Sonar - The Barbarian

[MarkE]

(Primarily for MarkD)

I'm posting this only for informational purposes. This is a screen capture (reduced) of the Sonar screen for The Barbarian that I just mixed out. I wanted to post this to discuss clipping.

The various tracks run horizontally across the screen. You can see that #8 is MarkD's new drum track, and #9 is the clean bass track. If you look closely and compare the two waveforms you can see that the drum track peaks get flattened (clipped) at the tops. This indicates an over driven input while recording.
The bass track doesnt have this, in fact its a lot lower in volume. Almost too low. If the signal is too low, you can compensate in Sonar by amplifying it a little. Problem with doing that is that if there is any noise on the signal like 60HZ hum or hiss, you will be amplifying that also.

If you look just to the left of the waveform you will see a little ruler indicating db. The best place to be is about -6db. The bass is a little low. If you have some sort VU or level meter, try not to exceed -6db by very much while recording. If you only have a peak indicator, like an LED, if its calibrated correctly it will indicate at 6db usually.

Even though Mark's drum track didnt have any audio problems, clipping like this causes some fidelity loss, and distortion if driven higher.

I forgot to mention, the reason you see two waveforms on each track is stereo left and right.

MTR's (like MarkD's Roland) are fantastic single box multi-track recorders but a disadvantage is that most of them will not allow you to see signal clipping like this. Usually you can only see it while recording, in the form of a "peak" or "clipping" indicator of some sort.



http://www.thehawkstudio.com/picts/TheBarbarian-Sonar-1100.jpg


When put through a mild compression, signals like this even out quite nicely.
Software programs like Cakewalk and Sonar allow you to see the signal painted on the screen while you are recording, so avoiding clipping is easy.
On the other side of the coin, MTR's have many advantages over a PC driven system. I have those listed in an article on HSP if interested.

MarkE

[babayaga]

Hi All.

There's another side to this as well....you really could do with two heads (ala Zaphod Beeblebrox) when recording on occasions - one to play the instrument and concentrate on the performance, the other watching the mixing desks, screens, hardware recorders etc.

When I'm recording someone else (check out the tracks I did for my mates 'The Good Intentions') I'm hunched over the desks and watching the screens for the slightest blip. When you're recording live performance the clipping, as Mark quite rightly pointed out, shows on the warning LED's on the mixing desk and also against the level meters when recording into Sonar.

However, take the clean TAP vox file I sent over... okay it was done in a bit of a rush (I was a bit excited about getting the track finished for goodness' sake... my first track recorded with EMP and also my Sandra's favourite ELP track of all time! :-) ), but admittedly I should have taken a bit more care. One of the disadvantages when doing that was I actually recorded the vocal outside the studio on the upstairs landing, and couldn't actually see the PC or the desks while recording. I did this because the PC that does all the work is exposed on the top of a cabinet, and the noise from it would have been picked up by the main studio mike I'm using.

This is possible due to the fact that Sonar has a feature whereby you can highlight a section of a track and 'punch-record' your performance - the track plays as usual, allowing you time to get yourself together and then it records within that particular section - overlaying whatever was there before. This is great stuff and entirely useful, but if the track is overdriven etc. you have to tweak the desks / level settings, delete the bit you've just done, and then record again.

However, today I've recorded the 'Father Xmas' vocals within the studio itself. I've been constructing a vocal booth over the past couple of weeks, and used one side of this - placed between the PC and the mike - to reduce the sound of the PC fans etc to an acceptable level. This allowed me to watch the desk and make sure that the vocal was recorded as cleanly as possible in the -6db zone. A few rogue peaks that could have caused problems later on when effects were applied were highlighted and the gain on them reduced a bit. This evened the track out when I normalised the gain across the whole track, making the vocal volume consistent throughout. I'm currently applying this to the guitar tracks I've recorded for the piece.

Sorry to ramble but I thought I'd put in my own experience of things. Over-driven audio is perhaps only useful when you play loud hip-hop, thrash metal or other stuff that personally I don't give a centimetre of dingoe's kidneys for.

Quality rock.... nuff said! Cheers - G.

[MDDRUMZ]

Thanks for this very helpful overview. You're right about the challenges of setting proper levels with the kit. I'm turning around to look at the Roland while striking the various drums/cymbals, and tweaking the input. Then I'm probably actually hitting much harder during the actual recording. So I guess the burning questions is...can you still work with it? From your message below, it sounds like you have a way to alleviate the problem.

Is the remix cliping more or same as my initial track. I have a feeling that because The Barbarian was one of the first numbers I recorded on the Roland, I was most likely clueless about setting good levels and the clipping probably originated there.

Have you looked at the more recent recordings under this view (Bouree or even Pirates). I would like to know if the problem persists so I can avoid any repeats on upcoming recordings.

Thanks again for the detailed post.

MarkD.

[MarkE]

Jeez Mark, Im sorry I missed responding to this.
No, your tracks are just great. There is no distortion whatsoever. Ijust thought you and the others might like to see the audio mapped out like that.
No, with your recording you could actually go a db or two higher before the dreaded distortion happens. That gives you a little head room for harder drum hits.

You are in a perfect place now.....as much signalas possible without distorting. The Barbarian drum tracks was awesome. The only place that it really clipped a little was right at the end. You can see the flat peaks. There were no problems with the audio though. It blended quite nicely.

[MarkE]

Another cool thing to note about the sonar pic above is track automation. On the clean bass track you will see a blue and red line on the waveform. The blue line is volume, and the red is panning (L&R)

You can notice that Im taking the blue line (volume) and decreasing it rapidly right around the time you make the last cymbal hit. This gives the bass a fast fade out.

The red line is at center which means panning is set in the middle. I could easily reshape this line to swing the signal to the left or right speaker. This is how I did TAP's guitar.
These lines are known as track envelopes. There are other track envelopes to control effects like eq and reverb.

Pretty cool stuff.

Morning all.

I agree with MarkE... the drum tracks that came from MD yesterday for IBIFC were spot on. The percussion one especially needed hardly anything doing to it apart from adding a bit of reverb.

I did however apply a pan envelope to it to separate out the individual percussion elements. If you listen very closely the sleighbells and tambourine are situated one slightly left, one slightly right in the mix. This gives a nice impression of a 3D quality to the mix which otherwise defaults around the centre.

G.

[MDDRUMZ]

Graham's mention of shifting around the panning for sleighbells and tambourine is a perfect example for which I can apply a question that has been bugging me for some time. But first let me give you guys an idea of how I've been mixing the drum/percussion tracks into a single stereo WAV file. I typically set the pans for the individual microphones placed around the kit and as much as possible, have tried to place them where I hear them in the original. In a nutshell, the two overheads are to the left and right respectively, the four tom mics pan across the mix and the snare and bass are near center. I prefer to have that "artistic license", if you will,when it comes to the overall kit, b/c I am on the (neverending) quest to achieve that satisfactory signature drum sound when I'm using the full kit on some of the ELP tunes that call for it (e.g. Pirates). As MarkE can attest, the early drum recordings on a smaller kit were much less sophisticated and everything dead center, which is what led me to re-mix them more recently.

But when it comes to supplementing multiple percussion tracks within the mix, I've been using my judgement. On IBFC, there were several percussive elements and the majority were sounding separate from any other sound. One exception was the second chorus, where both sleighbells and tambourine were sounding. When I mixed the track, I believe I assigned the bells to a pan of ~L30 and the tambourine close to center. Graham then assigned that clip from the song to a specific pan setting and I believe, somehow separated the two instruments and assigned tambourine elsewhere. So here's my question. If I send you a stereo track with snare at R10 and bass at R20, and you assign the track to L35 for example, what happens to my pan settings. Are the two instruments still 10 pan settings apart from one another, but justified to the newley assigned pan (i.e. snare L35 and bass L25)?

Moving forward, I think it may make your production tasks easier if we interface RE: percussion tracks during the mixing process. If you guys decide that a certain percussion instrument isn't fitting in the pan setting where I have it assigned, or want it stereod, etc., I can remix it with the corrected settings/configuration rather than having you guys filtering out instruments from one another like the sleighbells and tambourine in IBFC. You guys have enough to deal with during production, the least I can do is give you a worry free drum mix that simply needs the desired effects added during production. Oh, and speaking of, I may want to discuss the potential use of minimal pre-production effects on certain elements of the kit during recording, namely the snare. I think my failure to employ this may be part of the reason that I'm having such difficulty acheiving the snare sound I'm striving for without the rest of the kit suffering. But we can cross that bridge if I've ever felt that I've reached an impasse with the drum mix on a particular song. So far I've tolerated what I've been able to come up with but I think there's definite room for improvement and I'll keep working on it.

I look forward to your replies regarding this. Thanks in advance :)

[MarkE]

Mark
I am honestly no expert on micing a drum kit but I believe that if you have the michrophones and panning setup as you described, there should be nothing to do in production. if one of the sounds gets lost to another instrument in one side of the stereo, then we can simply reverse left and right during production for the drums or move the offending instrument to the other side.

I also believe that the scenerio that you describe, the instruments will still be 10 pan settings apart. Ill think on this some more.

I dont believe that the pan settings on the drums should be touched during production, except for possibly swapping left and right.
Your later drum mixes are dead on my friend.