEN using my finger!) and then I'd get it REALLY punchy where it needs to be. But that's an advanced technique that not everybody has the time to do, which is why we're improving it.

If you want that mix peaking at -9.5, there is no doubt that the FG-X will handle that fine, although I'd still clean up the lows. It's a good mix besides that one issue, and the playing is great.

For using the FG-X, I'd start with all the dials at 0, and only use them as necessary. For instance, your mix needed absolutely no dynamic perception.. at that kind of level, the dynamic perception will cause crackling with large bass wavs.

The FG-X 2.0 algo does have automatic ITP detection to eliminate distortion even at really high RMS. Look for it in 2013.

Cheers,
Steven
 
Slate said:
Hi Matt, what needs to happen with that mix is an M/S equalizer that cleans up the lows.. Trying to get a mix to -7.5RMS with that type of low end with any type of saturation processing is tough. As I said, one notch down on the ITP cleaned it up, but I preferred the snap with it as is. When you are pushing the song that loud, my strategy would be use the lesser of two evils.. given the damage that Ozone did to the clarity and articulation, I'd still say FG-X. Of course if I were mastering this for real, I'd just automate the ITP (now with the RAVEN using my finger!) and then I'd get it REALLY punchy where it needs to be. But that's an advanced technique that not everybody has the time to do, which is why we're improving it.

If you want that mix peaking at -9.5, there is no doubt that the FG-X will handle that fine, although I'd still clean up the lows. It's a good mix besides that one issue, and the playing is great.

For using the FG-X, I'd start with all the dials at 0, and only use them as necessary. For instance, your mix needed absolutely no dynamic perception.. at that kind of level, the dynamic perception will cause crackling with large bass wavs.

The FG-X 2.0 algo does have automatic ITP detection to eliminate distortion even at really high RMS. Look for it in 2013.

Cheers,
Steven
Click to expand...

Steven thanks for the kind words, suggestions and for whats to come with FG-X 2.0. Very exciting indeed!!!

EDIT... I just worked on the mix really quickly incorporating your suggestions and here is the outcome. Sounds good!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/srrbn8qo1427m3i/Matt Steele Instrumental fgxtest.mp3
 
Clark Kent said:
Once again another "my master limiter isn't working" -thread where the mix itself was to blaim. :) It's always the low end problems that people don't take care of which will kill the loudness. The toms were the most obvious one there.

I use the FG-X because of the constant gain monitoring. That's just epic!!

And about Ozone vs FG-X. I'd say it's digital vs modeled analog. Ozone does well with overproduced uber-loud in your face stuff. Then again FG-X will give you a very natural sound.

To be fair... I don't hear a big difference nor did my friends when we A/B'd them. We just liked what my meters showed us more with the Ozone.
Click to expand...

Really?!!
 
Here's my FG-X tutorial:

Make sure your mix is balanced
Turn off the FG-Comp
Have all dials at zero, and set the max output to -0.2dB
Raise Level until you get the desired RMS.
If you hear crackles, lower ITP until you don't. If you only hear crackles when there's no drums for example, automate ITP with the song.
Done

Dynamic Perception adds crackles. It sounds awesome if you are mastering something that came in incredibly compressed, because it will give it life. But if you're mastering something to -8dBRMS, and you turn Dynamic Perception up, you're going to have to turn ITP down to compensate. I almost never use the other two punch knobs.

Slate said:
The FG-X 2.0 algo does have automatic ITP detection to eliminate distortion even at really high RMS. Look for it in 2013.

Cheers,
Steven
Click to expand...
Awesome.
 
Melodeath said:
Here's my FG-X tutorial:

Make sure your mix is balanced
Turn off the FG-Comp
Have all dials at zero, and set the max output to -0.2dB
Raise Level until you get the desired RMS.
If you hear crackles, lower ITP until you don't. If you only hear crackles when there's no drums for example, automate ITP with the song.
Done

Dynamic Perception adds crackles. It sounds awesome if you are mastering something that came in incredibly compressed, because it will give it life. But if you're mastering something to -8dBRMS, and you turn Dynamic Perception up, you're going to have to turn ITP down to compensate. I almost never use the other two punch knobs.


Awesome.
Click to expand...

Pretty much same here, good to hear others are using similar methods.!.
 
Yeah the AOM one is straight incredible. Why no aax or rtas :(((( hate having to bounce my mixes to logic for the last step. But it's worth it!

Edit: AOM sounds more like ozone to me than fg-x. Fg-x definitely adds some eq color in the mids (I think?). Love em both, I wish I could run it in Pt10 (wrapper doesn't work :| ). I like to mix into my mastering limiters compression and limiting and if I was going to use AOM I'd want to have mixed into it from the start
 
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