hardware mixing desks vs virtual desks and linear vs non linear

This part of the blog is to taken the pros and cons of hardware mixing desks against virtual desks and well as the pros and cons of linear media vs non linear.
Hardware mixing desks and virtual desks pros and cons:
First off one main benefit of the hardware desk is that everything is laid out in front of you. You can visually see all channels and easily control any of them from where you are. It allows you to do many things at once if you have a free hand. On virtual desks however they can be in different windows and you have to switch between them and you have to select multiple things with a mouse then turn them up or down and only one person can operate it at a time whereas on a desk you could have assistants helping you doing multiple things at once.
One con of the hardware desk would be the fact that it takes up room and depending how many channels you desk has that could be a lot! this isn't the case for the virtual desks as they run from out of your computer and you can add as many track as your cpu can handle.
Hardware desks require maintenance and house keeping for example cleaning out the faders,knobs etc. and doing so with the wrong cleaning products could seriously damage your desk. On the other hand computers are susceptible to virus which can cause the loss of all your software if bad enough. Macs are much less prone to viruses than PCs but they still have some virus prone to them.

Linear vs non-linear media:
Linear media in music production is tape whilst non linear is the more modern audio files and data used in DAWs. Both have various pro and cons. First off the must obvious pro of non linear media is the fact that its non destructive i.e. you can chop and change it the put it back exactly the way it was as long as you still have the audio files. This is extremely helpful as it essentially allows you to be worry free when editing your sessions. This brings me to the con of tape in that once you cut it cut it there no going back and any editing you do is very time consuming using it.
Also tape requires storage space whereas digital tracks can be stored on your computer or external hard drive or memory stick etc.
Tape degrades over time and also each time an original tape is copied sound quality degrades slightly each time whereas digital can last forever technically.
one advantage of tape though is that its got a unique warm analogue sound and even though you could technically recreate it on digital it is not fully there yet. Many modern bands would still use tape just for that sound.

SRAE,Music technology and factory sessions joint assignment

For this assignment I am going to cover the whole process of recording the cover song of ‘Don’t Speak’ originally by the band No Doubt. In this write up I will cover the pre-production and recording by my group then I will cover the individual mix I did for the track.

First came the pre production of the track i.e. everything you can to prepare and have sorted before the recording actually begins. The very first thing we did was meeting the band and getting them to play through the song for us, which gave a feel for the song and there specific version of the song. We then asked if there was any way in particular that they wanted it to sound or any specific way they wanted it recorded but they felt it best to leave that entirely up to us just and were happy to do whatever we suggested. At first we decided upon doing a live recording for a very live, more raw sounding song however we later changed this idea to getting them to record individually because it would be easier to mix for one but also because we didn’t feel that the song would suit the rawer sound of a live recording since it wasn’t an all out rock song.  We decided we were going to do a scratch track with the band altogether then play that through headphones to them when they were recording to make it as easy and possible for them and to make sure they get there timings right.

Next thing we planned out the mics we were going to use while in advance of the recording so we could get the mics together quickly on the day that we were going to record on and get set up fast. For the drums we decided to use the Shure PGDMK6 set simply because they were specific to the task and all together in a case so easy to get together, past experience was also a factor in the decision to use them. However we didn’t use the sets mic for the kick, instead we chose the D112. Again this was down to past experience but also because it has a great sound with a frequency response that is boosted in the low end with some slight peaks in the higher frequencies for the slap of the kick.

For guitar we used a SM57 due to it being everybody’s trusted standard mic for the job having used it so many times in the past and gives out a great sound since it is tailored for guitars amongst other things and its generally flat frequency response in the mid range with cuts in the low and some peaks at the highs.

I also insisted on using the orange amp for the guitar just from being a general fan of its tone as many various bands I listen to use it.

We used a Behringer GI100 ULTRA-G active DI box for the bass and this pretty much came down to just past experiences with using it. For the vocals we used two Rode NT2-As, which were condenser microphones and had generally flat frequency responses which some slight peaks on the higher frequencies and were perfect for the vocals.

With the planning down we got our session booked for a Monday afternoon from 1 to 5 and we told the band to just turn up at 1.30 so we had a decent about of time to set up.

My group, being Brian McDaid, Chris Louis and Niall o Doherty, got together at half 12 at tech on Monday and went and got out mics together on the trolley. When then went into the live room and started to get everything set up, I got the track list in order and gave it to Brian and Chris who covered micing up the drum kit and I miced up the amp for the guitar setting the sm57 off axis and laid out the DI for the bass. I went ahead on into the studio room and set up our session according to the track list on Pro Tools. I set up 11 tracks in total for everything being played and named them all. The channel list was as follows:

1- Kick

2- Snare

3- Rack 1

4- Rack 2

5- Floor

6- OH L

7- OH R

8- Guitar

9- Bass

10- Vocal 1

11- Vocal 2

I then got some masking tape and laid it out along the channels on the desk and marked in what each channel was so we didn’t forget while monitoring. We also set up headphones that we had some bother with since we didn’t fully know how to work all the new equipment that was not installed in the new building. We got some help from the technician thought who basically got us to think how to sort it out ourselves with some hints and we got there in the end. We found that we needed headphones with xlrs as the new wall box doesn’t have jack inputs or outputs and we only had two headphones available to us. This was fine though since everyone would have individual recordings after the scratch track anyway so they didn’t all need headphones at once and they were fine not to use them during the scratch track play through. I did set up an instrument track on Pro Tools for a click, since the click is an instrument on Pro Tools, however we didn’t end up using it because the band preferred to just play along to the scratch track.

We recorded the scratch track whilst adjusting the gains and checking the levels to get the right sound we wanted. After the scratch track was done we bounced it down then brought it into our session on to new tracks then deleted all the other takes off the named channels. We then sent the scratch tracks to the headphones and everyone went in and did a take one at a time with the drums being first. This allowed us to avoid any spill between the instruments however the vocalists felt more comfortable singing together in their take so there was some spill but nothing to major. After that the recording was finished, the band was happy with it and we were ready to take it on to the mixing stage. We consolidated the files and exported them into a folder called logic bounces because we were all going to use Logic for the mixing of the track and the consolidated files meant that all audio files had their gaps filled and all the tracks were the same length so that when we brought the files into Logic and lined them up, everything would be where they were supposed to be and not out of sync with each other.

Overall we were happy with the recording however we definitely could’ve made improvements for example we could have booked more session earlier in advance of the actual recording so that we had ore practice with the new desk and headphone set up. Also when the files were brought into Logic they appeared pretty low to me so we could’ve been doing with playing more attention to our levels of each channel and not just hearing how loud it was as this was down to the monitor volume control knob being turned up the individual tracks.

Next came the mixing stage, this was an individual effort not a group one and I used Logic Pro for the task basically due to having more experience with this DAW than Pro Tools or any other one.  I brought the tracks in, coloured them according to instrument and made markers for each section of the song. I then started on the drums, specifically the kick. I noticed that the kick had a very boomy sound and so the EQ to keep that under control was quite drastic, taking away a lot of lower mid range but after it was done I felt it had quite a nice sounding low thump that suited the song and didn’t need much of the slap of the beater. I then compressed the kick starting with a preset but changing it to what I felt right. For the snare I implemented an extreme form of noise gating i.e. I used the strip silence option in Logic and deleted any parts of the audio that it picked up as spill. I also did this for the rack track, originally there were two however the drummer only used one, and floor tom. It sounded quite drastic like it took out the resonance of each drum when soloed but when played with the overhead tracks that picked up everything it blended well and became unnoticeable in the mix whilst taking out the loads of spill. The snare also sent to a reverb via a bus. I then changed the whole drum kit tracks outputs to a bus that I used as my drum master and did a slight overall EQ and more compression to have all the drums easily under control with one fader after setting the levels I wanted on their individual tracks.

Strip silence example

After the drums I worked on the guitars and by this point I knew I wanted a pretty simple mix with plenty of reverb to have a more chilling feel, as the sound was quite simple in comparison to the original No Doubt track. I copied the track onto another and panned one left and the other right for a more enveloping stereo sound I kept the EQ really simple using a high pass filter to do away with really low unnecessary frequencies and boosted around 300- 500 Hz region to boost the guitars tone however when referencing them against the other instruments they didn’t sit very well so I instead cut at that same range and it sat much better. I still didn’t really like the guitars tone when hearing it back in mixing so I used guitar amp pro and got a much clearer sound. I then sent the guitars on a bus to the Space designer reverb unit and sent a decent amount of signal because I like I mentioned earlier I wanted a very reverberant sound over the track in general, possibly due to a lot of post rock influence on me but no where near the same degree as a lot of bands in that genre. I again made a master bus for the guitars and did some more overall EQ and pretty hefty compression. I also copied out the solo section in the guitars and had that panned in the middle with the left and rights to accentuate the solo.

I then moved onto the bass and cut whatever frequencies in the low range that were boosted on the kick while added to ones that were cut from the kick to make it sit well along side the kick. Also I used a low pass filter all the way to 5kHz and compression. Also had a bus master as with the rest.

For the 2 vocals I used simple EQs but was heavy on the compression as the dynamics were a tad all over the place as the song when on since they didn’t have the best mic technique. I used the compressors to also have them setting nice and clearly out the front of the mix too with buses to reverb and a very slight delay. The two vocals had the same bus output for a bus master like the others.

While listening to the original track I heard an organ in the background and so I decided upon putting a tone wheel organ in via midi since the song seemed a bit too bare to me. I found out the chords and clicked it in to match the guitars in the chorus’s which I felt went very nicely in the track but I keep it down in volume a tad because I felt it did a better job being more subtle.

Classic Tonewheel and MIDI 

Bus masters and vox delay bus