People Who Look Like Other People/Whatever Happened To The Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City? – 280811

Sponsored by the letters B and C.

Whatever you do, don’t panic!!!

Having converted all the album track wavs to MP3 over the last few days, and having spent a little time “living” with the MP3s, I encountered two major problems.

Where PEOPLE… was concerned, I could hear unintended and unwanted distortion on one of the guitar parts, which was particularly noticeable since that part was solo-ed in the fadeout. I checked the master wav and everything sounded fine, so I reckoned that the problem had emerged as part of the MP3 conversion process. I’d converted all the files at 192, so I thought that converting to a higher bitrate might solve the problem. I ended up converting all the tracks at 256 in AA3 and I thought that had solved the problem with PEOPLE…, but on further scrutiny, the problem was still there.

I thought then that maybe there was a problem with the master and that I might have to remix/remaster the track.  But there was no problem apparent in the CE5 project, so there was really nothing I could do to fix the problem at the mixing/mastering stage. I then thought that converting to MP3 at 320 might solve the problem. If not, I’d either have to live with the distortion and pretend that it was intentional and desirable, or else drop the track altogether (when you hear the track, I think you’ll realise why I’d really not want to drop the track…). Thankfully, conversion at 320 worked a treat, so then I had to convert all the tracks at the same bitrate. Handier than remixing/remastering fer sho’…

Meanwhile, the problem with …EVONY was distortion on the Ebow-ed guitar parts. The distortion was apparent on the master wav (hadn’t noticed at the time of mastering), but it wasn’t to be found on the premaster wav. So I decided to use the premaster on the album – track sounds a lot sweeter now.

So now you see the advantages of having one’s own studio set-up and of not creating a physical product. If I’d noticed the distortion issues after having sent a disc off to be manufactured, it would’ve been too late to fix ‘em. Or too expensive.

That’s it now. I’m not going to listen to the damn tracks anymore!

Regards,

 

djp

“Whatever Happened To The Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City?”/”Vichy Circles” – 080711

Sponsored by the letters F, H, I and J.

Spent yesterday evening remixing and mastering …EVONY in CE5, Cubase VST/24 and AA3. For a track that isn’t hugely complicated, the mixing took me an age – sorting out the various competing EQs was a bit of a challenge, but I got there eventually.  An improvement on the previous mix. One valuable lesson I learnt (accidentally) while mixing was that a lot of the pops I hear in tracks on playback are caused by the Phonic Firefly. If I don’t route my audio via it, but via my PC’s default soundcard, the pops go away. Don’t know why, but it’s one to remember for the future…

Spent this morning remixing and mastering VICHY… I still haven’t fully removed the bass rumble at the start of the track, but it’s sounds fine over earphones, so I’m not too worried (when you hear how badly a lot of modern music is mastered, VICHY…sounds perfectly fine to me). The remix is significantly different from (and better than…) the original mix. Another lesson I learnt during part of this process was that there are limits to the compressor/limiter I use in Cubase VST/24. It adds a certain strange audio effect to bass parts (something I’d noticed before, but which I thought was caused by unsympathetic MP3 encoding). At a loss for something to use as an alternative, I experimented with the processing presets included in AA3 and found a nice multi-band compressor which I will use in future (it’s not as if I actually know what I’m dong when I’m mastering, but this compressor sounds “nice” to me, so…).

Right – that’s it. I ‘m going to spend a bit of time putting together the album running order. I have a fairly clear idea of what I want to do, but I need to hear the finished tracks to be absolutely sure.

Nearly there now…

Regards,

djp

Monitor listening party/”Whatever Happened To The Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City?”/”Vichy Circles” – 070711

Sponsored by the letters D and E.

Played back all the mixes on the monitors, and it looks like I’m going to have to remix …EVONY and VICHY… The former is just too dense and is causing problems for my monitors, while the bass line in the latter needs to be dropped down a bit. Thought I could get away with re-mastering both tracks, but after a number of attempts, it became apparent that I’d just have to bite the bullet and go back to the drawing board (as it were…) with the tracks.

Mild bummer, but I do have plenty of time to sort this out. So that’s what I shall jolly well go and do…

Regards,

djp

Headphone listening party – 040711

Sponsored by no letter at all

Welcome back, peeps. Wish I could say I’m feeling mighty fine after my little break from the project but, truth to tell, I seem to have picked up a spot of man flu over the weekend, and I don’t know for sure whether I’ve “caught” it in time, medication-wise, or whether I was too late and must suffer on. Not feeling the best, but I should be OK in a day or so…

Anyway, in an effort to get back on track, I had a quick listen to all the mixes through headphones (or to be precise, standard iPod earphones). I’m pretty happy with the mixes, although maybe …EVONY needs another bit of attention. I will reserve judgement until I get a chance to listen to the mixes properly over the monitors later on this week. If I can avoid remixing I will.

That’s it for the moment. Good to be back, but hope I’ll be in better form the next time you hear from me…

Regards,

djp

Whatever Happenend To The Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City? – 010611

Sponsored by the letter E.

Being somewhat euphoric after all the progress I’d made at the start of the week, I reviewed my work so far…and found, to my dismay, that the master for …EVONY had a number of rather annoying clicks and pops. Now, my sound system is inclined to crackle and pop of its own accord, so I’m rarely concerned if I hear some noise during playback, but when the same noise can be heard repeatedly at the same part of the track, then there is a serious problem.

I thought part of the problem might be noise coming from my Behringer mixer and going through the Phonic Firefly, so I shut off the mixer and remastered the track using Cubase VST/24. No joy – still noisy. Then I thought that perhaps I’d normalised the track too “high”. I usually normalise to -.001 dB, and generally there is no problem. So I tried lower settings, but to no avail. I then checked the “premaster” – no noise evident. So obviously there was some issue with the mastering process.

I tried to normalise the premaster, but when I did that, I got more noise. That indicated then that there was a problem somewhere in the premaster too.

After much trial and error, it occurred to me that the noise was caused by too much signal at the lower end of the mix, so I adjusted the EQ on the master using the aptly-titled ”Generic mud removal” preset in AA3. Viola, problem solved –  even at -.001 dB.

I can do without scares like that, I tells yer…;-).

Regards,

djp

Whatever Happened To The Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City/Fly Me To Hecuba – 270511

Sponsored by the letter R.

Swings and roundabouts, dear boy…

If yesterday was an awful day, project-wise, today was excellent.

I did a quick remix of …EVONY in CE5. Very little tweaking required and the mastering went well in Cubase VST/24 and AA3.

Flushed with success, I had a go at mixing/mastering …HECUBA. Sorted in 90 minutes – delighted with the results.

I’ve devised a workaround for the low signal output issue I mentioned yesterday - chuck everything into a group channel and use that to bring the signal up. And if that doesn’t work, chuck the group channel into a second group channel. Max the first group channel and make fine adjustments with the second. I’m sure audio engineering purists would choke at this suggestion, but it seems to work for me and that’s all that matters.

Regards,

djp

In Heaven For A Conference/Whatever Happened To The Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City? – 260511

Sponsored by the letters M, N, O and P.

Good day/bad day…

I finally worked out what was wrong with …HEAVEN. The signal going into the CE5 stereo output was too weak, so that when I mastered and normalised the track, there was too much normalisation required and everything got distorted. So I reckoned the only thing to do was to scrap the entire mix and start from the perspective of having adequate signal at the output. And this worked a charm. I got a very decent mix put together which  mastered nicely via Cubase VST/24 and AA3. And I even took the opportunity of adding in the Sawstrings 2 file which, for some reason, I’d omitted from the mix.

That having worked out nicely, I then got the mad notion of re-introducing the Ice Hall part in place of the Tabular Bells part and did an alternative mix. That worked out fine too. So now I have two different versions of the same track – which one will I put on the album?

Things didn’t go so well with …EVONY, though. Spend a lot time tweaking the mix and just when I thought I’d got it all sorted, I discovered some clipping in the X/Y/Z part, which seems to be have been due to some interference picked up by the Behringer mixer. I re-recorded the part, both through the Behringer, and even through the Tascam 2488. Not too sure if I’m happy with the results, and I ran out of time eventually, so I’ll have to have another go at this tomorrow.

Grrr…

Regards,

djp

Whatever Happened To The Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City?/Fly Me To Hecuba – 100411

Sponsored by the letters N, O and P.

Finished off editing …EVONY in CE5. Did a bit of tweaking on the keyboard parts to make them tie in with the completed bass loop. Sorted out the Ebow Strat parts as well. Got a nice little ping-pong delay thing going on with the Strat. Should sound grand in the finished mix.

Set up …HECUBA  on the laptop, only to realise that the various Native Instruments VST plugins (including Reaktor 5, which is required for this track) need to be installed on the laptop. Minor bummer, but a necessary thing to get sorted, so I didn’t get much done with this track, editing-wise.

Better luck tomorrow, eh?

I also tried to re-install CE4 and CE5 on my PC, everything worked fine, but there’s some weirdness going on with the eLicenser key which is preventing the software from working on the PC. Odd, considering it’s working perfectly on the laptop.

Who’d be me…?;-).

Regards,

djp

Whatever Happened To the Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City? – 090411

Sponsored by the letters H, I and J.

More editing in CE5.

Sorted out the bass parts and started work on the Ebow Strat parts. Might’ve got a bit more done were it not for a call from Younger Daughter for an unscheduled driving lesson, and for Elder Daughter “appropriating” the power supply for my laptop. Major race to get stuff done before the laptop’s battery crapped out.

An  hour or two tomorrow should see us right, so no complaints (much…).

Regards,

djp

Whatever Happened To The Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City? – 080411

Sponsored by the letters D and E.

Edited the bass parts in CE5. This involved cutting up a long bass line and trying to find the best combination of repetitive loops. Thought I had it sorted, but the timing is a little bit out. Not a major issue to fix, though… Ran out of time tonight, unfortunately.

Regards,

djp