treble/high end in mixing and mastering

[myownsilence]

Actually, I monitor too quietly I think sometimes. I've never been someone to monitor loud.

And I wrote in a post above, I went back through and tweaked the mix and got a result I like more than adding in too much in mastering.




Hmm, I guess I'm taking these as veiled potshots, but I wouldn't say I've been mixing anything "lazy", and the concern in general over the methods is what brought me here to ask the question in the first place, so these comments don't seem too on the mark?

Lazy is not to be taken as in a "you have done nothing" approach. Its to address where your efforts are placed. I have mixed and limited in the past and always wondered what I was doing. I began going back through the process again and again and in the end I found I was able to mix very close to mastered loudness (I would say though this is subjective on many ways) with a much better sense of energy and brightness to my tracks. I think anything you have to do in the mastering stage is a damb sight more destructive than doing it in the mix. If you have to make a few tiny DB's of adjustment in mastering fair enough. I am not a mastering engineer and there is stuff they probably do that has more to do with playback over difference systems. But if you are adjusting the overall balance of your mix, on your home studio monitors, after you have mixed, by a reasonable amount (ie over 2 or 3 db) then you probably have missed something int eh mix.

And compensating for the difference between 44.1 and 48k is mad! This sort of stuff should not be an area of concern.

 

[myownsilence]

Now my mixes aren't in any way up to the standard of many here, but i do notice there is a bit of trend towards extreme low and high passing of everything, which seems to my ears to produce odd sounding mixes with no feeling of organic life to them, and no glue, all the instruments having their own space so much it never sounds like they're actually together

I would agree here. Presets are a dangerous game. I will listen to what a hi pass does to a sound but I used to fall into a similar trap. I found that my mixes lost a lot of size and top end energy is critical to a sound.


Its hard to say however the opposite, ie you can mix without them in, but you might tidy stuff up a bit with them.

However the issue is more than likely an EQ understanding issue. Understanding EQ is like playing guitar, it does take practice but you sort of learn how to play it and just like when you start you kinda find stuff thats cool but really your out of time banging the strings with no real dynamics and missing half the notes. Eq is much the same, you make scooping alterations to start with cos its easier to hear what your doing, eventually you may realise all you need is a 3db cut at xhz and small 2db boost there - and of course dont let that fool you into thinking that eq is all about minor cuts and boosts, you may need to turn out that mad bluezy solo in the middle and make some big ol boosts. Its just knowing how to play it.

When you realise that a big cut is very detrimental to the sound you will stop doing it and perfect the cuts better when required.

 

[chonchball]

recording at 48 downsampling to 44 (cd)

and yes, i notice a treble loss from playing mix back in nuendo (at 48) and listening to mix down (44)

so there's a high shelf boost added in the chain to get that treble into the mixdown

hey joey, are you using a high end dither plug in when you master? you can help lose less highs properly if you dither properly. i dont know the sounds of nuendo though, so you may know your system better than i could approximate, but i just thought i'd throw it out there. you might be able to open up that tiny bit of head room in the end if you don't need that shelf with the right dithering.

 

[myownsilence]

Dithering tends to rescue lost bits that get sucked away during less "full of sound" moments.

Think of reverb trails, its a good one, or fade outs, as the nformation gets less and less without dithering you tend to hear if really loud a fizz as the information turns bitty.

The dithering smooths over this stuff, It might help for hi end lost, but not much.

 

[Metaltastic]

I was under the impression dither compensates for converting from 24 to 16 bit, not downsampling...

 

[slashvanyoung]

I was under the impression dither compensates for converting from 24 to 16 bit, not downsampling...

Yeah, dithering is a technique to minimize quantizing errors...

 

[slashvanyoung]

I guess what is perceived as a loss in high-end is actually due to anti-aliasing methods before the actual downsampling takes place. No wonder, because anti-aliasing in audio is usually a low-pass (or band pass) in practice, which will help you to avoid getting into trouble with the sampling theorem.... Makes sense to me.

 

[Metaltastic]

Yup, and the Nyquist frequency of the 44.1 sample rate is 22.05k, which is of course above the top limit of our hearing, so the loss in hi-end from downsampling from 48 to 44.1 would probably be avoided if you just recorded at 24/44.1 the whole time! (like Andy and James do, among so many others )

 

[slashvanyoung]

Exactemento!

I only record @ 48k at work. Everything that is meant to be put on a CD will be done with 44k...

 

[nwright]

Lazy is not to be taken as in a "you have done nothing" approach. Its to address where your efforts are placed. I have mixed and limited in the past and always wondered what I was doing. I began going back through the process again and again and in the end I found I was able to mix very close to mastered loudness (I would say though this is subjective on many ways) with a much better sense of energy and brightness to my tracks. I think anything you have to do in the mastering stage is a damb sight more destructive than doing it in the mix. If you have to make a few tiny DB's of adjustment in mastering fair enough. I am not a mastering engineer and there is stuff they probably do that has more to do with playback over difference systems. But if you are adjusting the overall balance of your mix, on your home studio monitors, after you have mixed, by a reasonable amount (ie over 2 or 3 db) then you probably have missed something int eh mix.

And compensating for the difference between 44.1 and 48k is mad! This sort of stuff should not be an area of concern.

Thanks...This is the kind of stuff that is easier to digest as advice rather than assuming techniques used (monitoring loudness/use of "preset methods", etc.).

 

[John_C]

The disadvantage of recording in 44.1 is that your filters sound harsher (high shelfs in particular, clippers as well etc) You can compensate with oversampling but ofc that leads to it's own set of problems

 

[myownsilence]

im not so sure if it really needs to effect you that much however, lots of great music is recorded at 44.1 and sounds great. I think its worth avoiding worrying to much about that. The meat of the mix wil depend on far more pressing issues than sample rate (at this quality anyway)