ASK US ANYTHING [NO SUBJECT IS STUPID / ALL QUESTIONS WELCOMED]

[Merah]

Hello people

I’m finishing some music these days. It sounds ok to me when I make it. The problem I have is when I compare it to other tracks on sound cloud etc.

Every other track I listen to sounds so wide and stereoish compared to my own. When I watch tutorials, no one seems to do much panning etc and doesn’t really mention width of track or how this is achieved.

Apart from this my tracks are sounding not bad.


The thing that did the trick for me was using a plug in from plugin alliance called bettermaker eq. I tried a few of the m/s presets and achieved to get the results I was wanting to hear.

If you want a really wide sounding mix perhaps focus on making some main elements mono, do not complicate the stereo field as most of us will find it hard to hear

[Lost to the Void]

Do I need to use a spectrum analyser?

No, but if you learn how to use them, they can be very useful, and will definitely aid you in making observations about mixes and sounds that much easier.

[Merah]

Can you recommend a good free one?

[juodas]

Can you recommend a good free one?

Vspan

[Lost to the Void]

Can you recommend a good free one?

If you use ableton it comes with one.
I uploaded my preset for it somewhere on here.

Blue Cat audio and voxengo both do good free analysers.

[Amøbe]

Who the fuck is Fred Again, and why is his name suddenly everywhere?

[willemb]

Finger drumming modern house-y stuff popular with the kids

[mervv]

I read someone describe Fred Again as "Burial for gen z" or something like that and I thought it was fitting. A lot of his songs are really catchy and nice, though. He really blew up after having a very popular Boiler Room set last year. It's sentimental house and garage with a lot of vocal samples. Worth a listen; it's easy to understand why he has a wide appeal.

[Lost to the Void]

Who the fuck is Fred Again, and why is his name suddenly everywhere?

Not on my radar at all until this post.
Checked him out and I see why.
Skrillex collaborator and yet another super wealthy public school kid who bought his way up.
Pop music and part of the gentrification and class inaccessibility going on in electronica.
Get in the sea.

[Amøbe]

haha sorry for bringing him into your sphere, Steve ;D

Just checked some things out with him - I gotta give him he's good at finger drumming, but boy does his music bore me. I think I sort of get the references to Burial, but it seems to be nowhere near that level in my ears.

[Lost to the Void]

haha sorry for bringing him into your sphere, Steve ;D

Just checked some things out with him - I gotta give him he's good at finger drumming, but boy does his music bore me. I think I sort of get the references to Burial, but it seems to be nowhere near that level in my ears.

Well yeah, Burial was unique, whereas this guy........

[Amøbe]

haha sorry for bringing him into your sphere, Steve ;D

Just checked some things out with him - I gotta give him he's good at finger drumming, but boy does his music bore me. I think I sort of get the references to Burial, but it seems to be nowhere near that level in my ears.

Well yeah, Burial was unique, whereas this guy........

yeah I have this feeling that somehow Gen Z decided to just get super excited about some random youtuber.

On the topic of Burial - the other day I argued with a friend of mine, that Burial has sort of become my generation's Bob Dylan. He keeps making the stuff I don't want from him, and still I'd defend all of it to friends who don't get what he has made post-Untrue

[gedda]

So...Should I worry about stereo in 2023? Often times I have a lead with reverb that doesn't exactly sound like ass in mono but it sure as hell isn't as good in stereo. I also don't know if most club systems are mono these days. Yay or nay?

I put some of my favorite songs in mono like some Basic Channel stuff, and I'm like "if they put a good record out and it's kinda meh in mono, why can't I do it?" Correct me if I'm wrong (which I think I am , tbh).

[Lost to the Void]

So...Should I worry about stereo in 2023? Often times I have a lead with reverb that doesn't exactly sound like ass in mono but it sure as hell isn't as good in stereo. I also don't know if most club systems are mono these days. Yay or nay?

I put some of my favorite songs in mono like some Basic Channel stuff, and I'm like "if they put a good record out and it's kinda meh in mono, why can't I do it?" Correct me if I'm wrong (which I think I am , tbh).

Well, finally we are getting more stereo sound in clubs and events.

Should you worry? It`s up to you, I barely master any mono only music, and I don`t hear much if any, new music that is in mono.
So.

With my own stuff I very much make use of stereo, and mid-side techniques in particular. Main drums dead mono, leads are mono biased, ambience + pads and other shit goes out to the sides at varying widths. You can get really nice clean wide and spacious mixes if you use stereo correctly. Things get muddy and cramped in mono pretty quickly.

[Barfunkel]

What does pan law do precisely and more importantly, do normal people ever have any need to touch the default setting of the DAW? And what happens when you do change it and do certain settings give you some advantages or disadvantages the others don't?

Explain it to me like I was an idiot. I have checked many tutorials about but they always just explain it from a technical POV, no one ever explains WHY would you want to change them.

[Barfunkel]

Another one: What do all pass filters actually do to audio? They seem to change it somehow, I just don't understand what's going on. Can they be used for something useful? Can they do harm in some way?

The only thing I ever use them for is occasionally for kicks. A random guy online (ie. a very reliable source) once told me has likes to put four all pass filters on the kick drum at around 120Hz. I've tried it a few times and it seems to make a rough kick sound a lot more clean and precise. Which is sometimes nice and useful, I just wonder whether the trick might do some harm I can't hear, like introduce phase issues or such?

Here's an audio example of that:






The one one with the all pass filter sounds a bit cleaner, the other one a bit dirtier. On some kicks the effect is much more pronounced, here it's a bit more subtle.

Bonus question: Any ideas where else all pass filters could be applied to do something nice?

[Lost to the Void]

Another one: What do all pass filters actually do to audio? They seem to change it somehow, I just don't understand what's going on. Can they be used for something useful? Can they do harm in some way?

The only thing I ever use them for is occasionally for kicks. A random guy online (ie. a very reliable source) once told me has likes to put four all pass filters on the kick drum at around 120Hz. I've tried it a few times and it seems to make a rough kick sound a lot more clean and precise. Which is sometimes nice and useful, I just wonder whether the trick might do some harm I can't hear, like introduce phase issues or such?

Here's an audio example of that:






The one one with the all pass filter sounds a bit cleaner, the other one a bit dirtier. On some kicks the effect is much more pronounced, here it's a bit more subtle.

Bonus question: Any ideas where else all pass filters could be applied to do something nice?

There is very noticeable phase distortion on the low end of the all passed version, versus the clean version so I`m not sure how you can say it is cleaner. It`s distorted.
The transients are slightly smeared, and the phase is shifted.
Most of this will go away once the low end is put into mono anyway.

Basically an all pass filter effects the phase of a signal (a phaser is basically a series of all pass filters).
I can`t see any reason to place multiple versions on a kick drum when you could get a similar effect in a cleaner and much more stereo coherent way via other means.
With so many phase based tools available now, and the various tools you can deal with dynamics and transients. All pass filters seem like a brute force tool these days, with little ability for control.

[mindstuff]

A random guy online (ie. a very reliable source) once told me has likes to put four all pass filters on the kick drum at around 120Hz

At first I'm like an all pass filter at 120Hz...how does one set the frequency of an all pass filter or is there a resonance bump at 120Hz?

After looking into the use of an all pass filter I found this interesting tidbit:

it passes all portions of the audio spectrum, thus the name all-pass. However, the phase response is not flat. There is phase shift associated with this all-pass behavior. This phase shift is due to the contributions of the low-pass and high-pass filters that were combined (mixed).

https://audioxpress.com/article/Using-All-Pass-Filters

[Lost to the Void]

A random guy online (ie. a very reliable source) once told me has likes to put four all pass filters on the kick drum at around 120Hz

At first I'm like an all pass filter at 120Hz...how does one set the frequency of an all pass filter or is there a resonance bump at 120Hz?

After looking into the use of an all pass filter I found this interesting tidbit:

it passes all portions of the audio spectrum, thus the name all-pass. However, the phase response is not flat. There is phase shift associated with this all-pass behavior. This phase shift is due to the contributions of the low-pass and high-pass filters that were combined (mixed).

https://audioxpress.com/article/Using-All-Pass-Filters

Yeah, it was an old school way of phase rotation. The centre frequency is where the phase is at 90 degrees.
It can be useful with mid range percussion to shift the transients, and there are some more modern takes on all pass filters, like the kilohearts disperser.
It`s another tool at the end of the day.

[Amøbe]

A random guy online (ie. a very reliable source) once told me has likes to put four all pass filters on the kick drum at around 120Hz

At first I'm like an all pass filter at 120Hz...how does one set the frequency of an all pass filter or is there a resonance bump at 120Hz?

After looking into the use of an all pass filter I found this interesting tidbit:

it passes all portions of the audio spectrum, thus the name all-pass. However, the phase response is not flat. There is phase shift associated with this all-pass behavior. This phase shift is due to the contributions of the low-pass and high-pass filters that were combined (mixed).

https://audioxpress.com/article/Using-All-Pass-Filters

Yeah, it was an old school way of phase rotation. The centre frequency is where the phase is at 90 degrees.
It can be useful with mid range percussion to shift the transients, and there are some more modern takes on all pass filters, like the kilohearts disperser.
It`s another tool at the end of the day.

I really have a hard time wrapping my head around this - is it somewhat related to comb filtering (which - if I understand it correctly - is about making delays that are shorter than the wavelength to produce new harmonics out of the phases) or am I completely in the wrong area?