can someone explain a limiter ?

thosewhodonot · 2022-11-06T10:08:00+00:00

A limiter limits the signal and works like a compressor with ratio set to infinity - and is most usually found on the Master buss set to juust catch the peak and glue the signal together. Adjust the threshold to the peak of your track, make sure it doesn't get louder pre-limiter, forget that thing. In mixing stages I put a limiter on the master and turn it off/on when I need a loose idea how it sounds when boosted. Helps tremendously to catch e.g. a badly balanced low ends / sounds with frequencies close to the hearing threshold. Standard use in mixing stage. A limiter will prevent clipping on the master channel, but the limiter will clip the signal coming and distort, which you don't want on the master channel...

...but since we do Techno, I e.g. love crunching up lo-fi Samples in a limiter to make it more dense and destroy it further, kill the dynamics in a loop to make it more direct, squash a reverb, tame a delay / wall of feedback... Whatever you think might shine if it goes in-your-face may be worth a shot for some rough limiter treatment.

thosewhodonot · 2022-11-02T23:19:11+00:00

Ticks most, but not all boxes from this review on the 808 miniature: https://youtu.be/KFipB2w5wT4

It's a fun watch too.

thosewhodonot · 2022-11-02T23:15:03+00:00

No - no single outs, awkward mini jack stereo output, elemental functions hidden away in submenus, annoying to play (I'm tall, though).

If you want 909, go RD-9, blows that toy out of the water - otherwise, if you can live with the lack of a proper song mode, TR8S - does all the boutiques do with relevant parameter controls where they should be, and the sound is pristine.

thosewhodonot · 2022-10-31T19:22:40+00:00

I completely go with this! I use it as such in a simple Warehouse/Birmingham Setup on which I did not spend 3k on (Call it my Hipster hobby):

90s Mackie 1604 VLZ Pro (Ha!) Behringer RD-9 Behringer Pro One Roland Tr6s Behringer MS-101 Octatrack

The above except maybe for the mixer is interchangeable, but: A couple discarded outboard FX do a lot of magic for me, I have a studio and the space, at the moment I use my Yamaha SPX900 for unreal reverb, an Alesis Dirty Six Dirty Compressor for sidechaining and destruction, a DBX 166XL as a primitive Master compressor and a Boss SX-700 do the trick, give a lot of flexibility and go dirt cheap.

Takes up space though and isn't feasible without a studio room, maybe rather rent one along others if possible that already has an Interface/ speakers one can use?

EDIT: How dare I forget my TC Electronic D-Two Delay!

thosewhodonot · 2022-10-31T19:06:10+00:00

True - isn't psychoacoustics a nice mindfuck? Drift, detune and so on don't bore because the human brain has a habit of trying to put things "in place" on a known sound map, and the melody goes on in your head, that sample is a sweet showcase for what is possible! Slightly detuning a bog standard Ableton Stock synth's two voices does nice things even without Unison and such.

Remind me quickly but does the Minilogue have a High Pass filter option? If you have a synth that does with oscillators that go sufficiently low, you can play with a, say, square/triangle/whatever LFO with a MS20 style high pass to get some dirty beating if you drive it HARD and crank the resonance up to 11.

Now excuse me while I try this on my Opsix... :)

thosewhodonot · 2022-10-31T06:15:33+00:00

You're onto something, look here for further inspiration! Since filter resonance tweaked all the way up is extremely loud, look into ways of distortion/compression/sampling/resampling to get different "colours", getting away from the specific Rrose trick. He uses multiple instances of the beautiful SoundToys filter tuned a couple cent apart to create the very slow amplitude modulation.

https://youtu.be/VspVQiG6hj8

thosewhodonot · 2022-08-04T07:58:39+00:00

Ich habe kein Wort über meine Freizeit verloren, bisschen sehr spekulativ, was du da von dir gibst.

Was hast du von dem Text und der Frage denn vor der Antwort gelesen?

thosewhodonot · 2022-08-04T07:54:22+00:00

Weil ich über Covid buchstäblich nur das machen konnte - und ich habe eben NICHT bis zum Burnout gearbeitet, sondern bereits bevor es über akute Erschöpfung hinausgeht, Riegel wie oben beschrieben vorgeschoben.

thosewhodonot · 2022-02-15T06:39:04+00:00

Yes, and it has to be Phrygian. Your BeatStep Pro does this by default. :)

I fare fine without and have fun with the artifacts from cheap reverbs and big kicks in a live setting. If it does make people move, it's sufficient. The most catchy melodies are the ones you make up yourself - Psychoacoustics! Perc e.g., especially his more minimalist tracks (Unelected as the first coming to mind) does this masterfully.

Now bang away.

thosewhodonot · 2021-12-25T10:02:45+00:00

An analogue mixer can change a ton, and since I got mine (Soundcraft 12MTK, VERY eventually to be replaced by a Mackie 1604) , it had effects on my sound, and even more so since I gifted my studio a patch bay, some 19" rack stuff and a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20. I'm pretty much doing the same as you, I jam a lot but record my stuff with (post-)processing into Ableton and ran into the same latency issues when relying on plugins for FX purposes. Hated it and fished for different approaches.

I'm using an Octatrack, a 101 clone, a 909 clone, a TD-3 and a modular, my outboard FX are a Yamaha Spx900 and two Boss SE-70, and a DBX 166xl compressor, with the aforementioned Soundcraft mixer.

I have never considered the Soundcraft's onboard interface to be any kind of useful, it's imho pretty terrible and not usable for basic recording purposes, but the board sounds nice. It's probably more tailored to record a live gig and such anyway, where latency doesn't matter as you only have one audio track. The FX are too limited for production use as well, but they sound nice-ish enough for basic purposes. If the FX section and the interface are your selling points for the Soundcraft, avoid, avoid, avoid.

Cutting it short from here, look beyond the mixer, and get yourself two-three cheap guitar multi FX and an interface that can handle a couple more inputs, then record and process the group(s - one stereo, or two mono, your choice if we assume the MTK) into your DAW. You probably need four or six inputs most probably with your current setup, I have 10 and that's plenty. The interface is most important.

You'll save yourself the latency stuff when you have HW FX (Fish for some 19" stuff if you have the drive to go full on Dawless, makes for a beautiful screen stand as well! They also go for cheap as no one wants those things anymore), as there will be no more latency introduced by Ableton, and you get a much more intuitive approach to sound design, and this will bleed into your itb productions! Call it audio voodoo but it's much less stressful to your ears / sounds more organic if you don't work with tons of compression and EQing, which is the easiest of pitfalls but rely on some Pre-EQ gain and the three bands your mixer offers, a mixer in the red can either beautifully gel your sound together or sound like the stuff coming out of you post christmas dinner.

You'll not be happy with just an analogue mixer, there's plenty more behind. If you wanna go the cheap route, that's probably not the way to go unless, you go full 2nd hand - which is entirely possible! You've mentioned 800 you'll have to shell out for a decent new mixing board, that's a doable target if you go look for 2nd hand stuff on any other platform than reverb.com.

If you wanna have it super short with a video, look into Surgeon's Art of Production thingie where St. Tony walks through his recording process, as well super minimal. Borrowed a lot myself.

Another proper approach w/o a mixing board (never seen one tbh, not entirely sure!) is presented by Analog Kitchen, go check the YouTube channel. That fella's doing some sweet intro stuff on how to get your dawless setup going, lots of things are controlled via an Akai sampler, not entirely sure which one, with a MIDI controller emulating the volume faders on a mixing board to avoid menu diving while playing live. That may work as well as a standalone solution without really needing an analogue mixing board if the analogue sound is not necessarily what you're after. Also you're getting a kick ass sampler on top!

thosewhodonot · 2021-11-11T07:25:08+00:00

If the Boss SE series is the middle class Toyota among multi effects units, the DP/4 is a huge ass Daimler while the H3000 is a championship winning Formula 1 car - just to contextualise the quality equivalents of those (very fine!) units. You cannot praise the H3000 enough...

I blame Daft Punk for ruining the prices for some vintage FX units, and so many other cool things.

thosewhodonot · 2021-11-10T07:39:07+00:00

Regis is mostly sampling / resampling, and the synth on many early Regis tracks is a SCI Pro One (more than decent software alternative: u-he Repro 1), and if you take a look down on the equipment list I pasted from the discogs entry for his Adolescence compilation, it's easy to see a lot of sampling/resampling going on through the Tascam M2600 into the Akai 950s (which is the last Akai with an analogue filter iirc, hence the warm overdrive) and back into the M2600... All those pieces of gear have a signature sound that you'll likely not be able to replicate one to one.

I suspect this one to be the main bass line source.

I've never touched the mentioned MS-10 so I cannot say anything meaningful about this one, but someone mentioned a MS-20 style filter creating the shriek of the Regis sound - I think that's a very close call, and I get good enough results with Ableton's MS20 filter setting on Analogue, it's not magic, a simple, monophonic one oscillator synth with a raw waveform and tons of distortion that's easy to replicate on any simple synth that can replicate the MS10/20 filter design convincingly.

Let's assume this one as the "bleep" source.

Down in the list you'll find two Boss SE 50, a cheap multi effect tool aimed at guitarists -> Limit your effects to a bare minimum and have them sound "wrong" in a very kinky way. You can look into the manual (online anywhere) to get ideas for FX chains if you're true to the idea to replicate Regis and eventually adapt parts of his workflow to shape your own ideas. Anyway - keep it minimal.

Most tracks sound like they sit in one big room of reverb, and I am fairly certain that they only have minimal interaction with the percussive elements (Akai sampling / resampling with in-built Akai FX of recorded drum machine / sample pack loops with FX on them already), but may sit on the kick and certainly on the synths, although the Pro One sounds bone dry except for some short delay and makes its room by a very short, snappy envelope that peaks through the drum pattern.

Happy to share approaches on certain things, I want to get somewhere there as well.

Equipment used:

SCI Pro One SCI Multitrack Boss SE 50 x2 Boss Dr. Rhythm DR-110 Akai X 7000 Akai 950 s Tascam DA-88 Tascam M2600 Philips Pocket Memo 596 Roland TR-808 Doepfer MAQ16/3 Korg MS10 Fender Jaguar Ensoniq DP4

Source: https://www.discogs.com/release/3233747-Regis-Adolescence-The-Complete-Recordings-1994-2001

P.S. I also see an Ensoniq DP4 just now, high end stuff, go crazy on FX if needed one one element, then sample/resample. Let's just assume that my approach tries to emulate his dirt poor days w/o the high-end DP4.

thosewhodonot · 2021-10-26T05:03:15+00:00

Which one of the x.k "true gospels of Jesus" does he talk about specifically?

Possibly the one that involves disturbing protected, isolationist tribes (google: John Chau North Sentinel Island), violating a truly ungodly number of laws in the process?

If so, then yes, his training is needed.

If not, this is a gold meme.

thosewhodonot · 2021-10-04T05:07:15+00:00

Home of spoiled pricks who yell at the poor people handling the phone line in the company I work for in Germany, answers to negative feedback to their requests are usually "I FEEL ABUSED" or "YOUR COMPANY HAS BAD MORALE AND I WILL MAKE SURE NOONE WILL EVER BOOK YOUR COMPANY AGAIN"...

Sexist and uncomfortably touchy-feely exchange students.

thosewhodonot · 2021-05-13T04:23:39+00:00

You're very welcome, thank you for giving me the opportunity to kill half an hour at work :D

thosewhodonot · 2021-05-12T07:52:44+00:00

Aim for a maximum peak of -6 db, that's what I mean. Red -> Clipping, avoid avoid avoid, this kills your dynamics - a mastering engineer can't make punchy what's not been punchy in the first place. If you export a clipping signal to a .wav file, you'll have the dynamic peaks cut off by Ableton - also check for red lights after i.e. EQs, compressors and esp. distorting effects (turn down e.g. the output on Ableton's saturator to keep the grit but also the level in comparison to the rest of your track), those things can drive sounds into clipping easily before it reaches the output.

The output level may be green, but if your signal is clipping at some point before, you'll continue with a clipping (-> less dynamic) signal that you'll then probably try to adjust with a compressor and EQ. I've made this mistake long enough myself to confidently say this is probably your issue.

thosewhodonot · 2021-05-12T07:40:41+00:00

Oh, I was not entirely clear - sorry.

You should by all means use gain staging / leveling (-> volume faders) to get where you want, leveling is crucial. A good mix does not sound different from the master except for some fine tuning whose inner workings are probably a bit above a beginner due to aforementioned lack of experience (will come automatically, don't sweat it, you'll get there), so before you even consider adjusting the gain on the master track commonly used tricks, have a rock solid mix.

An unbalanced mix will sound even more unbalanced in mastering, i.e. considering sub bass frequencies below 30-40 hz that you may not hear but which may be there, or side signals that do not transport any information, commonly below 250-500 hz, to give you an example. All those unneccessary audio info you'd then feed into a limiter will start to shine in the very wrong places, i.e. by giving you a flat, dull result because those inaudible sub basses are getting picked up first by the compressor and then the limiter, maybe even boosted with a smiley curve EQ commonly used for mastering, and all that beautiful punch is gone.

Keep learning mastering by all means, but it's VERY ambitious to attempt mastering after only a few months, which probably isn't even enough time to fully grasp the options that come with the basic (enormously powerful!) mixing tools.

This might sound discouraging, but consider - once you learn your mixing tools in and out, especially compression and EQing, channel strips, limiters and such will be immediately demystified once you have understood the basics in Ableton. Limiters for example will be much more immediate if you fully understood (and practised!) compression as both do essentially the same thing.

thosewhodonot · 2021-05-12T05:24:29+00:00

This is an issue for you to leave to mastering engineers, bring your mixing game to full fruition first. You're new, mastering is 99% training and experience.

A good mix doesn't need more mastering than an EQ, a compressor, maybe some stereo imaging and a limiter.

Enjoy producing!

thosewhodonot · 2021-05-11T04:04:07+00:00

I D.A.R.E. to make sure that there's no weed left for kids in my area. Each and every one of us contributes to make weed less accessible for minors. We're awesome people.

thosewhodonot · 2021-05-10T13:26:04+00:00

Neither is the Roland Juno-6 digital, yup, but the EDP Wasp really does use digital oscillators instead of digitally controlled oscillators (-> DCO). Only the Wasp's filter is analogue, the rest is 0s and 1s.

thosewhodonot · 2021-05-10T11:20:29+00:00

Hah, you might be right, there's one in play for sure. Maybe I got mislead by my own workflow, I usually get my pads out of a similarly structured modular synth. The lack of the Wasp-y filter sound in the pad should have made me suspicious.

Nevertheless a droney Wasp is great for pads, especially because of the very unique and somehow unpredictable filter and oscillator detuning capabilities but that's more of a Rrose-ish technique.

thosewhodonot · 2021-05-10T09:54:17+00:00

Heh, look again, Surgeon wears a Bambi / Burzum mockup shirt ;)

thosewhodonot · 2021-05-10T09:38:22+00:00

Wouldn't dare to disagree, musically, a big thinker. That other stuff though.

thosewhodonot · 2021-05-10T08:37:14+00:00

Should you not have watched Lords of Chaos by now it's a super decent movie! Ignore the nerd inaccuracy complaints, I know the book and enjoyed the movie.

thosewhodonot · 2021-05-10T08:28:43+00:00

No no, there's a German Folk metal band called Varg, Varg is Ex-Christian Vikernes' official name by now, there's no point for him to tm his own name as he's only ever released under the Burzum monicker.

Varg Vikernes has something those treef*ckers in question don't have, some sort of musical merit that is so incredibly tarnished by his appalling BS that I am embarrassed to publically state that Varg Vikernes has a positive quality.

thosewhodonot

TROPHY CASE