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hello

been workin on mixdowns and mixing tracks alot more recently, making sure sounds are sitting in correct frequenices etc...

BUT

i'm struggling to get warmth overall to tracks, seems to be something lacking for some reason, i use a bit of vintage warmer... but can can anyone reccomend any other techniques/plug ins to use to add warmth to tracks?

SAFE!

you might want to avoid cutting too much of the low end of your sounds,
warmth is typically generated between 50 and 100 hz, so cut of the sub-bass but not all the bass,..

I am not saying you should boost the mix in that area as it might just change the sound of the bassline / kick depending on what you have at that frequency range.

Personally I find that cutting too much of your sounds so that there is not much below 500hz except kick bass and a bit of snare is overkill and leaves the music sounding cold and lacking punch.

just my 2 C

vintage warmer is a compressor/limiter, not some magic warmth-giving plugin.

using the vintage warmer on everything will just fuck your mix, not make it sound any warmer.

its hard to know what you mean by 'warm' but try layering more sounds, layering samples on top of synths, layering synths on top of samples and so on. also try layering vinyl crackle or other 'warm' noises over your tune. depends what sound you're going for!

£10 Bag wrote:vintage warmer is a compressor/limiter, not some magic warmth-giving plugin.

using the vintage warmer on everything will just fuck your mix, not make it sound any warmer.

its hard to know what you mean by 'warm' but try layering more sounds, layering samples on top of synths, layering synths on top of samples and so on. also try layering vinyl crackle or other 'warm' noises over your tune. depends what sound you're going for!

yeah i literally just put a teeny bit of vintage wamer sent from an fx channell. i'd never chuck it over anything properly.

when i say warm...what i mean is like, i can see on my spectrum analyzer that everything is sitting correct, looks as though all frequencies are kushty, but over all, i get sent stuff from people like DZ and dutty dubs for example, and it just has an extra wamth and depth to the whole track.

i just wondered if there was any specific process apart from layering and eqing that people might use?

Filter and distort. Give resonance, you'll give thanks to the machines

Vintage Warmer is a warming plugin which sounds old, believe it or not, although yes I agree if you use it on everything it is tiresome

still for snares and hard drum busses its killer.


TLA outboard like the Ivory series 5050 and 5052 are DEFO worth looking into for "nice" character

what u r after is probably not possible using software alone. software just isnt warm. its thin, clean and brittle sounding.

but maybe u r comparing yr un-mastered tracks with mastered ones, and mastering can help a lot on this front

Battle Gong wrote: mastering can help a lot on this front

Try a slight EQ alteration on the master bus, bring the top end down a tad.

Funnily enough I stopped using Cubase SX3 for this exact same problem, everything came out sounding so clean and perfect. I'm now on FL8, it could be entirely psychological, but it just comes accross more bassy.

RE other techniques:
I like resampling a lot as well, taking a drum loop and resampling it louder than the input so its normaled past 100% and truncated at the top.

I allways use nice loud samples like this because quieter ones with loads of headroom seem to produce weak tracks.
I think it follows on that once you got a solid batch of sounds to arrange your better placed to end up with a hot (warm?) track, as opposed to a bit of a weak (cold/thin/brittle) one.

Battle Gong wrote:what u r after is probably not possible using software alone. software just isnt warm. its thin, clean and brittle sounding.

I beg to differ.

I think warmth can be achieved digitally by ensuring each element of the mix is treated specifically & individually for warmth. Overall, the whole track will sound full without actual distorting or clipping.

To achieve this, one must cleverly use eq, compression & distortion on every element in the mix.

There are plugins that exist to assist in our quest. Some to consider are transient shapers, harmonic enhancers and saturation devices.

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theonelikepaul wrote:

Battle Gong wrote: mastering can help a lot on this front

Try a slight EQ alteration on the master bus, bring the top end down a tad.

sorry. perhaps wasnt v clear: i meant professional mastering in a proper studio, by an experienced engineer, with serious hardware, running thru analog compressors etc.

not sure that there's any 1 magic solution within yr DAW. tho maybe a few of the suggestions above will help get a bit nearer. still, i dont think comparing yr unmastered tracks to professionally done stuff is gonna make u fell all that good about yr skills. theres no comparisson (assuming the stuff u talking about HAS been mastered)

well

EQing and compressing are the two most important things in music tech full stop. boring though it may sound. using decent EQs with good slopes [eradicating unwanted frequency] along with tight compression and good stereo imaging gets you a clean mix... but that's only half the battle

you mentioned vintage warmer... good stuff. i don't own it myself but all my friends sing it's praises. also 'dirtying' stuff up helps, so long as it's done with moderation

the Izotope Vinyl sim is good, i rarely use the mechanical noise function or the crackle, but you can simply turn the 'year' to 1970 and it makes it sound a little duller, which gets rid of nice digital-ness, but this may not be your cup of tea

Logic's fuzz wah also has it's own dedicated fuzz and compressor, this is nice

multi-band compressing [not *just* on master channel] works nicely, beefing up drums and bass.

good convulsion reverbs [and knowing how to program them...ha!!]

i've bounced stuff to tape and recorded it back in [good if your batteries are fresh and you can snap to zero-crossing... other wise you got one out-of-time sound]

dumping to my old Akai too... long but sounds cool

what £10 bag said about layering is paramount too... nowadays i rarely use one pad sound, but 3 or 4 'simple' pads layered and bused together with appropriate EQs on each individual pad then re-EQd at bus stage.

avoid too much resonance/Q in your synths [especially if they're in middle/top register] but i could be wrong on this

Logic has a match EQ plug-in where you play in a short clip of a track you want to match then adjust the adjustment of your track's EQ to fit via a percentage [did that sentence make sence?]

um... auxing out sounds to 'real' fx... i have some ghetto echo-box and a lo-fi reverb i occasionally use via my sound-card's headphone out function. how to do this without a feedback loop is anther topic though...

if you have the facilities... do your mix-downs on an analog desk... i don't myself, but have done and you can notice a difference.

oops long post :-s

10s reverb 100% wet on all appropriate tracks

ali jamieson wrote:well

EQing and compressing are the two most important things in music tech full stop. boring though it may sound. using decent EQs with good slopes [eradicating unwanted frequency] along with tight compression and good stereo imaging gets you a clean mix... but that's only half the battle

you mentioned vintage warmer... good stuff. i don't own it myself but all my friends sing it's praises. also 'dirtying' stuff up helps, so long as it's done with moderation

the Izotope Vinyl sim is good, i rarely use the mechanical noise function or the crackle, but you can simply turn the 'year' to 1970 and it makes it sound a little duller, which gets rid of nice digital-ness, but this may not be your cup of tea

Logic's fuzz wah also has it's own dedicated fuzz and compressor, this is nice

multi-band compressing [not *just* on master channel] works nicely, beefing up drums and bass.

good convulsion reverbs [and knowing how to program them...ha!!]

i've bounced stuff to tape and recorded it back in [good if your batteries are fresh and you can snap to zero-crossing... other wise you got one out-of-time sound]

dumping to my old Akai too... long but sounds cool

what £10 bag said about layering is paramount too... nowadays i rarely use one pad sound, but 3 or 4 'simple' pads layered and bused together with appropriate EQs on each individual pad then re-EQd at bus stage.

avoid too much resonance/Q in your synths [especially if they're in middle/top register] but i could be wrong on this

Logic has a match EQ plug-in where you play in a short clip of a track you want to match then adjust the adjustment of your track's EQ to fit via a percentage [did that sentence make sence?]

um... auxing out sounds to 'real' fx... i have some ghetto echo-box and a lo-fi reverb i occasionally use via my sound-card's headphone out function. how to do this without a feedback loop is anther topic though...

if you have the facilities... do your mix-downs on an analog desk... i don't myself, but have done and you can notice a difference.

oops long post :-s

This man knows, especially the first point regarding EQ and compression.

This plus some EQing. Don't abuse it. Use it subtly. Or else.

Run a subtle overdrive on a bus and send various tracks to it.

Run the sound in and out of the DAW and through a magic hardware box, but don't do this unless you have nice D/A conversion, otherwise you make the sound shitter on the way out and then even shitter on the way back in.

two oh one wrote: Run the sound in and out of the DAW and through a magic hardware box, but don't do this unless you have nice D/A conversion, otherwise you make the sound shitter on the way out and then even shitter on the way back in.

yep. best solution imo. especially if theres tubes in the "magic box"

not sure what software you are using, but ableton has the "saturator" which is nice... im sure theres similar vsts and others built ins on other software.

if you use it right, it doesnt sound like distortion, but gives a little "warmth"

theres some tutorial videos, heres one using it on a kick.
he brings in the saturator effect at 2:35 or so
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFiuKTOC ... re=related

warmth in the older studio days was through running things hot through tube preamps, or onto tape, etc... sometimes i run things hot through my mackie, sometimes thats not the sound i want...
i like abletons saturator, but i'm sure theres plenty of similarly designed vsts out there.

the trick is to be subtle and smart about it... quick presets probably wont improve your productions very much.