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Sampling Rates and Distortion

So this brings to mind a really good example to, um you are not using your bitten sampling, right? Right. So one of the things I like to impress on everybody is that plug in power, one of the other ways you could save it. So, you know, we talked about the dsp there's hardware buffer sizes. In fact, if we go to the pro tools, I'll explain this real quick. So what I did to try to get it so this would play is under playback engine. The higher this has set, the more plug in power you have the higher your cpu usage, a lit bit is set, the more plug in power you have. As you can see, I have these both said as high as possible, and it was still glitch ing because there's a whole ton of pockets on this. Um so what a point I want to make here is if you've exhausted all those things, the other thing you could do is you can track if we could go back to the key, though, for a second week in track at forty eight kilohertz or you could mix it forty eight kilohertz and that will preserve your plug pow...

er would I suggest everybody, though, because it sounds so much better, is that you should truck at eighty eight two point kilohertz if you can while you track your song if you could get away with mixing your saw, get eighty to eighty eight point two kilohertz. It'll sound dramatically better. I don't care what anybody says if you can't hear higher sampling frequencies, there's a problem with your monitoring or your years it's noticeable, sad. I think all plug ins operate better because the bath is designed at eighty eight two in ninety six and I think that they tend to sound better whenever I have mixed things at forty four point one killers or forty eight, they just don't have the same, because as I think that this is really like one of those things that is really, really important to getting a high quality product but is also not necessary. I'm master tons of things for people that come in at forty eight kilohertz all the time. But this is the one thing I will say is do not make music at forty four point one killers forty eight and forty four one take up the same amount of plug in power and forty eight sounds much, much, much better. Twenty four bit sounds much, much better than sixteen never record never mix it anything but twenty four bit and if you have the option for thirty two bit forward and all those fund things like I thinkyou basie that has sixty four at this point I think that might be a little excessive because you're converters can't handle sixty four bit most properly but twenty four bit and thirty two bit are awesome and they don't eat that much up of your dsp, but so the one thing I will say is if you track at eighty eight two or ninety six ninety six I think is especially good for working out the box eighty eight to a lot of people like to think of it as if you're working in the box, you want to do even math and when you go down to a wave for putting it on the internet, they're gonna wanna sixty but forty four one wave and it's even math instead of forty ninety six kilohertz going to forty for what is not chopping the math and half and supposedly it's a worse process? I trust them because it's about the same thing, so I just do eighty eight to if I work in the box or ninety six of our working out of the box um but no matter what you don't want to do forty four point one towards just because there's no there's no benefit to it aside from smaller file sizes and even that is so negligible with how big everybody's hard drives are for cheap these days, you are compressing when you should be distorting. So we've been kind of had to get this all day, and I've been showing some examples of when you see my mixes, you don't see that many compressors on, and I think this is the case for a lot of people would die. One of the things that always struck me when I was coming up when I'd read interviews with the mixers I really enjoyed is they talk about how they don't compressed as much as they get older, and I found the same thing to be for me. I find the same thing to be true for almost everybody I know is that yes, we do compress I mean there's, not a room like I've ever met that hasn't gotten, at least to tbe compression, never mind. Ten there's not a vocal I've ever met that I've put zero d b of compression on, with very rare exception, but the one thing I want to impress upon you is that I think a lot of time with people are when they first hear sounds that they're going. I should compress this, I want it more warm and you get used to as you play with compressors. The sound of the distortion they bring, especially at high compression vice, is that you want that harmonic excitement distortion, especially if you're tracking with cheap mike pries and really clean like pre as you say, I want that distortion. So what I would argue is if you want that distortion, but you don't want the pumping that compression gives, why not just distort? So what I think is a great example of this is just like, you know, in general what you could see this mix, we're backto nobody does this everybody's cool? Um, what you can see on this mix, if I go particularly to the drums, is that this is all going toe one compressor this parallel comm pressure that this is just drums, the symbols are not going to their own comm parallel compression, I've actually turned off the room because it didn't end up working for this song, but everything has this distortion except for my high hat mike and, you know, I can't remember backto why that was, but would I want usually, especially like a snare is a great example, so let's put, um, it's so out there when I first hear the stair with nothing on it it sounds a little life this of thirty so obviously I'm using a gate to get rid of sub of odd the bleed because the other thing about distortion is it brings up the bleed um I'm using the transient decider again let's actually look at how you know I'm not even using I just turned it on and I probably didn't turn it off at some point but I am distorting it a lot so let's hear the difference between that so obviously we here that's a lot of life and excitement that comes into it so to give another example uh the guitars of this song have a good amount of fab filter saturday I see my mixes it about forty two percent it's yet to get one of those things that yes while I'm doing a little bit of multi band compression what's called that a lot of multi about compression so he don't mince words here that I still felt since this is a really clean multi big pressure if anything this is like for frequency control it's keeping the guitar out of the way the vocal which we'll talk a lot about tomorrow that I still wanted some harmonic excitement that's mostly because we track these guitars were really, really cleaned mike preempt we didn't go through a really hard driven transformer might preempt it's a discreet preempt and I tend to like that and want the control over it so here's the difference with us and in my eyes a lot of the time what I used to do is to get that excitement distortion I compressed on the one product that depression is depending on how you did the attack at a release here all of a sudden getting really hard pickets you're getting all this dynamic you get it before you get that about a distortion you might be starting to make the sound side spotting instead of punchy this distortion allows you to keep that pudge and if anything sometimes accentuate that pudge without having to manipulate all of the south so what I'd love if you're one of those people that's always put compressors on things that not distortion plug ins on things is remember this that a lot of your favorite mixers especially we're talking about an ss l g which got the ss lg among other things to be famous is that what a lot of these big mixers would do is they'd go to the wind and put where the signal comes in the consulate and they turn that wide up in put in until it started to crackle and distort a little bit and that was part of the ssl sound people love and it's the same thing with an iv is that people love turning up that line and put on the or turning up the mike pre and getting something same thing with an a p I all this gear you're drooling over is because of the way it distorts that when people mix on it they could turn up that distortion and make it get character it's you do not have to use a compressor while still getting that excitement and warmth and harmonics that you want in a sound um so that's basically the essence off how I choose to do it I basically just compress what I wanted fattened something up bring more sustained to it changed the attack but if I just wanted to be more harmonic and warm and I'm looking for that sound I go to a distortion because it's just not as altering as a compressor is to be the other crucial thing I'll say with these compressors that we looked at with all of the mother it's um the air distortion or the fab filters the crucial thing is the mix that all of these sound absolutely terrible when there are one hundred percent mix blend them in suddenly and even when they're all the way up like I'll give you an example it's not that distorted it's distorted for sure but it's not so crazy you know of a setting that like it annihilated if it was all the way up these air really subtle, subtle distortions that air just heard god suddenly accumulating to obey bigger, more cohesive sound so you aren't making a proper comparison for your picks so one of the things were really going to get into after this next break is how you choose songs to compare teo and all that that fun stuff but the one thing is is that also odds are even if you're a solo artist, you wanna play your music what do your friends who also plays music your significant other your manager somebody you want to impress and get some feedbacks them the one thing about playing your mix to them is you want them to be able to compare it to other things and especially if they're here get out of their own system they're going to make a comparison whether you know it or not. So part of that becomes is that when you make a mix you have to do a small amount of loudness maximization so people have something compared to compare this to, um basically if you don't put loud despite your mixes me so quiet you're going to say, why can't they turn up the volume up? The reason they're not going to turn the volume knob is because they're just trying to do something else while there was some there, so they're probably checking your email, their email, they're patting their dog they're doing something else looking at tumbler like fin all day you know what do you call it dot so the key I want to make to use get a little bit of loudness on there I'm not saying put sixty b of loudness sosa's allowed is your favorite loud record but least get it so it's hitting a dvd or so so they could at least hear your mix at a volume that has somewhat calmer because otherwise all the feedback you're going to get especially if you're mixing for other people is why isn't our mixes loud? Is this record wise not save them the breath show them that you're professional and now the other thing comes to this is for listening with you when you start to a b your song you have to find a way to value match. One of the things I showed in the last class is that I use a view meter you could get these for ninety nine cents for any smartphone if you just type in v u meter to the app store and it will tell you how loud you're listening you hit play on your speakers you want to get it to a certain volume and make sure the other tracks of the same vibes here making a proper comparison if you're not doing that proper comparison it's even off by a couple d b you're going to be turning up things that don't need to be turned up turning down things that don't looking to bring out details that are already two apparent you need to establish a proper evaluation. And if you're listening at other volumes, you're going to be always chasing something that's. Not there. It's. So crucial for making smart decisions, just like we're talking about with doing the acute for the bastard bus. This is another one of those things that if you're not comparing things at the same volume, you're going to make bad comparisons. Because, as we know, when we're doing like deby, cuts of, like, a d, b and a half all the time. Two things. If you're mixes and matched with a debate, a half, you're hearing that. Hi, ed, totally different than the other track is that you're comparing to.