I'm learning about parallel compression and I was confused by this. I thought the idea was to get something hyper-compressed for the parallel compression, which I would think needed a fast attack. Why would you want to lose a slow attack?

He mentions it at about 4:45 in this interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuU6XdVebJo

Hi everyone,

I'm having trouble setting the attack and release on my compressor, and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

I mainly mix rap vocals, sometimes with faster flows and sometimes with slower ones(melodic rap vocals). I usually use two compressors: CLA-76 to control peaks, and then RCompressor for the rest of the compression.

My problem is with RCompressor. When I use extreme settings with a lot of compression, I can hear the difference in attack times. But release is harder for me. For example, 40 ms and 140 ms sound pretty similar to me unless I use very fast or very slow settings.

The bigger problem is that when I go back to normal compression settings, with a lower ratio and less gain reduction, I can barely hear any difference when changing attack or release.

I've tried this on different rap vocals and watched a lot of YouTube tutorials, but I'm still struggling to understand how to set these correctly by ear.

How did you guys learn to hear these differences, especially with normal compression settings? Is there something I'm missing or doing wrong?

Any advice would really help. Thanks!

I'm reading The Mixing Engineer's Handbook and they mention the technique of listening in mono to hear certain things differently. I'm not sure how it's supposed to help, though. I put my song in mono and everything is masked, but in stereo it doesn't have those issues. Should I really base mixing decisions on what I'm hearing in mono?

I'm coming from a mostly analog based background. I mix in the box, but most of the material I work on is pop, indie, and alternative. There are synths and electronic elements in the tracks, like subbass and pads, but the overall approach is more from an analog mindset.

So let's say all things being equal on the technical side, like proper gain-staging, filtering our low end or high end where it's not necessary on the tracks, Standard Clip on the drum bus for the overages, panning, level, balance, all solid. What are some tools you use that are distinctively EDM?

For example, what clipper do you use for bass and why? Like, I use mostly UAD or softube because they're high quality hardware emulations, pro-q for the clinical clean up, Mixhead by metric halo is a great saturator for my summing busses, etc. Are there go to tools you use that just work with mostly digital sounds?

I gambled on the Warm Audio Mystery Box. Got a single WA-84, not too thrilled but stoked to have a nice SDC in the closet.
I mainly record drums (@justinvandommelen on insta), and I would love to find a way to utilize this new piece even though I only have one!
Any fun tricks or placements I could try? I’ve thought of it as a ride spot mic, or hat mic.

Thanks friends

Hello Everyone,

I am currently looking into a few pieces of new gear for one of our rooms. One discussion i was part of in here sparked a renewed interest for new mastering hardware, and some pieces of equipment from this manufacturer looks very very interesting to me.

I’d really appreciate any input i can get.

Thank you all very much in advance!

Link: https://www.adt-audio.com

Hey, I’m doing an amazing wellness event in New York in November, but we’re gonna have live music like jazz Funk Indie hip-hop, it’s always so amazing

I had a sound guy, but I’m afraid he’s getting a little too pricey for what I can afford at this current state of what we’re doing. I obviously would love to continue working with him, but at this point, it’s a matter of just making this happen.

I honestly don’t know how I’m gonna make this event work with the prices he’s giving me. I obviously understand the value and the price of what he’s offering but at the stage it doesn’t feel like I can work with him and I don’t even know where to look to resolve this

Talk me out of this console. I use all outboard Neve preamps and outboard compression and need a centerpiece for aux routing, basic input EQ, and summing. This desk has pretty much everything I need - but I'm genuinely concerned about the sound and build quality.

My main concerned is if they can be driven as hard as an SSL or Neve before distorting. I'm also curious about the summing - is it pretty much just transparent line inputs? Or is there some harmonic color/transformers that add some extra to the output signal? Lastly, are the EQ's any good? Can they also be driven without sounding harsh.

For the price point, it's hard to beat. But I'm really curious if they are priced like that for a reason? Thanks.

Thoughts on this? I’ve been itb for 5 years and im leaning towards a summing mixer before getting a mixbus compressor and eq.

16 channel summing mixer like the shadow hills equinox to route my digital buses through or get a 32 channel summing mixer like the burl b32 and bypass all digital buses and use vca channels in logic to control levels only?

Would there be a perceivable benefit to avoid digital buses entirely or is that extra step and limitation on tracks/ability to put inserts and sends on buses itb not worth summing each track individually

Check these out and share your thoughts if you're down: I'd love to hear other peoples feedback too.

1. https://youtu.be/f58ypbVQX4w?si=SK4RIcf9I78ApDfw
2. https://youtu.be/HwRdZcKd3r0?si=JzyXnfxu70UA1EWD
3. https://youtu.be/8tfUpJ9iAlY?si=_wGBjfrROjoevTzZ
4. https://youtu.be/pVea3h9CfYA?si=nfdyb2HQwX4DZiaV
5. https://youtu.be/1M6sJNS0blI?si=25l0d1ocYdQ0qD75

I've been thinking about wiring up a transformer color box for my mix bus, and was considering ordering a couple from AML in the UK. Has anyone done this (or similar) recently and what were the tariffs like? I'm in California. The actual tariffs themselves don't seem terribly expensive, but AML doesn't do DDP shipping (Delivery Duty Paid) and if the USPS or UPS handles the tariffs on the US side, they're likely to impose a 'handling' charge that more than doubles the duty.

Just curious if anyone else has done this recently and what their experience was.

Please help a girl out… idk what to do- ive tried so many times to get to get it loud enough and now it’s been normalised to sound more like -10 on Spotify. I can’t bring the stems up anymore without clipping- yes I have a compressor (UAD) on them all. Do I just have to start all over again? Im at such a loss

Hi guys, I’ll try to keep this as short as I can.

I’m an audio engineer student on my second year of my degree. Next year is to be my last. Recently I’ve found out that I have some form on Tinnitus in my right ear. I went to the doctors, got referred to an audiologist. Went through all the tests etc. The results show that my right ear has a -15 db decrease compared to my left ear at only 2khz, and only this frequency range. He said my hearing is still great overall and said the it’s not a big deal and classes it as mild sensorineural hearing loss at only this frequency in my right ear. He also said the tinnitus ( ringing in my right ear) is my ear trying to compensate for the slight loss of hearing in this frequency.

The whole topic is very grey he said, the tinnitus and slight hearing loss could be two totally different issues and that was only his assumption. Also recommended an MRI if I wanted to look further.

Even though I’ve kind of made up my own conclusions with my conditions that this may not be a possibility for me going forward. I wanted to hear some advice from people in the industry and field. Is it even possible for me to be a professional mix engineer now? He says -15 db at 2khz is not a big deal. But I know -15db is HUGE in this world, it could make all the difference when mixing and perceiving sound.

Could I set up my monitors to amplify +15 db at 2khz in my right monitors? could I adjust my acoustic room treatment to allow more presence at 2khz on the right side? Or maybe a hearing aid that amplifies 2khz by +15db. I have no ideas if any of this is possible.

Any honest feedback and opinions is welcomed. Thank you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9rxuJjzFTk

precisely the chorus vocal, it sounds really saturated yet very clean and as if it were coming off an amp, I don't know, really cool.

the question is simple. i know the process might not be simple.

but i've never been satisfied with any piano vsts in my entire life.

i make pop music. mostly dance music, but it kinda requires piano many times cause i started from playing piano.

is it because i'm not trained enough to make it sound good or there's actually a huge difference?

i mean if this has been bothered me for a decade i should've tried sooner

but just thinking about buying upright. record it myself. and my room is treated too.

i always end up with 12 different pianos from various different piano vsts, don't know why but i always end up with almost kind of like a factory library type of piano which is dry, easy to control and add something (such as roland fantom, kontakt factory library)
i can somehow treat it well and mix it so the song would works but when the piano solo comes in, god it's horrible.

thank you!

I’ve been looking at songs on streaming services that I like through my YouLean Loudness Meter recently, and the sheer amount of red that shows up on loudness meters for them is insane. Red all across the top of the meter for almost the entire song, 0.1db true peak on some of them, and yet if you never told me that I would’ve assumed they were completely clean.

Everything I read tells me that if you upload a song to streaming services like that, it’ll be lossy. The amount of songs on streaming services that I’ve seen like this has me convinced that as long as your master fader doesn’t clip and there’s no audible chugging, it doesn’t matter. Is that a fair assessment?

and then lower the level by 3db... is that the same thing as the EQ off and level at 0?

In one of my tracks I have a wide bass (unison detuned slightly) with a stereo phase alignment that stays within 90° but only two notes when played the phase alignment jumps to 170°ish and in mono playback I lose almost all of the energy and this creates a vacuum in the mix. I could automate the detune/stereo spread to essentially make the base mono for the short periods in which they sound but in doing this I would be removing a fundamental characteristic of the bass timbre.

I'm assuming it has something to do with the relationship between the specific bass note frequencies and the detune/spread amount but I have been scratching my head trying to find a suitable (less destructive) compromise.

Does anyone have any advice because part of me feels like what I'm trying to do is essentially impossible? i.e maintain the wide bass character while also maintaining a suitable stereo phase relationship (for all notes).

Hey all, I'm in the process of recording guitars for a short black metal demo. I'm hoping to get it to a high enough quality that I can comfortably send it to a session drummer. I've started hard-panning my right and left guitar tracks, but I'm running into a problem where when I have tremelo lead lines (not solos) it sounds kind of weird having them just in one ear with the rhythm in the other. To try and fix that, I created an additional track of rhythm so that's in both ears and then bumped out the leads to run right down the middle of the mix.

The problem I'm running into is this makes that section come in HOT. But if I adjust the palm muting tracks, then you start noticing the reduction in volume. Any thoughts on how to address this? Or do I just need to bump all the parts out into individual tracks and lower the overall volume of those tracks? Not sure if that makes sense.

OR, is it better to just have the lead in one ear and the rhythm in the other? Even if it sounds kind of unbalanced?

I'm using Reaper as well if that matters. Thanks!

I know there have been a lot of threads about this issue, but I couldn't find what I was looking for in any of them.

I've been getting into mixing for a while now, making guitar videos and posting them on Instagram. The problem is that the audio gets noticeably quieter, almost like someone turned the volume down one notch on their phone.

Other than that, the volume sounds fine everywhere else: DAW renders, Premiere Pro renders, Google Drive, on my phone, and on my PC. Instagram is the only place where I experience this volume drop.

I know about the -14 LUFS guideline, but at that level, people basically have to turn their phone volume all the way up to get my videos to sound loud enough. So I usually aim for around -10 LUFS and a -0.5 dB true peak ceiling, although I've also tried -1 and -1.5 dB.

I already use most of the usual tools like EQ, compression, exciters, and limiters, and I've tried a bunch of different mixes over time. I've checked pretty much everything I could think of, including the sample rate and other settings, but I just can't figure out what's causing this. If it automatically reduces the lufs to -14, how are other people getting better sound levels than even my render?

I also implement most of the necessary things in terms of mixing. Applying low-cut below 70Hz~, applying noise reduction, double tracking for guitar channels, or necessary EQ boosts and cuts, Necessary track panning, a sweet level of stereo width... I also edit the mix in mono too. I'm not letting the mix hit the limiter wall completely for a bit of headroom. for renders, It sounds good to me

I've recently added audio rate modding to a lot of my plugins, and I'm having fun figuring out new uses for FM synthesis style modding of filters, and the like.

Here is a video going through using an audio rate modded filter to shape the tone of an 808.

youtube.com/watch?v=1AezfYl-OQs&feature=youtu.be

A long time ago, I saw on YT a video by an old pro who had produced/mastered great jazz artists, who told how, when CDs came in, he had asked the company to master differently for different formats, but they wouldn't because of dollars. He told the story when mp3s were everywhere, and said mp3s should be mastered differently, as well. (Mastered for iTunes came out a couple of years after his video.) It is not an argument that because songs from CDs people test exceed -1 or -0.2 db, or whatever, that means mastering a song for a streaming platform can also exceed the recommendations. You listen to the CD master on a CD, a song mastered for a streaming platform on a streaming platform. One shouldn't conflate these two distinctly different formats. (Doesn't mean Bangerang isn't a banger, but what sounds good on different formats doesn't boil down to a simple, one size fits all formula, either.)

So, after a couple of years of training, and releasing my own songs, i decided to pursue my dream of becoming a professional audio mixing engineer and start working with musicians to help to produce their music as well.

the thing is, i don't know where to start. I know that with AI everything is harder but i'm really not good with social media or marketing and i was wondering:

Is there any other way to get work?

If anyone knows about any other method, sharing it will be very helpful.

thank you.

'If it sounds good it is good' yes but I don't have monitors so I'm only going off of headphones (ATH-M50x) and it sounds great in my headphones, but sources online say it'll destroy your mix on speakers. Am I actually causing problems for speaker listening?

I bussed a few backing/harmony vocal channels with different panning and applying Redline Monitor glues the stereo field together in a way that instantly sounds good. For example I can take 2 vocals panned hard right and left and apply the plugin and they instantly sound good in a way that can't be achieved with less extreme panning or room reverb (convolution or algo).

Crossfeed messes with mono compatibility but my backing vocals are panned pretty far (-50, -25, -10, +10, +25, +50) so their function is to increate width while the lead vocal handles mono, so does it even matter?

Obviously Redline Monitor is literally meant to make the stereo field of headphones sound better. I didn't even dial it in, just threw it on and instantly sounded like a pro mix. But I don't want to be fooled! Is this just stereo trickery that'll mess everything up when not playing through headphones?

Is there any use of crossfeed on individual channels or busses or only on the master for headphone monitoring?