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Frequency loss / low end mushy... Digital 'clock' related ??
I need some serious help here....
Regulars probably know something about how my reluctance to dive into all digital HD recording has impeded my experience level. cough-cough Being recently forced to mix a project in an all digi environment with no house engineer and a number of stumbling blocks to overcome, I am inclined to re-evaluate what was done there and I could use some advice before making any recommendations to the client - who has already blown the vast majority of his budget and needs product in his hands for summer sales. I have posted two, one minute(+) clips of a song on my web site to provide you a comparison test from which I would appreciate your input. (Links below). I won't take the time to re-hash the entire experience unless asked, but it has come to my attention that the resulting mixes all suffer from a serious loss of upper mid & lower high frequency content, as well as a mushiness to the low end, and that this may have been caused by clocking or other sync oriented issues. The original source material was recorded at home by the client on ADAT at 16bit, 44.1K. Before arriving in Montana, the studio which the client had chosen to use agreed to dump the tracks onto an Alesis HD-24 prior to the mix dates. When we arrived there, the tracks had been dumped at 16 / 48k. The tools used were a Sony DMX-r100 (clock source), the HD-24 controlled by an Alesis BRC, and an Alesis Masterlink. In the path before the Masterlink was a TC Finalizer. These were all digitally integrated. After being handed the manuals and wished "good luck" by the studio owner, at the end of the first day the machines were finally talking to one another. The DMX-r100 had to be completely reconfigured from a rec/mix session some two months earlier. The Finalizer could not be removed from the chain by order of the owner, and the Masterlink had no GUI peripherals. The Finalizer was supposedly set up only for limiting to avoid clipping of the Masterlink and nothing else... I took his word for that and tried to stay out of soft limiting while mixing. The BRC had to be pitched down to control the HD-24 at 44.1K. The desk was reset to send clock at that frequency as well, and so *finally* after reconfiguring the routing as well, the audio cleared up and was free of the obvious timing errors and the mix ensued. Please note that monitoring through the desk during mixdown and during playback from the Masterlink, did *NOT* reveal the severe degradation of the audio that was actually taking place. I cannot explain the resulting loss of frequency content. I took my own monitors and phones and three of us were involved in the mix. None of the resulting symptoms became noticeable until we had left the building with the final mixes. The degradation was not discernable, even on play- back while on this equipment. We were able to leave with only a DAT backup of the unedited Masterlink files and an audio CD created by the Masterlink. (The Masterlink was not set up with a monitor and essentially was just a box in the rack). Now that we are listening to the mixes and realizing how dramatically different they are from the studio, I have to make a recommendation of some sort to the client. My first thoughts (other than shock and humiliation) were that the product could be repaired in mastering, cleaning up the mushy bass and adding some 1.6 to 3Khz or so for clarity. There are 13 songs which all suffer exactly the same symptoms. After requesting the original ADATs and re-mixing one song here at home, I think there may have been serious problems with the interfacing and likely my operation of the gear. I'd appreciate any input from folks with experience in these matters, as could pertain to this frequency loss which was invisible in the studio. Please keep in mind that in the re-mix, I made no attempt to add clarity in any shape, form or fashion. I tried to use the same cut-only EQ schemes and cut considerably more high end than I did in the all digi studio. Sample 1 - the original all digi mix.... MPEG-1 Layer 3, 44100 Hz, Stereo, CBR 256 kbps http://www.m-a-m-s.com/WESTERN_LAND_I_LOVE-Test.mp3 Sample 2 - the analogue remix.... MPEG-1 Layer 3, 44100 Hz, Stereo, CBR 256 kbps http://www.m-a-m-s.com/WESTERN_LAND_...REMIX-Test.mp3 What could have gone wrong here?? Recommendations? Things to avoid or look out for in the future? TIA, -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com Morgan Audio Media Service Dallas, Texas (214) 662-9901 _______________________________________ http://www.artisan-recordingstudio.com |
#2
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David Morgan \(MAMS\) wrote:
The DMX-r100 had to be completely reconfigured from a rec/mix session some two months earlier. The Finalizer could not be removed from the chain by order of the owner, and the Masterlink had no GUI peripherals. The Finalizer was supposedly set up only for limiting to avoid clipping of the Masterlink and nothing else... I took his word for that and tried to stay out of soft limiting while mixing. Odds are much of your problem has to do with the Finalizer. It will change the sound even when bypassed, I am sorry to report. Please note that monitoring through the desk during mixdown and during playback from the Masterlink, did *NOT* reveal the severe degradation of the audio that was actually taking place. Were you using the analogue output of the Masterlink for monitoring, and did you have any of the DSP functions of the Masterlink engaged accidentally? That would be my number two suspicion, behind the Finalizer. If you have something engaged on the digital output and not the analogue output, you may not have been hearing the degradation even though it was going to tape. I cannot explain the resulting loss of frequency content. I took my own monitors and phones and three of us were involved in the mix. None of the resulting symptoms became noticeable until we had left the building with the final mixes. The degradation was not discernable, even on play- back while on this equipment. It's not a clock issue. There is some processing going on. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
#3
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"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message ... Thanks for the response.... Were you using the analogue output of the Masterlink for monitoring, Yes... by way of phones, but I'm not certain about playback through the console. Whichever it was, playback audibly matched record... which leads me to think this could have been an analogue even though the record chain was definitely all digi. and did you have any of the DSP functions of the Masterlink engaged accidentally? Possibly. After spending 3/4 of a day reading the HD-24 and Sony DMX-r100 manuals and configuring the work flow, I admittedly took the owner's word as to the settings on the Finalizer. I had never before used *any* of this gear. I assumed that peak limiting only wouldn't be detrimental and never looked seriously at the Finalizer beyond that possibility... after all, things sounded fine and I had the owner's assurance it was nothing more than limiting (though I don't know now why I trusted that after coming to the earlier realization that he could neither configure or efficiently operate his own gear). That would be my number two suspicion, behind the Finalizer. If you have something engaged on the digital output and not the analogue output, you may not have been hearing the degradation even though it was going to tape. Crappola. :-( I cannot explain the resulting loss of frequency content. I took my own monitors and phones and three of us were involved in the mix. None of the resulting symptoms became noticeable until we had left the building with the final mixes. The degradation was not discernable, even on play- back while on this equipment. It's not a clock issue. There is some processing going on. It must be something related to the digi domain that I failed to consider from lack of experience. I may have to recommend a complete re-mix, but the client has blown his wad on these dates and flying me to Montana and back. There's barely enough money left for mastering and a short run of discs. It's pretty humiliating to think I may have to say, "We just didn't hear it", and expect that to go over well. Would you think that decent mastering could remedy the problems ? -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s dot com http://www.artisan-recordingstudio.com |
#4
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"David Morgan (MAMS)" wrote:
I need some serious help here.... Hmmm ... do you realize how interesting that talk radio in the background is? Regulars probably know something about how my reluctance to dive into all digital HD recording has impeded my experience level. cough-cough I don't read you closely enough then, please accept my apology, but I was not optimally prepared for someone to post something about audio. Being recently forced to mix a project in an all digi environment with no house engineer and a number of stumbling blocks to overcome, Allow me to put forth that the client should perhaps not pay for product development and design, but rather for the service ordered and hopefully rendered. I am inclined to re-evaluate what was done there and I could use some advice before making any recommendations to the client - who has already blown the vast majority of his budget and needs product in his hands for summer sales. David, I don't know all about the exact wording of your deal with the client, but redoing things may not be fairly billable. I have posted two, one minute(+) clips of a song on my web site to provide you a comparison test from which I would appreciate your input. (Links below). First a bit of typing while I listen. I won't take the time to re-hash the entire experience unless asked, I'm ignorant enough to not be able to fairly comment on all detail. but it has come to my attention that the resulting mixes all suffer from a serious loss of upper mid & lower high frequency content, as well as a mushiness to the low end, and that this may have been caused by clocking or other sync oriented issues. Whatever it is, it is a "you're dead", as grave as when I was unable to deliver a CD on time to catch the trumpet player prior to his plane leaving because of a compatibility issue between my Sony 2000 and my DiO 2448 leading to strange distortion. The original source material was recorded at home by the client on ADAT at 16bit, 44.1K. Before arriving in Montana, the studio which the client had chosen to use agreed to dump the tracks onto an Alesis HD-24 prior to the mix dates. When we arrived there, the tracks had been dumped at 16 / 48k. Strange choice to go for two times sample rate conversion, assuming the end product is 44.1 anyway. I occasionally record on 48-16 because the treble is better at the cost of a loss of spatial detail in sample rate conversion, but such a trade-off does not seem to apply here. The tools used were a Sony DMX-r100 (clock source), the HD-24 controlled by an Alesis BRC, and an Alesis Masterlink. In the path before the Masterlink was a TC Finalizer. These were all digitally integrated. I know the sound of a couple of Finalizer models, they dull the sound ever so slightly, almost only audible as a loss of background spatial detail, not really obvious on foreground audio, even in bypass mode. After being handed the manuals and wished "good luck" by the studio owner, at the end of the first day the machines were finally talking to one another. It would be incompetent to try to comment on this. The DMX-r100 had to be completely reconfigured from a rec/mix session some two months earlier. The Finalizer could not be removed from the chain by order of the owner, and the Masterlink had no GUI peripherals. The Finalizer was supposedly set up only for limiting to avoid clipping of the Masterlink and nothing else... Yeees, but what kind of limiting? - it is a very capable thingie, could it have been set to produce something that fits say FM preemphasis no matter how much treble is thrown at it? - I haven't checked the difference between the files with any exactness, but it appears to be something like a first order roll-off at 7.5 kHz. I took his word for that and tried to stay out of soft limiting while mixing. Hmm ... you might have been better off doing what the setup was designed to handle: pushing it mindlessly. But please Dave, I'm guessing. The BRC had to be pitched down to control the HD-24 at 44.1K. ? - I don't understand this, the studio took it to 48 kHz, surely you would then stay there until the mastering stage, downsampling again should in my religious belief be the very last stage. The desk was reset to send clock at that frequency as well, and so *finally* after reconfiguring the routing as well, the audio cleared up and was free of the obvious timing errors and the mix ensued. There is too much I don't know to grasp the details of the setup. Please note that monitoring through the desk during mixdown and during playback from the Masterlink, did *NOT* reveal the severe degradation of the audio that was actually taking place. Severe and irrecoverable. I cannot explain the resulting loss of frequency content. Low pass filtering, possibly dynamic. I took my own monitors and phones and three of us were involved in the mix. None of the resulting symptoms became noticeable until we had left the building with the final mixes. Yes, yes, yes. I have once upon a time clipped an entire recording session in the belief that it was the headphone amp in the A77 that clipped. It wasn't, it was the effect of a capable mezzo into a pair of borrowed small Neumanns on the Revox micpre. One does not hear what one is not prepared for hearing. One does occasionally hear what one wants to hear. Those who have fixed something by changing the settings on device that is bypassed may raise their hands now. The degradation was not discernable, even on play-back while on this equipment. I trust you nevertheless. We were able to leave with only a DAT backup of the unedited Masterlink files and an audio CD created by the Masterlink. (The Masterlink was not set up with a monitor and essentially was just a box in the rack). I'm not totally sure what a Masterlink is. One thing I am wondering about is whether audio went analog into the Masterlink, vague remembering it to be a recorder of some kind. Now that we are listening to the mixes and realizing how dramatically different they are from the studio, I have to make a recommendation of some sort to the client. Redo. I can't see the cost of that being the clients problem, I'm sorry to say it, but I really can't. My first thoughts (other than shock and humiliation) were that the product could be repaired in mastering, cleaning up the mushy bass and adding some 1.6 to 3Khz or so for clarity. There are 13 songs which all suffer exactly the same symptoms. The audio is broken beyond repair. After requesting the original ADATs and re-mixing one song here at home, I think there may have been serious problems with the interfacing and likely my operation of the gear. It is not really possible to know afterwards what went wrong. Digital is not simple, not all boxes are alse "just a wire". Here is a tale about that: Being lazy and to keep the number of hours on my SV3800 down I have set my Sony up as playback and transfer machine for getting sp-dif into my daw. I recently recorder an anniversary CD for a guitar and mandolin band. It was recorded in two sessions, one in late november and one in february. I had made a complete version of the 8 pieces of music from the first session and made careful notes of just what I had done, and it was approved by the conductor. Back home with the 8 remaining pieces of music I transfered them to the DAW via the Sony. There was no way they were ever in my opinion going to pass as from the same session, they were different, and had a slightly warmer sound with a bit less treble. The sound was OK, nothing wrong with it per se and certainly not something instantly measurable as this here problem you have is, but it just didn't sound like the tracks from the first session. I made a new sp-dif transfer from the SV3800 and it was as seamless as it ought to be. I'd appreciate any input from folks with experience in these matters, as could pertain to this frequency loss which was invisible in the studio. An unproven and unprovable theory is that the Finalizer may have been configured to do frequency dependent limiting, it think such contraptions can do that too. The difference is as the difference between a compact cassette and 38 cm/s half track tape. Please keep in mind that in the re-mix, I made no attempt to add clarity in any shape, form or fashion. I tried to use the same cut-only EQ schemes and cut considerably more high end than I did in the all digi studio. Which is to say that the problem was obvious over the monitors when you mixed, but you just didn't hear it prior to the problem happening. What you know is: you have a 44.1 multitrack recording that has the treble and you have a mixdown of a version of it that was converted to 48 kHz and lacks the treble. Things do not go that bad in the digital world, but some people seem to assume that going from digital to analog and back is the proper way to do sample rate conversion. The deterioration is on the order of magnitude of not optimally good analog. You have not noticed it in the studio because you did not compare the original tracks with the converted tracks. No matter what, no matter how, that sample rate conversion had no good reason graspable to me to at all get done. It is the first place things can have gone wrong, and if they went wrong there then it is explained why you didn't notice it in the studio. Sample 1 - the original all digi mix.... MPEG-1 Layer 3, 44100 Hz, Stereo, CBR 256 kbps http://www.m-a-m-s.com/WESTERN_LAND_I_LOVE-Test.mp3 Sample 2 - the analogue remix.... MPEG-1 Layer 3, 44100 Hz, Stereo, CBR 256 kbps http://www.m-a-m-s.com/WESTERN_LAND_...REMIX-Test.mp3 What could have gone wrong here?? Recommendations? Things to avoid or look out for in the future? These constitute opinions: The shortest route between two "boxes" remains a cable directly between them. Verify a digital transfer as you would an analog. Remix at home at no cost to the client and apologize for the delay it causes, you at least know what to aim for, just better. Going back to the restaurant that served an inedible meal does not make sense, the issue of a full or partial refund to cover your cost (loss of other revenue) while redoing it is a different issue. The disclaimer: I'm somewhat ignorant about these things, so I just applied some common sense viewpoints, the main one being that the client shouldn't pay twice to receive one mixdown. David Morgan (MAMS) Kind regards Peter Larsen -- ******************************************* * My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk * ******************************************* |
#6
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#7
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David Morgan (MAMS) wrote:
I have posted two, one minute(+) clips of a song on my web site to provide you a comparison test from which I would appreciate your input. (Links below). Fun music! The digi mix definitely has something missing, but if I had to guess I'd say I'm hearing something added (MF/HF distortion on transients?) in the analog mix. The original source material was recorded at home by the client on ADAT at 16bit, 44.1K. Before arriving in Montana, the studio which the client had chosen to use agreed to dump the tracks onto an Alesis HD-24 prior to the mix dates. When we arrived there, the tracks had been dumped at 16 / 48k. What was used for the SRC? The tools used were a Sony DMX-r100 (clock source) Nice EQ, nice converters, nice board. The Finalizer could not be removed from the chain by order of the owner, and the Masterlink had no GUI peripherals. The Finalizer was supposedly set up only for limiting to avoid clipping of the Masterlink and nothing else... I took his word for that This is where the sinking feeling started for me... |
#8
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David Morgan (MAMS) wrote:
I have posted two, one minute(+) clips of a song on my web site to provide you a comparison test from which I would appreciate your input. (Links below). Fun music! The digi mix definitely has something missing, but if I had to guess I'd say I'm hearing something added (MF/HF distortion on transients?) in the analog mix. The original source material was recorded at home by the client on ADAT at 16bit, 44.1K. Before arriving in Montana, the studio which the client had chosen to use agreed to dump the tracks onto an Alesis HD-24 prior to the mix dates. When we arrived there, the tracks had been dumped at 16 / 48k. What was used for the SRC? The tools used were a Sony DMX-r100 (clock source) Nice EQ, nice converters, nice board. The Finalizer could not be removed from the chain by order of the owner, and the Masterlink had no GUI peripherals. The Finalizer was supposedly set up only for limiting to avoid clipping of the Masterlink and nothing else... I took his word for that This is where the sinking feeling started for me... |
#9
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"Peter Larsen" wrote in message ... "David Morgan (MAMS)" wrote: Being recently forced to mix a project in an all digi environment with no house engineer and a number of stumbling blocks to overcome, Allow me to put forth that the client should perhaps not pay for product development and design, but rather for the service ordered and hopefully rendered. Agreed... We were credited for a full day, but the mix was done almost 700 miles away and one mile higher than where I now sit. After losing the first day, that left us with just two 8-hour days to complete 13 songs. No... the client should not have to pay again and I should have been more prepared to fly the ship, but I do feel slighted that we had no 'support' in getting the show on the road. I am inclined to re-evaluate what was done there and I could use some advice before making any recommendations to the client - who has already blown the vast majority of his budget and needs product in his hands for summer sales. David, I don't know all about the exact wording of your deal with the client, but redoing things may not be fairly billable. This is part of my predicament. Our agreement has been fulfilled to the letter, but I can't get into another local studio affordably - - plus, I would want the client there to approve the mixes (as they were the first time through). I feel like I've done a wee bit more than I agreed to with respect to the lack of on-site help and spending the better part of a day figuring out how to use and interface the gear as well as internally routing an unfamiliar digital console. I'm serious when I say the owner had -No- "default" templates set up for recording or mixing, and had never run any of the gear at 44.1K. Whatever it is, it is a "you're dead", as grave as when I was unable to deliver a CD on time to catch the trumpet player prior to his plane leaving because of a compatibility issue between my Sony 2000 and my DiO 2448 leading to strange distortion. That's another part of the dilemma. I want to deliver the best product I can (given the source tracks) and I somehow feel as if it's me that's letting the client down... even though he fully understood what sort of difficulties we endured on day one. We almost let the studio keep the 50% deposit and walked out due to the lack of assistance. Unfortunately the client had almost as much of a limitation on available time as he did on available cashola.... we had to make the best of a tough situation. The original source material was recorded at home by the client on ADAT at 16bit, 44.1K. When we arrived there, the tracks had been dumped at 16 / 48k. Strange choice to go for two times sample rate conversion, assuming the end product is 44.1 anyway. I occasionally record on 48-16 because the treble is better at the cost of a loss of spatial detail in sample rate conversion, but such a trade-off does not seem to apply here. It was an error on the part of the engineer that the owner paid to come and dump the tracks from the ADATs to the HD-24. Since nothing in the studio was set up at 44.1, the robot made a dump to the Alesis HD-24 set at 48k using the ADAT optical digi outs at 44.1. An entire set of ADATs was dumped into the HD-24 as a single song on 'bank one' and the seconds set of ADATs was sumped on 'bank 2' as a single song. In other words, the robot pressed record, started the ADAT playback, and left the room. It obviously was not checked at any point in time because the played back audio was faster and pitched up since the wrong sample rate was selected on the HD-24. The tools used were a Sony DMX-r100 (clock source), the HD-24 controlled by an Alesis BRC, and an Alesis Masterlink. In the path before the Masterlink was a TC Finalizer. These were all digitally integrated. I know the sound of a couple of Finalizer models, they dull the sound ever so slightly, almost only audible as a loss of background spatial detail, not really obvious on foreground audio, even in bypass mode. This seems to be the concensus of opinion from anyone here locally or anyone who's responded that has heard the tracks. This was a hard- wired line from the 2-track outputs of the Sony desk, to the Finalizer, and then to the Masterlink.... Which I also didn't discover until today, has it's own share of DSP capabilities. I was told on site to simply treat the Masterlink as I would a standard hard disc recorder. After being handed the manuals and wished "good luck" by the studio owner, at the end of the first day the machines were finally talking to one another. It would be incompetent to try to comment on this. But your words might make me feel better. :-| Believe me, I could have been better prepared, but I at least made certain in advance that there would be a house 'tech' on hand before commiting... and there wasn't. So what can you do after travelling 800 miles to get there and find that you're on your own in a strange environment with a job to finish? It was either dive in or lose the dates, the deposit and the plane tickets. The DMX-r100 had to be completely reconfigured from a rec/mix session some two months earlier. The Finalizer could not be removed from the chain by order of the owner, and the Masterlink had no GUI peripherals. The Finalizer was supposedly set up only for limiting to avoid clipping of the Masterlink and nothing else... Yeees, but what kind of limiting? - it is a very capable thingie, could it have been set to produce something that fits say FM preemphasis no matter how much treble is thrown at it? This is highly probable. Most of the work done there is rock. My mistake here for buying into the story that it was harmless limiting only. Lots of folks keep limiters in front of the 2-mix just below saturation, so I didn't really give it much more thought at the time. I took his word for that and tried to stay out of soft limiting while mixing. Hmm ... you might have been better off doing what the setup was designed to handle: pushing it mindlessly. But please Dave, I'm guessing. I tend to agree... now... but while mixing western swing at 10:00 am in the morning, that didn't cross my mind. The BRC had to be pitched down to control the HD-24 at 44.1K. ? - I don't understand this, the studio took it to 48 kHz, surely you would then stay there until the mastering stage, downsampling again should in my religious belief be the very last stage. They took it to 48 with a digital input running at 44.1. You don't have to downsample (per se') in this case. The default record rate for any ADAT running off of a BRC is 48K, but by pitching the BRC down to -147, the playback sample rate changes to 44.1. Voila'... correct pitch again with no SRC. The desk was reset to send clock at that frequency as well, and so *finally* after reconfiguring the routing as well, the audio cleared up and was free of the obvious timing errors and the mix ensued. There is too much I don't know to grasp the details of the setup. Me either. Want some manuals? g Please note that monitoring through the desk during mixdown and during playback from the Masterlink, did *NOT* reveal the severe degradation of the audio that was actually taking place. Severe and irrecoverable. A number of people have told me that if we are willing to live with the pumping and phasey sounding results of the DSP that was going on, that a decent mastering guy can band-aid the frequency response problems. I'm taking one song to my local guy in the next couple of days for some feedback. I cannot explain the resulting loss of frequency content. Low pass filtering, possibly dynamic. I took my own monitors and phones and three of us were involved in the mix. None of the resulting symptoms became noticeable until we had left the building with the final mixes. One does not hear what one is not prepared for hearing. One does occasionally hear what one wants to hear. Those who have fixed something by changing the settings on device that is bypassed may raise their hands now. No comment.... g The degradation was not discernable, even on play-back while on this equipment. I trust you nevertheless. I know that one is tough... but there are three of us who can and will make that claim & stick by it. We were able to leave with only a DAT backup of the unedited Masterlink files and an audio CD created by the Masterlink. (The Masterlink was not set up with a monitor and essentially was just a box in the rack). I'm not totally sure what a Masterlink is. One thing I am wondering about is whether audio went analog into the Masterlink, vague remembering it to be a recorder of some kind. Digital, from the Finalizer which was fed digital from the Sony 2-mix outs. Now that we are listening to the mixes and realizing how dramatically different they are from the studio, I have to make a recommendation of some sort to the client. Redo. I can't see the cost of that being the clients problem, I'm sorry to say it, but I really can't. Me either... especially given the circumstances. There are 13 songs which all suffer exactly the same symptoms. The audio is broken beyond repair. Don't say that !! There are some songs that exhibit more loss and light, fast pumping... but we may have to try and live with it. I did what it was that I went there to do, and we were 92% happy with the results we heard in-house. After requesting the original ADATs and re-mixing one song here at home, I think there may have been serious problems with the interfacing and likely my operation of the gear. It is not really possible to know afterwards what went wrong. I'm getting a grip on that. I had noidea that the Masterlink also had powerful DSP functions, and I don't really believe it's owner did either. One thing is pretty certain, both the Finalizer and the Masterlink were set up as they were when the last professional engineer familiar with the gear was in the building, some two months earlier. This fellow, regardless of what he told me on day one, would definitely not have made any changes to the gear if it was working at all.... I know this because he ended up putting me on the phone a Nashville cat who had been the last real 'engineer' in the studio some sixty days prior, to help me get the Digital desk configured. I never thought to ask about what I was told was an ordinary hard disc recorder, or the TC. Digital is not simple, not all boxes are alse "just a wire". I've already been through clock hell recently (Rivers knows) and now I have apparently been through Finalizer and Masterlink DSP hell. An unproven and unprovable theory is that the Finalizer may have been configured to do frequency dependent limiting, it think such contraptions can do that too. Yes, and what I am hearing now just might have fit a grungy, hard rock mixdown. Please keep in mind that in the re-mix, I made no attempt to add clarity in any shape, form or fashion. I tried to use the same cut-only EQ schemes and cut considerably more high end than I did in the all digi studio. Which is to say that the problem was obvious over the monitors when you mixed, but you just didn't hear it prior to the problem happening. The only way I see that as possible, is if I was monitoring waaay to loudly..... on western swing(?). Possibly.... but I don't think so. The deterioration is on the order of magnitude of not optimally good analog. You have not noticed it in the studio because you did not compare the original tracks with the converted tracks. I had only heard a couple of the songs before I arrived for the gig, and at that point the transfer was already made and I was greeted with a hard drive that was playing back fast and pitched up as well as the common pops and ticks from timing errors. No matter what, no matter how, that sample rate conversion had no good reason graspable to me to at all get done. It is the first place things can have gone wrong, and if they went wrong there then it is explained why you didn't notice it in the studio. Remix at home at no cost to the client and apologize for the delay it causes, you at least know what to aim for, just better. Unfortunately I have to pay for studio time, or I would demand the opportunity to re-mix in a familiar environment. I did make an honest effort to get the client to come to me rather than me climbing a mile in altitude to mix in a strange, untreated, very small room. The disclaimer: I'm somewhat ignorant about these things, so I just applied some common sense viewpoints, the main one being that the client shouldn't pay twice to receive one mixdown. I agree, but never the less, I may have to put this on the table as a potential option. Thanks for the sounding board.... -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com http://www.artisan-recordingstudio.com |
#10
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"Peter Larsen" wrote in message ... "David Morgan (MAMS)" wrote: Being recently forced to mix a project in an all digi environment with no house engineer and a number of stumbling blocks to overcome, Allow me to put forth that the client should perhaps not pay for product development and design, but rather for the service ordered and hopefully rendered. Agreed... We were credited for a full day, but the mix was done almost 700 miles away and one mile higher than where I now sit. After losing the first day, that left us with just two 8-hour days to complete 13 songs. No... the client should not have to pay again and I should have been more prepared to fly the ship, but I do feel slighted that we had no 'support' in getting the show on the road. I am inclined to re-evaluate what was done there and I could use some advice before making any recommendations to the client - who has already blown the vast majority of his budget and needs product in his hands for summer sales. David, I don't know all about the exact wording of your deal with the client, but redoing things may not be fairly billable. This is part of my predicament. Our agreement has been fulfilled to the letter, but I can't get into another local studio affordably - - plus, I would want the client there to approve the mixes (as they were the first time through). I feel like I've done a wee bit more than I agreed to with respect to the lack of on-site help and spending the better part of a day figuring out how to use and interface the gear as well as internally routing an unfamiliar digital console. I'm serious when I say the owner had -No- "default" templates set up for recording or mixing, and had never run any of the gear at 44.1K. Whatever it is, it is a "you're dead", as grave as when I was unable to deliver a CD on time to catch the trumpet player prior to his plane leaving because of a compatibility issue between my Sony 2000 and my DiO 2448 leading to strange distortion. That's another part of the dilemma. I want to deliver the best product I can (given the source tracks) and I somehow feel as if it's me that's letting the client down... even though he fully understood what sort of difficulties we endured on day one. We almost let the studio keep the 50% deposit and walked out due to the lack of assistance. Unfortunately the client had almost as much of a limitation on available time as he did on available cashola.... we had to make the best of a tough situation. The original source material was recorded at home by the client on ADAT at 16bit, 44.1K. When we arrived there, the tracks had been dumped at 16 / 48k. Strange choice to go for two times sample rate conversion, assuming the end product is 44.1 anyway. I occasionally record on 48-16 because the treble is better at the cost of a loss of spatial detail in sample rate conversion, but such a trade-off does not seem to apply here. It was an error on the part of the engineer that the owner paid to come and dump the tracks from the ADATs to the HD-24. Since nothing in the studio was set up at 44.1, the robot made a dump to the Alesis HD-24 set at 48k using the ADAT optical digi outs at 44.1. An entire set of ADATs was dumped into the HD-24 as a single song on 'bank one' and the seconds set of ADATs was sumped on 'bank 2' as a single song. In other words, the robot pressed record, started the ADAT playback, and left the room. It obviously was not checked at any point in time because the played back audio was faster and pitched up since the wrong sample rate was selected on the HD-24. The tools used were a Sony DMX-r100 (clock source), the HD-24 controlled by an Alesis BRC, and an Alesis Masterlink. In the path before the Masterlink was a TC Finalizer. These were all digitally integrated. I know the sound of a couple of Finalizer models, they dull the sound ever so slightly, almost only audible as a loss of background spatial detail, not really obvious on foreground audio, even in bypass mode. This seems to be the concensus of opinion from anyone here locally or anyone who's responded that has heard the tracks. This was a hard- wired line from the 2-track outputs of the Sony desk, to the Finalizer, and then to the Masterlink.... Which I also didn't discover until today, has it's own share of DSP capabilities. I was told on site to simply treat the Masterlink as I would a standard hard disc recorder. After being handed the manuals and wished "good luck" by the studio owner, at the end of the first day the machines were finally talking to one another. It would be incompetent to try to comment on this. But your words might make me feel better. :-| Believe me, I could have been better prepared, but I at least made certain in advance that there would be a house 'tech' on hand before commiting... and there wasn't. So what can you do after travelling 800 miles to get there and find that you're on your own in a strange environment with a job to finish? It was either dive in or lose the dates, the deposit and the plane tickets. The DMX-r100 had to be completely reconfigured from a rec/mix session some two months earlier. The Finalizer could not be removed from the chain by order of the owner, and the Masterlink had no GUI peripherals. The Finalizer was supposedly set up only for limiting to avoid clipping of the Masterlink and nothing else... Yeees, but what kind of limiting? - it is a very capable thingie, could it have been set to produce something that fits say FM preemphasis no matter how much treble is thrown at it? This is highly probable. Most of the work done there is rock. My mistake here for buying into the story that it was harmless limiting only. Lots of folks keep limiters in front of the 2-mix just below saturation, so I didn't really give it much more thought at the time. I took his word for that and tried to stay out of soft limiting while mixing. Hmm ... you might have been better off doing what the setup was designed to handle: pushing it mindlessly. But please Dave, I'm guessing. I tend to agree... now... but while mixing western swing at 10:00 am in the morning, that didn't cross my mind. The BRC had to be pitched down to control the HD-24 at 44.1K. ? - I don't understand this, the studio took it to 48 kHz, surely you would then stay there until the mastering stage, downsampling again should in my religious belief be the very last stage. They took it to 48 with a digital input running at 44.1. You don't have to downsample (per se') in this case. The default record rate for any ADAT running off of a BRC is 48K, but by pitching the BRC down to -147, the playback sample rate changes to 44.1. Voila'... correct pitch again with no SRC. The desk was reset to send clock at that frequency as well, and so *finally* after reconfiguring the routing as well, the audio cleared up and was free of the obvious timing errors and the mix ensued. There is too much I don't know to grasp the details of the setup. Me either. Want some manuals? g Please note that monitoring through the desk during mixdown and during playback from the Masterlink, did *NOT* reveal the severe degradation of the audio that was actually taking place. Severe and irrecoverable. A number of people have told me that if we are willing to live with the pumping and phasey sounding results of the DSP that was going on, that a decent mastering guy can band-aid the frequency response problems. I'm taking one song to my local guy in the next couple of days for some feedback. I cannot explain the resulting loss of frequency content. Low pass filtering, possibly dynamic. I took my own monitors and phones and three of us were involved in the mix. None of the resulting symptoms became noticeable until we had left the building with the final mixes. One does not hear what one is not prepared for hearing. One does occasionally hear what one wants to hear. Those who have fixed something by changing the settings on device that is bypassed may raise their hands now. No comment.... g The degradation was not discernable, even on play-back while on this equipment. I trust you nevertheless. I know that one is tough... but there are three of us who can and will make that claim & stick by it. We were able to leave with only a DAT backup of the unedited Masterlink files and an audio CD created by the Masterlink. (The Masterlink was not set up with a monitor and essentially was just a box in the rack). I'm not totally sure what a Masterlink is. One thing I am wondering about is whether audio went analog into the Masterlink, vague remembering it to be a recorder of some kind. Digital, from the Finalizer which was fed digital from the Sony 2-mix outs. Now that we are listening to the mixes and realizing how dramatically different they are from the studio, I have to make a recommendation of some sort to the client. Redo. I can't see the cost of that being the clients problem, I'm sorry to say it, but I really can't. Me either... especially given the circumstances. There are 13 songs which all suffer exactly the same symptoms. The audio is broken beyond repair. Don't say that !! There are some songs that exhibit more loss and light, fast pumping... but we may have to try and live with it. I did what it was that I went there to do, and we were 92% happy with the results we heard in-house. After requesting the original ADATs and re-mixing one song here at home, I think there may have been serious problems with the interfacing and likely my operation of the gear. It is not really possible to know afterwards what went wrong. I'm getting a grip on that. I had noidea that the Masterlink also had powerful DSP functions, and I don't really believe it's owner did either. One thing is pretty certain, both the Finalizer and the Masterlink were set up as they were when the last professional engineer familiar with the gear was in the building, some two months earlier. This fellow, regardless of what he told me on day one, would definitely not have made any changes to the gear if it was working at all.... I know this because he ended up putting me on the phone a Nashville cat who had been the last real 'engineer' in the studio some sixty days prior, to help me get the Digital desk configured. I never thought to ask about what I was told was an ordinary hard disc recorder, or the TC. Digital is not simple, not all boxes are alse "just a wire". I've already been through clock hell recently (Rivers knows) and now I have apparently been through Finalizer and Masterlink DSP hell. An unproven and unprovable theory is that the Finalizer may have been configured to do frequency dependent limiting, it think such contraptions can do that too. Yes, and what I am hearing now just might have fit a grungy, hard rock mixdown. Please keep in mind that in the re-mix, I made no attempt to add clarity in any shape, form or fashion. I tried to use the same cut-only EQ schemes and cut considerably more high end than I did in the all digi studio. Which is to say that the problem was obvious over the monitors when you mixed, but you just didn't hear it prior to the problem happening. The only way I see that as possible, is if I was monitoring waaay to loudly..... on western swing(?). Possibly.... but I don't think so. The deterioration is on the order of magnitude of not optimally good analog. You have not noticed it in the studio because you did not compare the original tracks with the converted tracks. I had only heard a couple of the songs before I arrived for the gig, and at that point the transfer was already made and I was greeted with a hard drive that was playing back fast and pitched up as well as the common pops and ticks from timing errors. No matter what, no matter how, that sample rate conversion had no good reason graspable to me to at all get done. It is the first place things can have gone wrong, and if they went wrong there then it is explained why you didn't notice it in the studio. Remix at home at no cost to the client and apologize for the delay it causes, you at least know what to aim for, just better. Unfortunately I have to pay for studio time, or I would demand the opportunity to re-mix in a familiar environment. I did make an honest effort to get the client to come to me rather than me climbing a mile in altitude to mix in a strange, untreated, very small room. The disclaimer: I'm somewhat ignorant about these things, so I just applied some common sense viewpoints, the main one being that the client shouldn't pay twice to receive one mixdown. I agree, but never the less, I may have to put this on the table as a potential option. Thanks for the sounding board.... -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com http://www.artisan-recordingstudio.com |
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"Mike Rivers" wrote in message news:znr1089319430k@trad... I assume that the Finalizer was connected to a digital output of the console, and Masterlink was connected to a digital output of the Finalizer? Yes. If so, there's no way that you could feed an "overload" to the Finalizer, I guess I'm headed for a music store to play with a Finalizer. I would have thought not, but the 'soft limit' indicator was definitely flashing with some transients. so unless it was doing something that you were unaware of (pretty easy, actually, unless you found the BYPASS button and pressed it) that path should be pretty clean. Believe me... I won't be so "unaware" in the future. Please note that monitoring through the desk during mixdown and during playback from the Masterlink, did *NOT* reveal the severe degradation You could mix to the Masterlink, play back the mix from the Masterlink hard drive, and it sounded OK? It sounded just like what went in... which buy our ears at the time, was OK. I cannot explain the resulting loss of frequency content. I took my own monitors and phones and three of us were involved in the mix. None of the resulting symptoms became noticeable until we had left the building with the final mixes. The degradation was not discernable, even on play- back while on this equipment. I'd suspect the monitor system, either the acoustic setup or some unknown equalization in the monitor amplifier. My first thoughts (other than shock and humiliation) were that the product could be repaired in mastering, cleaning up the mushy bass and adding some 1.6 to 3Khz or so for clarity. There are 13 songs which all suffer exactly the same symptoms. Sure sounds like a monitor problem, and that's one of the things that good mastering engineers encounter every day (and do a pretty good job of fixing). Well... the room was probably 8 x 20, parallel sheetrock walls, with the desk placed along center of a long wall. No acoustic treatment what so ever. The ceiling was sheetrock and typical house height... 8ft (?). I'd blame the monitoring first. I tried to keep the volume modest, pushing my 6.5s with a Krell. I had my Sony phones. I don't want to blame the monitoring, but if we got up above 80dB I could definitely start to hear the room. If you weren't hearing what was actually there, you can think you're doing it right and be doing it wrong. That's sorta' why I feel kind of bad about this. This is not something that I don't normally make allowances for. I think a lot of the problem was pilot error (only to a degree because of the circumstances) and the potential unknown DSP that could have been happening in both the Finalizer and the Masterlink. Once I was told these were both set up as 'passive' devices, I didn't page through the possibilities. I just don't have a good grip on how much, if any, of this mess should actually fall on my shoulders. I feel bad, but we agreed on each mix as they were finished, and we all took the owners word that the TC Finalizer and the Masterlink were harmless. I still can't explain the monitoring.... it sounded right at the time, but was grossly wrong. DM |
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"Mike Rivers" wrote in message news:znr1089319430k@trad... I assume that the Finalizer was connected to a digital output of the console, and Masterlink was connected to a digital output of the Finalizer? Yes. If so, there's no way that you could feed an "overload" to the Finalizer, I guess I'm headed for a music store to play with a Finalizer. I would have thought not, but the 'soft limit' indicator was definitely flashing with some transients. so unless it was doing something that you were unaware of (pretty easy, actually, unless you found the BYPASS button and pressed it) that path should be pretty clean. Believe me... I won't be so "unaware" in the future. Please note that monitoring through the desk during mixdown and during playback from the Masterlink, did *NOT* reveal the severe degradation You could mix to the Masterlink, play back the mix from the Masterlink hard drive, and it sounded OK? It sounded just like what went in... which buy our ears at the time, was OK. I cannot explain the resulting loss of frequency content. I took my own monitors and phones and three of us were involved in the mix. None of the resulting symptoms became noticeable until we had left the building with the final mixes. The degradation was not discernable, even on play- back while on this equipment. I'd suspect the monitor system, either the acoustic setup or some unknown equalization in the monitor amplifier. My first thoughts (other than shock and humiliation) were that the product could be repaired in mastering, cleaning up the mushy bass and adding some 1.6 to 3Khz or so for clarity. There are 13 songs which all suffer exactly the same symptoms. Sure sounds like a monitor problem, and that's one of the things that good mastering engineers encounter every day (and do a pretty good job of fixing). Well... the room was probably 8 x 20, parallel sheetrock walls, with the desk placed along center of a long wall. No acoustic treatment what so ever. The ceiling was sheetrock and typical house height... 8ft (?). I'd blame the monitoring first. I tried to keep the volume modest, pushing my 6.5s with a Krell. I had my Sony phones. I don't want to blame the monitoring, but if we got up above 80dB I could definitely start to hear the room. If you weren't hearing what was actually there, you can think you're doing it right and be doing it wrong. That's sorta' why I feel kind of bad about this. This is not something that I don't normally make allowances for. I think a lot of the problem was pilot error (only to a degree because of the circumstances) and the potential unknown DSP that could have been happening in both the Finalizer and the Masterlink. Once I was told these were both set up as 'passive' devices, I didn't page through the possibilities. I just don't have a good grip on how much, if any, of this mess should actually fall on my shoulders. I feel bad, but we agreed on each mix as they were finished, and we all took the owners word that the TC Finalizer and the Masterlink were harmless. I still can't explain the monitoring.... it sounded right at the time, but was grossly wrong. DM |
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"Kurt Albershardt" wrote in message ... The digi mix definitely has something missing, but if I had to guess I'd say I'm hearing something added (MF/HF distortion on transients?) in the analog mix. Bingo! There weren't two sets of hands and there weren't dynamics on every channel of the MCI, so I used myself right out of compressors and resorted to a 'Dynamite' on the acoustic lead and steel in order to get the analogue version done & get it posted quickly. Nice call.... (Never use a Dynamite on an acoustic guitar, even in a crunch). The original source material was recorded at home by the client on ADAT at 16bit, 44.1K. When we arrived there, the tracks had been dumped at 16 / 48k. What was used for the SRC? A mistake. (See my reply to Peter). The tools used were a Sony DMX-r100 (clock source) Nice EQ, nice converters, nice board. Once I got a grip on internal routing, I could live with this one. The Finalizer was supposedly set up only for limiting to avoid clipping of the Masterlink and nothing else... I took his word for that This is where the sinking feeling started for me... Come back... come back !! ;-) DM (feeling 6-feet under, myself) |
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"Kurt Albershardt" wrote in message ... The digi mix definitely has something missing, but if I had to guess I'd say I'm hearing something added (MF/HF distortion on transients?) in the analog mix. Bingo! There weren't two sets of hands and there weren't dynamics on every channel of the MCI, so I used myself right out of compressors and resorted to a 'Dynamite' on the acoustic lead and steel in order to get the analogue version done & get it posted quickly. Nice call.... (Never use a Dynamite on an acoustic guitar, even in a crunch). The original source material was recorded at home by the client on ADAT at 16bit, 44.1K. When we arrived there, the tracks had been dumped at 16 / 48k. What was used for the SRC? A mistake. (See my reply to Peter). The tools used were a Sony DMX-r100 (clock source) Nice EQ, nice converters, nice board. Once I got a grip on internal routing, I could live with this one. The Finalizer was supposedly set up only for limiting to avoid clipping of the Masterlink and nothing else... I took his word for that This is where the sinking feeling started for me... Come back... come back !! ;-) DM (feeling 6-feet under, myself) |
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Mike Rivers wrote:
That was going to be my next question. If you heard what was going into the Masterlink and it sounded OK, then what you got off the Masterlink /should have/ sounded the same. You could mix to the Masterlink, play back the mix from the Masterlink hard drive, and it sounded OK? Any possibility that there was signal processing going on in the ML? Something to do with its "mastering" gidgetry? -- ha |
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Mike Rivers wrote:
That was going to be my next question. If you heard what was going into the Masterlink and it sounded OK, then what you got off the Masterlink /should have/ sounded the same. You could mix to the Masterlink, play back the mix from the Masterlink hard drive, and it sounded OK? Any possibility that there was signal processing going on in the ML? Something to do with its "mastering" gidgetry? -- ha |
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In other words, the robot pressed record, started the ADAT playback, and left the room. It obviously was not checked at any point in time because the played back audio was faster and pitched up since the wrong sample rate was selected on the HD-24. i recently had a situation where a band brought in .wav files on a dvd-rom that were transfered from a da-88's. it was the strangest thing, becasue they were pitched up, but were at 44.1 (i still don't quite understand it). it was such a mess we ended up getting the original tapes and two da-88's and retransferring the tracks. the band paid someone for the transfer -- don't know if they got their money back. as the studio owner, i comped the retransfer time. here's my question to the panel: how realistic would it have been to walk in to the mess of pitched up tracks and no tech and demand the deposit back and cancel the whole thing? i know the studio owner comped you a day, and the band would've been out the airfare, and it's hard to walk away in the heat of the moment, but talk about having the tables turned against you. anyway, best of luck, david. chris deckard saint louis moe |
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In other words, the robot pressed record, started the ADAT playback, and left the room. It obviously was not checked at any point in time because the played back audio was faster and pitched up since the wrong sample rate was selected on the HD-24. i recently had a situation where a band brought in .wav files on a dvd-rom that were transfered from a da-88's. it was the strangest thing, becasue they were pitched up, but were at 44.1 (i still don't quite understand it). it was such a mess we ended up getting the original tapes and two da-88's and retransferring the tracks. the band paid someone for the transfer -- don't know if they got their money back. as the studio owner, i comped the retransfer time. here's my question to the panel: how realistic would it have been to walk in to the mess of pitched up tracks and no tech and demand the deposit back and cancel the whole thing? i know the studio owner comped you a day, and the band would've been out the airfare, and it's hard to walk away in the heat of the moment, but talk about having the tables turned against you. anyway, best of luck, david. chris deckard saint louis moe |
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The tools used were a Sony DMX-r100 (clock source), the HD-24 controlled
by an Alesis BRC, and an Alesis Masterlink. In the path before the Masterlink was a TC Finalizer. These were all digitally integrated. Sounds like the Finalizer is the problem. They're cost effective boxes, but they mangle things pretty bad. |
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The tools used were a Sony DMX-r100 (clock source), the HD-24 controlled
by an Alesis BRC, and an Alesis Masterlink. In the path before the Masterlink was a TC Finalizer. These were all digitally integrated. Sounds like the Finalizer is the problem. They're cost effective boxes, but they mangle things pretty bad. |
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I guess I'm headed for a music store to play with a Finalizer. I would have thought not, but the 'soft limit' indicator was definitely flashing with some transients. Since the Finalizer is a tri-band limiter, it will depending on the threshold settings on the respective bands alter the tonal character of the transients. Setting them all equal doesn't help either because there are generally more low frequency transients than high ones in most program material. Some EQ may help, but you can't really undo the process, course you know that... As far as the sample rate is concerned, you should be able to load the files into Sound Forge (I think you use this, right?) and just set the sample rate instead of resampling if they are at the wrong rate. Of course if you did any EQ'ing at the wrong rate, it's all mucked up now. If this is part of your problem, I'm not sure exactly what you meant about the sample rate issue. |
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I guess I'm headed for a music store to play with a Finalizer. I would have thought not, but the 'soft limit' indicator was definitely flashing with some transients. Since the Finalizer is a tri-band limiter, it will depending on the threshold settings on the respective bands alter the tonal character of the transients. Setting them all equal doesn't help either because there are generally more low frequency transients than high ones in most program material. Some EQ may help, but you can't really undo the process, course you know that... As far as the sample rate is concerned, you should be able to load the files into Sound Forge (I think you use this, right?) and just set the sample rate instead of resampling if they are at the wrong rate. Of course if you did any EQ'ing at the wrong rate, it's all mucked up now. If this is part of your problem, I'm not sure exactly what you meant about the sample rate issue. |
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"David Morgan (MAMS)" wrote:
Agreed... We were credited for a full day, but the mix was done almost 700 miles away and one mile higher than where I now sit. After losing the first day, that left us with just two 8-hour days to complete 13 songs. Hmm... David, I don't know all about the exact wording of your deal with the client, but redoing things may not be fairly billable. This is part of my predicament. Our agreement has been fulfilled to the letter, but I can't get into another local studio affordably Understood. Logically that leaves fixing it as being the only option. An experimental re-eq of the provided example is available to you on request, either as hidden file on my site or as email attachment. I know the sound of a couple of Finalizer models, they dull the sound ever so slightly, almost only audible as a loss of background spatial detail, not really obvious on foreground audio, even in bypass mode. This seems to be the concensus of opinion from anyone here locally or anyone who's responded that has heard the tracks. Just to avoid that unititiated people read this like finalizer bashing: the effect referred to is very subtle, they are truly great and very useful contraptions. What has happened to this audio is not just the subtle effect of a finalizer in bypass. A number of people have told me that if we are willing to live with the pumping and phasey sounding results of the DSP that was going on, that a decent mastering guy can band-aid the frequency response problems. Reconstructive surgery does appear to be possible. Unfortunately I have to pay for studio time, or I would demand the opportunity to re-mix in a familiar environment. I did make an honest effort to get the client to come to me rather than me climbing a mile in altitude to mix in a strange, untreated, very small room. A vertical one mile trip may not have been a wise idea. Things reportedly sound brighter up there, ref. the Elton John album "Brown dirt cowboy", its unique sound is attributed to it being recorded in a mountain studio, if - mind you - if my recollection is right. I could check this by going to the record shelf, but it vould void the ethics of usenet and probably go against the charter of this newsgroup to actually verify something prior to posting. David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com http://www.artisan-recordingstudio.com Kind regards Peter Larsen -- ******************************************* * My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk * ******************************************* |
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"David Morgan (MAMS)" wrote:
Agreed... We were credited for a full day, but the mix was done almost 700 miles away and one mile higher than where I now sit. After losing the first day, that left us with just two 8-hour days to complete 13 songs. Hmm... David, I don't know all about the exact wording of your deal with the client, but redoing things may not be fairly billable. This is part of my predicament. Our agreement has been fulfilled to the letter, but I can't get into another local studio affordably Understood. Logically that leaves fixing it as being the only option. An experimental re-eq of the provided example is available to you on request, either as hidden file on my site or as email attachment. I know the sound of a couple of Finalizer models, they dull the sound ever so slightly, almost only audible as a loss of background spatial detail, not really obvious on foreground audio, even in bypass mode. This seems to be the concensus of opinion from anyone here locally or anyone who's responded that has heard the tracks. Just to avoid that unititiated people read this like finalizer bashing: the effect referred to is very subtle, they are truly great and very useful contraptions. What has happened to this audio is not just the subtle effect of a finalizer in bypass. A number of people have told me that if we are willing to live with the pumping and phasey sounding results of the DSP that was going on, that a decent mastering guy can band-aid the frequency response problems. Reconstructive surgery does appear to be possible. Unfortunately I have to pay for studio time, or I would demand the opportunity to re-mix in a familiar environment. I did make an honest effort to get the client to come to me rather than me climbing a mile in altitude to mix in a strange, untreated, very small room. A vertical one mile trip may not have been a wise idea. Things reportedly sound brighter up there, ref. the Elton John album "Brown dirt cowboy", its unique sound is attributed to it being recorded in a mountain studio, if - mind you - if my recollection is right. I could check this by going to the record shelf, but it vould void the ethics of usenet and probably go against the charter of this newsgroup to actually verify something prior to posting. David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com http://www.artisan-recordingstudio.com Kind regards Peter Larsen -- ******************************************* * My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk * ******************************************* |
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Romeo Rondeau wrote:
The tools used were a Sony DMX-r100 (clock source), the HD-24 controlled by an Alesis BRC, and an Alesis Masterlink. In the path before the Masterlink was a TC Finalizer. These were all digitally integrated. Sounds like the Finalizer is the problem. They're cost effective boxes, but they mangle things pretty bad. They don't _have_ to mangle things. But you really have to go out of your way to keep them. Most people just leave it on one of the presets and let it wreck everything, but it's actually possible to get control over them. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
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Romeo Rondeau wrote:
The tools used were a Sony DMX-r100 (clock source), the HD-24 controlled by an Alesis BRC, and an Alesis Masterlink. In the path before the Masterlink was a TC Finalizer. These were all digitally integrated. Sounds like the Finalizer is the problem. They're cost effective boxes, but they mangle things pretty bad. They don't _have_ to mangle things. But you really have to go out of your way to keep them. Most people just leave it on one of the presets and let it wreck everything, but it's actually possible to get control over them. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
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"Mike Rivers" wrote in message news:znr1089371997k@trad... How do people who only work every two months afford (or justify) gear like that for their studio? He also does 'house' concerts in his over-sized, vaulted ceiling, living area upstairs. He can drop 100 folding chairs in this area and have room left over to move freely about with a 'stage' area, a PA system, a full size desk, and most of the furniture left in place. His place sells for tracking because the upstairs is patchable to the control room downstairs, 4 of the bedrooms are twin bed barracks, the scenery is good and the equipment is slightly better than normal (excluding the 40 or so vintage instruments and amps). More money than brains, I guess. Odd you should say this, as while discussing options with the client I have come to find out that this person is indeed a trust fund type. -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com |
#32
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"Mike Rivers" wrote in message news:znr1089371997k@trad... How do people who only work every two months afford (or justify) gear like that for their studio? He also does 'house' concerts in his over-sized, vaulted ceiling, living area upstairs. He can drop 100 folding chairs in this area and have room left over to move freely about with a 'stage' area, a PA system, a full size desk, and most of the furniture left in place. His place sells for tracking because the upstairs is patchable to the control room downstairs, 4 of the bedrooms are twin bed barracks, the scenery is good and the equipment is slightly better than normal (excluding the 40 or so vintage instruments and amps). More money than brains, I guess. Odd you should say this, as while discussing options with the client I have come to find out that this person is indeed a trust fund type. -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com |
#33
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"mr c deckard" wrote in message ... here's my question to the panel: how realistic would it have been to walk in to the mess of pitched up tracks and no tech and demand the deposit back and cancel the whole thing? Tough. Except for the mix days, the client had to work to pay the bills, so thier schedule truthfully had little to no flexibility. Prior committment is why the two of them could not afford to travel to Dallas. i know the studio owner comped you a day, and the band would've been out the airfare... ....And there were certainly no contingencies read into our agreement as to what would occur in the event of a forced cancellation. ...and it's hard to walk away in the heat of the moment, As it damned well should be. Pass up the experience to learn and whine to the client instead? No way.... time for a rabbit from the hat and another cup of coffee. but talk about having the tables turned against you. The odd thing is, that I see most of my mistakes pretty clearly now... but at the time I was trying to be as efficient as possible. (We had not yet given up on the owner of the facility actually managing to help us get started). anyway, best of luck, david. I'll wish thak luck on the client... Believe me, we huddled up to make this "Quit now" decision several times, and each time the owner would finally return from some 'errand' or other reason to have dissappeared, and would swoon us into staying with another phone call for help. I had already established a good hourly charge in Dallas should we have been forced to 'fold' on the spot, but the producer half of the client could not come to Dallas for the mixes. The deposit for the Montana room was clearly non-refundable. -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com |
#34
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"mr c deckard" wrote in message ... here's my question to the panel: how realistic would it have been to walk in to the mess of pitched up tracks and no tech and demand the deposit back and cancel the whole thing? Tough. Except for the mix days, the client had to work to pay the bills, so thier schedule truthfully had little to no flexibility. Prior committment is why the two of them could not afford to travel to Dallas. i know the studio owner comped you a day, and the band would've been out the airfare... ....And there were certainly no contingencies read into our agreement as to what would occur in the event of a forced cancellation. ...and it's hard to walk away in the heat of the moment, As it damned well should be. Pass up the experience to learn and whine to the client instead? No way.... time for a rabbit from the hat and another cup of coffee. but talk about having the tables turned against you. The odd thing is, that I see most of my mistakes pretty clearly now... but at the time I was trying to be as efficient as possible. (We had not yet given up on the owner of the facility actually managing to help us get started). anyway, best of luck, david. I'll wish thak luck on the client... Believe me, we huddled up to make this "Quit now" decision several times, and each time the owner would finally return from some 'errand' or other reason to have dissappeared, and would swoon us into staying with another phone call for help. I had already established a good hourly charge in Dallas should we have been forced to 'fold' on the spot, but the producer half of the client could not come to Dallas for the mixes. The deposit for the Montana room was clearly non-refundable. -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com |
#35
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"Mike Rivers" wrote in message news:znr1089372732k@trad... In article writes: I guess I'm headed for a music store to play with a Finalizer. I would have thought not, but the 'soft limit' indicator was definitely flashing with some transients. "Soft limit" is just a euphamism for compression with a fairly high threshold and fairly high ratio, so it indeed starts working before reaching full scale. I think I'm gonna' be sick. This is probably the worst mistake I have made in years. I'm beating myself silly over not being able to hear this on-site. Sure, I may have been impaired by altitude, but I had two days prior to the mix dates to acclimate. Or by the mix environment? Maybe, but I can't easily blame this... I had his Dynaudios, my Tannoys, my head- phones, and I've mixed plenty of decent stuff in bedrooms and patios. Even though you could hear some reflections in the control room as you spoke, it's still tough to want to lay the blame there. I'm really beating myself severely for listening to *anything* that the person in charge had to say about *any* of the gear. A two-buss limiter before a hard disk recorder(?)... I had no problem with that, at least with an analog limiter. I foolishly did not take the time to examine the damned Finalizer's lot of parameters after *finally* getting our tracks to play back logically. I guess I was looking for a reason to move on, and the owner's word was still enough for me at that point. Maybe he didn't understand my questions. By the time we were dealing with the Finalizer, the owner had probably spent a little over 90 minutes with us, and it was 4:00pm on day one... I suppose I *wanted* to believe him. Couple this with my anxiety and the need to see something happen, and I may have constructed the very trap that plagues me now... A simple cough-cough limiter. How could a 2-buss limiter hurt me? I'd never, or rarely, ever hit it. Or so I thought........ Bad, bad move. But with guys like Bob Katz acknowledging that a Finalizer isn't all that bad if you use it correctly (he wrote a book about it for t.c., possibly downloadable from their web site) I guess it's tolerable. I never knew what it was capable of, and I'll never know what it was that we were allowing to happen to the music - other than what can be seen by visual examination and aural scrutiny. "Bypass" should no doubt have been my choice given my inexperience with the gear. Still, unless the monitors were connected to the analog output of the console (I think you said they came off the Masterlink) you should have been monitoring whatever the Finalizer was doing. So that points to the monitoring system. Quite honestly Mike, I could never get behind the console to really see what the physical routing actually was. I could only experiment with routing paths within the console and assumed that if I heard something on what was supposedly an analog input, then it was likely analog. In the control room cue system however, I ran across no ability to select the sources for the 2-track monitor returns. So, I really don't know if they were analogue or digital... I just pushed the button for the playback source and listened. I just don't have a good grip on how much, if any, of this mess should actually fall on my shoulders. Unfortunately, as a business deal, probably most of it. Tough call. :-( Maybe we should talk about that. -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com |
#36
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"Mike Rivers" wrote in message news:znr1089372732k@trad... In article writes: I guess I'm headed for a music store to play with a Finalizer. I would have thought not, but the 'soft limit' indicator was definitely flashing with some transients. "Soft limit" is just a euphamism for compression with a fairly high threshold and fairly high ratio, so it indeed starts working before reaching full scale. I think I'm gonna' be sick. This is probably the worst mistake I have made in years. I'm beating myself silly over not being able to hear this on-site. Sure, I may have been impaired by altitude, but I had two days prior to the mix dates to acclimate. Or by the mix environment? Maybe, but I can't easily blame this... I had his Dynaudios, my Tannoys, my head- phones, and I've mixed plenty of decent stuff in bedrooms and patios. Even though you could hear some reflections in the control room as you spoke, it's still tough to want to lay the blame there. I'm really beating myself severely for listening to *anything* that the person in charge had to say about *any* of the gear. A two-buss limiter before a hard disk recorder(?)... I had no problem with that, at least with an analog limiter. I foolishly did not take the time to examine the damned Finalizer's lot of parameters after *finally* getting our tracks to play back logically. I guess I was looking for a reason to move on, and the owner's word was still enough for me at that point. Maybe he didn't understand my questions. By the time we were dealing with the Finalizer, the owner had probably spent a little over 90 minutes with us, and it was 4:00pm on day one... I suppose I *wanted* to believe him. Couple this with my anxiety and the need to see something happen, and I may have constructed the very trap that plagues me now... A simple cough-cough limiter. How could a 2-buss limiter hurt me? I'd never, or rarely, ever hit it. Or so I thought........ Bad, bad move. But with guys like Bob Katz acknowledging that a Finalizer isn't all that bad if you use it correctly (he wrote a book about it for t.c., possibly downloadable from their web site) I guess it's tolerable. I never knew what it was capable of, and I'll never know what it was that we were allowing to happen to the music - other than what can be seen by visual examination and aural scrutiny. "Bypass" should no doubt have been my choice given my inexperience with the gear. Still, unless the monitors were connected to the analog output of the console (I think you said they came off the Masterlink) you should have been monitoring whatever the Finalizer was doing. So that points to the monitoring system. Quite honestly Mike, I could never get behind the console to really see what the physical routing actually was. I could only experiment with routing paths within the console and assumed that if I heard something on what was supposedly an analog input, then it was likely analog. In the control room cue system however, I ran across no ability to select the sources for the 2-track monitor returns. So, I really don't know if they were analogue or digital... I just pushed the button for the playback source and listened. I just don't have a good grip on how much, if any, of this mess should actually fall on my shoulders. Unfortunately, as a business deal, probably most of it. Tough call. :-( Maybe we should talk about that. -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com |
#37
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"Romeo Rondeau" wrote in message ... I guess I'm headed for a music store to play with a Finalizer. I would have thought not, but the 'soft limit' indicator was definitely flashing with some transients. I'm not sure exactly what you meant about the sample rate issue. Being able to 'pitch' the HD-24 down with the BRC, I'm not overly concerned about what went on with the sample rate conversion. Should I be? I see this as staying constant from the original ADAT source tapes. However, my glaring error was not to pay more attention to the finer details of the Finalizer. It may have been crunching numbers in all sorts of unthinkable ways. I may have been feeding it an 'off-rate' clock and the digi outs may not have been on line with the Masterlink, which I had changed to 44.1 so we could burn the mixes immediately. There was no other software or hardware two-tracker or editor on site and the Masterlink wasn't on a GUI, so I really didn't know exactly what it could do, couldn't do, or could have been doing... either in the burning path or the monitor path. (I was already 'parametered' to death making the rest of the system talk peacefully). I made a big mistake here in taking these two pieces of gear and thier owner's word for granted - - and of course for not already knowing more about either of them (and the studio). -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com |
#38
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"Romeo Rondeau" wrote in message ... I guess I'm headed for a music store to play with a Finalizer. I would have thought not, but the 'soft limit' indicator was definitely flashing with some transients. I'm not sure exactly what you meant about the sample rate issue. Being able to 'pitch' the HD-24 down with the BRC, I'm not overly concerned about what went on with the sample rate conversion. Should I be? I see this as staying constant from the original ADAT source tapes. However, my glaring error was not to pay more attention to the finer details of the Finalizer. It may have been crunching numbers in all sorts of unthinkable ways. I may have been feeding it an 'off-rate' clock and the digi outs may not have been on line with the Masterlink, which I had changed to 44.1 so we could burn the mixes immediately. There was no other software or hardware two-tracker or editor on site and the Masterlink wasn't on a GUI, so I really didn't know exactly what it could do, couldn't do, or could have been doing... either in the burning path or the monitor path. (I was already 'parametered' to death making the rest of the system talk peacefully). I made a big mistake here in taking these two pieces of gear and thier owner's word for granted - - and of course for not already knowing more about either of them (and the studio). -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com |
#39
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"Peter Larsen" wrote in message ... "David Morgan (MAMS)" wrote: Agreed... We were credited for a full day, but the mix was done almost 700 miles away and one mile higher than where I now sit. Logically that leaves fixing it as being the only option. Budget is tight, time is tighter, and mastering may be the only solution that provides a speedy, more affordable product for the client. An experimental re-eq of the provided example is available to you on request, either as hidden file on my site or as email attachment. If it's been returned to MP3, an attachment is fine. It's it's a .wav or an ..aiff, shoot me the link. (remove the spamblock) I appreciate this. Just to avoid that unititiated people read this like finalizer bashing: the effect referred to is very subtle, they are truly great and very useful contraptions. What has happened to this audio is not just the subtle effect of a finalizer in bypass. What happened here was a clear case of oversight from lack of information. Reconstructive surgery does appear to be possible. This makes three votes that mastering can apply a successful band-aid. Any others? This is really a bummer for me, not just because I made a mistake but because this session contained 12 out of 13 original western swing tunes. This is not too common these days, and there's a niche' where these songs could be shopped. The mixes I have on tape right now may not do them justice. And of course, I'm still upset that I didn't hear this degradation on site. A vertical one mile trip may not have been a wise idea. I had two days on location before the mix. This bothered me in the Apallacians of Tennessee once, but I didn't feel any of those symptoms in Montana's 5600 ft. ...it could snip void the ethics of usenet and probably go against the charter of this newsgroup to actually verify something prior to posting. Trivia... ;-) Thanks again, -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com |
#40
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"Peter Larsen" wrote in message ... "David Morgan (MAMS)" wrote: Agreed... We were credited for a full day, but the mix was done almost 700 miles away and one mile higher than where I now sit. Logically that leaves fixing it as being the only option. Budget is tight, time is tighter, and mastering may be the only solution that provides a speedy, more affordable product for the client. An experimental re-eq of the provided example is available to you on request, either as hidden file on my site or as email attachment. If it's been returned to MP3, an attachment is fine. It's it's a .wav or an ..aiff, shoot me the link. (remove the spamblock) I appreciate this. Just to avoid that unititiated people read this like finalizer bashing: the effect referred to is very subtle, they are truly great and very useful contraptions. What has happened to this audio is not just the subtle effect of a finalizer in bypass. What happened here was a clear case of oversight from lack of information. Reconstructive surgery does appear to be possible. This makes three votes that mastering can apply a successful band-aid. Any others? This is really a bummer for me, not just because I made a mistake but because this session contained 12 out of 13 original western swing tunes. This is not too common these days, and there's a niche' where these songs could be shopped. The mixes I have on tape right now may not do them justice. And of course, I'm still upset that I didn't hear this degradation on site. A vertical one mile trip may not have been a wise idea. I had two days on location before the mix. This bothered me in the Apallacians of Tennessee once, but I didn't feel any of those symptoms in Montana's 5600 ft. ...it could snip void the ethics of usenet and probably go against the charter of this newsgroup to actually verify something prior to posting. Trivia... ;-) Thanks again, -- David Morgan (MAMS) http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com |
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