Yasae

I don't find a large difference in digital EQs, but things suddenly up and change when we talk Nebula versions of analog EQs or analog EQs themselves. Avalon or API or Neve etc. have rather distinct signatures. All the raving over various EQs didn't make much sense to me until I stumbled upon what Nebula offered. Now I'm fine with using ITB eq for general tasks where no signature is wanted or surgical cuts. (Helps to curtail CPU usage as well, since Nebula is one of the most demanding non-instrument plug-ins out there). A good high quality mastering-grade/use digital EQ is the one from Sonoris. You can get very far with just one decent parametric, however. It's easier to make them generate phase shift, but their versatility is unrivaled.

Learn the limitations of both systems, which requires a lot of extended listening. There's something to be said for monitoring which lets you create mixes that reproduce well from the start, but no one system can tell you everything. So you always have to tweak a little. I'm really not that big on reference mixes because the choices made from their staff are rather subjective. You can spin a mix from good source material many different ways and still have it sound right. I guess it helps with overall frequency skew.

Right but what ratio? How much GR? I doubt either of those numbers are ten. I haven't found a lot of heavy compression in mastering. Mostly that would be done in parallel. The mix usually has compression on it, which is the sum of compressed busses, which are splits and/or sums from compressed individual tracks. So really by the time it's at this final stage there's been 2-4 layers of compression already. With limiting we've been in the era of clipping converters for over 10 years now. It's whatever clients want, we went way beyond reason long ago. If you ask me, anything post-early 2000s is generally pushed beyond reason. There are plenty of exceptions, it's just the standard overall has continually been lowered, not raised.

Lower dynamic range isn't a problem, but the amount of limiting and hard clipping in this age of music is absurd. It sounds (and looks) like crap. Again, there's nowhere to go, so past a certain range you're just reducing quality and nothing more.

I see loudness as more of a taste thing, though it really started to get beyond reasonable limits past the early 2000s. I mean I don't know, it's about what sounds bad. Unfortunately a lot of bad sounding stuff is getting approved and even desired because of a multitude of factors, despite there being nowhere else to go in terms of headroom. I'm extremely unimpressed by loud stuff. It can never shake its lack of dynamics and tiny sound. Wow, okay, amazing, you got it loud. Almost NEVER sounds great in addition to that, though.

What a shame. I could easily point in the direction of his wall of credits and find a good score - Aliens, Cocoon, The Land Before Time, Pelican Brief, Apollo 13, Braveheart, etc etc. Even cheese like Titanic and Avatar was elevated. RIP.

Option 1.

Nothing will kill your love of this faster than not getting paid (or not getting paid enough) for your hard work. If there are small projects you'd enjoy working on just for the hell of them then shoot for the moon, but realize that's intentionally taking less than what your normal rate should be for other, less tangible benefits. It's not and should never be standard practice. Clients are there to get the most for the least, always, so there's nothing wrong with being shrewd.

Oooh Lyndhurst Hall? One of the best I've heard.

It is what it is. Generally speaking though, the louder tracks in my library sound worse than those which hit the right balance of loudness to dynamics. There's nothing wrong with being competitive on levels, but I feel it's a range as opposed to a hard number.

So... Techno. What's the deal with that?

I'm on the Sony Oxford mailing list because sometimes they have some good videos. Behold: She uses a Sennheiser MKH416 - the one I hate - but she does a lot of promo work and describes how it cuts through busy advertisement mixes. Food for thought.

Altiverb or IRCAM Tools are very good reverb choices from my experience listening to them. They're overpriced though. Maybe find a cheaper impulse response verb and buy/find some free responses? That video's good. Notice how the A-B (spaced pair) result sounds compared to X/Y and ORTF. I like that one. It's a soft, wide, rather classical sound to me, even if there is a little bit of phantom center going on.

I always see a spaced pair of ribbons or tube condensers either over the strings (closer sound) or elevated and back a few feet from the lid (more distant sound). Depends on the result you want and the limitations of the room. You're probably going to lean towards a closer sound in this case; a little bit of extra rejection/focusing from the NT5s, since they're SDCs, probably helps. This SOS article goes into all kinds of unnecessary detail: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may99/articles/recpiano.htm. I found it worthwhile. If you need more pictures, try browsing through http://scoringsessions.com/. Those aren't strictly classical techniques (which tend to be more distant/ambient), but there's a lot of overlap.

Ah the HP 40. The headband design is similar, though I bet they're more comfortable. Very usable result. I hear some resonances, but it's nothing that can't be worked with. There you go Meteo. Props to shaggy.

So NT2000 and, again, K240s. Do I have that pegged right? I haven't heard that mic, though I do feel a lot of Rode designs sound harsh - NT1A, NT5, NTK, K2. High end reflections are not the really the thing in closets. It's everything below the midrange. When you have small spaces reflecting sound in on each other, longer wavelengths can get very exaggerated. There are ways around this, and it's the end results that matters, but it's not an ideal space to work with.

Keep the Dells for reference. I've used K240s for almost ten years. They're very good, especially for imaging, and also inexpensive but I'd avoid mixing exclusively on headphones. I'm breaking in a pair of Presonus Sceptre 8s for nearfields. You also probably know what a good mix sounds like, but not how to get there.

The shortcut is to put your song in front of somebody who does this better than you do. If they're any decent, they'll probably list off points in their advice which you felt were weaknesses but didn't tell them about beforehand - and much more. Otherwise we could be here for a very long time. Timaeus has some good pointers. And there's also feedback from remix submissions http://ocremix.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=15 .

That's not bad! Obviously piezos always have a little of that quacky, amped kind of sound going on but I've heard much worse.

Cars are notorious for odd resonances. Again, they're a small enclosed space made of varying types of materials (most of which either reflect or slightly dampen vibrations - note the lack of diffusion). Maybe that would work for a scratch track but I don't see it panning out for anything higher tier.

Software: Reaper. Free to try and fully featured during the trial. A commercial license is very inexpensive otherwise ($60). Equipment: - A mic - An XLR cable - A mic stand - A pop filter - Monitoring headphones (typically closed back or semi closed back for proper elimination of bleed) - An audio interface (provides preamp for mic gain and converts analog to digital and vice-versa along with monitoring I/O) - A makeshift booth For anything serious, that's about the minimum. Mic recommendations by price: - $99 Audio Technica 2020. Good budget contender. AT mics are no frills, well constructed; most are a bit heavy on the high end but otherwise "boring". No pizzazz but no extreme coloration or character. Of the cheaper varieties you could do much worse. - $299 Blue Bluebird. A lot engineers are down on this one, but they're nuts. It's a one, maybe two trick pony mic - acoustic guitar and vocals. For everything else I never made it work. It has a supercardioidish polar pattern with good room rejection so you won't pick up a lot of stray noise, and the proximity effect can get really OTT if you need that kind of thing. A little EQ'ed sounding, especially the high end boost. - $700 Neumann TLM 102. Most of my knowledge of this mic has been through the grapevine, but it's supposedly a less harsh TLM 103. If you've played the Mass Effect games then you know what a TLM 103 sounds like on voice overs. - $(No Object) Vintage Neumann U87. A de facto standard in a lot of voice over work. 2nd, 3rd, 4th+ options tier - $349 Shure SM7b. Very good for the price, but still a dynamic mic and doesn't lend itself to more delicate performances. It also sounds EQed at any switch position. I like it way more in music and broadcast. Subjective/I'd stay away tier - $230 Rode NT1-A. No. Sizzly, cheap-sounding. Way overpriced. Not useful in most applications. - $1000 Sennheiser MKH 416. Shows up in too much VO work. Hate the sound (very distinctive when it pops up), doesn't work on enough performers. Good rejection though due to being a shotgun mic. Moving on.. Audio interfaces Knowledge on these is a bit outdated, but I'll throw out some recommendations for companies whose products I've used. - $150 Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. If it's anything like the now-defunct Saffire I still use, it's worth the money. Their drivers can be hit or miss (mostly miss on Mac) but I haven't heard about any significant driver-related problems with this one. - $150 Steinberg UR22. Supposedly good software functionality and nice preamps for the money. This is the smaller version of the well-reviewed UR824. Meh/stay away tier Lower end M-Audio and Presonus. I've heard too many and boy, I don't like them one bit. Maybe things have changed? Recording booth: Packing blankets are an old audio engineering standby. They work very well for taming reflections, which is most of what you're doing with untreated spaces. I'd stay a bit off from room corners where bass nodes build up and you get weird resonances, then find some way to hang/prop up a 4-walled booth of packing blankets. I'd avoid closets as they're notorious for nodes and resonances unless very heavily (unrealistically) dampened and trapped.