Andy scored yesterday. While browsing Craigslist, he came across a guy selling an old Ramsa 18 channel mixing console for $50. Of course, he talked the guy down to $20 and "Boom" now we have an old board to play with. You may be thinking "so what? What is special about an old mediocre board?" Here's the deal. You don't need state of the art technology to make a great record. In fact, tons of great records were made on gear that you might think was $20 junk. The board Andy grabbed is a Ramsa Wr8118. this is the slightly smaller brother of the board that resided in Reciprocal Records in Seattle WA. the same studio that recorded Nirvana's first album "Bleach".
Reciprocal Recording Studio was a tiny little building next to the train tracks in Seattle. They used the space they had available to record much of the early "Sub Pop" records catalog. This became the 'sound' that identified the 'Grunge' movement. It's a sound that changed the music industry forever, and it wasn't done in a million dollar studio on a Neve or an SSL, it was recorded on a Ramsa 20 channel board, and an old Otari 8 track. Andy and I are going to put this old board through its paces. We will attempt to record "About a Girl" by Nirvana through the Ramsa and hitting the DAW with a tape emulation, using only the Ramsa preamps and EQ's. I'm super excited for this opportunity to show that small budget recording isn't dead. Stay tuned for more info on the process and the finished project. Cheers, Rich
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So your final mix is ready and it sounds great on the monitors, you take it out to the car and go for a drive, all the elements are there and the mix is dynamic but it doesn't sound as loud as a commercially produced record. What went wrong?
Nothing really. Dynamics are always up for debate in music production. It's a matter of taste and musical style. A jazz album should breathe and flow in intensity and amplitude (in my humble opinion), but if you want "in your face" pop, punk, rock, EDM etc., you'll likely be faced with this issue. So what to do? First understand what your medium is. In the digital realm, Zero is the ceiling. Period. You cross that threshold and you just made an industrial record. The digital sweet spot, as its known, is about -18 to -12 db this is where the majority of your acoustical energy will lie. When I mix, I attempt to gain-stage my tracks so that my RMS values fall in this area on the individual tracks, and an RMS value of between -12 and -6 on the Master Bus meters. It's important in mixing to have a high resolution meter for your Master Bus. Many DAW's have fairly accurate high resolution metering. Protools and Reaper (White Tie Imperial) show very accurate peak and RMS values on the Master Bus. Izotope's Ozone Mastering software also has this feature. I take it one step further and use Brainworx BX_Meter, a simple and effective tool that helps me watch my master bus peaks as well as the RMS value of my entire mix AND it has a cool little "floating feature" that shows the relative dynamic range of the mix in real time. I like this feature during the final mix and mastering phase because it quickly lets me see if I'm starting to crush the life out of a mix. The reality is that at this late stage of the mix, that loudness target can be a bit of a cat and mouse game. You want to keep your RMS levels up while retaining the dynamic features of the music, but not have your peaking transients and "plosives" crack the digital zero. Once again there are many ways to navigate this, you can ride faders, adjust the compression, multi-band compression, limiters and even "brick wall" limiters. All of these tools come into play but you must be careful, it's very easy to suck the life right out of a great mix with too much compression and limiting. In many mixes I use a careful gain staging of different compressors and limiters to grab those transients and gently work them back to the rest of the mix, while trying not to lose the attack they are there to provide. The trick is to squeeze the mix just enough to join the rest of the modern audio world, and preserve the parts that make your music breathe. Feel free to comment below with and questions or maybe your favorite plugins to work the final mix. Keep making music, Keep learning, Keep mixing. Cheers, Rich |
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