Do these recordings sound shrill to you?

[themachinist]

Hello all,

I haven't posted on here for a quite a while. I'm a busker living in Devon, England and I've just finished recording some pieces for a budget instrumental album and I was wondering if anyone could have a quick listen to these and see if they sound too shrill? I've used an EQ preset called acoustic guitar, compression and reverb. I can't quite put my finger on it but I'm feeling like my ears hurt a little when I listen to them...

https://soundcloud.com/danrodgers1000

[Bob1131]

I listened to both songs a couple of time in headphones and they do not sound shrill to me. I think the overall tone does favor trebles and mid-range which gives the guitar a tight and bright sound. Perhaps decreasing the highs about 3 db at 4KHz and slightly boosting the lows (try 4-5 dB at 200 Hz) would give it a little warmer sound and be less fatiguing on your ears. BTW - I enjoyed both songs...very nice composition and playing!

[Doug Young]

Presets in what? 99.9% of the time, presets are not your friend, especially for fingerstlye guitar. Even if they're good, those presets are probably meant for a rhythm guitar in a rock mix. I don't hear "shrill", but I hear compression, which generally is unwanted in a solo fingerstyle piece. The compression is probably bringing out the squeeks a bit here, which may be what you hear. I'd add a little reverb to the raw tracks and see how that sounds. If you want to send me a raw track, I'd be glad to try a mix for you, just to have someone else's take to compare to.

[themachinist]

Thanks for the advice and for the kind words Bob!

Doug - The preset is in Adobe Audition. It hadn't occurred to me at all that it's likely tailored for strumming, thanks for pointing that out! Perhaps, like you say, I shouldn't use compression at all. I was tempted into the idea of giving each track a beefier sound. I'd love to send you a raw track if you're happy to spare the time - how would I send it over?

[rick-slo]

Sounded good to me but it's often very subjective and subject to one's playback system.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by themachinist

Thanks for the advice and for the kind words Bob!

Doug - The preset is in Adobe Audition. It hadn't occurred to me at all that it's likely tailored for strumming, thanks for pointing that out! Perhaps, like you say, I shouldn't use compression at all. I was tempted into the idea of giving each track a beefier sound. I'd love to send you a raw track if you're happy to spare the time - how would I send it over?

Audition's presets may be better than most! I'll PM you a link to my public dropbox.

[MBE]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Presets in what? 99.9% of the time, presets are not your friend, especially for fingerstlye guitar. Even if they're good, those presets are probably meant for a rhythm guitar in a rock mix. I don't hear "shrill", but I hear compression, which generally is unwanted in a solo fingerstyle piece. The compression is probably bringing out the squeeks a bit here, which may be what you hear. I'd add a little reverb to the raw tracks and see how that sounds. If you want to send me a raw track, I'd be glad to try a mix for you, just to have someone else's take to compare to.

I agree, the compression is quite obvious to me. However, that comes down to personal preference - there are plenty of instrumental acoustic tracks out there with fairly aggressive compression, and there are plenty with zero compression. I personally think your tracks sound quite good with the compression, but it does obviously restrict the dynamic range of the performance. Would they sound better without compression? To my ear, probably, but some target audiences will be more concerned with loudness than dynamics.

As an aside, I loved your performance, Chaconne in particular.

[Doug Young]

I just sent you back my "mix", feel free to share if it seems worthwhile. My first reaction was that your raw track was perfect as-is. Sometimes less is more :-) I went ahead and did a few, probably unnecessary, tweaks anyway, but mostly tried to keep it pure. I added a tiny touch of EQ, widened the track a hair, tried to reduce the squeaks just a tad with a multi-band compressor, and added some hopefully transparent reverb. And finally raised the level. The squeaks aren't a big issue, but you're using Adobe Audition (on a PC?) which has a great tool for knocking out squeeks, so you might consider just killing a few of the bigger ones.

[redavide]

Doug, would you please elaborate on how you de-squeaked with the multi-band compressor. Thanks.

[themachinist]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

I just sent you back my "mix", feel free to share if it seems worthwhile. My first reaction was that your raw track was perfect as-is. Sometimes less is more :-) I went ahead and did a few, probably unnecessary, tweaks anyway, but mostly tried to keep it pure. I added a tiny touch of EQ, widened the track a hair, tried to reduce the squeaks just a tad with a multi-band compressor, and added some hopefully transparent reverb. And finally raised the level. The squeaks aren't a big issue, but you're using Adobe Audition (on a PC?) which has a great tool for knocking out squeeks, so you might consider just killing a few of the bigger ones.

Wow - I just listened to your mix and it of course sounds heaps better! I've put my mix and your mix up on this link for all to hear. I tried to get the WAVS up this time so hopefully soundcloud hasn't tampered with their quality too much:

https://soundcloud.com/danrodgers1000

I've been using Audition on a PC - what's the tool called may I ask? I'm going to try and re-do the lot according to your words/tweaks of wisdom, when it comes to making hard copies. The whole EP is currently on my bandcamp page (link below) and bandcamp's down-coversion seems to have brought out the compression even more!

[Doug Young]

hi Sean, the tool I was referring to is the spectrum view - looks like a wall of psychedelic colors! You can actually see squeaks, select them with the mouse, and "heal" them. Doesn't always work, but it often does, and works best on big isolated squeaks, which are the ones that are the most noticeable anyway. The feature is provided to Adobe by Izotope, which has their own more full-featured version, called RX. It's pricey - costs more than all of Audition, but quite useful for home recording. Besides squeeks, I've removed chairs creaking, cats meowing, etc. The feature is only on the PC version of Audition.

redavide, I actually used a tool from TC Electronic called a "Dynamic EQ". Unfortunately, it's part of the powercore line that TC just killed. It's pretty slick, you dial in a graphical EQ, just like many EQs, setting the frequency, Q, and amount of cut, but then you can set a threshold for the EQ to trigger. Unless the sound crosses the threshold, there's no effect, but if it triggers, the EQ kicks in. Sean's louder squeaks, which were the only ones worth bothering with, all seemed to happen around 2K, so I set the EQ for that, with a narrow band, and adjusted the threshold to just kick in on the squeaks. So it just knocked them down a few db, and sounds pretty natural. I don't usually use this for squeeks, but it worked in this case - it's also great for taming peaking bass notes and so on.

The UI on this makes it nice to use, but you could do about the same thing with a multiband compressor, which is basically what it is. You just have to find the frequency range of the squeaks, and set up a narrow band, and adjust carefully to only kick in on squeaks. Probably a closer match for the TC would be some EQ/Multiband setup with a sidechain, somehow. If anyone's done this, or knows of an equivalent tool, I'd love to hear about it. It's one tool I'm going to hate to lose someday when I have to replace my computer.

[Scott Whigham]

Just to come back to the initial question, at no point did I hear shrill in any version. Really nice - I thought the original recording really sounded nice to begin with. I listened on two sets of monitors and it sounded good on both to my ears. Neither sounded tinny/shrill/muddy/etc - they both sounded good. I doubt I could really tell big differences between both versions actually.

Was it just me or did anyone else think these pulled a good bit more to one side than was natural? I'm almost sure it's me - I'm dialing in a new monitor placement and I'm probably sitting closer to the left one or something.

[themachinist]

Thanks for all the advice Doug - I really appreciate it! I've had to put my CD up on Bandcamp as is for now but I've got the tips for a different approach with my next effort, which I've already started to work on the arrangements for.

[Ty Ford]

I'm coming late to the party, but I agree with you and Doug.

The compression is good for about the first 20 seconds and then EVERYTHING IS IN MY FACE and is very fatiguing, including the fret rattle.

I don't know how much gain reduction you were using, but I find anything over 2-3 dB and the artifacts of the algorithm become annoying.

Nice tunes, nice playing! I really like Chaconne. Is that one of yours?

Regards,

Ty Ford

[moon]

Originally Posted by themachinist

I was wondering if anyone could have a quick listen to these and see if they sound too shrill?

Yes, definitely.

The shrill edge is happening in a narrow band, somewhere around 7k. Cutting that hard goes a long way to creating a more balanced sound.

I don't know where that came from - could have been the EQ preset which messed it up. Best way to explore the frequency balance is with a multi-band EQ. Narrow the bandwidth right down, boost generously and sweep through the frequencies. Anything obnoxious will really leap out and smack you in the face. Cut that a little, or a lot, but no more than you have to. Also, fine-tune the bandwidth.

Good playing. Hope the album does well.