Back to front depth

[Luke Garfield]

Was doing the "compare my mix to something in the top 40" thing the other day. The "tone" of the mix, with a little eq, compression and limiting, was quite similar to the mixes I was comparing it too (after some tweaks and things of eq and compression) but I really noticed a lack of "back to front depth" in my own mixes, or at least that's the best way I would describe it.

Just wondering if this is an eq thing, a mixing in the "box" thing, a "I don't have a multimillion $$ facility to mix in" thing or a combination of all of the above and other elements.

Any thoughts?

[jkhuri44]

back to front.."depth"...is usually created with delay and reverb, and spacial eq (but as you said, maybe youve considered that).

typically as something moves away from you...a few things start happening...

highs drop off (Low Pass)
Use your low pass, or a high shelf and dip different elements you want to seem further away....obviously you cant go nuts with this, but combining this with other things...works well.

gradual dominance of reverberation (reverb wet dry mix)
it is best to combine different reverbs with different times for different elements on a mix. Drums usually like snare and kick are best with shorter reverbs.....solo's nice long ones....lead vocals (depends)....backing vox (long verbs)....bass (little or no verb....because of clarity).

in relation to a sound made, lets say on a beat....there is a greater delay in sounds made on the beat that are further away from the listening point to those made further away. I think delay times from 0 to 30 ms are those which you can use for depth, before you start hearing a real audible delay.
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There are pieces of tech like Roland RSS series...or the SDX 330...claim you can place sounds in 3d....there are other plugs by Waves as well that claim to spacialise the mix too....

[Luke Garfield]

Hmmm. Yeah I think I could definitely spend a little more time EQing the sounds. And possibly adjusting the arrangements in certain areas.

I am working with an acoustic guitar that is tuned down a tone but in standard tuning on the particular track I am refering too. I need to nut out some low frequency clashes with a percussion loop I am also using. This might "spacialise" the mix a little.

I think some "tight" subconcious delays may help as well. Althought I have got a sax and melodic acoustic guitar line which have a tape delay on them. I think some playing with the cut-off on the delay will help as well.

Sounds like I'm answering my own question here ;-). But I guess I was and still do wonder if the quality of AD/DA converters, the mix in the box approach and those sort of things affect the "3D quality" of a mix - eg will a mix done on an SSL have that back to front depth naturally or can you "fake it" in the box with careful EQ, arrangement, delays/reverbs and automation etc.

Where are the limits?

[jkhuri44]

well, i spose...there are emulators...that try and be those gooey wonderful things that cost heaps..

but from personal experience....generally...nice tube stuff which is on the transparent side tends to treat the high end real nice and give some of the space you probably want...

This might sound really dumb..or bleedingly obvious...but volume is a huge spacialiser....bring the volume down of those things you want distance might be something to try (althought it is obvious, hehe).

eqing sounds before they hit the convertor help alot so ive heard...lets say boosting the high highs above 20Khz...and a bit of the low lows.. that helps accentuate the realism and really make things sound natural.

youd be right in thinking awesome mastering limiters open stuff up alot as well...arsed if i knew which ones though.

If your mixing in the box....sending your tracks out through some good converters into a good tube compressor helps give that mojo your looking for in your mix...digital is a perfect environment, so all the cool imperfections in analog and tube gear arent really present, so its alooot harder to get the depth your looking for in the box unless you plan carefully ahead.

When you are micing...your mic placement also helps add space, front and back, and from side to side....if you miced everything fairly direct and now want lots of width...you'd have a pretty hard time...but micing with depth in mind is a really good idea if thats an integral part of what you wanna hear.

[davemc]

As said it helps a lot with what you use in the way in. A plugin 3D thingy a whats it is not going to make up from the fact your room has problems and your gear is made up of stuff audio mags said were great value for the $'s.
The 3D sound difference between using a nice neumann onto a neve compared to a rode into standard mbox pre is never coming back

[Andrew]

I'd just add maybe try recording in a different place as well, not necesarily a studio. and in saying that I'd just like to quantify that a good sounding studio will sound alot better than your average room for recording.

Watch the compression as well, to much loses dynamics.

Are you going direct or micing up? have you tried any mic's from a distance as well to catch the ambience?

[davemc]

Watch the compression as well, to much loses dynamics.

Yeah A lot of people do not know how to use compression correctly. Kill the transeints and make things small.

[Luke Garfield]

agreed about the capture of sounds.

Recently bought a TC Powercore Compact. I have found some plugins I have quite tasty on a good sound - I was quite surprised. The "character" plugin I was very dubious of but tastefully used it really brings out a vocal.

But I do agree whole-heartedly with the sentiments about front end. On a couple of projects I recently did I hired some neves and quad 8's for drums plus threw on my pair of telefunken 376's. I had one floor tom which was running through the presonus firepod pre and you could visually see that the waveform of the floor running through the quad 8 was full of stuff that the presonus pre wasn't. Same mics, both floors tuned well but the presonus pre was weak and piddley.

saving pennies or hiring seems to be part of the solution.

[davemc]

On another forum. Someone was going on about how the Beatles were recorded on primitive gear and with primitive technqiues. Where now a days you have cheap gear from China that is just so much advanced and you can do so much on a Computer with more then 4 tracks. Of course I retorted and said most of the gear they used is now worth big $'s, there techniques were better as they did not cut and paste takes together etc etc
I do not know some guys cannot understand what better gear gives you. I know a lot of home users really have not fine tuned there ears enough and belive if they have a plugin which has a nice GUI its the same as the real thing . As said every review you see of cheap gear always has the line "for the money". Although for some reason you do not see major recordings with a Studio projetcs mic into a be!@#$%^& real valve (he he) preamp..

I did a few gear shoots outs with musos there and a lot struggled to hear any difference between a stock 002 preamp and a API. These guys were looking to record at home now to avoid wasting time/money in studios as they have the latest plugins and presets they download from the net.
I do think some musos think a soundcard and mic makes you a engineer he he. I know a lot want to do most of it themselves now, although you need to understand things to do things.

[Luke Garfield]

My ears really started to open up with each new bit of gear I have bought (or hired ;-).

Got rid of the c-port, how did I ever mix anything on it? Got a presonus - wow listen to all that extra detail.

Got rid of my spirit absolute zeros bought a pair of quested vs2108's wow - now I can mix with some confidence and pull sounds with some confidence.

Tried a neve and M49 wow I don't have to try to hide the abrasive frequencies of the mic so much - and the experiences go on.

So what do I need to do next?? Probably get the diffusion off the side walls in the control room and put it at the back... and so on.

[davemc]

Yeah I brought a lot of gear before I looked at fixing the room.
Hindsight should of fixed the room so I could hear things first. If you cannot hear it you can not fix it :)
VS2108's nice speakers, just sold mine..

[heathen]

Depth of field in a recording does start in the idea of where do you want to be situated as the listener, I try to always think of a sound stage and being at a show when mixing, High freq's roll off with distance if somthing needs too sound distant roll off the high end a touch, close micing will increase the proximity effect making vox more intimate, richer and close sounding, making marshalls sound more grunty. This is where good micing techniques great gear (converters) and a good knowledge of psycoacoustic effects come into play, fooling the brain into believing what its hearing is in 3d, a real impression of spaciousness. Poor choices of heavy compression on the wrong sounds will usually destroy any chance of achieving great results of spaciouseness, I know I've done it heaps and have learnt to back way off.

[Luke Garfield]

Yeah the comps are fairly fine. i eased off the attack time and increased the release time to get rid of a little pumping in the acoustic guitar. Same with perc.

The guitar was recorded myself in the the control room. I have panels of wood block diffusers on 1 of the walls which I face into and had the acoustic mic'd with a rough stereo pair as it is the "basis" for the chordal element of the track. The perc. loop was well recorded in a studio and sounds very tasty by itself but as I mentioned before the acoustics bottom end and the loop are fighting.

I think what I am hearing is a limitation of the tools I'm working with. In particular the "summing" of the parts.

And I can always refine my skills in mixing ;-).

[Chinagraf]

Depth can also be achieved during the recording process. Maybe try not close micing everything. Back off a couple of feet and let some air get into the sound.

[Peter Knight]

If you're recording stuff yourself (as opposed to mixing someone elses recordings) it helps to think about things in terms of your vision of the final mix - i.e. I usually like rock drums to sound big and "up in the back" of the mix image. How would I approach this in recording? For me a room mic about 3 feet from the drums and smashed through a Distressor in Nuke mode works wonders for making the drums sound big without adding reverb.

Now if you regularly mix stuff that you didn't track, you would need to start developing methodologies to allow you to place the tracks wherever you want to in the aggregate mix. Like sample reinforcement for example.

[Luke Garfield]

Funny that the last two post are exactly what I realised last night as I was working on some mixes.

I was doing a track that was 1/2 recorded by someone else (drums & bass) and the rest guit, trom, sax, trumpet and vocals which were recorded by myself.

Drums are great because they gave me lots of options. Room mics & cymbal mics giving me options for some air.

The horns + sax I mic'd with some air inbetween are sitting very nicely and have lots of punch.

Guitars which I mic'd 2 or 3 ft back still needed a short ambience mostly just to round off the some narkiness. The sounds aren't my favourite to begin with, a tele through a rivera for a modern rock/ska sound - not really cutting it for me. Clean is beautiful but dirty is a bit nasty.

All in all the mix is really happening. Punch and good image.

Went on to mix another track which I have done most of the arranging and instrumentation for. I put some tambourine in which was semi close mic'd but a fair bit of room got in there anyway. It really sits back there nicely and voila! some space.

So I think I'm getting much more of the idea. It's not just good sounds but the room and how much you let in there when recording. Decent pre's also make a massive difference. What do you know, I've got some new perspective on tracking and mixing. Thanks to all those who have contributed.

[mark rachelle]

what gear are you using?

for good space i think (apart from room and distance mikings)
reverbs only go so far

don't underestimate the power of delays into reverbs for a nore infinite spacial sound scape
also good signal to noise with a hi quality analog board and top rande FX is the only way for truely great manufactured sound depth

that is one of the reaesons why mixes are so dry today

people don't have access to great reverbs in the box
and the sound feild is quite a bit smaller with an in the box mix

convolutions are fine but they don't work like the classics for bands
very good for classical though IMO

also if you are mixing in the box try printing your mix into say 8 or 12
stereo stems with fx on them
so record each stem one at a time muting every other parts/voices in the computer not being bounced at that time so that you are recording with the minimum stress on your computer

record all the bounced stems in this way

then all you need to do is put the stems back in with the mixing side of you computer all at unity gain
your mix should sound the same but this time without the stress on the computer
you should have a lot more depth and have a lot better listening experience

the computer is alot less stressed and able to deal with depth of feild far better and you have a multi track master of stems that will stand the test of software/hardware upgrades for a lot longer than a mix session with all its edits and plugins

[rick]

i dont want to break you heart luke but i get mixes here by guys done with the simpliest of gear that sound amazing with really good spatial cues and some ssl mothers that sound pretty lame and of course the other way around as well ( more often)

places to look are in this order are

arrangement of song
choice of instruments
tone of instruments
miking of instruments

amount of silence in the track :)

then
look at your mix and your gear /computer

last place to look is in your reverb

[Chris H]

There are all the things others have listed but, depending on how you are recording of course, the things that work for me most are the use of room mics and spill and doing the rythm section as a performance with guide vox, even when playing to a click or backing trax. Also mic an instrument that will sit further back in the mix with a close and a distant mic and adjust in the mix to get it sounding right. One mic is too hit and miss forme to pre judge and nail this.

[Peter Knight]

Guitars which I mic'd 2 or 3 ft back still needed a short ambience mostly just to round off the some narkiness. The sounds aren't my favourite to begin with, a tele through a rivera for a modern rock/ska sound - not really cutting it for me. Clean is beautiful but dirty is a bit nasty.

Have a listen to the Slipperman Distorted Guitars Thread mate. One of the coolest things I got out of his thread was this:

(a) get an analogue eq with sweepable high and low pass filters, because this trick doesn't seem to work with plugins, not for me anyway

(b) for maximum effect (this will make the guitar really tiny) sweep the LP filter down past 6k, maybe even down to 3k, depends on the filter slope. Sounds a bit dull, doesn't it. But not nasty.

(c) do a narrow band boost way above the LP filter. Maybe up 18 or 20k and maybe 15dB of gain to get a bit of brightness back.

(d) you might now want to add a bit of midrange, 2 to 3.5k to focus the sound around that area rather than up in the HF.

Have fun with that. One of the coolest things I learnt this year by far!

[Peter Knight]

also if you are mixing in the box try printing your mix into say 8 or 12
stereo stems with fx on them
so record each stem one at a time muting every other parts/voices in the computer not being bounced at that time so that you are recording with the minimum stress on your computer

record all the bounced stems in this way

then all you need to do is put the stems back in with the mixing side of you computer all at unity gain
your mix should sound the same but this time without the stress on the computer
you should have a lot more depth and have a lot better listening experience

I suppose it's good that I have to do this anyway on my 001 running at 1GHz!

Or maybe not.... :lol:

[Luke Garfield]

Mark - Never thought of seperate reverb tracks. Makes sense though. I know what you mean about the lack of decent reverbs in the box. I am going to buy an external unit for tracking vocals which I hope to use for mixes as well. Delays are what I like, tape in particular.

Rick - I know I know ;-). I have heeded your advice about my "please just give me a bloody breath" arrangements. I'm even muting parts now!! And after listening to top 40 mixes I can really hear how the arrangements do play such a crucial role. I actually think that it's quite impressive how relatively simple the techniques they use to unclutter the mix and get to the point are. Point taken.

Chris - I know what u mean. I've taken to recording vocals with a room mic eq'd, fiddle with phase, maybe some compression or even a little overdrive for a rock track. I really like the blend you can get by mixing it in there. Throw on some delay for certain sections of the song.
Depending on the desired "sound" I've also been recording bands in the same room with some baffles in place which is working really well - everything just seem to fit so much better.

Peter - Like the sound of that guitar thing. will give it a go on that ska track I think.

[Linear]

I'd have to agree with lots said here.

Recently (another story...) I recorded a band with my 'engineers' hat on. So I spent most of my time getting the sounds right, making sure everyone was comfortable, and that what they were describing I'd be able to achieve 'soundwise'.

Now I generally don't like playing the role of 'mr producer', however this band wanted a particular type of 'sound' and they just weren't getting it. The band started questioning the room, the mic selection, the pre's, the recording format (not in a bad way, just questioning)...

So anyway. I knew what the problem was, they wanted space and room and depth on their recording, but everyone was playing everyting too loud all the time. Crash cymbals through the whole chorus, and on every bar of the verse. Guitars with bad intonation going through digital amps that sounded terrible.

So I asked them if they wanted my honest opinion, to give them the sound they wanted.

So we ended up making these changes:

- I sent them to lunch and fixed the intonation on their guitars;
- Changed their amps to normal 'tube' amps;
- Removed 2 of the 4 crash cymbals;
- Lost the 5 string bass and got the tried and tested fender/ampeg combo;

I told the drummer to hit the crash max 4 times for the whole song, and switch to the floor tom (rather than an open hat) during the verses. The guitars were turned down, and they didn't both play all the way through the song.

The bass player also started concentrating on the root note of the song, keeping with the kick rather than playing (my words) 'too many notes'.

All of a sudden, the band had what they were after and I didn't have to move or change a single mic or pre. And the band were happy with the result.

So even though I love the gear, even I'm starting to realise that it's not all about the gear...

Chris

[Ausrock]

Damn Chris, reading that story just about had me on the floor laughing as you described the drummer I have in at the moment "to a tee".

This afternoon I actually started jotting down random thoughts...........so far I have:

1) Room to breath

2) Every instrument doesn't need to be played every second of a song

3) Dynamics in individual performances can lead to better dynamics within the song.


Anyone else care to add to the list..............?

ChrisO

[jkhuri44]

yeh...

on the topic of performance...

with drummers....if you can get a drummer to "mix themselves" (play the drums so that what they hear in their heads is the right volume)...you can usually get away very nicely just recording with stereo overheads and a kick mic (maybe snare mic just in case).

That micing combo doesnt apply all the time i dont think, but in sections where other instruments are chilled out...a stripped back micing combo can bebrought up....that really increases space...

Now..good luck finding a drummer that hits their snares, toms and kicks hard but eases off on ALL cymbals...lol!

[jkhuri44]

going along with what Chris (linear) was talking about...

i just recently bought myself some George L guitar cable...cut to length...
and i have to say, the quality of sound going from the guitars and bass I am recording now...is instantly better....no honking midrange...highs that i never knew a guitar had....just a pro sound straight away....not to mention the dynamics, even under heavy distortion....heaaaps less hum and noise (the amp was actually silent when the guitarist wasnt playing).

Usually some guitarists, or bassists, no matter how good there rig is sometimes forget or dont think about leads being important...

but wow, big big difference, hehe