Dubstepforum.com

sup guys

i have been analising some tracks and looking at there waveforms to compare with my tracks..

i have noticed that a lot of the tracks from my fav producers have a small, and probley un-noticble audio signal before the start of each drum hit..

its hard to explain, but if you have audacity, wack a tune in there and zoom right into the kick or snare, (it has to be a tune where theres not much more than a kick and snare going on, no synths/ pads or u wont see what im talkin about)

if you zoom right into say a kick or snare, there is usually a very small audio signal just before the drum hit... i dont know why its there or if its just me spinning out, but i see it a lot. im just wondering if anyone knows why its there? it can be upto 10 MS before the attack of the actual drum hit, and looks like it gets louder the closer to the hit it gets... kind of like a reversed hit leading into the sample... but it cant be coz its far too quiet to be noticible..

is this a by-product of mastering? is it there on purpose? id like to know as its kinda bugging me.

i can link to a sample or up a pic if noone knows what im on about.

sounds strange, i'd be interested to know too. the only things i can think of would be either:

linear eq pre ringing - multiband compressors use linear eq's so this might cause a tiny bit of audio before a kick

reverse reverb - i doubt this would be applied to a whole track for any reason

my guess is that its an inaudible byproduct of a multiband compressor but i don't really have a clue.

I read something about this on here a while ago. Can't remember anything about it now, but at least somebody on dsf knows

Ill see if i can get a pic up...

the multiband comp sounds like a resonable explanation. its not something i use much so mayb thats why it dosent appear on any of my tracks

Try removing that small bit before the drum sample and listen to it... It kind of pops and fucks up your ear drums. This is the way a full drum sample looks because it doesn't start off going from silence to max volume, if there wasn't that small bit just before the hit, it's gonna sound ugly.

Analising sounds dirty.

ok so your saying it needs to be there.. isnt that kind of awkward for using with midi (using in a sampler) , since i will now have to have each midi note starting a little bit before the drum actual hits to compensate for this little bit of noise...

Sinestepper wrote:Analising sounds dirty.

hahaha, dammn. spellchecker missed that one on purpose

i've also noticed that when sampling my own gear. not just drum sounds, all sorts of sounds have that. for example, i've recently recorded some patches from my (now sold) yamaha sh-10 keytar, and most of the notes had that tiny pop before the actual note starts. it's inaudible, but i can clearly see it in the waveform. honestly, i have no clue what it is, and i was never sure of whether i should leave it in or remove it.

since it's inaudible, my guess is that it could be some sort of electrical hum (around 50Hz or something) that the synthesizer makes before generating the sound. might investigate if i find time later today.

I'm pretty sure these are attack transients which are boosted or reduced via compressor ADSR settings.

Kilo beats wrote:ok so your saying it needs to be there.. isnt that kind of awkward for using with midi (using in a sampler) , since i will now have to have each midi note starting a little bit before the drum actual hits to compensate for this little bit of noise...

You're talking about less than thousandths of seconds here, it shouldn't matter.

well, considering the fact that everyone layers their drums. and considering the fact that they stagger the start time of the samples a ms or so... this would make sense.

i use 4-5 samples for my snare, and none hit at the same time. that's probably what's happening, one of the snare samples is hitting JUST before the third beat.

bassinine wrote:i use 4-5 samples for my snare

why use so many?

actually, it's more like 10 snare samples, high passed kicks, white noise hats and some claps. I usually use a clap, two snares - one punchy, and maybe one of my punchy kicks. I stagger them a ms or so so they snap like crazy. Then, with so many snares, it's easy to make fills with tons of variation. The fills sound lIke feed me or skrillex when you mix and match all of the samples.

load up a drum sample in audacity and get back to us. I was under the impression that most drums have a tiny artifact before the hit. like someone said, going from nothing to a kick might hurt the ears.