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fragments wrote:
I actually did cover this, but probably didn't make it obvious. Let's look at an example VST Synth > Distortion VST > Master and also VST Synth > Distortion VST > Parallel Reverb VST.

Two scenarios:

1. If the VST Synth is clipping inside itself this will possibly cause distortion despite 32 bit FP. If you don't gain stage inside the VST (ie turn it down) this distortion will go to the distortion unit (possibly causing clipping inside the dist. vst), to the master and the reverb send. Turning the master down will not stop this clipping. And then you've got an assload of clipping all over the place.

2. Clipping inside the distortion vst. Again, if not "gain staged" this distortion will go to the reverb send and the master. Only way to fix it is to stop the clipping is inside the vst turning down the master will not stop this distortion.


I think the idea of "true" (hate this word btw) is lost on people who have never worked with outboard gear. It can become a real issue very quickly in the analog world. The issue is turning down the master only turns down the gain of the final output, it doesn't change the signal amount anywhere else. So if you clip before you get to the 2 bus, you've got clipping. End of story. Only the DAW works in 32 bit floating point. The VSTs don't. Not 100% on the last bit, but pretty damn sure.

Not to beat a dead horse or be and ass, but think about the term gain staging. Staging. Stages. Attenuating the amount of signal at every "stage" of the chain.

This is why every synt and FX vst worth a damn as it's own volume knob that attenuates the signal inside the VST.

EDIT: Fully prepared to be proven wrong here : )

Inside the vst yes. But the seamless video was about the DAW. It claimed that you could clip the channels, INSIDE THE DAW MIXER (not plugins), as long as the master was turned down.
I'm not saying thats a good idea but I'm wondering what the "artifacts" you are talking about are.
Is seamless wrong, will there be clipping? It seems like Ive asked that a few times, sorry, but I get different replies that, while containing useful information (like clipping inside vsts = bad), it doesn't really answer the question.

It's the algorithm used influencing the sound. Try it yourself and here what's wrong with it.

i can only speak for ableton, but.....

if you go over 6dB on any given channel, you will get clipping distortion even if your master is lowered and not clipping. but if you're channel has volume between 0dB and 6dB, and the master is turned down and not clipping, then no there won't be any distortion (I don't think). it doesn't actually clip until it hits 6dB i'm pretty sure.

however things are a bit tricky with the master channel. i don't know all the technical details, but i've heard that lowering your master channel's volume basically lowers the bit depth of your track when you export, or something like that. hopefully sunklo can come along and clear that up, but i think that's the inherent problem with lowering your master volume.

jags wrote:Sometimes I enjoy sound design but honestly much of the time I'd rather just write music.

I think this is a false distinction. Music does not exist outside of the sound that embodies it. Even in your head, your musical imagination embodies notes in sounds.

I do know what you are saying though, you're more invested in tonal relationships/progressions than the character of the sounds that embody those tones. I had something to say, while reading your post, was in the car, and it now eludes me.

But I find myself drawn to music, and making music where the sound design is the arrangement, is the progression, is the harmony and melody. Think of techno. What you are calling sound design is pretty much the whole deal with the genre. The playing of the sound sources, right, the manipulation of them is the music, it is how the music is made, it is how lines are made, how the arrangement is made.

And I feel the same way about west coast beats, the manipulation of the sound is the beat, it is the music. Got a sick meal of carne asada waiting for me now, gotta go

But leg, Massive sounds good and is very versatile, it does a lot more than Sylenth does. I use Massive my bread and butter, as I can pull it up and make just about any sound in there. I can do so much with it, and most importantly, it is really easy to use. The layout is good, it is fast, it is a good size, it doesn't have tiny little knobs with small or no hash marks. Just a really good interface. Not to detract from Sylenth, which sounds great. Massive's filters are NOT good, Sylenth's sound great. Sylenth's ability to get wide and big is pretty special. But there are a lot of reasons to use Massive.

Most of, if not all of the hate I hear for Massive is related to the people that tend to use it, or the genre they make with it, which is not the smartest way to evaluate a synth, imo.

If you are having to turn down your master than I can GUARAN-DAMN-TEE YOU there is clipping going on somewhere and/or your gain structure is terrible.

Maybe its internal clipping on a synth an instead of turning it down on the synth you turned down the channel fader? Yeah thats still clipping.

Maybe that kick drum doesn't have the percieved loudness you want so its peaking at 0db. I'm not trying to condescend anyone but there is 2 types of volume everyone should be aware of and thinking of because once you know of it, it'll make sense!

Actual loudness : This is what you see on your mixer
Perceived loudness : ever had a sound peaking at -16db but still cuts through the whole mix? yeah this is that.

This is why we mix with eyes and ears.





Bit Depth is quite a complex subject but i'll try to explain it but I might get a few things wrong, I know it - i am just not great with explaining it.

The higher the bit depth the more noise floor you get.

Noise flooR is the Signal-To-Noise Ratio's minimum > maximum decibel.

Check this chart.



I believe all turning down the master will do is make the perceived loudness much quieter than the actual loudness because even if your audio file is turned down to -6db cause it was clipping at 0db.

Technically, its still clipping at 0db because all the signal going to the master stays the same, you just turned the volume knob down.

Oh and this is why if you only have a 16bit master.

Engineers will ask for -3db instead of -6.

@bouncingfish: I don't have a good answer about clipping channels then turning down the master as a solution. I've never really looked into it as I learned just not to clip things and it has worked pretty well for me : ) I get what lgend4ry is saying, but I'm not sure I can explain it much better. Anyway, I don't even working in 32 bit floating point. It's like way overkill...

You can just use a soft clipper to get the effect which is just a style of distortion.

http://soundista.com/soft-clipping-explained/

I wouldn't clip within the mixer though as you're ruining your head room.



Heres some more on 16bit vs 24bit

http://tweakheadz.com/16-bit-vs-24-bit-audio/

I would only record live things at a higher bit rate, I wouldn't export my tracks higher than 24bit.

How come you think you are qualified to hand out advice. Your tunes are shit and you've never even had a release. Amateur xx

GeneralFire wrote:How come you think you are qualified to hand out advice. Your tunes are shit and you've never even had a release. Amateur xx

Lay off the hate.
You don't need releases to have knowledge.

Electric_Head wrote:

GeneralFire wrote:How come you think you are qualified to hand out advice. Your tunes are shit and you've never even had a release. Amateur xx

Lay off the hate.
You don't need releases to have knowledge.

jus' a troll

I want to start making videos showcasing some beats with the Push. Does anyone know how to set it up so that the audio you are playing/performing is directly feeding into the video ? I have no idea, do you need a camera with an audio input or something ?

Thanks for any help!

GeneralFire wrote:How come you think you are qualified to hand out advice. Your tunes are shit and you've never even had a release. Amateur xx

Love you sweety! It has been a while.

-TraX- wrote:I want to start making videos showcasing some beats with the Push. Does anyone know how to set it up so that the audio you are playing/performing is directly feeding into the video ? I have no idea, do you need a camera with an audio input or something ?

Thanks for any help!

You can record the audio and video separately and try and sync them up, use a camera with a microphone and settle for the audio quality you get out of recording your room off your monitors/speakers, or get a camera with audio input : )

I have recently go into recording jam videos. The first one I did, just as test run while I wait for a firewire cord in the mail, I recorded the video on my tablet and the audio on my computer. I "synced" them in Microsoft Movie Maker...in other words I imported the audio and video and dumped them on top of each other... Turned out pretty well, no one noted any sync issues. I had things setup so that I hit record on both devices very near simultaneously.

Good luck finding an affordable camera with an audio input from this decade though. You might be better off getting an external web cam and using a video program that will capture video off the web cam and audio from the master output of your soundcard.

I ended up borrowing a camera semi-permanently from family that I would never buy (because TBH I would rather buy another hardware synth with that kinda cash).

-TraX- wrote:I want to start making videos showcasing some beats with the Push. Does anyone know how to set it up so that the audio you are playing/performing is directly feeding into the video ? I have no idea, do you need a camera with an audio input or something ?

Thanks for any help!

Link to some of those beats?

Regarding the clipping subject, there's a few dangers with running mega hot into your master. If you've got your speakers' amp turned down and you're blazing out of the DAW, you're going to clip your convertors. Not really an issue if you've got the master trimmed down, and assuming you were to render out a 16 bit wav with a gain plug on your master keeping everything below 0dB, you wouldn't have a clipped file. But it's still a very stupid thing to do. There's the issue of clipping plugins as previously mentioned. But the real problem in my opinion, which is less obvious, is that it's a detriment to your mixing abilities. For one, your meters become absolutely useless. Any compression or signal dependent processing gets messed up. If you're mixing into a compressor on your master and you keep adding tracks letting the volume creep up, you'll be wondering why everything sounds shit and come back to find your compressor doing 22dB of gain reduction.

Having way too hot tracks feeding into the master is really a symptom of a deeper problem. It's not about clipping your master because that won't happen in a 32 bit floating point engine. It's about keeping volume constant and if you've got everything pegging into the red, you've obviously not paid any attention to gain staging at all. Which means you've probably made a bunch of shitty mix decisions and fatigued your ears by letting the volume creep up. You should be matching subjective volume throughout your processing chains (subjective volume, not peak levels, get a VU meter if you really don't want to use your ears) You should be able to hit bypass on each plugin in your chain without the volume changing drastically. Only then can you judge the relative merit of that processing without being tricked by loudness.

Pushing the red is also a symptom of people who think of 0dBFS as 0dBVU, as in something they should be mixing towards. That's why there's things like the k-system that calibrate 0dBVU to a certain full scale level and mix to that. Guys who are trying to always hit 0dBFS are usually guilty of applying shitty sounding over-done compression, but thinking it sounds better because they crank the makeup gain up until it's almost clipping again. You're working in digital not tape. The noise floor is way below the lower threshold of human hearing. There's no reason to smoosh everything up against the ceiling. You've got tons of headroom, make use of it. Turn your monitors up. Once your mix sounds good you can limit it a little bit and normalize. Keep everything volume matched based on perceived volume and use an RMS or VU meter and you'll be able to tell whether something is actually making it better or just louder.



For syncing audio to video, at the very beginning load a sharp sample on to a pad, like a click or impulse. Strike the pad quickly and bounce your hand off as soon as you make contact so it's only there for the minimum amount of time. After you're done recording, in your video editor it should be fairly simple to locate the frame where you make contact with the pad. Since the audio sample will have been a sharp impulse, it'll be be super easy to line the transient up to the exact frame of the video.

fragments wrote:

-TraX- wrote:I want to start making videos showcasing some beats with the Push. Does anyone know how to set it up so that the audio you are playing/performing is directly feeding into the video ? I have no idea, do you need a camera with an audio input or something ?

Thanks for any help!

You can record the audio and video separately and try and sync them up, use a camera with a microphone and settle for the audio quality you get out of recording your room off your monitors/speakers, or get a camera with audio input : )

I have recently go into recording jam videos. The first one I did, just as test run while I wait for a firewire cord in the mail, I recorded the video on my tablet and the audio on my computer. I "synced" them in Microsoft Movie Maker...in other words I imported the audio and video and dumped them on top of each other... Turned out pretty well, no one noted any sync issues. I had things setup so that I hit record on both devices very near simultaneously.

Good luck finding an affordable camera with an audio input from this decade though. You might be better off getting an external web cam and using a video program that will capture video off the web cam and audio from the master output of your soundcard.

I ended up borrowing a camera semi-permanently from family that I would never buy (because TBH I would rather buy another hardware synth with that kinda cash).

ahh, that's what I thought, time to get to it thanks man.

nowaysj wrote:

-TraX- wrote:I want to start making videos showcasing some beats with the Push. Does anyone know how to set it up so that the audio you are playing/performing is directly feeding into the video ? I have no idea, do you need a camera with an audio input or something ?

Thanks for any help!

Link to some of those beats?

accidentally emailed u, meant to pm.

Got it!

@Trax Check out the Zoom Q4. Can be had for 250USD used. Exactly what you and I are looking for. Seriously considering investing in one of these before a new synth.

Interesting conversation in here for sure. Might as well step out of the shadows and quit lurking.

Anyways, this has been on my mind for the last year. Why do my mixdowns sound better with practically no eq? I did an experiment where I took a finished tune I made, and stripped it of all eq, save low/highpass and shelves where needed, and it sounded just as good as before, with all the eq'ing, except the mixdown as a whole seemed a bit more...together, for a lack of a better word. It's not like I was doing some hardcore eq, just modest cuts and boosts, mostly in my drums and bass.

It's just weird to me. I spent the time to eq these individual elements because I thought they had clashing frequencies, yet when I did an a/b comparison of the whole mixdown, it sounded better overall, with nothing but a little shelving and a couple of filters to keep my mids cleaned up, and I wasn't hearing any clashing frequencies. Not complaining, but just generally curious, cuz some people swear by eq, yet despite all the distortion and parallel processing, it sounded clean enough to hear everything going on still, and more cohesive without all the extra eq.
So, what are people's thoughts, comments, advice regarding eq'ing? Not exactly a noob question, but I'd love to discuss this.