The Best Gain Staging for Virtual Instruments

Posted on October 24, 2015October 4, 2016 by ronan

Quick note: I still have a spot left in my 6-day Recording Boot Camp in LA November 9-14, 2015. Get info here

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I was recently on one of my rants about the utter stupidity of recording to 24bit digital with high levels. Anyone that has followed me for a while knows that this is one issue that drives me crazy. Recording with “hot levels” to modern digital is so completely stupid. It has so many downsides and no real world upsides……. I better stop now or I will rant for another 10,000 words.

When I am recording to 24bit digital, I try and set my levels so that my PEAKS hit around -10dBfs, or about 2/3 the way up the meter. This is all the resolution and dynamic range that I would ever need in a real world situation and prevents clipping and stressing the analog stage of the converters. Even if we want to have a super loud end result, it is better to record with conservative levels…… sorry I am starting to go off again… let’s get to the point of this lesson.

One question I often get when discussing this issue is “What about working with virtual/plugin instruments?” I love this question because it is really important and my answer to this is:

Think about the levels of your virtual instruments the same way you think about recording audio tracks.

What this means is that you want the level of your virtual instruments to output with peaks around -10dBfs. While working with virtual instruments we do not really have the risk of losing a “performance of a lifetime” like we do when recording audio, but we still have a situation where hot levels out of our virtual instruments will lead to poor gain staging in the final mix, but more importantly, the “sweet spot” of most of your plugins that might follow your VI is not at the really high levels. Most of our plugins will sound better if we feed them conservative levels.

Many people make the mistake of trying to get proper levels by pulling the channel fader down, but this is the wrong place to do it (the fader affects levels after all our plugins). You want to go into the virtual instrument and pull the level down in the VI/plugin. On a simple VI you can usually do this with a master output, but if you are using a more complex sampler player or virtual instrument that layers many sounds, I prefer to attenuate levels on the individual layers to reduce the risk of overloading the master out of the sample player or VI.

Some people will say that they like the hot outputs from a VI because it sounds better, or even that they like the sound of the clipping, but, as with all things I try and teach you, your projects are YOUR projects and you should do whatever the heck you want. I just want you to be making the best decisions to get the final results you really want. If you want to use hot levels out of your VIs, I STRONGLY encourage you to do two things:

1) Set up a virtual instrument and buss that to a new audio track, then set the output of the VI really hot so that you are close to clipping and record the audio output. Now do the same thing to another audio track, but set the output of the VI 10dB lower. After you have recorded both versions, pull the fader of the “hot track” down 10dB and compare the two audio tracks. Is the loud one somehow better? Probably not. So unless the hot one is WAY cooler, why would you want to have levels that will not work as well with the plugins that will probably follow your VIs and make your gain staging in the final mix more problematic?

2) If you’re into the idea of clipping levels out of your Virtual instruments, I STRONGLY recommend that you set up experiments using clipping plugins or even the simple brick wall limiter to achieve a similar result and see if you like the sound or amount of control better. In my personal work, I have always preferred the sound and control of doing this kind of thing within a plugin (or hardware in some cases).

Working with conservative levels is not about being conservative. It is about greater control and power. Even if you want to make the most extreme brutal record ever, starting with good conservative levels and proper gain staging will help you get an end result that is more powerful and gives you more control over the creative process. Conservative levels let you do extreme and conservative productions better.

BTW, this month we are giving away a free mic from Roswell Pro Audio. It is the Min K47, a large diaphragm condenser inspired by another mic with 47 in the name. You have to be on my Free Recording Advice Newsletter to win. You can sign up for both here.

2 tricks to create big, wide and tall mixes.

Posted on September 25, 2015October 4, 2016 by ronan

Panning, or deciding where to place elements in the stereo field, can be challenging when starting out, and from time to time it still poses a big challenge for me – despite the fact that I have mixed thousands of songs in my career. At the end of the day I still go with whatever feels right for panning, but there are a couple of panning guidelines, or starting points, that have dramatically helped my mixes get bigger, wider, deeper, etc.

1) Beatles Panning

I always start with LCR panning, which is sometimes called Beatles panning. This is panning every track all the way to the left, all the way to right or straight up the middle. It is not a law that every track has to stay in that position (even though many times they do), but I use this as a starting point and it has helped my mixes come together faster and naturally sound bigger and wider.

2) Complimentary Colors

One big mistake less experienced mixers make is adding more and more of the same thing to a mix and expecting it to get bigger. In fact, this makes things smaller. For instance: if you have a guitar track and you layer up more and more tracks of that same guitar sound, it will actually rob the mix of size and impact. One big secret for big sounding mixes is diversity of sound.

I try and keep this in mind when I am mixing and making my panning decisions. In a dense mix, I am going to try and pan things together that have complimentary colors, or another way to say this is pan things together that have their energy in different frequency ranges. If I have a big fat electric guitar, I usually do not want to pan another big fat electric guitar in the same place. I will look at panning it with a mandolin, bright piano, thin acoustic guitar, etc. If I have a clean bright electric guitar, I will try to pan it with a fat organ, mellow fender Rhodes, or a fat electric guitar. This strategy even comes into play with panning things against the drums. If I have mixed the drums with the high hat panned off to the left side, I will usually pan a dominant bright rhythmic element (bright guitar, mandolin, shaker) off to the other side to let the high hat shine through without a lot of competition.

Of course, you can find great mixes done differently (including some that I have done), but I have found that starting a mix with these two guiding principles helps get mixes sounding big, wide and powerful faster and with less effort. Listen to your favorite albums. You might be surprised by how many are using this approach to panning.

* Make sure to check out my YouTube channel for “Ask Ronan Turbo Mondays” where I try to make a new video every Monday answering viewer questions (Unfortunately my craze schedule keeps me from being consistent.)

* If you are planning to join us for the Mountain Recording Retreat in West Virginia May 15-20, we are running a $350 off special and have additional discounts for people coming from outside North America, so if you want to save big sign up soon.

* I have two spots left for the 6-day Recording Boot Camp in Los Angeles June 12-17.

Flux Bender by Lightning Boy Audio. Gear Review

Posted on September 13, 2015October 4, 2016 by ronan

Lots of you have already done it, but if you want to enter to win the awesome Kush Audio Pusher plugin, today, September 14, 2015 is the last day to do it. Enter here.

I am starting a sold out 6-day Recording Boot Camp today, but there is a still a chance to get into the 2-day Mixing Boot Camp September 26-27.

So, would you buy a $5,000 EQ? It is a pretty big investment, and certainly not right for everyone, but if you have the money, some of the high end boutique stuff is pretty awesome. In this new video I review the Flux Bender by Lightning Boy Audio, a hand built passive EQ with a twist and an insane attention to detail.

Lastly, if you have not seen my latest “Ask Ronan Turbo Monday,” you can see it here. I am trying to get another one posted by the end of the day today.

Thanks

Ronan

Mixing bright vocals without getting harsh, edgy and sibilant

Posted on September 2, 2015October 4, 2016 by ronan

A couple people that signed up for my “Fly on the Wall” Vocal production course were disappointed that there was no lesson about mixing in the course. I always consider mixing a different stage, but I did not want to disappoint, so I created an exclusive vocal mixing lesson. So if you signed up for the course, log back in for 45 minutes of additional training.

If you missed out on registering, I have opened up enrollment for a couple more days (ends Friday night California time). Cost is still only $17. Sign up here.

But no need to pay anything to get some vocal mixing training. I also created a new video on mixing to get vocals to sound bright and forward without getting harsh, edgy and sibilant. Watch it on Youtube.

If you want to get really in depth, I have two spots left in my Mixing Boot Camp course in LA September 26-27. Get more info Here

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Pusher Give-Away & “Ask Ronan” questions answered.

Posted on August 31, 2015October 4, 2016 by ronan

There are two more weeks to enter the give-away for the amazing Kush Audio Pusher plugin. Sign up to enter.

Things are looking great for the Mountain Recording Retreat. I just got back from the Resort in West Virginia where I was working on some logistics, and I am more excited than ever. At the time of writing this, we only have 3 of the super discount rooms available. Sign up soon if you want the best deals.

I had a fun doing another “Ask Ronan” episode. I am going to try and do a 5 minute “Ask Ronan” video every monday as long as people are into it and asking good questions. Submit your questions here

What does Ronan have in common with Steve Vai, Frampton, Bonamassa, Eric Johnson, Satriani?

Posted on August 19, 2015October 4, 2016 by ronan

What do I have in common with Steve Vai, Peter Frampton, Joe Bonamassa, Eric Johnson, Bob Bradshaw, Joe Satriani?

We are all subjects of the new book, Tone Wizards: Interviews With Top Guitarists and Gear Gurus On the Quest For The Ultimate Sound, by Curtis Fornadley.

I have to be honest and say that this post is just me being giddy and bragging. I am so honored to be a part of this that I have to pinch myself. To be featured as a tone guru in the same breath as these guys, especially Steve Vai and Eric Johnson, who are not only icons of tone, but musicians whose words and music I spent hours studying when I was learning about guitar recording. Make no mistake; I am not in this book because of my guitar playing chops. It is because of my years in the studio trenches working with the likes of Robert Fripp (King Crimson, David Bowie), Steve Stevens (Billy Idol, BLS), Adrian Belew (Frank Zappa, Talking Heads, Bowie, King Crimson) and Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs, Deep Purple).

The book is massive; 370 pages of really in-depth interviews with an amazing cross section of 17 tone obsessed guitarists and gear builders. Curtis Fornadley was exactly the right guy to make this book. He is a world class guitarist in his own right and also a solid engineer. This book is strongly recommended if you care about getting great tones live or in the studio (even if you are just an engineer and not a guitarist). It only costs $18.99 on Amazon. This is the complete list of people featured in the book:

Joe Bonamassa, Bob Bradshaw, John Carruthers, Cliff Chase, Peter Frampton, David Friedman, Jay Graydon, Scott Henderson, Eric Johnson, Jim Kelley, Jeff Kollman, Ronan Chris Murphy, Joe Satriani, John Suhr, Pete Thorn, Steve Vai and Carl Verheye.

Buy the Print Version of Tone Wizards or the Kindle version

I feel guilty making a post just so I can brag, so I will share one of my favorite tips for mixing rock guitars:

As a guitar player, I love getting giant guitar sounds The bigger the better!!! But, in reality, while giant guitar sounds are fun to play, they do not actually work well on records. A giant guitar sound will eat up all the space in a mix and the end result is usually a final mix that sounds small. One well known trick is to use a high pass filter on the guitar (remember that high pass filter is a fancy name for that EQ that cuts off the low end). By removing or reducing the lowest frequencies of the guitars, we take away some of the frequencies that are covering up the bass and this helps make the low end more articulate. Articulate low end is powerful low end!!!

One thing that is not as commonly known is the benefit of using a low pass filter (fancy name for cuttin’ off the high end). When we distort guitars we are actually creating harmonics or additional higher frequencies above the actual notes played. This is the same for distorting anything, which is why Pro Tools puts all yourdistortion and saturation plugins in a folder called “Harmonic.” Creating all these harmonics is what gives rock guitars their thick sound. We love that!! But even a clean guitar has a really big frequency range. When we strum a distorted chord on a guitar, all the notes, from the lowest to the highest, are creating a series of higher harmonics. Most of these sound really cool, but the higher notes of the guitar are creating some really high frequencies that are downright nasty! This is even more true when using digital amp modelers as opposed to miking a real amp. Don’t take my word for it. Pull up a distorted rock guitar and use a high pass filter on it. Set the filter at around 6-8k (6000 Hz) and take a listen to what is left. Not pretty!!!

So the trick is to now swap that high pass filter for a low pass filter and cut off the high end. I recommend setting your low pass filter at either 6dB or 12dB per octave and experiment with cutting off the stuff somewhere between 5k-10. Start around 10k and gradually lower it until you are starting to lose a little bit of high end excitement but are still getting the character of the guitar part. When you turn the EQ off and on, the guitar might sound a little less exciting in solo mode, but in the mix is where the magic will happen.

1) Getting rid of that nasty fizzy top end of the guitar helps the cymbals and voice become more clear, present and smoother.

2) The energy we get from the cymbals makes us not miss the high end we cut off the guitar.

3) That fizzy high end on the guitar can actually smear articulation of the high-mids on the guitar. As crazy as this sounds, many times the guitar will feel brighter and more forward after we cut off the high end.

I hope that helps a little and if you are into great guitar tone (or even just the creative process of recording guitars) you’ll definitely want to check out Tone Wizards.

Also, the Recording Retreat I am presenting in West Virginia in May, 2016 is already half sold out, 9 months before the event. So if you are thinking of attending you might want to book soon to get a spot (and get the $500 early registration discount).

Thanks

Ronan

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2 tricks to fix the midrange on your mixes

Posted on August 17, 2015October 4, 2016 by ronan

2 Tricks to fix the midrange on your mixes

I want to share a couple tricks with you for getting the midrange right in your mixes. I wish I could give you THE trick, but getting the midrange right is a life-long journey and sorting out the mids is one thing that really separates mixes by the great mixers from everybody else.

The reason getting the midrange (which I usually think of as anywhere from about 250Hz to about 4k, but mostly centered around 1k) right is that so much important stuff lives there. In pop/rock/punk/country/funk recordings the midrange is where most of the energy of the voices, guitars, pianos, synths, snare drums and organs…… live. We have all these super important elements all fighting for the same space. It is beyond what I can get into in detail here, but I like to solve most of those conflicts between midrange elements with panning and subtractive EQ. If you get the midrange conflicts sorted out, your vocals will naturally sound more clear and forward without having to turn them up. But here are a couple of tips that can make this a little easier.

1) PUT IT “IN YOUR FACE”

One of the main reasons so many mixers, including myself, like to mix on the Yamaha NS-10s is not that they are balanced or accurate, but because they are mid-rangy. Some people even describe them as “honky.” They really push the mids to the front. This forces you to address these problemsto get a mix that sounds great. When you are working only on speakers that have great highs and lows, the excitement of the boom and the prettiness of the high-end sheen can be seductive and make us think we have gotten everything sounding great; but this often leads to mixes that do not translate well to other systems.

I enjoy monitors that have a fairly full range. I master on full range speakers and, in the past, I have done the bulk of my mixing on speakers with plenty of highs and lows, so I am not going to discourage you from using them, but it is a really good idea to have a more mid-

range forward set of speakers that you can switch to. The Yamaha NS-10s are out of production and pretty expensive now, but look for something with a small low end driver. Even small home stereo “bookshelf” speakers or a decent pair of computer speakers can work (I actually check my mixes and masters on the speakers built in to my computer monitor). If you do not have an easy way to add a second pair of speakers to your system, something like the Coleman LS3 can be a good solution that does not really hurt your audio.

2) KILL THE BASS

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking of bass as a low frequency instrument. Of course it has lots of low frequencies, but it also has a lot of energy all the way past 5k, especially with players that slap or use a pick. What this means is that the bass, which accounts for a huge amount of the overall energy in many mixes, has a lot of energy in the midrange right where all those other instruments have their most important frequencies. This is not a bad thing. That blend helps give a mix its overall body, but this can sometimes make mixing more difficult. If you are having trouble getting the midrange to feel right in your mix (that usually means less honky, nasal or piercing), one great trick is to mute the bass for a while. This often results in one of two things:

A) This will leave the instruments in the mix with a lot of midrange character more exposed and this can often make it easier to hunt down and find problems.

Remember that problems with the mids are usually because there is too much energy in a particular frequency range, so subtractive EQ is your friend.

B) Without the bass the midrange of the whole mix might sound good. If this is the case you should look at your bass sound and see if you can find any offending frequencies and reduce those in the bass. One way you can do this is to put the bass back in the mix and, using a parametric EQ, you can pull down (attenuate) one band in the mids and move that frequency up and down (in frequency), and wait until you hear the problem go away or at least get better. If you are still having trouble finding it, boost a mid frequency and sweep that around until the problem gets worse. Then turn that frequency down. This latter approach can sometimes be easier while you are still developing your ear for EQ.

If you are in Southern California and want to get into this more in depth, we have a couple spots left in next months 2-Day Mixing Boot Camp.

Also we just added another 6-Day Recording Boot Camp in November (the Recording Boot Camp includes all the material from the Mixing Boot Camp).

2-Day Mixing Boot Camp in Los Angeles*
September 26-27, 2015 (2 spots left!) Details>>

6-Day Recording Boot Camp in Los Angeles*
November 9-14, 2015 (3 spots left!) Details>>

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I have to admit that the whole concept of M-S processing kind of melted my brain at first. It is almost embarrassing how long I was a full time pro before I started to wrap my head around it. It is pretty whacky… but a godsend when you need it.

The basic concept of M-S or mid-side processing is that it is possible to treat the center information (the stuff in the middle of the mix) differently from the sides (the stuff out on the left and right). I do not think I will ever be smart enough to know what goes on under the hood of an M-S processor, but M-S is becoming an increasingly important part of my work, especially now that mastering has become such a big part of my business.

Our standard stereo EQ or compressor can usually adjust the left and right sides independently, but all of those changes have a big impact on the center information. M-S can adjust the sides separate from the center, but you cannot adjust left and right independently within the same processor. M-S can be used to make things artificially wide (or less wide), but I am rarely interested in that. I mostly care about M-S because it lets me do EQ and compression like a ninja! You might ask why one would need M-S processing to do EQ and compression, and the answer is that most of the time we do not actually need it. The overwhelming majority of processing we usually need in a mix or master can be done with the same traditional hardware and plugin tools that we have been using for years. Most of the time standard left-right stereo compression and EQ is all we need to sculpt a track just the way we want. Where M-S becomes so valuable is when we are dealing with stereo sources that have problems (or creative goals) that are specific to elements that are in the middle of the of the stereo image OR out on the side. If the problem is across the whole stereo field we are best off using our traditional tools. But when needed, M-S kicks ass (and the good news is that if you find a plugin you love that does M-S, it will almost certainly do standard left-right processing as well). Let me give you some examples of how I have been using M-S lately.

A few weeks ago I was mastering a great album for an artist from Northern California. The mixes were great, but there were some problems with sibilance on the lead vocal (that harsh, spiky ‘ess’ sound that can jump out in vocal recordings). The best way to deal with that is on the individual track when mixing, but this mix was done and there was still too much sibilance when it came to me to master. So I applied a de-esser across the whole track. This helped with the vocal problem, but a de-esser in this situation is going to compress the whole mix every time there is a big ‘ess” in the vocal, and when it fixed the lead vocal, the guitars that were panned out left and right lost some presence. M-S to the rescue!! I was able to use an M-S de-esser and only processed the center channel. That way the de-esser did not affect the guitars and cymbals that were panned out to the sides. This allowed me to be far more aggressive with the de-easing than I could have normally been with a standard stereo de-esser. Sure, the snare drum was affected a little bit, but since the guitars still stayed big and exciting the artifacts of my de-essing were not that noticeable.

Another project I was mixing recently was a hard rock album where the drummer really hit the snare hard. The stereo overheads sounded great but there was too much snare in them and I wanted to get most of my drum sound from the overheads. Compression is the usual remedy for that and often works great. It worked well for this, but I found that when the drummer was playing the ride cymbal it was starting to pump a little too much with the amount of gain reduction I was doing to tame the snare. So I switched over to M-S compression and just compressed the center channel. This allowed me to compress the snare drum with less impact on the ride cymbal. (the ride cymbal was not hard right so it was still affected a bit, but much less dramatically).

Lastly, one trick I have been doing in mastering lately is using M-S EQ to do a little boost in the high end of some rock and pop records. This allows me to bring the high end presence of the guitars and cymbals a little bit forward without running the risk of making the vocal too harsh or sibilant. Pushing up the high end of the sides can make the mix sound a little bit wider without really changing the balance of the overall mix and without some of the negative effects of those phasey wider-izer type processors.

If you want to start to wrap your head around M-S processing there is a cool tool that can help you understand it a little better: bx_solo from Brainworx. It allows you listen to different aspects of a stereo signal (center, sides, left right, etc.) and you can even play around by adjusting mid and side balance to do some interesting widening tricks without major downsides. The best part is that it is free. Download it here.

So if you are looking to expand your palette of options, M-S or mid-side is a great thing to explore. If, in the end, M-S still melts your brain, do not worry about it. Lots of amazing records are made every day without it.

Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Best Gain Staging for Virtual Instruments

2 tricks to create big, wide and tall mixes.

Flux Bender by Lightning Boy Audio. Gear Review

Mixing bright vocals without getting harsh, edgy and sibilant

Sign up for your free eBook by Ronan Chris Murphy from Recording Boot Camp

Pusher Give-Away & “Ask Ronan” questions answered.

What does Ronan have in common with Steve Vai, Frampton, Bonamassa, Eric Johnson, Satriani?

2 tricks to fix the midrange on your mixes

Sign up for your free eBook by Ronan Chris Murphy from Recording Boot Camp

One trick that has helped my mixes translate better.

M-S or Mid-Side processing melted my brain for a while!

Apogee Groove Review. USB headphone amp & D/A converter.

Sign up for your free recording advice newsletter and get a free copy of his best selling e-book “Audio Recording Boot Camp”

Sign up for your free eBook by Ronan Chris Murphy from Recording Boot Camp

Sign up for your free eBook by Ronan Chris Murphy from Recording Boot Camp