DAYLIGHT SAT
Saturday, March 7th, 2026 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio41F and cloudy, with a chance of rain, on this final day of Standard Time.
I didn't do much with the mixes over the work week. Just rested my ears and then last night I took the four new test WAVs with the pickup simulation models and dropped them into Audacity with the vocals & sound effects for the four songs; Reavis, Tuesday, Clue Phone, and Other Friends.
This was a headphone test to see how these new mixes sounded in the full context.
While Reavis, and Tuesday sounded just fine, Clue Phone sounded canny and awful, and Other Friends wasn't much better.
Same pickups, same convolver, the only difference was chorus (a Sakura effect), and Fast Dist.
In general, the distiortion just wasn't biting well, and... I couldn't explain exactly why Clue Phone sounded so terrible.
So today I loded up Clue Phone in FL, monitoring with the iLouds, and just started messing around with... everything!... Sakura settings, pickup EQs, distortion, Convolver... making everything worse, then starting over from the saved defaults... several times in a row!
I ruled out Sakura as the problem... yes some slight tweaks did help, but for the most part it was fine.
I also ruled out the pickup EQ settings as a problem. Again, yes, I did tweak things slightly... to get more low end on the neck EQ... and a cut in the boxy range of the high EQ... very narrow Q cut.
The thing that helped most was putting Fast Dist first in the signal chain, followed by Convolver, before the signal hit the pickup EQs.
That's counterintuitive to how the signal would flow in a real situation, but in this simulated environment it seems better to EQ the distorted signal, than to distort the EQed signal!
Convolver also adds it's own character to the EQ, obviously, because that's what a cabinet impulse is for... so it also made more sense to EQ the impulse, than to impulse the EQ.
Basically, when convolver is eliminated and it's just; Sakura --> Dist --> Pickups... that guitar sound is good and has good distortion. But when Convolver is introduced... no matter where it appears in the chain... *that's* what adding the boxy honky character.
I did run through all the cab models available from A to T. I had been using Model S, and found that Model T was slightly better, but the real fix was to just keep the DRY signal around 95%, and only crank the WET to about 50%.
This way the impulse is there, but it's not taking over... and because it comes before the pickup EQs, they can help to blend that impulse into the overall guitar sound.
I'm not gonna say this is the conclusive, silver bullet answer, however.
All I can say right now is that for Clue Phone, these changes seem to have improved the guitar sound.
I saved the modified settings for Sakura, Convolver, and the pickups, for possible global use, and then exported a new test WAV.
I will next drop this newest WAV into the vocal version and see if it works better than the previous version.
Then the next test will be to apply this newer model (rearranged signal chain, modified presets) to my other three test songs; Other friends, Reavis, and Tuesday... to see if the improvement translates to these other environments.
Okay, gotta take a walk for smokes soon, and get back to work.
Talk to you later.
It's 6:30, but I'm treating it like 7:30PM. Analog clocks were advanced and i've just cracked the first beer.
The walk for smokes was chilly because of the wind. Happy to see the old Huntoon House, a historic little hotel building from the 1880s is being renovated.
According to the banner on the construction fence, it's going to be all studio apartments! Very interesting!
I put the new WAV of Clue Phone into Audacity and it does sound markedly better.
Monitoring in the iLouds, I was struck by how well the vocals still cut through the mix.
I exported that version as a test FLAC and now it's on to Other Friends, in FL.
Exporting Other Friends from FL as a WAV right now, after applying today's new model to the guitar signal chain.
This does sound a lot better than last weeks! The distortion is much better, and the sound is much more clear.
With the newly tweaked pickup EQs, I noticed a big difference between neck and bridge... such that I had to modify the automations to not be so drastic... taming 90/10 splits to 30/70, etc.
Recall that last week I couldn't hear much difference between neck and bridge in songs with heavy distortion... right?
Today I can, but the tweaks to the pickup EQs weren't very drastic, so a lot of the new clarity is due to the change in the signal chain... putting the EQs last.
Time to drop this new test WAV of the music into Audacity.
Okay, the new guitar model works way better in Other Friends. Sounds great with the vocals!.. and that test FLAC is exporting now.
I took some time to fix the AI voice at the end, who cuts off the distorted final chord to say, "I ordered you some aloe for that sick burn."
Back in the winter, I got an AI to say it online, but to avoid paying for a download of the sound, I just played it over the iLouds, and recorded it with my phone. The result was a very bad take, with tons of bad room verb, from the apartment.
Since then, I'd learned that I can get Alexa to say phrases for me (for free), so I moved the echo dot to over by the bed, and hung it from a mike stand with a blanket behind it.
I also miked it with the SM58, as plugged into the input of the MOTU.
After some tests for ideal mike placement, I got a *much* better take of Alexa herself, saying, "I ordered you some aloe for that sick burn."
I actually recorded four takes, and then pasted together the best, "I ordered you," with the best, "Aloe for that sick burn."
I then added a bit of space betwen sick and burn, cuz she tends to want to say it like, "sickburn."
A little noise reduction, and the clip was ready to go into the song's AUP3, where it was stereo doubled with a bit of lead/lag from left to right, and a light EQ.
The result is a WAY better ending for the song!
Okay, so next I'll need to try Tuesday, and then Reavis, with today's modified guitar signal model... but it is getting close to 9PM... which means it's really getting close to 10PM, with the time change closing in on us.
And the Saturday night phone call will likely happen soon.
So I'll talk to you again after the late session, and we'll see how far I got.
°¦}
