Not challenged at all. No need to overexaggerate to personal "attacks".
This is a technical subject, not Oprah.
You said you are not into technical matters. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.
I am 100% sure you insulted my singing (which you've never heard) long before I pointed out you are off-putting in your responses (which I have personally observed and been at the other end of).
If you don't like it, don't do it. Right?
And even then I was still willing to see if I could learn from you. But I can't and that's nobody's fault. I def wasn't being passive aggressive by speaking directly to you.
Thankfully there are lots of good ppl here willing to actually try to help. Your "my way or your ignorance" approach isn't helpful to a beginner (or maybe anyone here, judging from responses).
You wanted me to post audio, learn the technical differences between a bunch of related terms, and look up Fletcher-Munson curves to answer a simple question that so many others were able to answer by DE-mystifying things. You mystify things. You complicate things. And you overstep and get personal, insulting, and assumptive.
Worst of all, when bumped back you complain of being attacked passive aggressively. It's all silly Pashkuli. You're being silly. Just stop it. If you were my son I'd be pointing a stern finger at you, lol.
That is your perspective. I am always looking forward and slightly upward.
No need to look down at whatever it is there.
As I said to Stoneglow: I am looking forward to reading your technical questions.
A perspective that is being reflected back to you by almost everyone who responded to you in this chat. That should really tell you something.
But at this point I'm not gonna lie - I'm half team Pashkuli now. I'm pretty sure I'll never listen to anything you say but I do enjoy your pigheadedness and your marked ability to appear genuinely obtuse to the dynamics of human interaction.
Maybe I should say "don't ever change"? I will certainly enjoy seeing others react to your postings in the future and I even looked up your keyboard. An impressive beast. Looks super technical (surprise surprise) but it's impressive. Good on you.
There is an option to render to a 32 or 64 bit floating point file in the render menu if you want. Reaper is 64 bit FP internally if I recall correctly. I'm guessing many folks render PCM and don't have any issues, but it's there if you want it.
Thanks.... I have a video saved to a playlist to hopefully learn what floating point is and what PCM is, lol.
I'm too uninformed to even respond beyond saying I will research. Thanks!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pink Wool
Just cause you look down on everyone doesn’t mean they are looking up to you...
Wool, I'm not doing SO well with the multi-quoting, lol. But this is a start....
A perspective that is being reflected back to you by almost everyone who responded to you in this chat. That should really tell you something.
But at this point I'm not gonna lie - I'm half team Pashkuli now. I'm pretty sure I'll never listen to anything you say but I do enjoy your pigheadedness and your marked ability to appear genuinely obtuse to the dynamics of human interaction.
Maybe I should say "don't ever change"? I will certainly enjoy seeing others react to your postings in the future and I even looked up your keyboard. An impressive beast. Looks super technical (surprise surprise) but it's impressive. Good on you.
Why do you even write all that crap, mate?
The subject is clear. I "insulted" any Melodyne "correction" nonsense, unless it is for some creative robotic-effect.
I have no idea how or what you can sing. It is not about you.
If it needs pitch correction, it is crap. Period.
You said it needed some ±16 or 20 cents. That is not correction. That is human voice.
You do not need Melodyne. I would use it only for some chord-dissections for fun.
Why do you even write all that crap, mate?
The subject is clear. I "insulted" any Melodyne "correction" nonsense, unless it is for some creative robotic-effect.
I have no idea how or what you can sing. It is not about you.
If it needs pitch correction, it is crap. Period.
You said it needed some ±16 or 20 cents. That is not correction. That is human voice.
You do not need Melodyne. I would use it only for some chord-dissections for fun.
Don't ever change Pashkuli. You actually said you were sure my performance was shite because you assumed I needed Melodyne.
Thanks.... I have a video saved to a playlist to hopefully learn what floating point is and what PCM is, lol.
To come back to the original point:
Quote:
Originally Posted by mschnell
You should not manually render any intermediate audio data to files.
If Reaper does intermediate renders (e.g. subprojects) it uses floating point format, hence gain does not matter at all.
-Michael
Rendering to PCM will clip any audio past 0dBFS. With floating point, you will have hundreds or thousands of dB of headroom past 0dBFS (depending 32 or 64 bit), and will be functionally equivalent to what Reaper is doing internally. So you would not have to worry about clipping. Michael can correct me if I'm wrong here.
Why do you even write all that crap, mate?
The subject is clear. I "insulted" any Melodyne "correction" nonsense, unless it is for some creative robotic-effect.
I have no idea how or what you can sing. It is not about you.
If it needs pitch correction, it is crap. Period.
You said it needed some ±16 or 20 cents. That is not correction. That is human voice.
You do not need Melodyne. I would use it only for some chord-dissections for fun.
Rendering to PCM will clip any audio past 0dBFS. With floating point, you will have hundreds or thousands of dB of headroom past 0dBFS (depending 32 or 64 bit), and will be functionally equivalent to what Reaper is doing internally. So you would not have to worry about clipping. Michael can correct me if I'm wrong here.
Wow, ok this is good to know. I had no clue rendering to PCM (which I, in my ignorance, assume is the kind of rendering Reaper does out the box without being changed) would clip anything past 0db.
Luckily I didn't have anything above 0 so I'm assuming that's why I didn't encounter any clipping. Is it fair to say that as long as I have nothing close to 0db rendering to PCM will give me the exact same effects as rendering to floating point (32 or 64)?
I will watch that video tomorrow and do any other research I need to better understand this. I really appreciate guys like you taking the time. I am but a babe (not in the sense of being hot either). Thanks!
You're a legend Max. Each of your clips is right on point. It's as if you have an AR with a legend-sized cartridge full of media and video clips. I can dig it!
You actually said you were sure my performance was shite because you assumed I needed Melodyne.
I did not assume.
You said in OP you use Melodyne and that is for your vocals.
I never liked that "side" effect of Melodyne.
In fact its DNA (or whatever it was called) function, the one that dissects polyphonic material (chords and harmonies) into separate note, is way much more important from a technical point of view. As well as (I am sure) from a coding point of view. The guy behind it is a genius (Peter Neubacker).
I have nothing more to contribute to this (OP) subject.
You're a legend Max. Each of your clips is right on point. It's as if you have an AR with a legend-sized cartridge full of media and video clips. I can dig it!
^Ha! That's right, we are in the middle of gain staging pandemic as I type this.
Too funny.
I don't have much to add but if anyone is truly a beginner and reading this thread, please run away. Quickly.
For some of you, I wonder if you even mix with speakers.
There's never in the history of recording been an easier path to getting great recordings and great mixes and some of you are really trying to prevent that and make it complicated again.
If you really want to tweak stuff, go buy an analog tape machine.
For everyone else, hit record and record something that someone cares about. Even if it's just you.
I did not assume.
You said in OP you use Melodyne and that is for your vocals.
I never liked that "side" effect of Melodyne.
In fact its DNA (or whatever it was called) function, the one that dissects polyphonic material (chords and harmonies) into separate note, is way much more important from a technical point of view. As well as (I am sure) from a coding point of view. The guy behind it is a genius (Peter Neubacker).
I have nothing more to contribute to this (OP) subject.
Nope. I said I USED Melodyne. You said my performance must be shite. I teased you for saying something so ignorant. You said the reason you said that was because "if I need melodyne, then my performance must be shite".
I never said "I need melodyne". All I said was I used it. Not that I "needed" it or that I needed it BECAUSE my performance was shite. You ASSUMED "I need melodyne" and the reason YOU assigned to that need was my performance being shite.
I can drop it but I am not going to let you rewrite history, bud. We stand on the words and ideas we spew into this world, and you added that need/shite part, not me.
We can move on but not with you being a slippery fish. I will gladly nail a fish head to a wall for clear viewing. I'm like Inspectah Deck - I will take notes and report back accurately to you after the fact, lol. Anyway, we're good now I think...
Good.
And this thread is not about your vocal performance or capabilities.
Let me assume (based on experience), that since we (I) have not heard anything sung by you, any vocal recording that has Melodyne applied, must have been shite before such processing.
Let me suggest some practical preparations with regards to Loudness and Gain D-staging:
1. Hearing is crucial and the instruments, which provide the sound must be calibrated (to SPL - sound pressure level) decently, depending on what you use - monitors or headphones.
*good practice is to do it with RMS (root mean square) value of the most busy (intense) signal at about 600ms time span
2. The RMS value when hovers around -18dBFS to -12dBFS should be = to about 72dB to 77dB SPL respectively (for monitors at home; at about 1m distance from your head)
*for headphones is a matter of taste (but imagine the huge Hollywood action movie explosion blasting in your ears without causing discomfort)
You calibrate this with the Volume knob of your amplifier (monitors usually have some indication at the back; headphones do not have it).
3. This way when normalising by Loudness (usually it is weighted: removed lows, boosted highs calculatively and non-destructively), you might still be able to hear any low-frequency garbage after the Normalisation by Loudness has been applied. Also, this can be learned and 'get used to' with practice and knowing your equipment.
Otherwise the most easiest and fool-proof method is by 'Peak and RMS' gain D-staging. RMS about -18dBFS (±3) and Peaks treated gently with clipper\saturation\compressor at around -9dBFS to -6dbFS.
*all these gain preparation (gain D-staging) values are highly dependant on genre, style, intention for the later Mixing
Just to get a good signal to noise ratio. I've read that some plugins are calibrated to affect the signal best at about -18dBVU or thereabouts. Is that unreliable advice to your mind?
Honestly bro, you’ll know the (very) few plugins that recommend gain staging, because they’ll not only be modeled after analog equipment but they’ll mention it in the manual itself.
a – Melodyne
b – Vocal Rider
c – Izotope RX8 de-click and mouth de-click
None of those require gain staging. The most common plugins that MIGHT benefit from gain staging are Channel Strip plugins that are designed to model the analog console, and not even those always benefit from gain staging depending on how they captured the model.
Personally I have a love-hate relationship with channel strip plugins. On the one hand the distortion can sound quite nice. On the other hand, any plug-in that is not designed to model noise, but still models noise, can get f-cked imho. Easiest way to test is take a compressor, put the threshold as los as possible, and throw a 100:1 ratio at it after the channel strip. If you hear noise, make sure that channel strip is the last thing in your chain, or, even better, simply don’t use it if you can’t disable the noise section.
For some of you, I wonder if you even mix with speakers.
Just a tip for anyone mixing with headphones, because let’s face it there’s a lot of hype about this since median housing is now 9.26x the median income in 2021 vs the 2.48x it was in 1950, so I get a lot of people are in limited space with the inability to buy full studios and are on limited budgets BECAUSE of the insane and laughable housing prices (oh and the fact we aren’t building homes and instead are building more apartments and townhouses), HOWEVER; if you monitor eBay or similar and get get your hands on a pair of Yamaha MSP7 Studio Monitors for under $300, don’t think, just buy. They will change your life.
If anyone else knows a bigger bang for the buck then please start a thread
I have no idea how or what you can sing. It is not about you.
If it needs pitch correction, it is crap. Period.
You said it needed some ±16 or 20 cents. That is not correction. That is human voice.
You do not need Melodyne. I would use it only for some chord-dissections for fun.
Careful man, not everyone can afford or has the time to do a bunch of vocal takes, and sometimes the more emotional vocal take is the one that resonates emotionally, even though the singer went a bit flat or sharp at points. And that’s what Melodyde is good for. I’ve never heard extreme Melodyne corrections that sound natural; it’s much better used for gentle nudges in the right direction for emotional takes rather than extreme corrections, given my (admittedly limited) experience.
Can be good to gently cut down on or increase natural vibrato on a phrase-by-phrase basis.
I will say though, that using melodyde to blindly snap everything to perfection can kill a take, so I suspect the heavy handed people are the ones you’re referring to. I’ve certainly been there and done that. Fortunately the singer picked right up on it even though they had no idea about melodyne
Careful man, sometimes the more emotional vocal take is the one that resonates emotionally, even though the singer went a bit flat or sharp at points.
Exactly my point. I would prefer the colourful performance as well.
As with every tool for correction or polishing, Melodyne should be used with care and with knowledge. And to know where you cross the line of overdoing it.
Yes, I agree most do not have neither the time or budget to spend on take after take, like in the analogue days. Ant it is obvious nowadays with the overedited vocals.
I can hear it today even on some of my best singers and it is a bit cringe. Most people (average listeners) won't notice though as it's been done with care, but I know.
for illustration purposes
La Mari has a perfect pop-flamenco voice even without Melodyne.
One of my top 10 singers of all time (though I am biased because of the flamenco roots)
Good.
And this thread is not about your vocal performance or capabilities.
Let me assume (based on experience), that since we (I) have not heard anything sung by you, any vocal recording that has Melodyne applied, must have been shite before such processing.
Let me suggest some practical preparations with regards to Loudness and Gain D-staging:
1. Hearing is crucial and the instruments, which provide the sound must be calibrated (to SPL - sound pressure level) decently, depending on what you use - monitors or headphones.
*good practice is to do it with RMS (root mean square) value of the most busy (intense) signal at about 600ms time span
2. The RMS value when hovers around -18dBFS to -12dBFS should be = to about 72dB to 77dB SPL respectively (for monitors at home; at about 1m distance from your head)
*for headphones is a matter of taste (but imagine the huge Hollywood action movie explosion blasting in your ears without causing discomfort)
You calibrate this with the Volume knob of your amplifier (monitors usually have some indication at the back; headphones do not have it).
3. This way when normalising by Loudness (usually it is weighted: removed lows, boosted highs calculatively and non-destructively), you might still be able to hear any low-frequency garbage after the Normalisation by Loudness has been applied. Also, this can be learned and 'get used to' with practice and knowing your equipment.
Otherwise the most easiest and fool-proof method is by 'Peak and RMS' gain D-staging. RMS about -18dBFS (±3) and Peaks treated gently with clipper\saturation\compressor at around -9dBFS to -6dbFS.
*all these gain preparation (gain D-staging) values are highly dependant on genre, style, intention for the later Mixing
You flip flop more than foam on girls' feet, my man. If I'm ever going to get into these details I might look this up. As the unanimous advice I've gotten from all who have commented on your posts goes, I'm going to choose not to listen for the time being. Again if I ever get stuck in the weeds and your advice seems like the only way out I'm humble enough to come back asking. Thanks for your effort.
That said, ignoring all of that, I seemed to have made a decent first demo, certainly in terms of clipping and loudness, as well as overall volume. So the advice I got in this thread from numerous ppl proved really valuable and I'm thankful for the community at large as well as even you Pashkuli.
As I often say about life - "it takes all kinds". We should not all be the same and when I meet ppl who make me scratch my head, I think of the fact there are things that they could show me better than anyone else probably can. If I ever need that from you I will humbly look you up and ask. Thanks!
Honestly bro, you’ll know the (very) few plugins that recommend gain staging, because they’ll not only be modeled after analog equipment but they’ll mention it in the manual itself.
a – Melodyne
b – Vocal Rider
c – Izotope RX8 de-click and mouth de-click
None of those require gain staging. The most common plugins that MIGHT benefit from gain staging are Channel Strip plugins that are designed to model the analog console, and not even those always benefit from gain staging depending on how they captured the model.
Personally I have a love-hate relationship with channel strip plugins. On the one hand the distortion can sound quite nice. On the other hand, any plug-in that is not designed to model noise, but still models noise, can get f-cked imho. Easiest way to test is take a compressor, put the threshold as los as possible, and throw a 100:1 ratio at it after the channel strip. If you hear noise, make sure that channel strip is the last thing in your chain, or, even better, simply don’t use it if you can’t disable the noise section.
That is good to know, thank you! I will test this with channel strips like Neutron and Onmi Channel.
Careful man, not everyone can afford or has the time to do a bunch of vocal takes, and sometimes the more emotional vocal take is the one that resonates emotionally, even though the singer went a bit flat or sharp at points. And that’s what Melodyde is good for. I’ve never heard extreme Melodyne corrections that sound natural; it’s much better used for gentle nudges in the right direction for emotional takes rather than extreme corrections, given my (admittedly limited) experience.
Can be good to gently cut down on or increase natural vibrato on a phrase-by-phrase basis.
I will say though, that using melodyde to blindly snap everything to perfection can kill a take, so I suspect the heavy handed people are the ones you’re referring to. I’ve certainly been there and done that. Fortunately the singer picked right up on it even though they had no idea about melodyne
This is my first project and I am a pretty decent singer and have decent pitch. I can be off between 1 and 15 cents at times, esp when I use a lot of vibrato. I made SO MANY mistakes with Melodyne.
At first I was lazy and snapped all to grid. Holy Christ I had to rescue parts. Then I snapped small parts to grid, part by part. I found that to be way too heavy handed as well. Because of my vibrato (it's strong when I use it that way) Melodyne will sometimes snap me to the wrong note as well.
Then I got into an issue where I'd move a note, not even in pitch, but in timing, and all the frequencies would not move with the note. There would still be ghost frequencies where the note WAS and the new note, in the new correct position, would only have some of the frequencies with it.
Eventually I have to contact Melodyne to ask about that because to my understanding this simply shouldn't happen. So Melodyne has been a frustrating journey for me and I've found it is only useful for nudging less than 40 cents (which is way more than I need for pitch correction but less than I'd need to do lazy harmonies - so I have learned to just sing everything). I can't use it to shift timing at this time. Hopefully they'll straighten me out when I contact them.
All of that said, I've still found that in the end result demo, Melodyne has helped my performance just slightly more than it's harmed it, lol. Part of that is on me and my inexperience, as well as my developing ears. I expect the next project to go MUCH more smoothly from what I've learned this time out.
Just a tip for anyone mixing with headphones, because let’s face it there’s a lot of hype about this since median housing is now 9.26x the median income in 2021 vs the 2.48x it was in 1950, so I get a lot of people are in limited space with the inability to buy full studios and are on limited budgets BECAUSE of the insane and laughable housing prices (oh and the fact we aren’t building homes and instead are building more apartments and townhouses), HOWEVER; if you monitor eBay or similar and get get your hands on a pair of Yamaha MSP7 Studio Monitors for under $300, don’t think, just buy. They will change your life.
If anyone else knows a bigger bang for the buck then please start a thread
I first mixed my project on Audio Technica headphones and it was a complete disaster. These are FAR from faithful to how other speakers might sound. So I broke out a pair of old cheap M-Audio monitors that I'd had laying around for 10 years. A cheap ass pair of BX5a's.
Surprisingly, the second mix plays on everything I've tested it on (haven't tried the car yet) pretty faithfully to how it sounds from these speakers - even plays on the phone speaker quite faithfully.
So I def learned the value of mixing on speakers firsthand. Now I just need to develop my ears and gain lots of experience, lol. And learn to mix better. Lol, small order, right? So lots more projects to create I guess....
I first mixed my project on Audio Technica headphones and it was a complete disaster. These are FAR from faithful to how other speakers might sound. So I broke out a pair of old cheap M-Audio monitors that I'd had laying around for 10 years. A cheap ass pair of BX5a's.
Surprisingly, the second mix plays on everything I've tested it on (haven't tried the car yet) pretty faithfully to how it sounds from these speakers - even plays on the phone speaker quite faithfully.
So I def learned the value of mixing on speakers firsthand. Now I just need to develop my ears and gain lots of experience, lol. And learn to mix better. Lol, small order, right? So lots more projects to create I guess....
Check out Sonarworks if you dont know it, other competitors are available too, its been a realy game changer for me with headphones.
Check out Sonarworks if you dont know it, other competitors are available too, its been a realy game changer for me with headphones.
Oh, whit that said...
If anyone needs a Sonarworks Headphones edition SoundID Reference (For Creators) license, please let me know. I am selling mine for about $40 (retail is about $110).
You flip flop more than foam on girls' feet, my man.
Damn, it is true that unrequested advice is worse than a lie.
Read carefully and learn. I understand you are not a 'technical chap' but do not full yourself if you are serious and good as you say about your singing. For a first project it is fine to play it 'dumb'... but if you are really serious, then you should know, especially when you do not have a sound engineer around to help you with this techy stuff.
I first mixed my project on Audio Technica headphones and it was a complete disaster. These are FAR from faithful to how other speakers might sound. So I broke out a pair of old cheap M-Audio monitors that I'd had laying around for 10 years. A cheap ass pair of BX5a's.
Surprisingly, the second mix plays on everything I've tested it on (haven't tried the car yet) pretty faithfully to how it sounds from these speakers - even plays on the phone speaker quite faithfully.
So I def learned the value of mixing on speakers firsthand. Now I just need to develop my ears and gain lots of experience, lol. And learn to mix better. Lol, small order, right? So lots more projects to create I guess....
Ha! I remember the BX5's - they sounded terrible, so I sent them back. Now guess what: My mix sounded terrible, and they were so close to the truth. Nice little speakers indeed!
As for the headphones: you should absolutely try Realphones, to my ears it sounded better than all the competitors, and it's lightweight and not expensive. Of course they won't magically turn your AT cans into Audezes, but if the demo proves them (and my ears) right, you should be able to create at least a pretty good mix with it.
__________________ Windows 10x64 | AMD Ryzen 3700X | ATI FirePro 2100 | Marian Seraph AD2, 4.3.8 | Yamaha Steinberg MR816x "If I can hear well, then everything I do is right" (Allen Sides)
Damn, it is true that unrequested advice is worse than a lie.
Read carefully and learn. I understand you are not a 'technical chap' but do not full yourself if you are serious and good as you say about your singing. For a first project it is fine to play it 'dumb'... but if you are really serious, then you should know, especially when you do not have a sound engineer around to help you with this techy stuff.
You may be right on this in the long run. I'm not experienced enough to know. Could you tell me what understanding what you say will demonstrably do for my mixes? As in, what problem would your advice solve exactly? I have to admit I don't know where to start with it but the "why" would maybe give me a good indication.
I'm not against learning anything at all but I haven't heard anyone echo or support what you're saying so I guess I'd want to understand better what you're getting out of your approach that others may be missing?
Check out Sonarworks if you dont know it, other competitors are available too, its been a realy game changer for me with headphones.
I will look into these - why not?
Quote:
Originally Posted by beingmf
Ha! I remember the BX5's - they sounded terrible, so I sent them back. Now guess what: My mix sounded terrible, and they were so close to the truth. Nice little speakers indeed!
As for the headphones: you should absolutely try Realphones, to my ears it sounded better than all the competitors, and it's lightweight and not expensive. Of course they won't magically turn your AT cans into Audezes, but if the demo proves them (and my ears) right, you should be able to create at least a pretty good mix with it.
Could you tell me what understanding what you say will demonstrably do for my mixes? As in, what problem would your advice solve exactly?
It is a long way as above we have tackled only the preparation for recording and the pre-mixing.
'Audio mixing' is irrelevant because that is an artistic form of dealing with audio and I have no idea what it is about in terms of style, genre, general idea for sound, atmosphere, tempo, etc.
It will help you to work more hassle free and with less distractions during mixing.
It is a long way as above we have tackled only the preparation for recording and the pre-mixing.
'Audio mixing' is irrelevant because that is an artistic form of dealing with audio and I have no idea what it is about in terms of style, genre, general idea for sound, atmosphere, tempo, etc.
It will help you to work more hassle free and with less distractions during mixing.
Thanks - so this is just about getting the audio levels optimized then? If so, I'm not apparently encountering any issues with audio levels now. Would this be best considered if and when I am?
I have lots of critiques of my first mix the more I listen, but audio levels never gave me any troubles once I abided by the advice given here in this thread. I made sure I addressed any clipping I encountered and otherwise I tried to get the volume as close to -18LUFS average in general BUT didn't make a big deal of it, understanding that almost everyone here said this wasn't really a big deal.
And that all seemed to go rather smoothly. Would I not know if I were encountering problems here? Is there a chance that I'm encountering audio problems I'm not aware of? How would they manifest? I guess, what problem am I trying to fix because it SEEMS like I don't have any problems in that department?
You are familiar with Kenny Gioia right? He posted in this very thread, and has videos for most anything you'll ever care about. I mean being a working platinum producer should be enough cred I would guess.
Thanks - so this is just about getting the audio levels optimized then?
I have no idea what your recordings and mixes are all about.
If it is just acapella or vocal covers (vocal over prepared naked tracks) it is irrelevant.
Usually as an artist you would not be involved into this technical aspect of preparation. So, it is normal for you to not see it as important.
You are familiar with Kenny Gioia right? He posted in this very thread, and has videos for most anything you'll ever care about. I mean being a working platinum producer should be enough cred I would guess.