This is likely niche, but I think in this day and age the illusion of original thought doesn’t really exist anymore so I’m hoping something like this already exists.

Does anyone know if any plugins (or hardware) exist that let you load a few instances of plugins into it, obscure them, shuffle them around and then you can move between them and decide which sounds best to you without any undue prejudice affecting how you’re hearing things?

So an example of this in case it doesn’t make sense - I could load a few different pre-amp plugins with slightly different settings into this tool, and one of the ‘slots’ would have nothing on it at all. It would sit as an insert on the channel so I could play like a vocal recording through it and flick through the different plugins without knowing which is which (bonus points if the tool automatically level/ loudness matches) and then make a decision, before the tool reveals which is which.

At the moment I kind of do this by loading something like a 1073 plugin, adjust things slightly until it sounds good to me and is level matched, put my mouse over the ‘in’ button, close my eyes and then just click a load of times until I’ve lost track of whether it’s on or not. Then click a few times more and decide which I like the most. It’s just surprising how it’s not uncommon for it to sound better off lol.

I just think something like this would be so useful to remove the kind of audio hallucination that plugins can sometimes give you and a little more objectivity into decision making.

Apropos to this, I am heavily neurodivergent and this may appear to be mental.

How do you get a better DI guitar sounding good quickly? I mean what are your go to settings?

I have TH-U by over loud and it’s got so many amp sims but they sound weak. My real amps sound great but maybe I need to get better at dialing tone.

For voiceover. With the cost/budget factor aside. Are there situations where the TLM 103 actually beats the U87? The specs of the TLM 103 seem to point that way for certain situations, but is it really that simple? For a home studio, you for example don’t need the polar patterns and the extra SPL is useful, etc. is all you’re paying for the name at that point? Aside from minor differences in tonality?

Any insights into what actually matters would be greatly appreciated! I’m just a voice actor, so if there are actual engineer specific preferences for remote sessions, workflow processes etc., that’d be extremely helpful!

Specifically for a home studio setup.

Thanks!

One time I was mixing one of my projects and I had recorded the vocal as a double but ultimately decided not to use the double but somehow I ended up hearing the first vocal with the reverb from the double. I do this a lot now.

Looking to line a few walls of my little demo studio with theater curtains, as an aesthetic way to reduce the slappiness of the room... But all the suggestions for where to purchase them lead me to nothing but black curtains.

I'll pull the trigger on black curtains if I have to, but I would love to get some colored curtains instead, ideally a dark green. Does anyone know of where I could find some colored theater curtains?

And barring any colored options, what's the general consensus on where to purchase regular ol' black theater/acoustic curtains?

Hey all,

I’m a songwriter and self-produce from my home studio. I’ve spent years problem-solving and learning from mistakes in my own setup so I’ve gotten a lot of things figured out.

I’ve decided I’d really like to spend a week in a cabin somewhere writing and recording for my next release. I’d bring my Apollo interface, power conditioner, laptop, guitar amp, several mics, synths and drum machines and some monitors (not for mixing but because I get tired of just listening on cans and it’s more fun).

I’m wondering if anyone has done this and when vetting an Airbnb/vrbo what questions would you ask? What would you expect to go wrong and how would you plan for that?

I would like to record vocals, acoustic guitars, and whatever can come out of my amp (guitars, synths, reamped stuff). I would treat the space with blankets and/or just use dynamics for vocals if I need to.

I will bring some treatment blankets and ground lifts and stuff, but obviously I have to be open to the fact that some things might go terribly wrong and I just end up with demos. I am the kind of musician that often likes the emotionality of early takes though, so it would be nice if I got usable tracking out of this. I go for interesting/emotional over perfect which is part of the inspiration for this trip to begin with.

Thanks!

So, I've purchased the plugin while on sale a few months back, and I really like it. I've used it mostly for drums that lack a good room track, it really has that realistic big room sound. Thing is, until now I've basically only used it in reverb mode, as I have some doubts on re-mic mode. As I understand it, in re-mic it would go on your drum bus, or with any other source, it goes as an insert on the main path, as stated in the manual. But, let's stay with drums, let's say you have already done levels and panning, maybe even eq and compression on the single kick, snare, toms, ecc., and then you put SCS on the bus, aren't you losing the sound you have already worked with? Doesn't it sound weird, lose definition? I will do this testing when I can, but in the meantime I'd like to know how people use re-mic mode. Yesterday I had the time to fiddle around with it for a bit, and I found out that using re-mic on the room track only gives perfectly usable results, though I still have to decide if it's better or worse than reverb mode.

Or, for example with acoustic guitar or a vocal. The track you'd feed into it has already been recorded through a microphone right? (I suppose you wouldn't even think of using re-mic for any source that hasn't been recorded in a dead environment with minimal reflections) Then what would the mic choice be doing in that context?

Anyway, maybe I've been a bit unclear in my questions, so please ask for clarification in that case. Any input really is appreciated, thank you for reading :)

I’m using Cubase and want to know if there’s a way to record vocals with a complete vocal chain already set up, including EQ, compression, reverb, delay, and other effects.

Basically, I want to select a preset, record my vocals, and have them already sound polished and finished, rather than recording dry vocals and processing everything afterward.

Is this possible? What plugins or setup would you recommend for achieving this in real time?

Thanks in advance!

i still use digital rather than tape due to cost, ease of use and available space, but what all would your approach be?

my closest expamples what im going for are powerslave and melissa (mid heavy guitars, reverby acoustic drums that dont sound super gated, audible bass)

tell me if my current approach makes sense:

record drums first and keep it to 1-2 takes unless the songs super long, close mic the snare kick and toms, add a snare bottom, a set of overheads and a room if recording without other instruments. add an expander and reverb to snare top, toms, and extra heavy on snare bottom (side chain snare bottoms expander from a snare top send to reduce kick bleed). kick gets enough highs to get snappy but not clicky.

double track guitars with occasional quads or a lead in the middle, using an overdriven marshall with the mids maxed into a speaker that isnt a vintage 30 (i like greenbacks and evm12ls).

bass i dial some overdrive but nothing as crazy as a modern bass tone.

if the song has vocals add a bit of reverb.

i keep everything within a reasonable number of takes (1-8) and dont quantize (record a good performance to begin with).

Hi folks, I am by no means a pro engineer, but I did do some engineering vocational school and am an experienced computer music researcher and musician, so I know the basics of using compressors and reverbs and so on.

I am now producing podcasts for my work, and I'm curious to hear if people have go-to processing pipelines they use for that that are different from music, especially with regard to how you handle riding gain, compressors, etc. Naturally some of my guests are not great with their mics.

Currently what I'm doing is:

- getting guests to use a cheap but ok small diaphragm condensor pretty close to the mic

- dereverbing both my track and theirs so I can put a tight dryish room reverb on both to get them sounding closer to the same room, eqing both feeds to get the mics sounding closer

- putting mild saturation on the tracks, followed by an easy-over compressor just reducing the overall dynamic range and another to catch and compress harder any unusually loud parts, plossive pops, etc (using Klanghelm, Soundtoys, FabFilter plugins)

FWIW, so far I seem to like my Shure ksm-9 the best for getting a wee bit of proximity effect, minimal room reverb, and clarity.

I'm particularly curious if there are specific types of compressors or saturators that sound best on spoken dialog for clarity and warmth. (eg. FET vs Tube vs optical, etc)

Any other suggestions or pointers at resources for podcasts/radio style mixing would be most appreciated.

thanks!

https://youtu.be/OlLsp1ztYPM?si=vl7e012kUHHit4nh

Adding colour to the channels is definitely one of my favourite updates.

I do CTZ mixing for heavy electronic music tracks (mostly my own) to get those crazy volume levels.

Though the only thing I've had trouble with is guitars/vocals. Something about guitars and or vocals driving it into a mixing bus/group with the rest of the instruments distorts them too much and I lose clarity. Drums are happy, synths are happy, loud and clear while vocals and guitars sound like they're overly distorted while trying to match the same frequency levels in a spectrum analyzer. Synths and any other instruments don't complain.

How do I control the peaks without using compression because I don't want to control the loudness (which is what compression does), I want to shave off the peaks in the guitar/vocal waveform. The only other thing I can think of is a multiband clipper but if I'm missing any other information on how to make this possible I'd love to hear it while being able to mix in CTZ.

For reference this is a bass/kick/snare mix that sounds perfectly clear https://hostr.co/SO2ZnDjAIvKc

You can see the kick/snare low end sidechaining against the sub (typical for the heavy drum and bass tracks).

I'd share the link of the song but I wouldn't want the mods to think I'm promoting any music (though I'd happily DM). The mix I have is without guitars because adding any just doesn't work like the other instruments

The specific problem is the summation of the signal of the sub bass + guitars against a group clipper (even when the guitars are already pre-clipped to shave off peaks) always ends up in losing guitar clarity while other instruments don't do that. I'm failing to understand why. While other instruments don't suffer from this problem.

Sorry if not allowed, I'm looking for collaborators not customers. I think its way past due time to propose an alternative to the JUCE/PACE/iLok model. Anyway its all in the readme - free to contribute, fork, commercialize, whatever you want within the MIT licensing (permissive, including commercial works) framework. See it all here: https://github.com/Symbia-Labs/ruse

Musicians. Describe the effect you hear in your head, and your personal agent like Claude or ChatGPT turns it into a plugin you can load in Logic or any other Audio Unit or CLAP host, with no code to write.

Sound designers. Build the exact processor a sound needs from tested DSP blocks, on anything from mono to 64 channels for surround and immersive work.

Commercial plugin developers. Ship closed-source CLAP and Audio Unit plugins in memory-safe Rust with no licence fees, and have every build validated automatically, including Apple's auval.

Where I really need help:

1. testing and feedback
   
2. DSP block suggestions (bare minimum included to start)
   
3. Community contributions, word of mouth, reviews, other sharing (if you mean it)

Thank you so much!

Bit of an odd ball thing to post I know, someone might find it useful so last night I open sourced my TigerSharc 201 tool chain.

Its a DSP chip that is relevant in the music world specifically in signal processing, but has many other applications.

This project contains the 3 core components of any chip's toolchain, the Compiler (C to Assembly) the Assembler (Assembly to Machine Objects) and the Linker (Compiles your objects and provides a binary the DSP can run)

http://www.github.com/rm2kdev/TigerSharc-201-Tool-Chain

I built and used this to compile a firmware for a particular bit of kit, unfortunately that project was shut down by the manufacturer (respectfully and politely I'll add) so I pivoted to building my own vst thing instead www.forgeefx.com (not an ad, just part of the true story) since all the code was pure C i just stopped using this compiler, and ported to a vst.

Its highly optimized and produces binaries that run faster than the real compiler, yes, a good bit of AI assistance (still claiming to be an engineer as I've worked in the industry for 20+ years), no reverse engineering used it was created by reading the DSP/CPU's instruction set in the official published documentation (Processor Programming Reference) and cleanly implementing all of those instructions and then building optimizations for the compilation process. (mostly around math, opcode usage, memory etc)

This on its own, does not produce binaries that run on any hardware (That would need a boot loader, and firmware, and other work), it does however produce binaries that run on this exact DSP/CPU in question.

Happy to answer any questions.

If you had only standard audio interface preamps (enough to record whatever you want) and could choose one additional outboard preamp (or a pair of them), what would it be? Maybe something you could use on recordings after the fact to add some coloration/character. Preferably something you actually own or use frequently. Api style? Neve style? tube?

Or if you prefer to pick any other outboard piece of gear primarily for coloration (not compression/fx) as in an EQ, saturator or color box.

I was asked to help my sister’s friend with a passion project of her’s. She wanted to create a 10 song album in 90 days which sounded fun and exciting. I low balled the price because I thought the project could be fun, her music is catchy, and she didn’t have the means to pay for the full price of an album mix and master, but from the get go the communication was inadequate. We had a meeting before the recording process started where I laid out my workflow and spoke with her about the importance of reference tracks and my price; she agreed to it all.

Fast forward a month and I’ve received three songs, again I ask for some reference tracks for each song and she never sent any so I began to mix to the best of my ability. As I started the mixing process it seemed to me that I could not create the mix she was looking for. I think I remixed the first two songs around four times. The third song I sent back after spending hours mixing only for her to listen to the mix and tell me that she actually would like me to recreate another mix that a different engineer did for her a few years ago which then took me another few hours to recreate.

So I remixed the third song and sent it back while also following up about the first two songs and she ghosted me for a month. I did not hear from her at all so eventually I messaged her and asked if the project was going to move forward. Again no answer for another week. When she finally did answer she mentioned that in that month she had recorded 5 new songs and needed me to do extensive vocal editing on one of them. I tried to bring the focus back to the first to songs and she again didn’t reach back out to me.

It’s been a week since then and I decided to bow out of the project. I don’t need the money, I make a good living doing live sound engineering, this project was truly just for fun. Should I have just grinned and beared it just to get the project done? Will this decision negatively affect me if I someday move more into mixing and mastering?

A tester sent me Roy Clark, Guitar Boogie, because my chord app could not hear it. Spent a night on it. The record is about 20 cents sharp of concert pitch, the whole thing, every note. Tape speed on the master, or a deck running fast when it was cut. It is between keys, which is why playing along to it in standard tuning sounds wrong no matter what you do.

Once I knew to look, it is everywhere in that era. Not a tuning problem, a transfer problem. The fix for playing along is to tune the guitar to the record, not the record to the guitar, or pitch-shift the file by the offset.

I build a chord app (Chartless) and ended up adding a readout of the offset next to the key because of this one song. Now I can play along with Roy :) Curious what records you have run into that are off pitch, and whether anyone knows if the later CD remasters corrected them or left them alone.

Hardware or software. I don't need to hear RVox is a great for the 1000th time, or how the latest 1176 clone gets even closer to the real thing.

What's that obscure thing you picked up in a junk shop, or paid a few pennies to a sketchy website for, or the thing everyone else says is rubbish, that turned out to be a key mixing tool for you?

Hello-

I work a full time job in broadcasting, and run audio production on the side (podcasts, audiobooks, etc.).

Yesterday I ripped a 7" record for someone by request here on Reddit...and thought, hey, this could be something I offer too.

I know that it is a simple thing for anybody who is slightly tech savvy these days...but obviously my clients would not be in that bracket.

Anybody do it as a paid service?

Please forgive me as I'm a total beginner. I wouldn't even claim that I'm trying to get into audio engineering.
I am simply looking for the easiest way to change the key of a song without changing the singers voice. It's only one or two semi tones but still it sounds completely distorted. I don't have a computer, so working with an iPhone/ipad. Any tips?

A few months ago Ian Williams (GlassOnTin) shared openDSP-4x4: a clean-room reverse engineering of the t.racks DSP 4x4 Mini Pro's USB protocol, with a web app and an Android app. Amazing work, and it meant no more Windows-only editor.

I forked it because I wasn't really happy with the UI, and some early architecture choices (connection handling, state) made it flaky and hard to maintain long term. So I kept his protocol work and rebuilt the transport, state layer and UI on top of it. It's now called Unrack.

What's new:

• Rebuilt connection: reconnects on replug, values snap to what the DSP actually stores and get read back, every edit is undoable, nothing fails silently
• Mixer-style overview: faders, solo, mute all, master trim
• Setup: pick a layout (2.1, top/kick/sub, bi-amp...) and an environment, and it proposes crossovers, subsonic, trims and limiters, showing exactly what will change before you apply
• Time alignment from speaker positions or measured distances, plus a guided "fine-tune by ear" mode
• Preset files (whole state as JSON) and settings for channel names, colours, theme, units
• ESP32-S3 Wi-Fi bridge: plug it into the DSP's USB port and control it from any phone or browser (about 11 ms round trip)
• Demo with a simulated DSP, so you can click around without the hardware
• ...and more, check out the README

Next up: multi-device control. Several ESP32 bridges on the same network, each plugged into its own DSP, all controlled from one web app that finds them and shows every DSP side by side, so a whole system runs from one screen.

Try it in desktop Chrome/Edge: https://askz.github.io/unrack/ (with no DSP plugged in it opens the demo) Code and Android APK (not tested on a phone yet): https://github.com/askz/unrack

Honest disclaimer: I built most of this with heavy help from LLMs. It's tested against a real DSP, but expect bugs and check your settings at low volume first.

If you own a t.racks DSP 206/408, a Peavey VSX or something similar and want it to work with Unrack, a USB capture of the vendor editor talking to it would help me add support.

EDIT: Added "next-up section"

^{Hello friends and/or enemies but mostly strangers, This unit will do her best to keep things brief and simple.}

^{I am new to using the software Audacity, and I need to find out how to make voice lines sound like they're being said through a radio.}

^{thank you all for whatever help you might be able to provide}

I have a sm7b as my main (vocal) microphone and just found an nt1a sitting around that I forgot about.

How awful of a pairing is this for A/B miking a guitar? Am I better off just buying a pair of some mics so I can do various miking techniques?

If so, any recommendations?