Hi everyone!
I’ve not been posted for a long while, I wanted to apologise
for not keeping you all in the loop but I am back now and I have a great new
post for you!
A lot of you message me on a daily basis asking about music
creation, recording and various bits of technology so I wanted to answer a few
of the most frequent ones I have received lately.
If you have sent me a message in the last few weeks please
keep your eyes open on the new Q&A section that has recently been added to
my blog! My answers to your questions will now be a click away so, have a
little scroll and see anything else you might find useful to know!
For now, enjoy this new update and I’ll catch up with you
all soon!
“Why does reverb sound different on headphones?” – Katie, age 17.
I hear people comment upon this regularly, and something I
have also experienced myself, you’re not alone! I believe the effect is due to
the very different way our brains process sound when it is presented. This is
either through headphones, speakers and monitors. The fundamental difference,
of course, is that when listening to speakers both ears hear both channels plus
the indirect sound bouncing around the room, whereas with headphones each ear
hears only one sound channel and no room contribution. So, as a result the
different reverb signals in the left and right channels are interpreted as
spate sources, not disregarded as part of the general room ambiance, and so
acquire a greater prominence within the mix in our perception.
“Sound I avoid placing my
tweeters half-way between the floor and ceiling?” – Rob, age 23.
There is some truth
hidden in that advice, but it relates to the speakers’ woofers, not the
tweeters. The wavelengths of the sound the tweeters produce is so short that it
really doesn’t matter, from a room-mode standpoint where the speakers are, the
reflected sound will be entirely random and chaotic. It’s generally a good idea
to avoid placing the woofers on the mid axis of the room (side/side, front/back
or up/down), because of the low frequencies which the woofer produces are
likely to be similar to, or integral fractions of the dimensions of the room,
so you’re more likely to excite string room modes that way. It’s much better to
have the woofers off the centre room axes. The overall height of the speaker
needn’t necessarily change, though you might find that you can solve any
problems you can hear simply by turning the speaker upside down!
“Why do my final
mixes always end up in mono?” – Segal, age 27.
This
isn't as simple a question as it may at first appear, because you only need to
make a mistake at one point in the signal chain and all the stereo work you've
done up to that point can end up mixed down to mono. Assuming that you indeed
have a stereo mix set up on your analogue mixer, which you can verify by
listening to the headphone output, this can be recorded to a workstation in one
of two ways. If the workstation offers stereo track capability, you can connect
the left and right outs from the analogue mixer to the appropriate odd/even
numbered inputs of the workstation, and record the results directly to the
stereo track. This will preserve the stereo settings you created on your
analogue mixer.
Where
stereo track capability isn't provided, you'll need to record the left and
right mixer outputs onto two separate mono tracks of the workstation, taking
care to pan the one carrying the left mixer channel fully left, and the one
carrying the right mixer channel fully right. Again, this will preserve the
original stereo information from the analogue mix, and any overdubs made on the
workstation using different mono tracks may then be panned conventionally to
any position in the mix. The final mix can then be recorded to a standard
stereo recorder by connecting the main left and right outs of the workstation
to the left/right inputs of the recorder. Also check for any mono buttons
(which usually only apply to monitoring), and for any hidden menu functions in
your workstation that may be designed to provide you with a mono mix.
“Is
it a good idea to use a subwoofer in my home studio?” – Jay, age 18.
I can think of very few music–making scenarios where you
should need particularly accurate monitoring lower than that — and in those few
cases you’d need a room that could cope. If your room can’t cope, and you
really do need to judge the level of a 30–50Hz sine wave, then it’s a pretty
trivial matter to check on a modern frequency analyser plug–in what’s going on.
With this in mind, I’d suggest that you start not by
thinking about subwoofers, but by attempting to check what level of bass your
speakers are actually putting out into your room: play some bass–rich material
over them and stand in a corner of the room, where the bass build–up is likely
to be greatest, and walk around the room boundary. If you can hear an increase
in very low frequencies, then lack of bass from your speakers isn’t your main
problem — and adding a sub will probably just prove to be an expensive way to
make matters worse.
If your speakers are doing their job, you need to do
something about the room. You say you’ve already installed as much acoustic
treatment as you can, but perhaps you can reconsider the nature of the acoustic
treatment you’ve installed. To achieve remotely accurate low–frequency
monitoring in a domestic space the room must be treated with ample bass
trapping. The idea is to absorb low-frequency waves so that they don’t bounce
around the room causing all those nasty peaks and nulls. It’s pretty much
impossible to install too much bass trapping, but often impossible to install
enough!
“Are high-end cables worth
the money?”
– Jemma, age 22.
The
short answer is no, they're very unlikely to sound any better. The longer
answer is that there are complexities and subtleties involved that can, in
specific circumstances, conspire to affect the sound when using different types
of cables and connectors.
In
essence, provided that the cable is appropriate in terms of its construction —
particularly in having low capacitance and good screening — and the connectors
used are of good quality and manufactured to meet the appropriate
specifications, then there is no audible difference that I have ever
detected reliably. The problem is that some inferior cables allow interference
to get in via the cable or connectors, or have some inappropriate properties
such as high capacitance, or they are wired in a way which creates
ground-loop problems, and in those cases a properly made cable may appear
to work better, simply because the reality is that the inferior cable didn't
work properly. However, you should be aware that some very expensive cables are
not built properly either.
“What is the best way to add sub-bass?” – Scott, age 25.
In any computer-based tracks where you already have the MIDI
information for the other parts, there are two core ways to go about this. The
simplest would be to add a dedicated sub-synth channel, with your plug-in synth
of choice set to output a pure sine wave — usually with infinite sustain but
zero release, so that it immediately plays at full volume and just as quickly
stops upon triggering/release, unless a longer release is required dynamically
— and then copy the MIDI part for your bass track onto that track. You’ll
probably need to transpose the notes to the correct octave or to set your
sub-synth’s oscillator pitch internally, to make sure that it sounds in the
octave below the original bass line.
However,
this simple approach can lose some of the articulation of the original synth
pattern, so I often find a second method to be better in many ways. If the soft
synth you used for your main bass sound has the ability to generate a simple
sine wave, create another instance of that synth on a new channel with the same
patch, and then change its settings so that it is outputting a basic sine wave,
as in the previous method — but don’t touch settings such as envelope attack or
release, or portamento. This way, you’ll have a clean sine-wave sub-bass
channel, but with dynamic characteristics identical to those of your original
bass patch, so the two should layer seamlessly.
Where you don’t have the
original MIDI parts and need to recreate them to add sub-bass, it can be
difficult to hear the low notes accurately. A good tip is to play or draw in
the notes a few octaves higher up, so that you can hear the notes more clearly,
and then pitch them back down to the octave that gives you the nice warm
sub-bass tone you’re looking for. Sub-bass shouldn’t really need any
processing, as a straight sine wave creates nice, round bass, but sometimes
driving it gently with a tube distortion plug-in can add some harmonics that
fill a gap between the sub-bass and the more tonal elements of your existing
bass. It’s very much a case of trial and error here, but do use your ears and a
decent monitoring setup to make sure it sounds good.
