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Originally posted by JTZ I like to listen to the mix in the hallway outside my studio every 30 mins. Then Ill burn the downmix on a CD and play it on the loudsystem downstairs, then I will take the CD in my car and blast it on the Pioneer deck ... God it sounds so differnt in every environment... Mixing is really difficult at first. My collige will always remind me... "If it sounds better in the hallway than it does on headphones, somethings definatlly wrong..." true dat

AMAZING advice. I do this all the time!! your partner is correct too

I actually monitor sometimes with my ears covered to get different perspective.

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Originally posted by Digital Aura Give me a break man. Like you could tell the difference in these cards. There should be no negligable degree of difference in the sound quality...just in interface and how things hook up. Did you check the specs??

Well I must agree with broken silence on this. I currently have three cards, not counting soundblaster live. I have an older Yamaha DSP factory, it sounds nice, but has crappy latency, so it's in a box for now. I have a M-audio Delta 66 which sounds nice, not as nice as the yamaha though, and I have used it for the last 2 years or so. Than one day my girlfriend took me to the music store and we checked out RME and Motu cards.... I took home the RME card and I am very satisfied. It does sound better than my delta 66. I accually compared the two cards in my system listening to same material and monitoring with the same monitors ofcourse. I can only say It's crispier, and it just sounds better. And I am not the only one who could tell the diefference immiediately. I still use the delta for my girlfriends cubase setup, but I am never going back, And I am sure you wouldn't either if you heard it... I can just imagine what a three thausand dollar soundcard sounds like hehehe... Motu sounds nice as well, in fact I couldn't tell the diefferance from the RME..

Like broken silence said, if you EQ right, you can let the mastering engineer do his job. Mudiness has to be corrected in order to get a pro sound. Want muddy? This is a little Flowtation remixed excerpt that I made in Reason really quick and half-assed to show what happens when you don't EQ and adjust levels on anything...ear fatigue mayhem, hehe:


http://www.soundclick.com/bands/1/ricomusic.htm

The one titled B&J - Flowtation (RiCo's Muddy Remix Clip)

Mastering is practically meaningless for a single track, it only becomes important when there are multiple tracks that have to go together, like on an album, where you want the tracks to have a discernible connection and common context, or on the radio or in a dj set, where you want them to have a common loudness level (or in the case of radio, a specific frequency distribution). Fixing stuff in the mastering stage is not recommended, you should fix things in the mix. Mastering on single tracks should be used to give that final nudge from greatness to perfection that you're just not engineer enough for

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Originally posted by TranceZoner How do quality producers like Nickson, Phynn and other Reason users make their whole track sound so tight? Nothing's muddy... Nothing is overdone, Everything is in place.. * Sigh* I know it comes to compression and equalizing, but i NEVER, Never get it so tight sounding as they do... Or is it their Reason setup, and how they connect all the machines? I'm a bit desperate, because although i use compressors and equalizers the right way, it never sounds so tight.. Anyone knows the answer?

They probably have professional sound engineers on their paylist

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Originally posted by Timothy They probably have professional sound engineers on their paylist

ROFL! Dream on!
And it has nothing to do with mastering. It's just the way you mix.
But you need good monitors and experience for a clean, punchy sound.

Yeah so iv got a delta44, i dont understand how a motu would be better. N whats the advantage of running the output in 96khz when all your software is still only processing everying in 44Khz?

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N whats the advantage of running the output in 96khz when all your software is still only processing everying in 44Khz?

Headroom, its like 3D designers. They dont render down to their final resolution. They usually double it or more. Then scale it down to get most of the pixelation out and to get a nice anti-alising. The same can apply to the digital audio realm. You can drop in a 44.1 kHz stereo synth lead into an 88.2 kHz project and have a good processor attached to the sample and it would smooth out the sound of it. But if your processors are still only outputing at 44.1 kHz, then not much will happen, you wont utilize the full resolution of your workspace. Kind of like watching a DVD-9 on an HDTV (Looks like crap). In the mean time, stick in the 44.1 kHz realm, theres nothing wrong with that. I still use 44.1 kHz. Most people won't know anyways... cept us audiophiles...

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Thanks im starting to get it i think. Just one more question, iv got a delta44, but if i use floops to produce and render it in 44KHz it wont touch the soundcard and therefore make no difference at all to the end product, am i right? Would it make any difference to the sound whilst monitoring it? And whats the 24 bit floating point thing in cubase about? sorry for the questions but this really confuses me.

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Originally posted by broken silence I absolutely could tell the difference. Buy a motu, see what I mean. Above and beyond use multiple motu's daisey chained. Like their productions? No, it wasn't mental. I actually got convinced into buying one. I really wanted to come home with a Nord Lead 2, but my partner hounded me to get a Motu instead. I was actually PISSED until I heard it. I couldn't believe i was using that shit card before that. I mean if you want an M-audio style card (maybe the high end ones are good, but if you're buying high end m-audio, why not buy a motu anyways) for just tinkering around with music, they're great. but for full on production, i don't think they're sufficient enough. not just recording too, monitoring is so much more clear, its insane. the track I posted was recorded on my motu.

I got Motu 828 MKII and RME Hammerfall multiface. I must say that RME definitely kicks motu's cast iron ass. While I like the ease of setup and 10 minutes up and running scenario, I do think that motu latency is unacceptible (even with ZLM) - I'm still above 11ms, while I'm at 2.9ms with RME. Also, motu seems to color the sound. I plug the same synth into RME and MOTU - comming out of MOTU, it sounds "darker". So much for neutrality of sound. Otherwise, it's a nifty little unit.

In terms of mastering, I'm no expert by any means and just starting out myself. But one of the things I noticed is many of us tend to use reverb on the patch - which is a bad idea. I know that sometimes you get the patch to where you want it to be and once you take away your built-in reverb, the patch sounds dull. So, you're adding some of that stuff back in and it becomes that much harder to get the sound to be cripsper. What it seems to come down to is: don't use reverbs in the synth, record the sound as dry as possible - you can add it later but once it's there you can't take it out. So, use FX with discretion. Same goes for delay, phase etc. Sure, you may need to spend extra time with the sound to get it right, you may have to do it over again several times before it becomse "right" - but no one said that you can do a hit-worthy track in 15 minutes. Music is like painting. Sometimes you have to look at the same picture over and over again before you see what's wrong with it. (the flipside of that is overmastering - making the track too harsh.)

anyway, use creativity - do unconventional things like run through guitar FX or vocal processor - you may get surprising results. don't confine yourself to conventional wisdom, unless you want to achieve conventional (boring) results.

I'm reading and hearing the same thing over and over again - if you start with a nearly perfect mix, you can master it and make it great. But you can't make something mediocre or poor sound great. It just doesn't happen.

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Originally posted by Tom_cowan Thanks im starting to get it i think. Just one more question, iv got a delta44, but if i use floops to produce and render it in 44KHz it wont touch the soundcard and therefore make no difference at all to the end product, am i right? Would it make any difference to the sound whilst monitoring it? And whats the 24 bit floating point thing in cubase about? sorry for the questions but this really confuses me.

I havent used floops yet but theoretically if it stays in the digital domain, then the quality should remain intact. Depending on the way you have your audio routed in floops, I think by default, floops just uses the directX sound mapper to your audio interface to play music back, but thats it. It wont touch the audio card if you are rendering down. So yes you are right. No it wouldnt make a difference while monitoring it either.

As for the 24-bit (did you mean 32-bit?) floating point in cubase... This can get geeky really quick, but to sum it up there two "types"; integer (16-bit) and float (aka floating-point, 32-bit). Floats can carry a much larger number than an integer. This greater number can give a much better accuracy when reproducing sound in the digital domain. And actually, in Cubase they only use 24 of the 32 bits for the number itself, and the remaining 8 bits for shifting the decimal spaces depending on how small the number is.

Hope this makes some sense...

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