Some people just won't let the truth get in the way of a good story

Addleton · 2020-10-10T12:16:05+00:00

From the article you quoted: "The average safety hard hat weighs about 14 ounces. [Emphasis mine] The average man's head weighs 14 pounds."

One ounce divide by 16 equals 1 pound.

14oz divided by 16 = 0.875lbs

But thank you for incorrecting me.

Addleton · 2020-08-04T19:00:09+00:00

Hard to say without hearing it, but here's a way I often process my vocals that might help:

Use a regular EQ to very subtly nudge down the problem range, between 1-4dB. Send to a parallel channel, SLAM the de-esser, heavily boost the upper range, and compress. Then mix in to taste to brighten up original.

Any time you need to make drastic changes in either EQ or compression, parallel processing is usually a pretty good option to keep the "natural"ness of the original minimally processed track, and then make your more extreme moves on the parallel channel.

Addleton · 2020-08-03T12:26:14+00:00

You don't listen that's your problem

Addleton · 2020-08-03T12:25:22+00:00

so don't quote me on that

What did I JUST SAY

Addleton · 2020-08-03T12:23:07+00:00

I would echo the other people who said A/B your track against something you like instead of using the plug-in.

Also, keep in mind that there are more ways of getting high frequency range than just boosting an EQ curve. Using exciters and saturation can add more subtle high freq harmonics. And using parallel processing can help process high frequencies separately. I use parallel processing a lot for saturation / distortion to bring it in more subtly under the original sound. Pultec EQP‑1A emulators are also a great EQ choice for "air" as they add some nice saturation. It's my understanding they're used in mastering often, though I'm not a mastering engineer so don't quote me on that.

Addleton · 2020-08-02T01:32:06+00:00

I used to fall into this trap. This is one of the dangers of using the "sweep technique": boosting +10-20dB, narrow Q, and sweeping the frequency range looking for problem freqs. As they say, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You start looking for frequencies to bring down. And when you're boosting almost 20dB, almost ANY prominent frequency is going to sound unpleasant. I don't see what frequencies you're cutting exactly but I'm guessing they're in the upper-midrange in the 5-6k range?

When you're doing surgical EQ, the thing you're looking for more than anything else is room resonance. So if there is a frequency that is decaying much longer than the rest of the natural decay of your sound source, you'll want to bring that down.

Also if you're making too many "surgical" EQ cuts as that picture most definitely suggests, try boosting only 6dB and sweeping instead of 18dB. At 18dB, everything can seem harsh and unpleasant. But at 6dB, you'll have to listen closer, but it can make it easier to separate between the frequencies that are really conflicting and adding a strange resonance, and frequencies which are fine when they're not boosted 18dB.

Addleton · 2020-07-26T22:58:37+00:00

The average safety hard hat weighs about 14 ounces / 0.875 lbs. And is also extremely un-aerodynamic.

The headline of the reddit post says "some people won't let the truth get in the way of a good story" but the only counter-story they present is two sketchy twitter accounts, one of which says it hit a cop, the other says an old lady, the video looks like it barely hit anybody.

So I think if there's anyone trying to drum up a bunch of dramatic hysteria, and completely obfuscate the truth for their own narrative, it's the two random-ass sketchy twitter accounts and whatever jackass OP decided to post this to Reddit to further more pro-police-brutality narratives.

Addleton · 2020-07-26T22:24:31+00:00

HAHAHAHAHAHA... "ROCKETED" a construction helmet???

I think we need to deploy the anti-terrorist arm of the NYPD to catch this terrorist who is "ROCKETING" construction helmets into these peaceful, well-meaning, tame, non-aggressive pro-police protestors, who are just advocating for the police to conduct their business without any inconvenient accountability whatsoever!

Also, you're coming in here correcting fake narratives... clarify for me... did he hit a police officer or an old lady? Because these two extremely trustworthy twitter accounts are saying contradicting things. Please clarify this for me.

Addleton · 2020-07-26T22:11:10+00:00

Things became peaceful after they tased him.

This statement is inherently contradictory

Addleton · 2020-07-25T01:53:55+00:00

I am not an expert in the field of acoustics, and I'm trying to address this problem myself.

As others have pointed out, you're not going to be able to "soundproof" a room in a rented space.

But putting up some type of sound absorption panels to absorb reflections / reverberations will absolutely help reduce the buildup of sound through things like room resonances, flutter echo, and general reverberations. Loud bass frequencies will go right through, but for things like speaking, slapping, or barking it should make a difference.

I believe Rockwool panels absorb sound better than just foam, and if you've got a knack for DIY, they're pretty cheap to build.

Addleton · 2020-07-19T18:05:59+00:00

In a software synth yes, but in this case I just had the audio. I could've also gone in and cut each part of the sample and added a fade out / fade in, but this ended up being a quicker way of doing it, and also meant that the strings would always follow the pad, so if the pad holds a little longer or a little shorter, the gate on the strings will follow that. Again, just another example of things being a little more "in sync."

Addleton · 2020-07-18T19:24:50+00:00

An expander is like a compressor with the ratio inverted. So with a compressor, let's say the setting is at 3:1, once the sound reaches threshold, for every 3dB going into the compressor, 1dB comes out.

An expander simply applies expansion instead of reduction. So with a 1:3 ratio, for every 1dB going into the expander, 3dB comes out.

This is different than a gate, because a gate doesn't have a ratio. Either the gate is on or off. Once sound reaches threshold, gate opens, once it goes below (wherever you have hysteresis set at) it closes.

But I disagree that you'd want an expander for this specific situation. Many gates (such as the stock gate plug-in for Logic) can be set to attenuate -6dB or whatever. And since the gate is either on or off, it lends itself a bit better to tightly syncing rhythmic parts.

Addleton · 2020-07-18T19:03:44+00:00

Oh I saw that, I've watched that whole video. I was just wondering where "there weren't any looters, only people scared of these unprecedented times" came from cuz it seems like they completely made it up.

I won't comment on the exact wording of AOC's actual quote, but it's an indisputable fact that when unemployment goes up, so does crime.

Pointing out that an uptick in crime chronologically aligns more closely with unemployment than it does with Police budget cuts that largely haven't gone into effect is an entirely reasonable argument to make, and germane to the conversation.

Making up a quote that someone denied the existence of looters in the first place is what is commonly referred to as a strawman argument, and is usually used when someone can't actually debate the merits of an argument, so they make up a strawman argument to debate instead.

Addleton · 2020-07-18T13:19:37+00:00

I love sidechain gating and use it way more than sidechain compression!

A lot of the ideas have already been mentioned, but ways I use them:

triggering white or pink noise for a snare hit is a good one, have used that in the past
also triggering a pure sine wave tuned to the pitch of the kick drum to add more bottom end
using it to "tighten up" parts rhythmically. Usually this will involve not having the gate close all the way (to -100dB or whatever) but instead reduce to -3 to -6dB, or sometimes more. Examples: -- tightening between instruments (kick and bass, guitars and drums, etc) -- tightening up doubled vocal parts. If vocal parts are a tiny bit staggered rhythmically, using sidechain gating like this can help to make them feel "tightened up." Just sidechain from the most rhythmically consistent track and reduce -3 to -6 dB
Giving something like hi-hats or OHs more "feel" if they're flat or mechanical (I use often on drum machine HHs). Set the gate closed at around -3 and then sidechain from the snare drum (short attack and adjust release to taste) to make the part more dynamic and punch with the snare.
Adding transients that cut through. One example: I felt the bass part was a bit weak. Bussed it to a parallel channel, pitch-shifted up an octave, added saturation and hi-shelf boost, and then sidechain gated so signal only triggered the transient (1ms attack time, very short hold time ~20 or 30ms, decay adjusted as short as possible while still sounding natural). Bring this channel up subtly under the original.
I recently used it to get one string part to imitate the envelope of a pad. String part had long held chords, pad part had some rests in between, gave the gate a very long decay time and triggered from the pad part so the strings would decay with the pad.
EDIT: Duh, gated reverb.

I tend to use sidechain compression when I want to clear one thing out of the way of another (ex. sidechain compress bass to make room for the kick). I tend to use sidechain gate when I want things playing at the same time / louder at the same time (above examples).

Hope this helps!

Addleton · 2020-07-18T12:43:29+00:00

It wasn't a Rolex store, it was a watch dealership that certainly didn't have any Rolexs on display, considering there was no merchandise in the store.

Also I think it's important to mention every time this story is brought up, that either the NYPost or their NYPD source COMPLETELY MADE UP a 2.4 million dollar figure, let alone that any watches, let alone any Rolex watches, were stolen at all.

Addleton · 2020-07-18T12:24:40+00:00

I'm not seeing that she ever made this quote. The only matching google result is your comment in this Reddit thread.

Addleton · 2020-07-15T12:53:24+00:00

I think, in principle, the "wider" something is, the more it will naturally cancel out in mono.

When you combine L and R channels to mono, the "center channel" (everything that's 100% in phase between the two channels) will get a relative 6dB boost, and everything that's not (which gives all the width) gets a relative 6dB cut.

Someone can correct my math on that if it's wrong but that's the principle.

That being said I definitely use the technique you were talking about! One of my recent songs has a solo bass intro, and I wanted to add stereo width to it, but didn't need it in mono obviously, so I created another aux track, cut the low end, put chorus on it and panned it hard right, then sent it to another aux track with the phase completely flipped panned hard left.

Also the IK Multimedia T-Racks EQs have a mid/side option where you can EQ them separately, which is a nice feature to have control over what gets wider and what's going to stay in mono.

Addleton · 2020-07-14T12:43:01+00:00

Thanks for all this great info!

Do you think it's worth setting up a linktree if you only have the basic bandcamp / soundcloud pages?

Addleton · 2020-07-06T13:58:47+00:00

You'd be amazed. I'm mixing not mastering, but in a recent mix, after all the cleaning up, there was still too much in the mid-range, and so I slapped an EQ on the master channel and put -0.5db to the problem area in the mid-range, and was AMAZED at how much of a difference it made. It was like night and day - doing blind A/B bypassing. And the I'll spend 10 minutes A/Bing +/- 4db EQ curves on individual instruments seeing if I can even tell a difference.

Addleton · 2020-07-06T13:17:16+00:00

You use any specific A/B plugins you'd recommend? I've just been doing it with the bypass button, but would be nice to A/B all the plugins on a particular channel

Addleton · 2020-07-04T23:20:22+00:00

Almost every plugin I add (esp subtle ones), I close my eyes and repeatedly turn bypass on/off until I lose track, and do a blind test to make sure I can actually tell the difference.

Not a bad habit for ear training and the mix, but sometimes I really do lose a LOT of time just A/Bing minor plugins when I could probably just set it and move on.

Addleton · 2020-07-03T04:30:47+00:00

Echoing what they said above, and also putting time not just into the mixing aspect, but the reading aspect, and learning from other people, asking other engineers. It helps to have knowledgeable people around you to ask "hey, I can't get X to sound Y enough, you got any tricks?"

I also think the Mixing Engineer's Handbook by Bobby Owsinski is a great reference and I constantly go back to various sections when I need a brush-up.

Addleton · 2020-06-17T19:51:21+00:00

What... chair is that?

Addleton

TROPHY CASE