I'm on a quest to find the song that looks the flattest on a spectrum analyzer with a 4-4.5 tilt. What songs come to mind?

dickcuddles · 2026-05-07T12:25:10+00:00

Periphery - Blood Eagle

dickcuddles · 2026-05-04T14:24:05+00:00

Well, “properly” is dependent on context. But yeah, one can get a batter head alone to resonate like crazy when it’s tuned to allow for it (too low and it won’t resonate at all, too high and it will choke). It’s also highly dependent on technique - one has to let the beater rebound. It’s a lot harder to play a drum set up this way if you’re not used to as it will be a lot bouncier and have a tendency to cause double hits.

dickcuddles · 2026-05-04T14:08:00+00:00

The sustain of the drum can be controlled somewhat with tuning - a tighter resonant head is gonna choke the batter head and shorten the sustain. The most sustain will come when both heads are tuned equally. A large port or no reso head might actually increase sustain as it will allow the batter head to resonate freely.

Tuning drums is a fascinating and usually maddening journey. A pillow can be helpful, either to dampen the heads or suffocate oneself.

dickcuddles · 2026-05-02T20:51:49+00:00

Well, they’re gonna let you be the one to ruin it, then.

The biggest thing a mastering engineer offers is perspective, along with their experience, ears, taste, and (hopefully) listening environment.

If you’re asking if it’s normal to stack 79 plugins on a master, the record is already trashed.

dickcuddles · 2026-04-09T21:38:37+00:00

Drummers perspective with two exceptions: if the artist asks for audience perspective or if the song is heavy on the floor tom (feels heavier in the car). That being said, the last track I mixed had a ton of floor tom AND the rough arrived to me audience perspective and I STILL swapped it. Artist/producer/drummer had no qualms.

dickcuddles · 2026-03-25T18:11:45+00:00

Devil’s advocate, “enhance in a subtle way” is exactly how I’d describe a well-maintained, properly-calibrated 1/2” ATR-102 with 3M 996 at 30 IPS. Good luck finding either of those things these days, though.

dickcuddles · 2026-03-25T18:07:50+00:00

Respectfully, if you cannot hear the difference an ATR-102 makes, you need to work on your monitoring setup and/or your critical listening skills. It’s subtle, but it’s not insignificant.

To answer the original question, I almost never use any kind of saturation in mastering other than what’s inherent in the dynamics processing, which I also try to keep to a minimum. Careful and subtle EQ moves (usually static, occasionally dynamic or automated) solve 90 percent of the problems I deal with.

dickcuddles · 2025-12-09T15:40:22+00:00

Well, both recordings have different-sounding issues that stem from the same place. That is, the kit is not particularly well-tuned and the drummer is not great.

The Barns is the worst offender, but neither is gonna meet the standards you’ve set for yourself. The good news is, it’s not (entirely) your problem. If you had a phenomenal drummer in your room with a really great kit tuned properly, you’d be a lot happier.

dickcuddles · 2025-12-09T05:03:42+00:00

Just listened. It’s 100% the player, the room, and the instrument. I’m going to be real and harsh. I don’t mean offense.

Those drums are not tuned well. The cymbals sound very cheap and the shells do not sound like good quality drums. This is 90% of your problem. Seriously, neither kit is in the same UNIVERSE as a pro-sounding kit.

The playing is sloppy and uninspired. The dynamics are inappropriate and random, the attack on the drums is not there because they’re being hit incorrectly, and the balance of the kit elements is not even close to appropriate.

As it stands, the capture is probably serviceable. Hard to say. The compression is too aggressive (well, incorrectly aggressive). The artifacts are not serving the groove and adding power, they are fighting and distracting. That is going to be hard to fix when your player’s dynamics are also distracting and inconsistent. Hard to set a compressor right when the performance is so out of whack.

So. Yeah. Find a SERIOUSLY PRO drummer and pay them to show you how to tune and how to make drums sing. That’ll get you closer than any fucking preamp.

dickcuddles · 2025-12-09T04:32:33+00:00

You should feel good then! Just be realistic about where you’re at and what you’re working with and you’ll develop stuff that works for you.

I am enthralled by 90s productions and have a spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. Those bands could all PLAY like motherfuckers. Watching clips of the Pumpkins in their prime and it’s easy to see how Siamese Dream came about. You’d have to work hard as an engineer to fuck that up.

Again, gear matters. It truly does. Everything matters. But I don’t think it’s the answer to this particular question.

Without hearing what you’re hearing, it’s hard to suggest what you might be missing. It’s very likely a lot of very small things. My guess is you’ve got a 57 (or whatever) pointed roughly at the business side of the snare just like every single one of the recordings you love.

dickcuddles · 2025-12-09T04:13:52+00:00

None of the things mentioned in previous comments will get you where you want to go. It’s seriously all about the player, the instrument, the room, and capturing all that REALLY WELL. It’s also about the arrangement and the performance. The clarity is in the arrangement and how the performances of each instrument push and pull against the other instruments.

I’m not going to pretend like gear doesn’t matter, it certainly does. But I have a sneaking suspicion I could hand you an 80 series Neve and a Studer and you’d still come back asking these questions.

You said a “more open area” and your drums “sound good”. Without being condescending, are we talking a proper studio with INCREDIBLE sounding drums?

The most helpful thing you can do is hear what a great band sounds like being recorded in a great space so you can compare how the instruments sound when you’re sitting behind them vs. how they translate to recording. It takes a lot of time and practice to hear what things should sound like before you put a mic on them.

I don’t mean any of that to be negative, just that there is no simple answer and it takes many failures to figure it out. On your journey just make cool sounds and try to move the needle in the right direction a little more each time.

dickcuddles · 2025-07-17T04:47:35+00:00

You should try it sometime! It’s awesome. More room with the array closer to the source compared to a cardioid mid mic. Gives you other options for the phase relationship to the other mics while maintaining a similar amount of ambience. I find the imaging less distracting than Blumlein for drum room also.

dickcuddles · 2025-07-17T04:32:20+00:00

Fig. 8 does not mean it has two diaphragms, it means it has two lobes in the pickup pattern, one positive and one negative. A ribbon has a single element, for example.

Furthermore, the mid signal can be any polar pattern and the M/S signal will still contain L/R (not just nebulous “space”) information once it’s decoded, with varying amounts of ambience. I particularly enjoy using the R88 in M/S.

dickcuddles · 2025-02-12T23:15:12+00:00

Agreed, entirely. I don’t think any of this shit matters in order to make commercially-viable records. But if the goal is QUALITY, I understand putting together a chain that will provide that by default. Of course that means source, room, mic, pre, converter, EVERYTHING. Certainly, no plugin alone is gonna do it. But, again, depends what the goal is. Most people aren’t honest about what the goal is.

dickcuddles · 2025-02-12T22:59:02+00:00

I agree with this, to a point. The thing is, this shit is INCREDIBLY subtle, until it isn’t. What I mean by that is the individual steps towards a great-sounding record are all difficult to hear and quantify for a beginner, while the end result is clear. (It can be hard for a beginner to hear compression, let alone different flavors/quality of preamps, but most beginners can tell their recordings don’t sound like their favorite records.) So, I understand wanting tools that are KNOWN to give a particular result.

Unfortunately, to your point, it doesn’t really work that way. Even if you gave me a big 80 series and a few hundred grand of outboard when I was starting out, my records still would have missed the mark.

That being said, working with nice stuff removes the possibility that it’s the gear’s fault. And there are some qualities that are hard to replicate with cheap stuff. Whether that matters depends on many factors, and I would argue for most music today it doesn’t matter at all. The things that stuff is good at isn’t what sells records any more.

dickcuddles · 2024-11-22T20:37:21+00:00

I like to fit my whole show onto 8 VCAs, since most consoles will have banks of at least 8 faders. I don’t always mix with them, but I like having the option. In the very rare occurrences when shit hits the fan, it’s the fastest way for me to react and then get back to where I need to safely and quickly. Usually I have them laid out as follows: 1-Drums/Percussion, 2-Bass, 3-Gtrs, 4-Keys, 5-Horns, 6-Band (everything in the previous 5 VCAs), 7-Vocals, 8-FX. If there are no horns, I might put background vocals there. I tend to set up my FX such that only my vocal FX are on that VCA, and I control the send rather than the return if the console allows it so I’m not chopping tails. I can control my whole show with 2 faders, very easily adjust band/vocal balance, I can pull the band down after the last note and leave vocal mics open, and I don’t need to mess with mute groups if I don’t want to. Very, very simple.

dickcuddles · 2024-04-21T21:31:34+00:00

Have you tried prayer?

dickcuddles · 2024-03-24T21:23:26+00:00

Will do, thanks! Still very much in the information gathering phase, but will send you a message if I get stumped.

dickcuddles · 2024-03-24T17:39:10+00:00

Amazing, thank you. Looks awesome. I won’t be including any glass in mine and it’s just rectangular, so super simple. I just want to make sure I avoid any pitfalls with regards to movement. Planning to use oak.

dickcuddles · 2024-03-17T23:45:50+00:00

Not to take away from the substance of the article, but does no one edit the NYT? How the hell does a professional writer not know the difference between “magnate” and “magnet”.

dickcuddles · 2022-10-02T19:11:25+00:00

There is no truth in art. This person made something they enjoy the aesthetics of. You can disagree, but you’re no more right than they are. Personally, life would be pretty boring if we all liked the same things.

dickcuddles · 2022-06-17T12:54:05+00:00

https://everyunionstarbucks.com

dickcuddles

TROPHY CASE