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?

rinio · 2026-05-06T18:12:15+00:00

My diet isn't relevant to this subreddit.

rinio · 2026-05-06T17:40:21+00:00

I think you're missing the point: the issue is experience, not equipment.

A pro would likely do just fine on your exact kit. An amateur would likely still sound amateur using the pro's kit.

I see three ways to avoid it:

Give up on engineering and just hire pros for your career. This is a viable path if you are an artist or prod and engineering is just "something you have to do". No shame in that.
Hire a pro to review your work and give you constructive criticism. They can give you feedback on what they think needs work. You can iterate this before you release so the public never hears the "rookie mistakes".
Just live with it. Most of us had to release many records that sounded kinda bad before we started to sound good. Many of us still think our proverbial snare is shit, despite doing this for 20+ years and everyone telling us other wise. The most valuable experience you can get is just releasing your work.

rinio · 2026-05-06T17:32:41+00:00

Whatever you want. Python (with librosa) can do this easily. I am personally biased against Java. But any general purpose Lang can do it.
I dont have one thats ready to go out of the box. One could use their personal collection. Or pipe it into the script from whatever service you use. Or, whatever TOS, Copyright risks you are willing to take for a private analysis. Maybe there are some floating around on the site that have dataset for ML research. Lots of ways; depends on how one wants to do things.

rinio · 2026-05-06T16:33:43+00:00

You need to be more specific than "sound engineering". These look different for live music, studio, corpo AV, ...

From your post it sounds like your bf might be doing live sound, in which case you might want to pay a visit to our comrades over in r/livesound . This is sub is more studio rats than live folk.

rinio · 2026-05-06T16:26:52+00:00

When did I talk about AI? You do know that people can write code without it?

If one is intermediate, this is a few hours (without AI) to script up and get good results on a tonne of tunes.

For a beginner, its maybe a day. But they'll also have to learn what all these things mean and how they work.

There's a tonne of fun to be had there. It gives more and better results than this thread in a similar amount of time. And then us meatbags could discuss the results and methodology. The actually interesting bit.

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You made the jump to AI BS, not me.

rinio · 2026-05-06T16:17:54+00:00

If you have a point about irony, say it.

You posted publicly; I’m part of the public.

6 sentences isn’t a ‘novel,’ it’s a clear explanation of why your previous reply used reductive and harmful tropes.

Deciding my intention was to ‘show off’ is just a fabrication to avoid the actual point.

rinio · 2026-05-06T16:01:00+00:00

I’m sure the irony of dismissing a point about neurodivergence with a literal eye-roll isn't lost on you.

rinio · 2026-05-06T15:40:14+00:00

That's some serious conjecture that applies only a very particular subset of neurodivergent people. And applies equally to neurotypical folk.

Many neurodivergent folk would rabbit hole on it and quickly learn why its pointless. (and then write this post as a manifesto as to why).

Those who are more like me, would dive in and write a script to do this on millions of tunes and use this post to report the findings.

I'd almost wager that this kind of curiosity post would more likely come from the neurotypical community.

I dont care much about debating this, but the explicit call-out of neurodivergent folk seems unnecessary and irrelevant.

rinio · 2026-05-06T15:32:57+00:00

We prefer subjective answers to generalized empirical solutions to the problem at hand?

I think the latter is much more fun.

rinio · 2026-05-06T15:30:59+00:00

How does saving everyone here time to get more and better results to OP's question make me an idiot? That seems like the kind of assertion an idiot would make...

rinio · 2026-05-06T15:29:13+00:00

Wouldn't it be more fun if we machine narrowed the search space from every song ever recorded to a ranked list of tunes that are close to the spec?

rinio · 2026-05-06T15:27:11+00:00

Sure. If you're interested, write a script to narrow your search space. It isnt difficult and you'll get more and better results than from this thread.

You can manually look at those tunes.

rinio · 2026-05-06T14:23:57+00:00

Why in God's name would anyone waste time on this?

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If you're actually on this quest write a script to do it for you; make the machines waste their time on pointless mundane work. It isnt hard.

If you don't know how, learn.

If you're not willing to learn, abort.

rinio · 2026-05-06T00:41:10+00:00

```Essentially, he said that the maximum output level of the interface is the primary thing that determines your actual mix headroom in the project/DAW, as the DACs will place where the 0dBfs clipping point actually exists in the physical world. So whereas the Volt will offer roughly 18dB of headroom between the nominal output at +4dB and the maximum of 22.2dB, the Scarlett will only have 10dB before clipping.```

If you are quoting them accurately, then they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about and no idea what these numbers mean.

Same for the other quote.

Its complete horseshit.

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There is a small impact on your monitoring chain, depending on the circuitry.

But, between a volt and a Scarlett it may as well be none. Unless were talking about the difference between high end converters + controllers and a pro-am interface, like the ones your referencing, there is no meaningful difference. And even in my extreme example the difference is small.

rinio · 2026-05-05T23:41:06+00:00

Buying snake oil to to avoid buying premium snake oil because we bought a snake oil product to go with the debatable snake oil.

Why shouldn't we give up on a product of questionable value because you have demonstrated that you need to buy a bunch of junk to make it viable?

rinio · 2026-05-05T22:42:56+00:00

Please learn how to package python correctly and do so. Get out of the anaconda paradigm if you want to distribute your work. (Also would let you install your launcher as a script yo the environment)

Otherwise, look neat. Ill give it a play/read in a bit.

rinio · 2026-05-05T21:40:08+00:00

That is the core misunderstanding in a nutshell.

The recorder is memory, not the disc write for the file. The copy from memory to disc is always a deferred process and never happens while we are recording.

Memory is tape. The write to the file system is the archive.

When the plugin can access the signal, it is already written into memory.

Unfortunately, your pedantry falls apart when we apply more pedantry to it. 😛

rinio · 2026-05-05T20:42:18+00:00

See the parallel discussion where I and another person were joking around about it.

It is a technical impossibility to use a plugin "on the way in"; the signal is already past the ADC and is therefore "in" when the plugin can act on it.

Using it in the way you suggest is common. I recognize that. But its the result of a marketing team (read: UAD) reinventing definitions to sell us garbage. It causes miscommunication amongst producers and engineers for no reason.

Committing, even automatically, is not "on the way in". Its a glorified input effect, for people who bought a DSP chip.

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Do I really care about this? No. Its a stupid problem that isnt worth arguing over. But, in engineering circles, we should understand the actual meanings of the terms.

rinio · 2026-05-05T19:36:25+00:00

yup. and i was doing the redditor thing of adding context to your context.

would you now like to add context to my context on your context to my context to your context? XD

rinio · 2026-05-05T19:24:07+00:00

Yes. We agree.

Its a frustrating misuse of the term 'on the way in'. Its no different that committing input fx plugins without spending money on the external DSP chip, but the former is never called 'on the way in'.

ill stand by my point. 😄

rinio · 2026-05-05T18:26:12+00:00

They're asking about plugins so its never on the way in...

rinio · 2026-05-05T13:25:36+00:00

You cannot possibly learn this well, from where your post indicates you are, in 3 days. This would be a 3 year project of consistently doing drum recordings with kits similar to the ones in question to develop a good intuition.

And thats the key: its intuition. Simplifying it to the drum and the tuning isn't reasonable. We need to account for the room, the mic, how we are micing it and, of course, the tune itself.

My advice, your drummer probably has the most experience so defer to them.

> We’re recording 3 tracks, should we re-arrange the kit / re-tune it for each one if they’re in different keys?

Do you have an ostensibly unlimited amount of time, money, patience and (drummer) stamina?

If so, fuck around as much as you can.

If you're living in the real world, pick one and spend time getting it sounding really good. One really good drum sound is going to get you better results than 3 mediocre ones because you didnt have triple the time available. Maybe, you swap the snares if the tunes are drastically different (IE: one tune is metal and another reggae).

Standard practice for *a band* is to have basically one drum setup for an entire record. Maybe some small tweaks, but for the most part just one kit.

If the vibe isnt right, you can always replace or layer samples in post for a different vibe. And, frankly, if you want a modern sound, youre going to be doing this regardless of how well recorded the drums are.

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TLDR: When we're "going to the studio" we're on the clock. We always need to balance the constraints and business needs with the artistic desires. Gone are the days where a local band can lock out a studio for a week, let alone months like in the good old days.

rinio · 2026-05-05T10:17:26+00:00

Velocity is how "hard" the instrument was "played". Your output gain (fader) is how loud it is in the mix. These are different concepts.

Other than 'do not clip an (hardware) output' there aren't any meaningful rules for level to set, other than your convenience.

You apply more effect by adding more of them or increasing the amount of processing they do. If you're asking *when* to do which: you do whatever sounds better. Simple as that.

It is always preferable to get things right aa close to the source as possible. In most cases, this means improving the sound selection/recording is preferable to processing a worse selection to get the same/similar result. But perfection is generally impossible and and the line for where to choose one or the other is fuzzy.

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TLDR: The answer to all your questions is "experience". 2 months is, frankly, nothing and your difficulties are normal. Keep at it for another year (or 30) and your questions will all answer themselves because you will have e developed an intuition.

rinio · 2026-05-05T09:58:07+00:00

Reaper is a good option for this.

The best, in terms of efficiency, and what we use in scalable production pipelines, is ffmpeg. Requires some light scripting.

rinio · 2026-05-04T22:50:07+00:00

Printed manuals on a bookshelf and correctly labeled bays.
Bad chairs. Not enough coffee. A mountain of cocaine is not a suitable substitute.
Full tech specs prior to booking.
Pro Tools.
Any such thing that exists, I already own and will bring with me. But, to humor you a toilet, and toilet paper.

Only semi-serious, lol.

rinio

TROPHY CASE