DISCLAIMER: This post is not for the faint of heart. Don’t freak out. We’re going to intentionally clip our lead vocal. If you’re going to continue reading, I need you to promise me you’ll read through to the end (or at least watch the video all the way through). Deal?
While there are always new plugins coming out that you’ll need to learn as you go, there are fundamental mistakes that engineers make when it comes to multi-band processing. Here’s how you can avoid them:
If you’re not using impulse responses in your workflow, you’re missing out on an entire world of consistent, accurate sound that you can replicate over and over again. There’s a level of sonic accuracy and detail in a well-captured IR that you’re going to be hard-pressed to find in an amp simulator.
Electric guitars recorded directly into the computer are more commonplace in the studio than ever before - and for good reason. It’s easier to make edits to a DI track and you can tweak their sound as much as you want (at any point in the mix process).
A 3-dimensional mix is necessary to remain competitive in the music industry. With track counts soaring higher all the time, engineers need more than the traditional LCR approach to combat particularly dense mixes.
Okay, you caught us red-handed… We crushed the hell out of it. Cranked the Slay up to infinity and let it go to town. Fattened it up with a little extra Body and threw to the wolves (disclaimer: no wolves were involved in the making of this song, unfortunately).
Anyone can throw a limiter on a track, crush the source audio and get a crispy, aggressive sound out of it. It takes a handful of small tweaks around most limiters to get the most out of them – here are a few of our favorite ways to supercharge our limiters for optimal performance:
When building up a lead vocal track, we spend so much time focusing on dialing in the right settings that it’s easy to forget how boring a static vocal can be.
How often do you hear other engineers tell each other they’re doing something wrong or “that’s not the way I’d treat that”? For as much good information getting shared between your peers, there is plenty more toxic information that gets spread.