Preliminary Findings
Saturday, January 24th, 2026 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio6F out there, with overcast skies.
Yesterday, the high was -5F, and was down to -10F when I walked home from the parking garage! That was the worst of it, but this whole coming week will be low teens above during the day, and single digits below by night.
This will finish out our January, on a cold note. But maybe it means February will be milder?
Over the week I got Never Rains & Magic Monday gain staged, then took a night to prep the rest of the songs for it, by adjusting all the channel rack volumes to 100% and eliminating all the unused patterns.
Then last night, I got about half way through Tuesday Siren.
Today, I've just reviewed Reavis, Never Rains, and Magic Monday (music only, no lyrics) at high volume and there's definitely been an improvement!
The drums and cymbals are finally clear and up front, with the kick being very present. The bass and guitar are also clear... not conflicting.
The cello and violin are amazingly clear and do sound as if they're in the room.
The other orchestral are also sounding good, and somewhat in the room.
Everything's intelligible, even in dense musical interludes.
I suppose the main notes are that the bass sounds a bit dull? The overall rhythm section seems to lack a bit of sparkle? I wouldn't call it low end mud... I think it's more to do with the general EQ, and lack of compression?
And while everything's quite clear, this all could be mixed a bit better, from the amplitude standpoint. Certain cymbals seem a bit loud. Certain orchestrals are either a bit loud or a bit quiet.
So... I'm definitely on the right track here, but these early tracks will need a second pass.
This is because early on I thought I was just managing peaks, and didn't fully appreciate the low-volume mixing aspect of this stage right away... the idea of critically listening to get the guitars and higher pitched elements into the mix by ear, rather than by the meters.
To do this right, I'm learning, the rhythm section has to be balanced first, and then the ears have to get used to hearing those drums and bass at the low volume, at which point the rest is mixed in, according to the frame that's been established.
For guitar, cello, and violin this is pretty easy, but for things like marimba, xylophone, bells, flutes, and piano... it can be difficult to get the volume just right.
Think of listening at low volume as being like looking at the mix from far away, the room being a kind of shoe-box diarama, with the drums and bass inside that box. The higher pitched orchestral have to be at the right depth inside that little box, but it's easy to lose focus and put them out on the table in front of the diarama...
From your distant perspective they appear to be in the box, but they're actually much closer to you than you think.
Then occasionally I overcompensate and push them too far back into the box.
This is ultimately a problem of ear-training.
But it's worth taking the time to get trained, because the results, when it's done right, are far better, at high volume, than any other way of mixing... thanks to what's known as the Fletcher-Munson curve.
Fletcher-Munson was a study of perceived loudness at different amplitudes. Without getting too deep into it, what it means is, if everything sounds balanced at low volume, it tends to sound balanced at all volumes.
So, especially for gain staging, before any serious EQ or compression is added, doing the near-field, low-volume mix is the best way to get everything situated, and makes future stages a lot easier to deal with.
So, I'll continue on mixing through to Miss Fortune, then come back for another pass to tweak the early songs before sending the new mixes into Audacity to do low-level balancing of the exisiting vocals and sound effects.
The result should be a far more balanced Ruff Record.
And only then, can I move on to spectral analysis, and compression.
It is looking like, however, that the mastering will be with a limiter.
The way that I'm doing these mixes preserves a lot of dynamic range, meaning the main body of the songs will be a bit on the quiet side. A limiter can lift that up a bit, while keeping the peaks from clipping.
Still, in open air speakers, most listeners will likely crank the volume knob a bit, even on the mastered version... which is fine, because nothing will be clipping. But headphones listeners will probably be perfectly happy with it. So it's a good compromise.
Okay, onward to completing Tuesday Siren, and hopefully I can get Cold Feet knocked out today as well!
Talk to you later.
Hung up my single Valentine decoration in the window tonight.
Tuesday Siren got done and was exported, then I also just finished Cold Feet, and it's exporting now... to WAV!
Cold Feet went quickly, because it's a simpler song. Fewer instruments and fewer unique patterns.
So, I'm now half way through the first pass of gain staging for the album!
And I believe the second pass will go much faster, because things will already be so close to where they need to be!
Closer To You is next up, and will probably take a while, because it does involve some pretty dense orchestral swells at the end of the song.
Still, tonight I feel even the first passes are going faster, now that I have a solid theory in my head for what exactly I'm doing.
- Peak management for drums & cymbals via faders alone.
- Peak management for bass via fader and scaling of velocities with an emphasis on the latter.
- Aclimatize ears to rhythm section, then get guitar volume by ear via fader, no need to touch the veolocities, as the guitar will never come anywhere near pegging the meter.
- Cello & violin next, much the same as with the bass... hybrid approach.
- All the rest of the orchestral instruments one by one, with a kind of tri-brid approach... velocity first, then earballing as faders are adjusted.
- Final focus on master meter... find spikes, go in to adjust velocities in offending drum patterns. It's always a case of several drums/cymbals hitting at once in specific beats.
- Call it good, and export!
Okay!.. on to, Closer to You.
Talk to you later tonight!
Closer To You is now exporting to WAV! I managed to get it done tonight, even with a Saturday Night Phone Call with Tim!
So, that was song number seven, and the end of Side One!
With time tomorrow to get a start on, Suburbs, and a five-day week ahead with the standard 3-hours per night to mix... things are looking good for this first pass of the gain staging to be complete by this time next week!
Normal latest stop time is 4:30AM, so... here at 3:15AM, I'm done with over an hour to spare, which means I should be able to get up early for building checks and groceries tomorrow, optimizing studio time tomorrow night.
I'm gonna back everything up, make some food, wind on down, and I'll talk to you tomorrow!
°¦}
