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First of all, let's try to answer the
question: "What is a good sound? What is it?" What makes the
sound of some recording define as "good",
"transparent", "punchy", "sounding great"? Why
certain recordings passed to history's pantheon of fame? Was
it only about the great performance and composition or
was there something else to it?
Is a good
sound all about clear presentation of all the instruments
and vocals? Is it like the clearer and louder the better?
Well, most obviously it is not.
The definition of good sound, set over the last 50 years in
the history of home listening Hi-Fi is derived in the
following way: "... Great sound is a thrilling listening
experience, in which all
the instruments and vocals form a certain artistic unity.
All the instruments and voices are perfectly audible, but
they are working together and are perceived as one whole
thing, not just the sum of parts or individual parts. The
appropriate balance is maintained between the bass, the
middle and the treble, and top class stereo and 3
dimensional panorama is
captured in a manner which
promotes obtaining additional space in the stereo listening.
But in the same time all the sounds are glued together
making an impression, that each part can not exist without
the others. The sound is warm, full, natural, giving a great listening
experience even at a
very high volume levels ...". It will never tire the
ears. Of course, the quality of each
sound recording can be fully assessed only when listening
through
superior equipment, that is, when we play it back through a great player, a
sonically excellent
amplifier and outstanding speakers. But listening to music
has such a property that even with relatively weak audio
equipment the
difference between well-produced recordings and
weak, average recordings will always be easily recognized.
The great
sound of music is something hard to explain but easy to
spot- it just thrills, grabs attention and makes you feel
the music with all your body and soul.
It is
just.... great!
Let's try to look at various factors affecting the quality of the
final sound of music recordings.
Hardware or software?
Recording music from the beginning of the
music industry was
carried out with use of analog equipment, the digital
devices were not present then even in wildest dreams. There were no computers,
no software to process and edit music, both recorders and
gear transforming the sound worked wholly in the analogue technology,
based on different fluctuations and changes in the frequency of
electric currents and magnetic induction phenomenon. For
example, the recording equipment used for tracking in studios were
reel-to-reel tape recorders using the features of magnetic tape to
record sound, and it's ability to store music in form of
magnetic field variations.
This way
the sound cod be stored on the magnetic tape and then played
back. Each tape machine contained the so-called magnetic head, which
was a small device with electromagnetic coils used to read
the sound from the tape passing over this head. This formed
the electromagnetic induction and small currents in
machine's electronics from read changes in the
magnetic tape media. All the sound processing equipment was
based on various characteristics of electric current, and its fluctuating changes reflecting changes in the frequency of
sound waves. The signal it this form was passed to the
amplifier, which changed it to much stronger electrical
impulses, which were passed then to speakers. The speakers
exchanged the electrical energy into the movement of speaker
coils. The speaker coils moved the air creating the sound
waves in it, which could be heard by human ears as the sound
of music or speech.
Around the year 2000 and even earlier, the
digital recording technology
came to recording studio for good. It is entirely
different from the analog one and is reflecting any changes in
the sound wave by means of the strings of ones and zeros,
the so called digital words. The
advantages of digital technology of recording is that such a
recording is devoid of such negative artifacts as glitches,
tape and electronics noise,
aging and stretching tape with it's gradual degradation, etc. Similarly,
equipment for processing digital audio, such as compressors, equalizers, reverberation
units and other devices have much less noise
of own components, it will not age as the tubes or
capacitors, is more
reliable and more stable in operation. Another very important
advantage is that you can save a lot of settings in
electronic memory slots of such equipment and recall them on demand in the form of "presets".
the analog equipment could not be reset to exactly same
settings once the knobs and sliders were moved.
Does this mean that the digital equipment is clearly better than analog?
Does it
produce better sound and what it is better to use - the "digital"
or "analog"?
We have many yes' and no's over here. Here we will try to describe the most important
features of both of these techniques and we will challenge
one against the other.
The
analog is a traditional recording technology used in the music
industry from the very beginning of its existence.
Throughout all those years it has influenced very much indeed
the way we perceive the recorded music, with giving it a specific sound, and
has become a kind of
"standard", likeable and admired by the producers
all over the
world. Digital technology is something relatively new, in
its pure form it completely different from analog, but it offers
more opportunities for editing, the ease of handling and far greater ease of use
with almost no rewinding time, and also it offers drastic reduction in costs
of tape and maintenance needed with the tape machines. It is
accessible to anyone who wishes to engage in music
production. These are clear advantages, which probably decided that
digital technology increasingly is displacing analog.
But what
about the sound? Today, there are still many producers and
sound engineers who prefer the analog tape to digital
technology. It is true, that the pure digital sound without
any devices changing it's character sounds much worse than
analog. But that digital character can be changed by use
various analog devices in the sound paths, or the
sophisticated software applications that emulate the sound
of widely recognized analog classics of the past. Therefore,
achieving the great sound out of digital recorders is
possible and lies in hands of knowledgeable engineer. And
working in digital domain is cheaper and faster.
One of
the most important ways of changing the digital sound is
equalizing it.
Secrets of equalization-What is it and what
benefits gives the equalization ?
Proper equalization of tracks making up the mix
of a
song is just as important as the choice of palette of colors
used by the painter when painting the picture. A true masters
never painted in a way that put too much contrasts in his work,
the sometimes
deliberately used the somewhat fuzzy contours, soft lines,
dark shades of light or weak colors. The sound of the song should be
sculptured and shaded similarly.
Not necessarily all which is very strongly contrasted, is very
clear and loud is good - most often, the human ears are more
likely to assimilate sounds, which are complementary to
each other in spectral and dynamic sense than those that are
competing against each other, measured only in the largest
volume and very broad band. The secret of perfect sound
recording lies in making all the tracks to complement each
other and form a one, coherent picture. The greatly recorded
and produced music is always perceived as a unity bounded
together. One of the most powerful tools to sculpture the
tracks is equalizer.
Equalizer is a device used to select certain frequencies in
the spectrum of sound recording or just live sound during
concerts and strengthening or
weakening those frequencies, depending on current needs. It is an indispensable tool
for mixing a song or correction of errors in the tonal balance
during mastering. Thanks to skillful use the
equalizer can make the badly sounding instruments in the mix
becoming full of details, we can highlight the best elements of
the recording and bring them to the first plan and set a
good tonal balance so
the recording starts sounding as a whole, and not just
short-conglomerate of different sounds, where everything is
very clear, very equal and very .... boring. the good
sounding music should always make us wanting to turn up the
volume. The music that sounds bad does not give us that
urge.
Equalizer was discovered by the phone companies which
started to use it in order to compensate
for extremely unequal bandwidth transfer of the telephone
lines.
The certain frequencies were lost during transmission on
the telephone long distance. Soon, however, the sound engineers
in recording studios understood that by using this device
they
can achieve a lot better sound when recording music or
of a human voice.
There are many types of equalizers, both tube and transistor
(solid state) type, but for several years they also appeared
in the form of computer programs, which are the so-called VST,
DX and RTAS plug-ins, which can be used in
host audio-midi sequencers such as Logic Audio, Pro Tools,
Cakewalk or Cubase, where they can be freely combined in the
whole chain of effects.
The advantage of the program equalizers is that they are
devoid of noise inherent in analog technology and are
resistant to wear and aging components. All the settings can
be easily stored and recalled as presets.
From the other hand, their analog counterparts, while being susceptible
to breakage and more cumbersome to use, are often
characterized by some own, unique and very musical
sound, which automatically makes the music material more
pleasing and easier to mix. There was a lot of equipment
built on
tubes and in fact, the tubes have something very finesse to
their sound giving the effect of warmth and fullness and the material
recorded with their use sounds better. The software, such as
the T-racks and Waves Ren EQ or Vintage EQ try to emulate
that behavior and bring it to the digital world.
When skillfully used they can give a very pleasing effects
that is pretty close to analog sound.
Another advantage of plug-ins is the ability to save
settings for each track, or the instrument and easily recall
it as well as to exchange "presets" between individual
engineers via the Internet. For some time they have found a
permanent place in the best and most expensive studios
around the world, often displacing analog hardware devices.
Which technology is clearly better? Is the hardware,
analog equipment really indispensable? There is the ongoing debate about
that between the professionals, but the mere fact that such
a discussion takes place
means that the software is already an extremely serious competitor
for the best hardware devices. A few years ago serious
sound engineers of great reputation only shook their heads
over
the software and would never replace their acquired for serious money hardware
of famed and legendary brands, such as the Pullman, Fairchld
or Manley. Today, many of them openly admit
that their hardware devices are currently in the studio
closets
collecting dust.
Both types of technology, and both approaches to the music
production have
their hard supporters. A clear answer on which
approach is better or not is not possible. The most important here
is a human factor. The ear and
experience of the person using these devices. The
true fact is "a main device" in mastering is ... producer with all
his emotional and artistic sensitivity, the
luggage of experience and othe skill of listening to music, which
he has
acquired throughout his life. Both software and hardware devices
are capable of achieving excellent results in
the production of music ... provided that they are operated
by
suitable person.
Is a very widespread view that the equalizer only affects
the tonal range of sound, and nothing more. Nothing more
mistaken - equalizers are powerful dynamics
processors, we can shape the dynamics of the
recording to a very large extent and specifically for certain parts of the
band. We should be thinking about equalizers as the
dynamics processors, but acting differently to audio compressors.
A typical equalizer can be built in 2 kinds - the parametric and
graphic. The parametric equalizer can be adjusted, in general,
by
knob, through which we can determine the frequency, and then
weaken or strengthen it using another knob. We can have a
few of such pairs of knobs in parametric equalizer. Graphic equalizer
is slightly different, it has one permanent frequency for
each, but it has more regulators usually built as sliders, which makes it able to
graphically present the curve of correction in graphical manner.
and it usually has many bands (sliders) of correction.
Very often we hear the question, what frequency is best suited
for bass, for a guitar solo, a vocal or for some other
instrument. How to set the
equalizer in order to improve the sound of the piano or sax? Many websites
of music producers and even manufacturers
of the equipment give a kind of "rules" on a permanent
basis, the optimal settings for equalization of individual
tracks. We are surprised that such solutions are proposed by
the renowned and corporate deliverers, which of course
should not take place, because such settings are simply not
existing.
They do not really exist because the nature of a recorded
sound depends on too many factors such as the type of
microphone, and the track for which the instrument was
recorded (what role in the mix it is to play), the instruments differ much from each other
not only in the construction and transducers, but for
example in the types
of used amplifiers and ambience.
Art of mixing the music is like the art of mixing paint for
a picture, it is all about skilful
operating the contrasts, the tracks do not have to sound
equally strong or clear, sometimes it is very desirable to
make one sounding duller to cause another one shine better,
for example a bright piano and smooth guitar (or vice versa). So we can say with
certainty that there are no optimal, fixed equalizer
settings for different tracks in the mix as an initial
optimization of their frequency spectrum. However, you
can specify a certain characteristic frequency, which occur
in the range of individual instruments, which may prove
helpful for less experienced mixers just for the start. These figures are
typical of the standard-sounding instruments and voices,
recorded with a good condenser microphone thorough a decent
preamp or mixing desk. We insist, that those figures can
vary considerably when used in mixes.
Frequencies are classified into 3 ranges, but regardless of
these 3 bands, there is still a general bass and treble
frequency for all the instruments. Those we will give you at the bottom
of the table. These ranges are:
-Base frequency range, which focuses
on the most energy in the instrument and which is the main basis of the instrument's tonal
character
-Distinguish frequency range, which results in drastic change
in the sound timbre of the instrument
-Presence frequency range, which decides on the resolution
of the track in the mix, adding it will highlight the instrument in
the mix, turning it down will cause smoothness in sound
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Here are frequencies for different instruments: |
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Track |
Base Frequency [Hz]
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Distinguish Frequency[Hz] |
Presence Frequency
|
Remarks |
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Female vocal |
355
|
1500
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3500
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Electric bass |
155-150
|
1200
|
2800
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Acoustic bass |
105
|
1312
|
2680
|
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Snare |
812
|
1320
|
4500
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add 100
Hz for funk snare |
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Cymbals |
250
|
6500
|
9000-11000
|
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Acoustic guitar |
230
|
950
|
5100
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Spanish guitar |
230
|
1500
|
3500-4200
|
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Electric guitar |
250
|
1500
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3200-5250
|
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Grand
piano |
225
|
1000-1350
|
3500-4100
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concert
grand has it 50Hz lower |
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Hammond
organ |
235
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850-1250
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3500
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for
distorted Hammond take
away 50Hz |
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Fender
piano |
280
|
750-1150
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3600
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Church organ |
80
|
600-1000
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1500
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The common bass frequency for
all the instruments is 76 Hz with such a "Q" shape that it
starts from around 225 Hz.
The common treble frequency for
all the instruments is 10 500 Hz with "Q" shaping the curve
starting from around 5000 Hz
Furthermore, each of these instruments have bass and treble
frequencies common for all
audio and we can strengthen the overall
bass and treble of the instrument using this setting. Accordingly, it is 76Hz and 10 500 kHz.
Some experts recommend adding so-called "Air" in a
range of about 13 000 - 16 000 Hz, those frequencies,
however are not,
vitally affect the sound of tracks tracks. In
addition, there is a danger of the extraction of noise from
the background, if a noise was present during recording.
However, keep in mind that the smartest rule in mixing is that there are no rules here. If something
is good for your ear, it probably is just a good
thing. Do not look at the dials too much and just
concentrate on sound. The most important thing here is personal taste and sensitivity
to subtle tonal changes in music, rather than rigid technical rules, which can
not be successful transferred to real world in every case.
Frequencies below around 40 Hz should be cut. These components
of sound spectrum
will only weaken the whole mix, not affecting its better
sound at all. Similarly, the treble should be cut in the region of
about 16 500 Hz. And finally, one very important principle:
Boosting frequencies generally gives the effect of more
stiff sound, and that is usually not very desirable, as
natural sounds do not sound stiff. Very interesting results can be
achieved by cutting certain frequencies, the result is usually softening the
sound and making it smoother. Contrasting those 2 types of
sound gives very good effect
when two tracks which were treated with equalizer boosting
and cutting play together... that good rule in order to
achieve great sounding music mix is to have one track softened
by cutting frequencies, and
the other one hardened by boosting some frequencies. Most of
the backing instruments should be softened while the solo
instruments and vocals hardened by boosting somewhat. The
softened tracks will give a nice cushion to support the lead
ones.
More expert comments and advices on the use of equalizers, the types and
operation of their filters, and the terminology and
technical tricks giving excellent results when mixing music
can be found in other tabs on this page.
Secrets of
audio compression-what it is and what benefits gives
us the audio
compression?
Compression is often poorly understood part of the process
of forming sound, and the adjusting of the audio compressor can
be quite a task, even for the experienced musicians, and
often something difficult
to understand. Secrets of proper setting the audio compressor are
fully explained on another tab on this page, so let's
concentrate in the meantime
we on the analysis of the impact of the sound of the
compressor from the more aesthetic and artistic than
technical point of view.
The audio compressor was invented as an electronic device
that was to control the sound from overdriving the tape when
the signal became bigger. It was to be a kind of an
automated hand which will turn the signal down when it is
becoming too high. The sound engineers, however soon
discovered that audio compressors give them not only
technical control over sound- they give them THE BETTER
SOUND. Compressed audio tends to sound more uniform, warm
and round and therefore audio compressors are very widely
used during mixing of music. They help to get much better
sound and it is hard to imagine a studio engineer that does
not use compressors. It is second most important sound
processor after the equalizer.
Actually, we can say that anything done with the audio compressor
is on the 2-kinds the technical and the aesthetic aspect. Most important
of the two is the aesthetic. Dry recording without compression,
especially digital, is often making an impression that it is not very clear in terms of quiet sounds, is
somewhat "thin". A compressor draws all, even these very quiet
sounds from the deep background and brings it up making the
whole sound image
very clear to the human ear, as if given "in one piece
glued together from different parts".
The role of audio compressor in creating the
aesthetic part of the sound of music can not be over
esteemed.
lastly revised 24 January, 2009
For all your questions and
inquires please contact us at:
bestmastering@gmail.com
tel: +48 666 11 333 0
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All articles are covered by
International Copyright Laws.
Copyright ® by Mariusz Wojtoñ, 2007-2008. Copying,
the use of excerpts for any purpose without the
agreement of the author prohibited.
Emotion Converting Plant is a registered trademark
of Mariusz Wojtoñ. |
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