Silly question: Moving FX from master to drum buss

Electronic Music Production // Dark Arts
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Plyphon
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Silly question: Moving FX from master to drum buss

Post by Plyphon »

Hello,

So this might be a stupid question.

But what, at the end of the day, is the difference between having saturation on your master buss and having it on a drum buss?

Let me explain:

I use quite a bit of saturation on my master to get the drums to crunch & colour/aesthetic like old mackie mixers. It's mainly for the drums, but obviously all other elements are going through it as well as it's on the master, but you can't really hear it on other stuff.

So people often state that when you send to mastering you remove all FX from the master - in my case this would change the colour and aesthetic of the track completely if I did that. So I could move the saturation to a drum bus, but other than the other stuff not going through the saturation now, what in reality/sonically is the difference to just having it on the master? Surely all those FX are still there, so it'll effect the mastering process just as if there were a bunch of FX on the master, right?


Let me know if I've worded that crap.

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g3_d9
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Re: Silly question: Moving FX from master to drum buss

Post by g3_d9 »

So, just my personal opinion here...

it's rather dependant upon what the 'entirety' of the 'track' consists of.

further discussion is rather subjective, particularly in regard to 'techno'.
"The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence" -
Jean Baudrillard.

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Re: Silly question: Moving FX from master to drum buss

Post by g3_d9 »

"The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence" -
Jean Baudrillard.

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Lost to the Void
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Re: Silly question: Moving FX from master to drum buss

Post by Lost to the Void »

Plyphon wrote:Hello,

So this might be a stupid question.

But what, at the end of the day, is the difference between having saturation on your master buss and having it on a drum buss?

Let me explain:

I use quite a bit of saturation on my master to get the drums to crunch & colour/aesthetic like old mackie mixers. It's mainly for the drums, but obviously all other elements are going through it as well as it's on the master, but you can't really hear it on other stuff.

So people often state that when you send to mastering you remove all FX from the master - in my case this would change the colour and aesthetic of the track completely if I did that. So I could move the saturation to a drum bus, but other than the other stuff not going through the saturation now, what in reality/sonically is the difference to just having it on the master? Surely all those FX are still there, so it'll effect the mastering process just as if there were a bunch of FX on the master, right?


Let me know if I've worded that crap.
Ok. Not a simple answer.
Firstly, the Mackie crunch sound was never a master channel things. People weren't driving the 2 buss to crunch the entire mix, it was done on a channel basis, usually only the kick or drum bus. Driving the entire mix in to the red would do all sorts of stuff to transients and dynamics you probably wouldn't want. The Mackie channel drive was never a colour thing, it was a grit and drive thing. Great for some percussion, not so great on a mix. If you are referring directly to that particular sound it's not really saturation it's distortion\overdrive.

So that out of the way..
Saturation, or even drive\distortion is not a no no on the master buss, but it's the same situation as most discussions about master channel stuff.
Do want more control or less control of your mix.
If you want more control then saturate or distort by channel, then each channel can be treated, and then EQd to fit the mix on its own merits. The dynamics and everything can still be sculpted or controlled and if in the future specific problems come to light, you can easily find the sound or bus with the problem and correct it.

Saturate and or distort the whole mix and you have less control. Any eq or level adjustment to any individual track or buss can change the way the master saturation\distortion acts and responds, and it might mean then re addressing other elements of the mix which may get you in a tail spin of correcting for corrections.

Everything in that mix is having its transients and dynamics shaped by that one effect, which could lead to elements losing punch with no way of correcting for it without again, changing the nature of the entire mix.
Essentially it makes life harder and it can lead to a situation where, for example you have overcooked it, the top end is distorted in exactly the wrong way that vinyl hates.
The cutting engineer says "can't cut this as is, needle won't like it, going to have to roll this right off". But that roll off destructively alters your mix and you don't want it to happen.
Cutting engineers time is money, no second session for free, mix should be ready when he gets it, fancy paying another 90 quid minimum for another cut?

A extreme example, but one that could happen.


Now I'm not saying don't distort\saturate or whatever, your master channel.
What I say is make sure you fully understand what you are doing, what the implications are, what the problems are, and what the solutions are.
And make sure that you understand the actual result\effect you want and the results\effects you don't want across the whole mix.
You might want everything to be clipped, and therefore be ok with that, but you might only want the harmonic richness on your mix but not the by product of clipped transients, or extra density in the low mids or whatever.
If you only want one specific effect but are just having to accept all the other shit that comes with it, then maybe you are doing it for the wrong reasons.


I have a pretty good experience of this right now.

I have a "new sound" I have developed. It's different enough that I am separating it from my Voidloss project. It's been signed.
Technically what I have done to the master bus alone would make most engineers pass out with stress. I have fucked the master channel to bits. Individual channels and busses also have some fucked to bigness. BUT I have managed to retain dynamics, a very rounded and warm low end and plenty of sparkle.
I have sort of achieved the impossible.
I had a picture of the sound I wanted, I could mostly predict the problems and issues the mix would face.
What I wanted was a sound that felt like it was on the cusp of falling apart. Like a tape machine where the tape was so worn the magnetic layer was separating out and falling away, where the heads were worn and distorted and the whole sound was vintage and felt slightly distant, but there was modern era punch, huge low end, lots of detail and subtlety but also the action of distortion where every sound bleeds into each other, as if everything was sort of one sound but not, a sort of glue from distortion.
I knew some of the problems would be...
Lack of dynamics, lack of top end definition, reduced separation, narrow image, overall lack of detail, flat low end with little harmonic weight.
The only way I could achieve the sound was essentially to use lots of really good distortion and saturation, but not just on sounds individually because the whole mix needed to bleed into itself, so I had to distort the master channel.

It took me months of experimentation before I developed a method.
I call it the "Fucked to all shit process"

And it works. I still need to fine tune it, the guy who runs the label tested out the material at a few places , including tresor, so it got a battering, and his feedback confirms the final elements of fine tuning I still need to do to get it "perfect". Essentially just a little cleaner in the low end, and some more punch, and I already have a plan to deal with that (which I will be doing throughout this week).
I'm being extremely finicky because this is going on vinyl which adds extra problems so I really want to get clarity and punch spot on.

Sooooo it would be hypocritical to say don't ever do it ever, because I am doing it, doing it with bells on..... But I'm fully aware of the problems, and have taken a long time to work out the solutions. The time spent on these tunes is like working on a pop record for a major label type of time. Hardcore detail focus.
Again my example is extreme, if you saw my master channel and took a peek at all the individual channels you would be expecting merzbow levels of noise out the speakers, but actually it's controlled and round and not really abrasive. Just thick and... Falling apart.

So yeah by all means do it, but understand it and be prepared for the problems OR be prepared to be told there are problems if it goes to an engineer, it might be you won't even notice them because your ears aren't tuned yet to that level.


Did any of that shit make sense?
Mastering Engineer @ Black Monolith Studio
New Shit
Techno is dead. Long live Techno.

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P0607r0n
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Re: Silly question: Moving FX from master to drum buss

Post by P0607r0n »

Woah, really good read. Can't wait to listen to that piece Steve. :0


I would +1 on "be sure if you really need that on 2 buss" or you do it because of laziness... As doing changes to any sound in your project might (most likely will) be a long fight with correcting, compensating and will be longer and more frustrating than just adding fx on separate tracks/busses

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Re: Silly question: Moving FX from master to drum buss

Post by intrusav »

That sounds cool, and nuts! A bit like trying to sort out a knotted up ball of wool, haha!

Brings to mind a guy who I was following on soundcloud, eesn/esem/georgi marinov, a sound engineer by profession. He put up a track built up using cut up samples from a session he recorded for a band, just guitar samples that were captured outside of the main recording. It was lush as fuck and built up to a crescendo. One of the most hauntingly beautiful tracks I had heard in a long time...

Can't remember the name of the track and it was a while ago so prob long taken down ..

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Re: Silly question: Moving FX from master to drum buss

Post by innovine »

Seems easier just to buy a mackie. I bought a 32:8 for less than the cost of a new dist pedal.

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Plyphon
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Re: Silly question: Moving FX from master to drum buss

Post by Plyphon »

Thanks for the reply there steve, very insightful. I might try putting it on the drum buss to have more control over the mix as you say, cheers!


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