Elastic Brilliance

So what's new?

I finally moved up to Protools 7.4 for one thing.
I'd gotten 7.4 with my new Lightbridge, but as luck would have it, I ended up having to pay for the updgrade anyway because you have to have the same version of LE and M-Powered to run the two on one PC.
Glorious.
So I'm stuck with having to buy upgrades for both until I ditch the 002 altogether.

Although I haven't gotten around to checking out all the new stuff, Elastic Audio is definitely worth a mention.
I had a chance to test it out on two different tunes - one that was pretty tight already but suited the welded to the grid thing, and another than was pretty much the opposite.
In both cases it did a pretty fine job once I'd gotten the hang of it.
It seems to do its best work on drums, and editing them this way is a relatively painless undertaking.
I did run into some trouble where I had guitar tracks that consisted of two microphones on one amp with the diaphragms as close together as possible for phase reasons.
On these tracks the shifting and warping would occasionaly knock the two mics out of phase with each other - I can only assume that this is happening across a group of drum tracks too, but with less readily audible results. Then again, it could be my elastic noobness letting me down (hints and tricks appreciated).



In new plugin news, I've been demoing the Abbey Road Brilliance Pack.
This consists of three plugins, all of which are based on units used in Abbey Road back in the day to brighten up signals in one way or another.
Two of them are functionally identical, providing plus or minus 10db in 2db steps at either 2.7, 3.5 or 10khz. The third has a fixed frequency of 8khz and only offers boost, again in 2db steps.
All of them sound pretty cool. A nice sounding boost in brightness is one of the most satisfying and useful tools to have at hand - in use where I regularly find myself boosting some high end (guitars, vox and particularly ribbon mic drum overheads) the 10khz boost delivered exactly what I wanted almost all the time.
The lower frequency settings seem to grab the midrange by the balls in a very cool way, handy at low boost settings for some things and probably a bit of a life saver with tracks that arrive to mix with no midrange/treble at all (usually those damn synth sounds that seem to fall over a cliff at about 2khz).

They're running an introductory $200 (about €130) offer until the 13th of July.
The bastards.

Pros :

• Sounds sweet
• Damned useful

Cons :

• Now I have to buy it
• Will I ever have 'enough' gear?

'Till next time.

String me up

I had two very different sessions in Beechpark last weekend.
One was a short vocal recording session for a pop/r'nb starlet and the other was assisting on a 12-player string session.
Chalk 'n cheese.

The vocal recording session was good fun.
Whenever I work in a slightly unusual genre for me, I'm always struck by how much fun it is to work on something different, and how one can transfer the same basic techincal and pseudo-psychological skills to a very different kind of song.
I could also rattle off a whole "what's the world coming to" post about singers requesting the use of autotune before they've even sung a note, but where's the sense in that?

The string session was for an entertainer popular with mammies all across the land. 12 players, conductor, producer, ambient micing and a lot of tea and coffee. Hearing a decent amount of players like that live is a lot of fun, and the hourly rate definitely gives extra focus - as if it were needed.

Got two projects back from mastering in the last week - first up was the Land Lovers record from Golden. Good subtle job done with this, he reined in the low end on one or two songs where I'd missed a bit of a build-up there, but overall it seemed that the tasteful application of mastering magic gelled the whole thing together like a good master should. It's nice to have a good reference for the ballpark I should be aiming at for high and low end in future with mixes in my room.
Rifle Fire Rifle just got back their master from Alan Douche's place this morning (I've forgotten the name of the engineer who worked on it.. will update) and again, a nice job, although I've only heard it on shitty PC speakers so far. Good feedback from the mastering guy over there - nice to know I got the mix into the right area.

Finally got the last piece of my new setup on Friday.
M-Audio Lightbridge > Lynx Aurora 16 > Neve 8816
Will report back with impressions as I develop them.

I must say, having finally moved to PT 7.4, I'm seeing much better performance from it.
A session that was starting to tax my system a bit on 7.3 jumped straight back down towards the 50-65% mark on the CPU meter in 7.4 - very cool.

Next up is a group vocal / handclap session for Stoat tomorrow night.
Should be a larf!

One Man Band

So I spent last weekend in Elektra with Gerry - he'd gotten in touch a month or two back saying he wanted to put down a few songs playing everything himself.
"Interesting", I thought.
"God, I hope he can play everything reasonably well", I thought.

Anyway, not too much to worry about on the playing front.
Good songs, in a somewhat mellow Ryan Adams kinda vein, but with more Steve Malkmus style delivery on the vocals.
We had a few false starts on the first song figuring out the best order to lay down the tracks in.
Any typical weekend of recording will pick up pace as it goes along, as everyone gets stuck into the rhythm of laying down tracks. That was a little more pronounced than usual on this session, since Gerry was "It" all the time. Once we figured out that Gerry was most comfortable drumming to an acoustic and bass backing, we got some decent work done.

Elektra has a new studio manager called Anders, who seems to have sorted out some of the maintenance issues that screwed things up for me on previous visits. In fact, I think I got through the whole weekend without being slowed down by technical woes at all. Have I posted about the importance of maintenance in a studio before? I should have.
Anders was kind enough to lend me his own Beta57 for the weekend - I've mentioned before how it's my current favourite on snare. Elektra also have an SM7 now, which got used on all electric guitar and vocal tracks. I had it hanging low over the area between ride, rack tom and floor tom to try and cover any close micing I might need of that area and it actually picked up a really good picture of the whole kit from there.
Definitely might end up using that as a gnarly kit sound mic.
Every time I use an SM7 I wonder why I haven't bought one yet.. must rectify that soon.

Everything was recorded to the Radar (a joy to use as always), and I used my API3124 whereever possible (kick, snare and OH for the drums, with the desk covering the rest). Bringing your own preamps is definitely a good call in Elektra - the Orion's preamps are pretty uninspiring.

So I'll be running off some mixes for Gerry this week, continuing work on the Stoat stuff. I really must get back to work on the Hounds stuff too.
Did I mention that I'm rejigging my whole setup?

That might have to wait until the next post..

The results are in..

In order of preference :

1. Neve 8816
2. Dangerous D-Box
3. Audient Sumo
4. Phoenix Nicerizer

The Neve's got it won on features and sound for me.
In terms of sound, it gives the low end a slight, smooth lift to my ears. It also rolls off the high end just slightly in a pretty pleasant way. It's kind of an overall rounding/warming sound I suppose.
Monitor control of two seperate pairs of speakers, talkback, heaphones etc.
With all that and the fact that it's got real knobs for volume and pan on each of the 16 channels (plus solo and mute) it does just about the best job of convincing me that I still have room for a real analog desk.
Unfortunately, because all its useful i/o is on D-sub, that means I'll probably have to put together a mini patchbay to interface my outboard with the 8816 - which is kinda one of the more compelling side effects of getting out of the box, however temporarily.
The 'width' control is like nicotine - just a little bit couldn't hurt, right?
Stuff like that always gives me the creeps.. "it sounds better - there must be something wrong", is all I can think. It's fun though.
Did I mention that this has the loudest headphone amp I've ever heard?
It does.
And the recall is a big plus.
I did try beating the shit out of the output stage (of course I did) by hitting it with a load of level on every channel. That sounded a bit more.. something. It definitely rounded off the transients a bit. Add in your favourite audio review adjective here. It sounded like that.
Although a little too much.
The long and short is that you can take it from clean to spongy depending on your input levels.

The D-Box I like a lot, mostly because it's got pretty much all the features of the 8816, apart from the fact that it only sums 8 channels and doesn't have the volume/pan knobs. It really does squeeze a lot in for your €1300ish. Sound wise, it's pretty clean and gives you back what you put in to it apart from the added depth and width the summing brings. The monitoring section is cool (nice knobs) and the headphone outputs sound good.
Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get hold of an AES to optical/spdif cable, so I can't tell you how the D/A sounds, but every report I've heard says that it stands up pretty well.

The Sumo is similar to the D-Box in terms of price, and pretty close in terms of sound, too. It had a very slight lift in the high end that some folks might enjoy, but I felt it kinda fell in between two stools a bit. It's not quite clean enough to give you back what you put in, but what little 'colour' it does add wasn't my cup of tea.
Still, it's got plenty of features, although I couldn't see myself using the bus compressor/limiter all that often.
The knobs are kinda mangy too. Am I shallow?

The Nicerizer, funnily enough, does sound pretty nice.
It's got a more overtly coloured sound, I found it lent a kind of tasty midrange crunchiness to some mixes I ran through it, particluarly a drum machine+synth heavy mix. Nice sounding unit, but I discounted it pretty early, because of its lack of monitoring facilities.
It does have a monitoring output, but it's just a straight +4 out, with no level control.
Not terribly useful.
So you'd be using up a stereo pair on your interface for monitoring (and since I'd be sticking to 8/10 channel summing for a while, this is kind of a dealbreaker for me).
Mind you, the unit I had on demo is for sale at a nice price, and it does sound pretty cool.

So yeah, now I've got to figure out where all this fits into my Gear Roadmap™.
And probably find a bunch of cash under a rock to buy the 8816.
Gah.

Titles are boring

Sooo, I picked up my demo unit Dangerous D-box and Phoenix Audio Nicerizer from Darren in Studio Solutions on Friday. Is there anything better than new toys? I think not.
First impressions are positive, but also somewhat confusing.
I'm sticking to running 8 outputs for the moment, partly because I haven't been able to borrow another interface to run from my adat outs. In comparing the D-Box, Nicer and ITB mixes, I'm preferring the summed mixes every time. In comparing the D-box and Nicer, I'm hearing different results depending on the mixes I run through them, and it's not just related to the level I put into each box. On some mixes, the Nicer is adding some low end and smoothing out the highs a little, while also lending some saturated crunch to the midrange. This is a nice enough sound, but I'd be a little concerned that I wouldn't want it for every mix. Mind you, on some mixes there is little or no difference between the two.
Now, when monitoring through the D-box (that is, monitoring the analog summed signal before it goes back into the box) I'm hearing a lot more low level detail like reverb tails. At least, it's most obvious in that I'm hearing how things like reverb tails are going on for too long at some points in a song, or just are too long or the wrong sound in general. This is GOOD.
Only thing is, I'm not sure if it's the D-Box or summing in general that's getting me there - I think it may be because I'm using my RME ADI-2 to convert the summing box output to digital and running it back in to my interface. But I'm also clocking from the RME.
And I'm thinking it's the clocking that is improving the level of detail I'm hearing.

VERY interesting.
I will investigate further.
I'm also hoping to get my hands on one or two other demo units in the next few days, I'll report back with more observations, and maybe even some files.

In other news, Padraig's freshly analog summed mixes have been ftp'd to Golden, and Rifle Fire Rifle were over again last night. I've given them a few versions of Doppler with some arrangement edits they requested, so once they decide which they prefer, we'll have that baby wrapped up.

Peace.

Tweaks 'n Geeks.

Had another short session with Padraig to finish up his album. The only problem now is stopping myself from making little tweaks as I'm bouncing the songs down.
I did catch some ess-y vocals that I'd missed previously though, and I got a chance to fool around with using the URS CS Pro's de-esser preset (which is easily recreated with Dynamics III or similar - it's pretty much a compressor with a sidechain HPF set somewhere upwards of 4.5khz).
It does a pretty fine job of taming the esses without sucking the bright outta the vocal too much.
That and the uncontrollable urge to add a feedbacking delay outro spacenoise thing to the final song on the album aside, I battled the tweak-lust as manfully as I could.
The record is off to mastering with Golden in the next few weeks, hopefully.

Did attended mixing of the first Rifle Fire Rifle tune last night - I'd gotten the mix into pretty good shape, so it was mostly a case of tweaking a few bits here and there into place. We'll reconvene to finish it up in the next few days. The guys seem excited to be getting a first 'finished product', which is always a nice feeling.

The three Stoat tunes are ready for mix, so as soon as I can make the time, I'll be getting stuck into them too.
It looks like the long-awaited summing mixer shootout will be starting this weekend - a full report will follow!

Finishing touches

Had a (near) final tidy-up session with Padraig on Monday.
He had a few notes, so we ran through each song making a few tweaks here and there.
Everything seems to be in pretty good shape, so now it's a case of checking out the mixes on a bunch of different speaker systems to see what they can tell me.
Listening to it in the car last night, I was struck by difference in detail between the car stereo (which isn't a bad one) and my Focals. The car stereo kinda smoothed everything out and made things that really jump out of the mix on my monitors receed back quite a bit. Thank God for the Focals - at least they tell me what's actually going on.
Aside from tweaking the vocal up a touch in one or two songs, the 'consumer' stereos are great for getting a handle on what the low end is going to sound like in the real world. Most consumer stereos have a bump in the low end in and around 100hz to add some excitement, and knowing how your bass and kick drum will be affected is really valuable.
That low end is definitely the trickiest part of a mix to really nail, so I'll always try to get plenty of different perspectives on it.

Padraig's talking about mastering with Golden, which is great, home recorded stuff always benefits most from a really good mastering job - it's also a really good incentive for me to try to get things right! A bunch of Irish bands have used Golden recently with great results - Dudley Corporation, Nina Hynes, Jimmy Cake etc.
With the dollar where it is, and the ability to ftp the files back and forth, it makes a huge amount of sense to go to the US for mastering, particularly with the ease of access you get to really experienced professionals.

Update on the analog summing/gear lust situation..
I'm starting to lean towards the RollMusic Folcrom for that analog summing situation.
It's cheaper than the Dangerous D-Box but still has plenty going for it. Golden Age have them for 578 ex vat and shipping. I'm definitely gonna have to see if I can arrange a demo. It doesn't have the monitoring control/switching or built-in conversion of the D-Box, but then again it is half the price and sums 16 instead of 8 channels. Being able to use the mic pre of your choice for make-up gain and 'colour' is definitely a nice option, although my APIs are the only dudes I think I'd trust in that scenario.

I'm also (finally) demoing the URS Saturation plugin. They finally got around to releasing the PC version (although only for vst so far - I'm using the Fxpansion VST wrapper.. recommended, by the way) and so far, it's pretty sweet. Very nice on a parallel drum bus. Pretty good for giving DI bass a little grit and roughing up vocals where necessary.
I think I'm gonna go with their rental option - it's $200 to buy, but you can rent it by the month for $100, and when you've rented the full price worth, you own the plugin. Beautiful!