Beyond a good mix, what is a good mastering strategy for me?

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by SprintBob

But again, you are absolutely correct in that I need to continue to refine my picking hand to produce that balance at the source.

It's really hard to balance between bass notes and melody with EQ. The difference may be an octave, or even less, and there's tons of overlap between the overtones of the notes. You can affect it somewhat, but it usually doesn't work all that well. Dynamic EQ can help, since you can dial it in to just cut a specific bass note only when it occurs without damaging the rest of the track, but even then, it's useful for relatively subtle tweaking.

[Doug Young]

Overall, this is nice playing and nice recording, BTW. I do get the feeling there may be some overprocessing going on with the high end, but it's hard to know. Nice guitar tone on the bass strings. Is this the Doerr?

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Overall, this is nice playing and nice recording, BTW. I do get the feeling there may be some overprocessing going on with the high end, but it's hard to know. Nice guitar tone on the bass strings. Is this the Doerr?

Thanks so much for the encouragement Doug, that means a lot. The guitar is my Doerr. I've been pretty sentimental about playing it since Tom passed so unexpectedly. I'm using GHS Silk and Steel strings, 11-48's in this song for the first time. I've been really enjoying listening to up and coming fingerstyle artist Yasmin Williams and these are the strings she uses. The tone is fairly round and full albeit kind of mellow in the mids and highs. The low E has kind of a thunk to it that gets more pronounced when you are using a capo. It does not really ring or sustain that much.

[DupleMeter]

Originally Posted by SprintBob

Here's a re-mix trying to incorporate some of Doug's and Derek's suggestions. Does not sound quite as good through Soundcloud as it does playing the WAV file direct off my hard drive.

Take what I'm about to say for what it is. I'm a professional audio engineer, I mix & master for a living...so I have different goals when I approach a sound. I'm looking for ultra-refinement. I know that isn't everyone's end goal. I'm also listening in the studio on a very refined playback system.

I don't think your mic position is optimal, I'm hearing a lot of top end clanks & clicks, and there's a pronounced bump around 200Hz. My guess is that the mics are way too close. The sound needs some space to breathe. I also suspect the balance will get better if you can pull the mics back a bit.

The mics have a pretty harsh top end, that isn't doing you any favors. Rolling off the top might help tame that. Pulling back will also help that.

There's also a hash sound in the top end. It might be room sound or it might be the preamp or the mic. I can't tell exactly. it seems to move with the sound level, so I'm suspecting either preamp or mic. I wonder if the gain is set as well as it could?

I'm not digging the reverb. It's a little woolly & seems to add more mush in that 200-ish range that already has some buildup.

I'd love to hear the raw recording. No processing of any kind, just to get a sense of what you're starting with.

I hope you don't mind me being honest about what I'm hearing. I am trying to steer you in the right direction.

I did download the .wav file to hear full quality, and while listening I did do a very quick pass just to see how the track reacted to some quick & dirty tweaking. This pushes it a step closer to what I would try to get from the raw recording (before any processing), to get a better final mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v80mya4q82...0HCTS.wav?dl=0


HTH

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by DupleMeter

Take what I'm about to say for what it is. I'm a professional audio engineer, I mix & master for a living...so I have different goals when I approach a sound. I'm looking for ultra-refinement. I know that isn't everyone's end goal. I'm also listening in the studio on a very refined playback system.

I don't think your mic position is optimal, I'm hearing a lot of top end clanks & clicks, and there's a pronounced bump around 200Hz. My guess is that the mics are way too close. The sound needs some space to breathe. I also suspect the balance will get better if you can pull the mics back a bit.

The mics have a pretty harsh top end, that isn't doing you any favors. Rolling off the top might help tame that. Pulling back will also help that.

There's also a hash sound in the top end. It might be room sound or it might be the preamp or the mic. I can't tell exactly. it seems to move with the sound level, so I'm suspecting either preamp or mic. I wonder if the gain is set as well as it could?

I'm not digging the reverb. It's a little woolly & seems to add more mush in that 200-ish range that already has some buildup.

I'd love to hear the raw recording. No processing of any kind, just to get a sense of what you're starting with.

I hope you don't mind me being honest about what I'm hearing. I am trying to steer you in the right direction.

I did download the .wav file to hear full quality, and while listening I did do a very quick pass just to see how the track reacted to some quick & dirty tweaking. This pushes it a step closer to what I would try to get from the raw recording (before any processing), to get a better final mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v80mya4q82...0HCTS.wav?dl=0


HTH

I absolutely do not mind your honest critique. This is super helpful. Let me spend some time listening to your tweaked version. If you PM me your email, I can send the unedited WAV file via WeTransfer.

Thanks so much for the time you took here!

[Doug Young]

I just checked out Bob's raw track. There are definitely a few weird things going on here. TBD.

[runamuck]

Hi Sprint Bob,

I just listened to your most recent recording. From what I hear, EQ, reverb or any other effects you're using are of a distant second in significance compared to the unbalanced attack of your picking. I'm hearing the melody only because it's so familiar.

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by runamuck

Hi Sprint Bob,

I just listened to your most recent recording. From what I hear, EQ, reverb or any other effects you're using are of a distant second in significance compared to the unbalanced attack of your picking. I'm hearing the melody only because it's so familiar.

Yep, we have recognized that is an issue with my playing technique.

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

I just checked out Bob's raw track. There are definitely a few weird things going on here. TBD.

Doug and all,

Recording environment - A worst case scenario of a cube size room approximately 10.5' x 10.5' x 8' (tall). Hard wood floors with rug. One window. The room is setup with guitars hanging on walls and various cabinets and shelves. Room treatment is only an investment in a folding two panel Gobo with 24" wide by 72" tall panels that I will set up in a shallow V. The mics are set up on two stands within the V and I sit facing the mics in the shallow V. The Gobo is intended to absorb and reduce reflection. Not much else I can do with this room but to be honest in listening to other home recordings, I'm probably doing better with it than most others. On the day I recorded this, no one else in the house, weekend morning with minimal outside traffic, and HVAC system off. I recorded with the door closed to the room and the door is setup with an acoustic sealing treatement that is very effective at keeping noise out (keeping our curious cat out) and also keeping my guitar playing in the room so I don't impact my significant other when she is home.

Mics and mic setup - A spaced pair consisting of a Microtech Gefell M300 SDC and an Austrian Audio OC818 LDC. The LDC is aimed at the lower bout just behind the bridge and the SDC is aimed at the 12th fret neck junction to the guitar. The mics are approximately 24" apart from each other and approximately 8"-9" from the guitar.

Recording chain - The recording chain is mics to a Sebatron Axis 200VU two channel mic preamp to a Motu Ultralite MkV interface to my DAW (Reaper). The preamp has a high pass filter and phase switch for each channel. The mic levels into the interface from the DAW are controlled on each channel by the combination of a Pad/Gain knob (-15dB to 15 dB) and an output level knob (0-10). The former can act as either a pad for heavy mic signals or a gain boost for lower mic signals (such as acoustic stringed instruments). Turning the pad/gain to the right (positive) is typically combined with a lower output level setting. As an example, if pad/gain is 0, output level may be around 7. If pad/gain is 15 dB, output level may be around 3-4. Sebatron describes the pad/gain as the "color" control for your tone. Preamp also has two phase switches, one for each channel.

Mic settings/levels - High pass filter on preamp set at 80 Hz, pad/gain at 15 dB with output level at 3.5 that result in input level meters on the DAW peaking at approximately -6 dB with average levels between -18 dB and -10 dB. Each mic in same phase switch position. On the DAW, channel 1 was panned 100% left and channel 2 was panned 100% right.

Recording notes - There was a player mistake on the last approximately 30 seconds of the first pass on the raw recording. I stopped the recording and then re-recorded that last section and spliced it back. 20/20 hindsight should have been to not stop the recording and just pause and replay maintaining my playing position. However, when I recorded the section over, I probably shifted slighlty and did not play with the same attack so in the raw recording you hear a difference in the volume level of that section. I tried to fix that section in the mixed examples here where I created an automation envelope on each track. On one I raised the volume level 5 dB and on the other I raised the level 3 dB to try to smooth out the transition.

Monitoring and mixing notes - I use Sennheiser HD280 headphones for monitoring and Grado SR325e headphones for mixing. I use a Dell laptop. Plugins used in post processing were the Seventh Heaven reverb plugin (Sunset Chamber pre-set), FabFilter Pro Q3 EQ plugin, and Waves CLA-2A compressor plugin set to the acoustic guitar profile.

Player profile and experience - Semi-sucky to sucky intermediate level on the guitar and semi-clueless beginner level on recording with 8-1/2 years playing experience but one who aspires every day to improve and very much enjoying the learning curve. I'm an open book for critique and feedback and do believe I'm moving the ball down the field both with my playing and recording solo fingerstyle acoustic. I will say that I believe solo fingerstyle acoustic guitar is probably the most challenging type of playing you can take on in terms of technique and overall tone production and recording will lay bare where you need to improve. I'm fortunate to be able to afford some amazing equipment that inspires me every day.

Thanks again for the help. I hope my progress adds to your enjoyment of this Record forum based on the feedback many of you have offered. This is an awesome community. I wish we could all gather and meet in person some day.

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by DupleMeter

I did download the .wav file to hear full quality, and while listening I did do a very quick pass just to see how the track reacted to some quick & dirty tweaking. This pushes it a step closer to what I would try to get from the raw recording (before any processing), to get a better final mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v80mya4q82...0HCTS.wav?dl=0


HTH

Steve,

What you did with my mix made it sound fuller, rounder, more balanced, and less strident (if that is a term to describe softening the hardness you heard in the high end of the recording).

Thanks for doing this. I downloaded the WAV file so I can do more direct comparison to my efforts.

Cheers,

Bob

[Doug Young]

Bob sent me a raw file, which is interesting, but with a mystery or two. Here's my thoughts:

1) I think the overriding issue is getting the melody to come out in the performance, nothing to do with the recording.

2) The strings may not be helping. Hard to know, every guitar and player is different, but I'd not suggest going below 12s for fingerstyle. I use much heavier myself, in an attempt to get more from the treble strings. My Doerr was challenging to dial in the treble strings. Great basses, but I tried lots of different strings to optimize the trebles. When I bought it from Tom, he had a mixed set on it, different brand top 3 vs bottom 3, so it seems I'm not alone in working on that. In any case, I suspect 11's will sound pretty weak.

3) The track you sent is clipping, above 0db. You say you recorded at -6, so maybe this happened in the export? In any case, way too hot.

4) I'm hearing some low-mid distortion at times. Comes and goes. Maybe you're hitting your tube preamp too hard?

5) The really weird part. I immediately sensed a phase issue. Flipping polarity doesn't help, makes it worse. Delaying one side to attempt to phase correct doesn't help, it just shifts the problem. The phase relationship bounces all over the place, going from positive correlation to quite negative at times. Not sure if this you shifting in your seat, edits, room acoustics, your gobo causing reflections, some kind of processing? Not sure. Maybe DupleMeter will have some thoughts on this.

Here's an example of what I see and hear. This is a graph of phase correlation by frequency. Up is positive (good), down is negative (bad). Spaced pairs will have weak phase correlation (and the only way to get 100% is mono). But here's what this graph looks like on one of my recent recordings, also done with spaced pairs in about the same placement as you report using:

Dougs_Phase.jpg

As you can see, I'm roughly 70-80% correlated across all frequencies. This is reasonable for spaced pairs. It does jump around with different notes, but generally stays in this range.

Yours on the other hand, tends to look like this:

Bobs_Phase.jpg

Or:

Bobs_Phase_2.jpg

Yours also jumps around wildly, but there's a lot of this kind of thing, where big swatches of frequencies are very out of phase. There almost always seems to be some split around 200-250 Hz, where you're positive (barely) below it, and negative above it. I think this contributes to a sort of indistinct sound, a sort of washiness, that, combined with the bass line being too loud relative to the melody, makes things feel distant and unclear.

[SprintBob]

Thanks Doug, see my bolded comments below.

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Bob sent me a raw file, which is interesting, but with a mystery or two. Here's my thoughts:

1) I think the overriding issue is getting the melody to come out in the performance, nothing to do with the recording.

2) The strings may not be helping. Hard to know, every guitar and player is different, but I'd not suggest going below 12s for fingerstyle. I use much heavier myself, in an attempt to get more from the treble strings. My Doerr was challenging to dial in the treble strings. Great basses, but I tried lots of different strings to optimize the trebles. When I bought it from Tom, he had a mixed set on it, different brand top 3 vs bottom 3, so it seems I'm not alone in working on that. In any case, I suspect 11's will sound pretty weak.

I think a mixed set may ultimately be what I need so using the top three strings from a light (i.e. 12's) set and the lower three strings from an extra light set (i.e. 11's). But I also need to work on my picking hand technique so certainly more time there.

3) The track you sent is clipping, above 0db. You say you recorded at -6, so maybe this happened in the export? In any case, way too hot.

In Reaper, you have levels for the two tracks for the two mics and those are what I set. There is also a "Master Mix" level control that I have to check may be setup where it does some type of additive treatment with the individual track levels that seems to boost the track levels. I'll check that this evening. What I sent to you had the gain adjustments all set at 0 dB and I also could have lowered the gain level on the "Master Mix" until there was no clipping.

4) I'm hearing some low-mid distortion at times. Comes and goes. Maybe you're hitting your tube preamp too hard?

I could be using too much pad/gain on the pad/gain knob on the Sebatron. For my next recording, this will be set to 0 db.

5) The really weird part. I immediately sensed a phase issue. Flipping polarity doesn't help, makes it worse. Delaying one side to attempt to phase correct doesn't help, it just shifts the problem. The phase relationship bounces all over the place, going from positive correlation to quite negative at times. Not sure if this you shifting in your seat, edits, room acoustics, your gobo causing reflections, some kind of processing? Not sure. Maybe DupleMeter will have some thoughts on this.

I have no idea. In addition to setting the pad/gain to 0 on the preamp, I think I'll switch the HPF on the preamp off and then use the low cut in the FabFilter EQ plugin via a dedicated bus.

Here's an example of what I see and hear. This is a graph of phase correlation by frequency. Up is positive (good), down is negative (bad). Spaced pairs will have weak phase correlation (and the only way to get 100% is mono). But here's what this graph looks like on one of my recent recordings, also done with spaced pairs in about the same placement as you report using:

Attachment 64856

As you can see, I'm roughly 70-80% correlated across all frequencies. This is reasonable for spaced pairs. It does jump around with different notes, but generally stays in this range.

Yours on the other hand, tends to look like this:

Attachment 64857

Or:

Attachment 64863

Yours also jumps around wildly, but there's a lot of this kind of thing, where big swatches of frequencies are very out of phase. There almost always seems to be some split around 200-250 Hz, where you're positive (barely) below it, and negative above it. I think this contributes to a sort of indistinct sound, a sort of washiness, that, combined with the bass line being too loud relative to the melody, makes things feel distant and unclear.

[Doug Young]

I think I'd try a test recording without your sound baffles/gobo setup, just to see if that has the same issue. If you're not doing any kind of processing on this track, I don't know what else could be causing the phase behavior. There could be something happening in Reaper, but I don't know what. Very odd.

When I'm trying to chase stuff down like this, I just make short recordings - 10 seconds even. And I play something simple so I don't get hung up trying to play perfectly, etc. A short example with and without the sound panels might be interesting.

[DupleMeter]

The phase issues are from mic placement. They are not phase aligned. I just verified this in the original wav file.

The more mics you use for a single source the more careful you need to be about placement.

There’s the old 3:1 rule that states: the distance between mics should be 3X the distance of the mic to the source.

This is, of course, just a general guideline & is not nearly as good as testing the phase relationship.

Luckily you can simply nudge one of the mic track so that they line up. Just line up the first note of both tracks so that they start at the same exact moment. It would be interesting to see what tonal improvements that brings.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by DupleMeter

There’s the old 3:1 rule that states: the distance between mics should be 3X the distance of the mic to the source.

My understanding is that applies to micing multiple sources, not stereo micing of a guitar. It's really hard to put mics on a guitar and obey that rule, unless you are only a few inches from the guitar. The 3-1 rule applies in lots of cases, but no one follows it for spaced pairs on guitar. (BUT, note that Bob is basically meeting this rule with his 24 inches apart and 8 inches from the guitar).

Luckily you can simply nudge one of the mic track so that they line up. Just line up the first note of both tracks so that they start at the same exact moment. It would be interesting to see what tonal improvements that brings.

I had no luck doing that, all it did was shift where the phase alignment problems happen in time. I tried both manually and with auto-align, which computes it, and also with RX, which can dynamically compute and correct it. The problem shifted, but remained. The phase changes constantly as he played. That happens always to some extent, of course, but I've not seen it as extreme as this track.