Looking into buying a tube pre amp to fatten and warm up my sound a little bit. Anybody know of any good ones that aren't insanely expensive?

There are tons of tube emulating plug-ins that will probably get you close to what you're looking for, without having to buy that, but that's more based on taste than anything. What application are you trying for?

Reason 5. I just want something to run through my interface and will give my sound a nice overall boost.

There should be a lot of VST plug-ins out there that you can demo. If you're just trying to get a really basic tube sound, you should be able to insert the plug-in on your master buss (if you don't have a great interface, a hardware tube pre-amp will hurt you more than help you, in my opinion). I'd imagine a google search using the terms "tube plug in", or "tube emulation plug in" would be enough to find a lot of things to try.

You could also do something like trying to find an emulation of a Pultec plug-in. Waves Audio makes one called the Puigtec, and it should be under $100, though I haven't checked the price on it lately. There are others on here who have used the hardware version of the Pultec (I have not), but it is supposedly a decent emulation of the Pultec. I own the Pultec emulation for Universal Audio, which is a great plug-in, but it requires a significant amount of investment to buy hardware (DSP Accelerator card). If you're just looking for something that will change the character of the sound, by kind of fattening it up, while doing nothing, the Pultec for Universal Audio did that great (just having sound run through it with no settings touched was a pleasant experience. Even though the emulation for Waves probably sounds a little too "smooth" and conservative for me, in comparison to the Universal Audio version, it might be the magic bullet you're looking for.

Please report back your findings.

nunnehi,

Thanks for the info dude. I will probably start out with the easiest of your suggestions in checking out the Pultec. Definitely want to fatten up my sound and think this could help.

If you could, expand on what you mean by emulation for waves sounding too smooth.

Also one more question. The interface I'm using is a presonus audiobox usb and it has 2 inputs for microphones. I've messed around w/ live sampling a little and was able to pick up the sound through my monitors. The only problem is it's not very a "amplified" sound.

My 2 questions.

Will a good pre-amp, like the one you suggested help amplify this sound when played live?

Am I able to use the microphone/live sample in Reason and play it as an effected instrument? I'm only able to create the sample, record/import it from Audio Hijack Pro to Reason and later effect it as of now.

Thanks in advance

No problem, I hope it proves helpful.

It's kind of hard to put into words the differences. The hardware Pultec was a really popular EQ for bass and kick a long time ago, but has probably fallen somewhat out of favor in the digital world. One of the unique things, about the hardware Pultec, is that each one supposedly had its own unique character. Therefore, any emulation that was done would have to be made off a specific hardware Pultec. I might get some of this info wrong, but my understanding is that the guy who helped with the Universal Audio emulation of the Pultec allowed them to borrow his favorite sounding one. To get an idea of what a Pultec sounds like in the mix, I can give you two examples of songs (both guessing that a Pultec is somewhere in the chain).

Examples (listening on big speakers is ideal):

D'Angelo-Jonz in My Bonz on the bass
The Roots-The Next Movement, probably on the kick, bass, and maybe keys

Listen to the way the 60 Hz sounds in that (the deep smooth bass). It has a really nice impact, and in a lot of the old Roots stuff, and a lot of the album Voodoo by D'Angelo gives examples of what can happen, I think. I can't guarantee a hardware Pultec is on those songs, but I'm pretty sure it is.

As for the Universal Audio emulation version vs. the Waves emulation version, the Universal audio has that really superphat 60Hz sound, just by putting it into the chain, meaning that you hear an audible change to the bottom end feel of your mix, just by turning it on (it might also be giving a 1 or 2dB boost to that 60/100Hz bass information, just by turning it on). I had been using the Universal Audio one for awhile, when I decided to demo the Waves version, because Waves plug-ins tend to have a low imprint on Pro Tools DSP wise, and Universal Audio plug-ins are DSP hogs (you can't get many instances of the Universal Audio plug-ins on the type of DSP Accelerator I have). When I tested the Waves version, I immediately thought it lost at least some of the benefit of just putting it in line. I also couldn't hear it working as quickly as I could with the Universal Audio plug-in (meaning I needed to turn the knobs more to achieve roughly the same effect).

As a different kind of equipment example, I would probably compare it to the Mackie HR824 or whatever they were monitors that everyone used to love in the late 90s. Those monitors were way hyped on the bottom end, which really helped out the amateur musicians, since one of the biggest problems in most modern music is putting too much bass in the mix. Because the bass was hyped in those monitors, it was very difficult for musicians, and a lot of engineers who used them, to make huge low end mistakes. That's not how you want to listen in a real environment (my goal is that I want my monitors to sound completely accurate, and that what I'm doing is real, but that's insanely difficult to achieve cost effectively), but it worked for a lot of people.

The reason I make that comparison is that the Waves emulation seems to be operating on the same philosophy. The Pultec, by nature, is a very dangerous plug-in, in the wrong hands, and it's known for dramatically changing the character of bass. Remember what I said about bass mistakes? The Universal Audio Pultec makes it very easy to make bass mistakes (it assumes that the engineer or mixer understands what they are trying to accomplish), but the Waves version makes it harder to make those same mistakes. If you hadn't heard the hardware (as I have not) or emulated Universal Audio versions, it's likely you wouldn't know what the Pultec really offers anyway. Therefore, the Waves emulation is safer, while still having some, and maybe even a lot of the tangible benefits of the hardware and Universal Audio emulation of the Pultec. Unless you're in an exceptional listening environment, there is probably absolutely nothing wrong with using the Waves version, as it will still provide enhancements you can't easily get otherwise. I just looked up the Native version, and it's $187.50. A friend of mine who is a recording engineer used it on something he did on the string parts, and he loved it, so I'm sure it is still a very good plug-in for what it does, but I doubt it would be considered anywhere near a perfect emulation.

I'm not a musician so I can't help you with the Reason questions, but someone else probably can.

Pre-amps are generally considered the single most important thing in the recording process (I am just learning Ableton, and there's almost no reason to ever go outside the box unless you need to record vocals). Until recently, nearly every MIDI keyboard or whatever interfaces were being used were extremely noisy. These days, I'm able to work professionally, specifically because I never need to record anything INTO my box from an external source. Everything is delivered to me on .wav files or OMFs/AAFs. My final mixes are always exported as .wav files, so I never have to worry about those kind of conversions. It's a really cool and affordable way to work, too.

So, getting a great interface, (there are others like maybe DC11 or Mitch who might be able to steer you in the right direction), is really important if you're trying to record anywhere near professional quality (which I always think should be anyone's ultimate goal). I haven't done too much research on that stuff, but I know there are a lot of relatively cheap interfaces that should have high quality pre-amps. Then, you have to make sure you're in a clean recording environment, and that you have a good mic. None of this stuff is ever super easy, or cost effective. One product that we discussed elsewhere in this forum is the Universal Audio Apollo. I'm going to be buying one of those in a few months ($2499), and they claim it is best in class by miles, and you can use the Universal Audio plug-ins on it.

If you're just wanting to record samples, then you just want to get something that has a good enough quality (through the line inputs) that you hear no significant degradation of the sound (no hiss or hum added, and that it sounds as similar as possible to the sample, unless you're trying to screw it up intentionally). Again, hopefully others can advise you out of their own experience, as I try to work completely internally, and am setting a relatively bad example with the interface I use (that I have never recorded anything into).

Again, I don't know anything about Reason, but you can record something in, at a lower level, and then boost it in the box. Then, you can output (export) the sample at a volume that's acceptable to you (hopefully without extra sound degradation), and then just import the .wav file or whatever file type it uses back into the program, and chop it up.

I hope some of this was useful to you.

Nunnehi,

Thanks for the response. I'm still pretty new at all of this, so a lot of what you said went over my head, but I was still able to make sense of what I took as the important points. Much appreciated.

Anybody care to walk through their music making process? Doesn't need to be as in depth as it really is, but I feel like I have hit a slump and get stuck on songs lately.

I could be approaching it entirely wrong as I am a noob at this, but i feel a different approach may help keep the flow going.

I play drums and want to add some beats by playing on my own but the only way I have of recording it is the ****ty default mic built into my mac. It sounds awful and way to loud when I record myself playing the drums.

What should I look into to finding a better sound or just being able to sound proof the room my drum set is in? thanks....

Recording live drums is a task. You will probably need a multiple input audio interface and multiple mics and yes sound treatment helps.

If you have an electronic kit you can plug right into the audio device or even record midi and program samples for each drum.

My newest creation. Check it y'all
http://soundcloud.com/elronncee/no-te-vayas

Really cool song, I like it a lot.

How'd you make it? Samples / synths (for guitar esp.) / where'd you get the vocals?

Sounds pretty clean too.

Thanks man, much appreciated.

I use Reason 5 to make all my songs thus far. Thinking on trying Ableton live cause I have heard many good things about it, but for now sticking with what I know.

The vocals and guitar are only from 1 sample. It was a song I found on Youtube from a fado singer. I recorded the song from Youtube w/ Audio Hijack Pro and then load it into Audacity. From Audacity, I took the opening part of the song (the guitar), and cut it up and arranged it differently to form the main lead you hear through most of the song using Recycle.

I found small vocal parts in the song that I liked and just played around with them over the beat using my MPC until I found something that flowed well. I have the same vocal sample four times through the song using different effects and automation that basically just increase volume, reverb and other subtle changes.

The synth was a Thor patch I found and tweaked the lfo a little bit and added a arpeggiator and set it to 1/16 playing over 3 octaves, added reverb, slight delay etc.

The cleanliness of the sound is something I have been struggling with. I've only been making music electronically for about 5 months, and found that boosting just about everything with a compressor and a maximizer and adjusting through EQ helps to make a clear sound and boost it at the same time.

Anymore questions I'd be happy to answer.

Hey guys, technical Q. I have some instrumentals but I don't know how to fix them. Basically have reverb on violins, sounds good but there's too much "excess" echo, if I turn reverb down it reduces echo but flattens the sound back down which I don't want. I dunno if you'll get what I mean :S If you do tho, any ideas on what sort of plugin could help with this?

Are you turning down the decay time? A gate maybe would work. You could try volume automation too.

Try tweaking the room size first (sounds like the room is too big for what you want), and then the decay as Prana says.

Basically the prob was that I had the decay and room set how I wanted, when I made them that way they were echoing out some nice bass notes that weren't coming out before, so I couldn't turn them down, but there was excess echo coming from the high end that I had to get rid of without changing the rest of the sound. EQ didn't work so I randomly clicked buttons on a compressor for half n hour and stuck some strings plugin on it which worked.

Most reverbs have hi frequency cuts and lo frequency cuts available. You could also try playing with that to shape the sound of the reverb.

Yeah I played with that high end reverb thing and it helped. The finished songs here http://soundcloud.com/purrrty/spartacus I dunno if the violins ended up too shrill after messing with them, or if I could have mixed/mastered it better or something. I'm a noob with electronic music so any constructive criticism welcome.

Cocteau,

I thought it sounded great. Could easily extend that another 2 minutes and make a song. Was wondering who the random was that followed me on soundcloud

For some reason most things I do end up a minute n a half long lol, I don't know why.


I'm interested in hearing about mixing/mastering techniques if people wanna share.

As far as I've learnt there's no special way to do it and how you would approach it depends on the song. Having said that there could be some basics or something that could be good to know. I use ableton and have a list of plugins that could be used on things but tbh I'm not really sure where to use them, I've just be sticking them on and seeing if they make things sound better. I've probably made some things sound better but some worse in the process, esp with the multiband dynamics :S

I try to follow the method of having all my instruments to 12db and the master to 6db before converting the song and "mastering" it, but my songs always end up around 12db on the master and then 6db when it's finished >:d
I find it hard to get volume levels right for things because in ableton it sounds one way but once it's been converted to wav the volume levels sound totally different.

I think you have a setting wrong in Ableton for your exports. There is something called normalize. If you have that highlighted, it will make everything the same volume. Make sure that is off. I have done a decent amount of file exporting from Ableton, and, without fail, it has been what I expected to hear.

I'm also completely unsure what you mean by 6dB and 12dB, as neither of those, in the context you are using them, are any kind of numbers that make sense to anyone who does sound for a living. I'm guessing you mean where you have your "faders" set? Generally, the top of the audio level scale is digital 0 (I doubt any modern workstations default to analog metering), and everything else goes down in -numbers. There are lots of ways to measure sound, so that number can sound a lot different on different mixes, depending on the "density" of the sound. Just because something is mixed at the same level as another song doesn't mean it will sound the same. What you're doing inside those obvious numbers everyone knows about is usually what makes the difference.

Most people who aren't professional have a really hard time with multi-band dynamics. I'm sure many professionals also have a really hard time with multi-band dynamics. Look at what it's doing, while listening to what's going through it. If you can hear it pumping, you're not using it right, unless that's what your intent is.

Anybody have any tips for extracting vocals from songs?

I've been using Audacity and have messed around with it for hours with no real positive results.

Only real tutorials I've seen using Audacity require mixing together the actual song with an instrumental version resulting in the "leftovers" which is primarily vocals with not as much of the instruments coming through.

I just don't have instrumental versions of the songs I'm looking to extract from. Any help is appreciated.

Look everywhere you can for instrumentals, because that's really the only thing that will help you out.

nunnehi, I have normalize off and dither off as well and then import the wav file back in and then try to master it, then put dither back on when I export out. I was thinking it might be what I'm listening to the song on, which is winamp, so it sounds different, like it would probably sound different on a hi fi compared to winamp and ableton? What do you listen to your songs on when you export? Maybe winamp has some settings that make it sound diff.

With the db I meant to say -12 and -6. The individual instruments at or around -12 but the master not going over -6db, and then when it's mastered the master doesn't go over 0db. Although by the time I get there everything always ends up too quiet anyways. Also my settings are 44100 and 24bit.