The bass dual track mixing technique

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to check our more in depth one of the techniques already explained in our more general "how to mix a good rock/metal bass" article, the most popular one: the dual track mixing technique.

This technique consists basically in having 2 tracks of the same bass take, they can be either the recording of a bass d.i. duplicated in 2 independent tracks, or 2 microphoned tracks, pointing to different parts of the cabinet (one needs to capture the high end and one the low end of the bass tone).

On the individual tracks, narrow down the eq of the low-end track by using a lo-pass filter from 500hz down (you can use also a hi-pass from 40hz up if you feel like you need to clean also some low end rumble), and on the high-end track use a low pass filter from 7khz down and a high pass from 500hz up.

Now that we have our 2 tracks nice and separated in terms of eq we can use any type of distortion we want in the high end track, for example an amp simulator (some also like to use very nasty metal amp sims for guitar to add grit to this track), and in the low-end track we should add a nice broadband compression to start making the low end stable, by reducing 2/3db of gain.

Once the 2 tracks are properly processed it's time to balance them in volume (it's likely that we will have to put the high end track quite lower than the low end one, because of its capacity of be more ear-piercing.

Now that the 2 tracks are well blended together is time to route them into a group track and load in this track an eq to sculpt the sound, if we need it (for example some like to cut a bit around the 300hz area to remove a bit of low-mids mud and to boost a bit around 920hz to add some nasal tone), then we can load a multiband compressor, with 2 bands that should be matching the frequency areas of the 2 tracks, so that we can shave off some other unwanted fluctuation in dynamics without changing the general tone, because if we would use the same compression settings for both tracks there's a chance that what sound good for one of the 2 tracks would have unwanted results for the other.
Bear in mind that the low end track already has a bit of compression, so we should keep it in mind when applying this second compression to the low end track (so let's be less aggressive with the gain reduction than we would if there was just one compressor), and that in the distorted track the gain as well acts a bit as compressor.

Finally we need to make the bass tone rock solid, stable on its railway in which it needs to stay in terms of volume and dynamics, and in order to do so we nee to load a limiter (or a maximizer) and push it until we reach 3db of gain reduction (click here for an article on how to keep the Bass stable with a Limiter).
Once you find the right setting to keep the bass track tamed and stable all the time, you can basically use the output ceiling of your limiter as volume knob, and in order to dial the right level it's important to connect it with the kick drum, as explained in this article.

I hope this was helpful!

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Using a VU meter for better low end balance

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are going to see a trick used to have a visual reference to improve how the low end in our mix will translate from our DAW to any other source.

Let's start by saying that we're going to need a VU meter, a metering plugin that recreates the one of an analog mixer (or a real analog one), and by specifying that 0db in the VU meter equals to -18db in the fader of our DAW.

Now that we have clear this concept, let's get to business: 
The idea is to get right the balance between the kick and the bass, and then to balance all the rest of the mix around these 2 elements.

Let's start by loading the VU meter in the Stereo Buss and by setting at zero the kick and bass faders. The first thing to do is to play the kick track (or group of tracks) and raise the gain until it peaks at -3db on the VU meter.
Now it's time to bring in the Bass: let's raise the gain until the peak of Bass and Kick combined reaches 0db in the VU meter (when they play together).

Why 3db of difference? Because if you would duplicate the kick track and play the 2 kick tracks together there would be a 3db in volume increase. By making sure the bass adds 3db to the total, means that the bass is equal in volume to the kick, balanced, and that if we mix the rest of the instruments around this equilibrium there's a good chance that our mix will translate better in the real world.

Once the 2 tracks are connected, you can raise and lower them in volume together to fit them in the mix but try to keep the same proportion, so that the equilibrium remains stable.

I hope this was helpful!

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Low latency monitoring (in Studio One)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

This time we're going to talk about a theme that is often overlooked, but that is of paramount importance: the low latency monitoring, and in ordering to do it, we're going to use the interface of Studio One, but the same rules applies to every DAW.

There are 2 types of low latency monitoring: hardware and software.

Hardware low latency monitoring is the ASIO protocol (also known as Hardware Direct Monitoring), a protocol created by Steinberg, which basically lets the drivers of the audio interface to dialogue with the DAW and work together to allow the lowest latency possible for the configuration.

A particular type of low latency monitoring is called Blue Z, or "low latency monitoring for instruments", which is a bit more advanced than the classic ASIO one and it's a function supported only from certain audio interfaces (such as Presonus, RME etc), which allows you to monitor with almost zero latency without stressing too much the CPU, but will not let you hear the sound processed by regular plugins, just for some which are made for that (for example in Studio One you can add a delay or a reverb to the real time signal, those plugins are called DSP plugins).

The "software" low latency mode instead (which still anyway involves hardware as well) is the one called Green Z, or "Native Low Latency Monitoring". This mode is more advanced, and it's supported only by few, more recent interfaces and computers, and allows the signal to pass through the whole chain of effects and come out as fast as with the regular hardware low latency monitoring, but it requires also a comparatively faster computer.
Studio One, unlike other DAW, allows you to choose different settings for the buffer size, which is the protection from jitters when doing playback, and the so called "device block size", which is the buffer size for recording: the lower it is, the faster.
This way you can set "dropout protection" medium or high, to make sure there are no jitters, and then just set the device block size as low as possible to minimize the latency, and finally enable the "green z" in the mixer on the tracks you are recording in real time to use this function that minimizes the latency and also lets you hear all the plugins in real time.

The more the cpu is struggling by making many tracks passing through real time processing, the more we will need to balance, for example by increasing the buffer size (and therefore the latency), or the dropout protection (to avoid hearing weird noises during the playback, which is anyway a function tied to the buffer size), so anyway monitoring is a balance game: we need to be aware of how much we need low latency (if we are recording we do, if we're mixing we don't) and change the settings according to the phase we're in.

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Difference between old school and modern guitar distortion

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to clarify a bit what are the characteristics of the old school guitar distortion and the modern day hi-gain tone.

Let's start from the base: a distortion is an effect achieved by taking a signal and boosting it on purpose in order to make it become degraded, but in a controlled, euphonic way, with the aim of making it sound more aggressive and compressed, and this is exactly how it went initially; guitarists were plugging their guitars into tube amps and cranking them to the maximum (also because at the early stages there wasn't even what we might call today a p.a.), and the amps just couldn't handle it, so distortion was an unexpected (but usually welcomed) side effect.

Then Hendrix and rock n'roll in general exploded, guitarists were experimenting with their tone like crazy and pushing the boundaries with every record, and the amp producers simply adapted to the needs, creating amps (and pedals) capable of distorting on purpose without the need of putting everyting on 10.

Back in the day of the first hi-gain amps, distortion was permeating the whole frequency range, because it was generated both by the gain stages of the preamplifier and from the power amp, stressing its power tubes, and a good example of the early amps which featured a high-gain tone were the Marshall and the Orange amps of the '70s among the others.
An Orange amp is a good example of old school distortion: it's prominent in the low-mids, which makes it a bit dark sounding, and it's very distorted in that same area, making the tone not very defined and not easy to control, but very punchy for example with groovy single string riffs, like many Led Zeppelin ones, in which every note hits you like a truck.

Modern guitar distortion instead is all about control. This is obtained from amps which through the years had more and more gain stages and which relied less and less on the power amp to distort, until we arrived to amps with large tube power amps (e.g. 120w), with 6L6 power tubes which have a lot of headroom, and all this is to make the power amp sound clean and the amp to rely mostly on the preamplifier for its gain.
This different setup has 2 objectives: 1) to stress less the power amp, thus prolonging the life of the tubes 2) to have a cleaner, tighter low end.

To make the distorted sound even tighter, guitarists like to take a hi-gain head (for example a Mesa Boogie or a Peavey 5150), use the distorted channel and boost it with an overdrive, because it makes the input signal even hotter and the result is a tone with a fast attack, reduced low-mids and a tighter low-end (meaning that when playing a fast, palm muted riff the recoil of the lows is faster and less prominent, so you can hear the riff more clearly).

This solution is particularly good with low tunings (to be honest today it's very hard to even find a band that plays contemporary hard rock-heavy metal in E), because it adds clarity, so in conclusion the modern distortion is about a tight, controlled low-end (which needs to sound clean, because if it's too distorted the riff will sound like a mess, to the point that some metal amp has a separate gain knob for the lows and one for the highs) and a screaming, very defined upper mid range, with a clear attack and good string separation, if you want to play some articulate djenty riff like those of Periphery.

Clearly I have provided the example of 2 very different type of tones and there are surely a million tones in between the old school and the modern one, but I felt like explaining this difference, because it can help defining more the type of sound we have in mind.

Which one among the 2 do you prefer?

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Review: Audio Assault Klank (with video sample)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're reviewing a new bass amp simulator from Audio Assault: Klank!

Klunk is the simulation of a preamp pedal that looks very simlar to some of the Darkglass ones: it features 3 levels of eq (one with knobs and two graphic ones, one of which in the rack after the preamp), 2 types of distortion, 2 shaping flavors (vintage and modern), compressor, noise gate, tuner and a dual IR loader with many bass IRs by Seacow Cabs.
One thing to notice about the ir loader is also the fact that you can move freely the virtual microphone on the speaker not only with the bundled irs but with any ir! 

This simulator is the third one for bass, after Bassgrinder and Duality Bass Studio, and it's the first one to emulate a pedal preamp, and it's the most advanced of the 3, it has also a very nice resizable UI.

How does it sound? It's sounds quite good, as you can hear from the sample, but it sounds also very versatile, thanks to all the IRs and the eq capabilities, which makes this plugin very versatile in terms of tone shaping.

What would I improve in the future? Here's my suggestions to Audio Assault: I would ship the plugin (not only this but all of them, since it's a problem that I'm encountering often) with a leaflet in pdf that explains exactly what each knob and switch do, because without it we might be lacking or misunderstanding some function; I would also add some graphic representation of the compression (be it a vu meter with the needle, or with the '80s leds, or in any other form), because it would help when doing some fine tuning and would spare us the need of an external compressor.

All in all, when looking for a very quick metal tone I still prefer Bassgrinder, for its capability of separating the distorted part and the clean part and because it features a limiter, but if you're looking for versatility and tone shaping capabilities you can't go wrong with Klank!

Thumbs up!

 

Specs taken from the website:

- 2 distortion modes

- 2 shaping flavors

- Graphic EQ

- Double IR loader with custom bass amp IRs from Seacow Cabs

- Rack with 9 bands graphic equalizer and compressor

- tuner, noise gate

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How to keep the bass stable with a limiter

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are going a little more in depth in the topic of mixing with a limiter, and this article should be taken as an expansion of our "Should I put a limiter on each single track when I mix?" discussion.

My conclusion today of this whole discussion is that depends on the genre. 
There are genres in which the instruments with the biggest dynamic excursion (which are usually bass, vocals, maybe cymbals, clean or acoustic guitars and acoustic instruments in general), those in which the performer can really choose to play some part extremely quiet and extremely hard can use some track limiting, while in other genres like extreme metal, in which there is already a lot of distortion (which acts as natural compressor), drum samples etc, this is less useful and you can stick also just with the compression.

Let me elaborate more: 

If you have a song in which in the first half the singer sings with just a whisper and in the second half sings one octave higher, with very loud peaks, the first thing to do is to do some clip gain, then when the volumes are more or less consistent you can put some compression to make the track more coherent, and finally, since maybe in the highest and loudest parts there might remain some loud peak, instead of manually lowering every peak you can put a limiter with a threshold set only to check those, and bring them down.
In this case the limiter acts as final wall for the peaks that are so loud that still can't be properly tamed by a compressor, because if you would set the compressor hard enough to stop them, it would harm the rest of the vocal track, and the same concept applies to any other instrument.

The trick therefore, if you still hear some part in some track that is popping out too much, is first to try to see if you can solve in some other way, for example sometimes in palm mutings the low-end recoil can be solved simply lowering the bass on the amp or moving the microphone a couple of cm back from the speaker, but if you can't solve, the limiter with a high threshold, set just to stop those occasional peaks, can be a solution, just don't overdo it, like leaving it with a threshold that keeps it active all the time, or you will damage the sound of your instrument.

I hope this was helpful! 

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Review: Nembrini Audio Crunck v2 (free Vst plugin with video sample)

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to talk about another interesting plugin, this time free, the almighty Nembrini Audio Crunck v2! 

Crunck v2 is the second version of Crunck, the first plugin designed by Igor Nembrini in the beginning of his career in DSP development more than ten years ago.
It's a virtual amplifier with a very clean and simple layout, which features all the classic controls of a real amp (gain, master, presence and eq section), and which has a bypassable cabinet section with a V30 speaker impulse response.

This virtual amplifier, which is one of the few ones available also for Iphone and Ipad through the App Store (free as well), is quite versatile and provides a very warm tone, with a gain knob that allows to dial a huge amount of gain, and lets you achieve quite a wide range of tones.

How does it sound? I'd say it sounds quite well, but it's more geared towards the rock and hard rock tones than the metal ones, since it has a lot of energy in the low mids that is not easy to get rid of (in the sample I have used an overdrive in front), so if you are looking for a creamy bluesy tone, or a fusion lead tone, this it's probably the plugin for you.

Anyway since it's free I suggest everyone to go check it out in the Nembrini website, a website that offers also other free plugins, along with paid ones.

Thumbs up!

Specs:

- 3 bands EQ

- bypassable cabinet simulator with built-in IR

- Gain, Master and presence knob

- available in all plugin formats and as Apple store app

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