The Logic Off Topic list

Hi OT-luggers, i'd like your advice on the following.

It occures to me that material I produce seems to lack 'power' 
and 'presence' in comparison with other 'top notch' productions.

I'll give you a short description of the way I usually work:
- i record all midi tracks from outboard gear to audio tracks,
- i add the plug in effects on individual and bus tracks,
- i add reverb (from ext processor) to the bus mix on mixing desk 
(328)

this mix i 'loop'  back to a stereo track in logic.

On this stereo track I do some final editing, including:
- eq-ing
- stereo spreading
- limiting (waves L1)

I tried to raise the L1 treshold level to a setting of +11, to 
compensate for power and presence. But it seems to have a negative 
impact on systems with a low amplifying power (eg. car stereo, pc 
multimedia sets): the music will sound rather distorted, when turning 
up the volume. 

Can anybody give me hints, how to achieve the results I'm after?

Many thanks in advance,

EK

--- In logic-ot@y..., "ewald_kegel" <ekegel@c...> wrote:
> Hi OT-luggers, i'd like your advice on the following.
> 
> It occures to me that material I produce seems to lack 'power' 
> and 'presence' in comparison with other 'top notch' productions.
> 

I dont have any answer or tips.....
Heres a link with an article that might be worth reading.
http://www.computermusic.co.uk/tutorial/mastering/mastering1.asp

regards
Mikael Adle
http://www.mp3.com/MikaelAdle

>Can anybody give me hints, how to achieve the results I'm after?

You really should post a good quality mp3 so that people can hear 
what you are doing.  Otherwise it's pretty much impossible to even 
begin to speculate on where you are going right or wrong.

--- In logic-ot@y..., Dennis Gunn <dennisg@a...> wrote:
> >Can anybody give me hints, how to achieve the results I'm after?
> 
> You really should post a good quality mp3 so that people can hear 
> what you are doing.  Otherwise it's pretty much impossible to even 
> begin to speculate on where you are going right or wrong.

You're right Dennis, action speaks louder than words :-)

Here you find a link to a small, but high quality mp3-snippet:
http://www.cone.nl/content/download/example.mp3

I'm interested in your opinions, about:
-how to obtain more presence and 'power'
-while played on lo-fi systems, no distortion
-other tips & hints

Thanks in advance for your time and attention.

EK

>  I'm interested in your opinions, about:
>-how to obtain more presence and 'power'
>-while played on lo-fi systems, no distortion
>-other tips & hints

Actually it sounds like a pretty good mix to me.

On my hi-fi speakers (Dynaudio BM6As) I feel like I the bass might be 
a touch loud and I might like a little more of the percussion.  On my 
tiny crappo Lo-Fi speakers the percussion balance sounds better right 
but the bass line is a little hard to pick out.

One thing you might take note of is that the bass is a pretty pure 
sine wavy bass and it tends to get lost on speakers that can't 
reproduce it when it is loud enough to actually be kind of blasting 
on speakers that can.

NS10s for example roll off on the bottom at 60 hz but a low E on a 
bass is 40hz so it is the distortion and overtones that give you a 
clue as to what is going on on the bottom.   The fundamental does not 
even exist on most speakers.  The upshoot of this being that if you 
are aiming for crappo speakers you may want to use a bass patch with 
more overtones in it.

As for sounding more "powerful" I don't think any mastering you do to 
that particular piece is going to make it a whole lot more powerful 
because it is kind of lite music and light tones.

Just my opinion and someone else may be able to help you more.

"ewald_kegel" <ekegel@...> wrote:

>--- In logic-ot@y..., Dennis Gunn <dennisg@a...> wrote:
>>  >Can anybody give me hints, how to achieve the results I'm after?
>>
>>  You really should post a good quality mp3 so that people can hear
>>  what you are doing.  Otherwise it's pretty much impossible to even
>>  begin to speculate on where you are going right or wrong.
>
>You're right Dennis, action speaks louder than words :-)
>
>Here you find a link to a small, but high quality mp3-snippet:
>http://www.cone.nl/content/download/example.mp3
>
>I'm interested in your opinions, about:
>-how to obtain more presence and 'power'

Based on what I heard with your example, I offer my
My 5 cents worth:

Reduce the low bass level in the mix. A lot.  It dominates all
else and it needs to breathe more to let other parts come
thru. A low shelf at  around - 6dB, 125 Hz for starters
The loudness  of the bass will lower the amount of maximising
you can  effectively apply across the whole track  so this is
likely to have some effect on the 'power' part of your problem.

A a slow gentle curve to boost  in the midrange (a la 2k)
wouldn't hurt  for presence either.

Think about leaving a bit more space in your arrangement too.

If you are monitoring on a less than decent system during mixing
It may be worth your time and money getting a spectrum analyzer
to check out your efforts visually.

S.


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