I admit I'm no Bob Katz, but then everything is relative. I don't charge $200 an hour as he does. I merely do these for fun. You get what you pay for in this world.

 

You see, that is the common misunderstanding: MIDI does indeed have a sound!

It sounds robotic, repetitive, static and lifeless. Unless you are aware of these shortcomings and know how to work around them.

 

Congratulations then on being the only person on the face of the planet to get a sound out of a midi keyboard without connecting it to software or external hardware device!


Unless of course you meant by hitting the keys hard and getting a 'tappety' sound.. you didn't mean that though?? did ya?



But, I'm always willing to learn something new.. Go ahead an enlighten me..

 

Excuse me?

 

Looks like the poster was trying for "mechanized".

 

No need to go defensive, I'm just pointing out.

MIDI by itself only does as much sound as any other calculation on your processor does. You're thinking of GM-compatible MIDI player sound sets, which vary from system to system.

Spoiler

PLEASE STOP I CAN"T HOLD MYSELF BACK

 

Please excuse my brain fart, dementia boldly forges ahead.

(See post #45)

 

Wasn't meant offending, I just didn't understand it (me English is limited ).

 

Correct, a midi is information, it has no sound, that information will then need to be interpreted.
But saying "This sounds like a midi" is a concept word, a concept of that word (Misconceptualized, of course). It is the interpretation with lack of information that a person has in a situation, and I think this happens to all or most of us on many occasions.
For example. It is common to hear people say that an artist whose profession is to sing, but who does not tune two notes, "is not a singer", in fact he is, maybe he is not a good singer, but he is a singer, it is his profession. So in the absence of information or accustomed to that jargon or concept, it is that many times we say things like "This sounds like a midi" "that person is not a singer" "that person has no culture" etc.
Many times I also said "sounds like a midi", obviously it is poorly expressed, but I think most of us understand what this means. It is enough to open a song in midi format to understand what this concept refers to.

 

I would try using DDMF Metaplugin use their frequency splitter bands, split your signals up how you want as long as you have one of the bands for your target freqs. Run that band through a saturation plugin, good recommendations in the comments here. And then route the rest of the bands clean through to the Audio Output. I'd download a bunch of saturators 5-10 that have a free trial and see 1 by 1 which one suits your taste. You may also along this journey, find other plugins you like for different uses. Many of the legends did things by trial and error, randomly f'ing about or just by accident!

I like using Metaplugin with MSed also, which could be another option. Just be careful with Metaplugin OS'ing when splitting bands or the stereo as it sometimes messes up the phase/transients. Also as mentioned +1 for Spiff

 

Most eq's getting recommended here just have wacky readout values (which is bad), And/Or interesting shapes under one knob with multiple bells/high-shelf(s).(which can be useful)
They serve a purpose, but I just want to point out that there is no magic going on inside these eq's.

 

Not really.
Hard quantization without dynamic velocity can sound like this, as long as the played sound doesn't modulate independently by itself. But this has nothing to do with MIDI. Just learn how to play the keyboard.

 

No offense taken.

 

Actually? I think there is. Let me explain.

When a question about mastering is asked in here I provide answers as indeed do most other people, but I always provide something I've worked on to back up my answer. Now I get you might hate it and that is fine, but how often when you give advice do you back up your reply with something you personally have worked on?

 

Pretty much never, unless directly prompted. I see it as seeking attention, not "backing up".
Also what I was pointing out is that if this is a normal amount of highs for you, you might have hearing issues. Like, actual issues, not in a derogatory sense. It might be worth it to consult a medical professional.

 

Don't know if it has been mentioned yet, but Spectre by Wavesfactory is great for boosting high frequency content without getting harshness. It looks like an EQ, but it's actually a saturator, and i believe it's in parallel, so you don't actually hear distortions (unless you really drive it). There are about 10 different saturation colours within each band. It's like painting with smooth saturation. Great for tone shaping.

Also check out Kelvin by Tone Projects. Similar to above, it's a saturator, but you can control all the gain structure divided into 3 frequency bands, so you can get really impactful with it as far as the frequency curve. Better quality saturation in Kelvin compared to Spectre (imo), but Spectre is easier to use cos it looks like a basic EQ.

Another thing you could do is try the old "A-type" Dolby trick that they used to do in old studios, where they use the "tape decode" information in parallel which adds more high frequency boost without any harshness (or something like that. Maybe i recalled the details wrong). Anyway a bunch of companies made plugins that replicate this. Off the top of my head, AudioThing make one called "Type A", and Overloud made one called Dopamine. There's probably a couple more that slip my mind right now.

Or if you wanna go the traditional EQ route, some that spring to mind are:
-Clariphonic by Kush (as others have already mentioned)
-Ivory by Acustica (very transparent in the sense that you FEEL the boosts rather than HEAR it necessarily. It's one of those plugins where you don't really notice the boosts until you bypass it. It's really nice, but it's pretty CPU intensive so mostly useful for mastering duties more than mixing. Also, Acustica plugins tend to degrade high freq transient signals a bit in my experience)
-Erin by Acustica (similar to above, but more broad strokes, and more colour / less transparent)
-Ruby by Acustica (kind of like a "sweeter" Pultec)
-theEQorange or theEQred by MAAT (i forget which one is better for boosting (i think the Red one??), but those EQ's are about as pristine as a digital EQ can get. Very CPU intensive though)

You could also try just about any digital EQ but set it to "linear phase" mode (Fabfilter, DMG Equilibrium, Crave EQ, etc etc) and any high frequency boosting will sound pretty damn smooth. But you sacrifice latency, and possibly transients too.

UNLESS your source has a bunch of ugly resonances or whistling or "windy" sounds going on in the high freqs, then boosting the highs will just magnify the harshness, in which case you need to clean up the source sound. To do that you could try using either Soothe2 to tame the resonances in whatever area you want, or any dynamic EQ to manually do it surgical style (i use IQ-EQ by Hofa, but any one is probably fine), and then have the EQ booster plugin sitting in the chain AFTER the surgical EQ plugin.

Another thing you can do to boost the high freqs is reduce the low-mid freqs, and the highs will unmask and become more present, because the brain is a beautiful thing. It's the ultimate "Yin and yang" move of audio

Hope that helps

If none of those options work then seek your doctor, or re-record the source better

EDIT: Oh one more idea: You could try SplitEQ to boost just the transient information in the area you want, and then it will give the impression like that area has more clarity and detail (because there's more transient information) without actually boosting the tonal information (and risking boosting shitty resonances that may exist in your source). You can also use Spiff for this but i find that Spiff has weird artefacts, personally (but maybe i'm using it wrong)

 

Last edited: Aug 2, 2022

Has nothing to do with "GM-compatible MIDI player soundsets". I guess those that understand got the point, others missed it. If you don't understand the difference between a MIDI composition and the actual performance of various musicians playing together, then I recommend you to listen more to some actual (non-MIDI) music, a bunch of actual instrumentalists performing a song.

I would argue that as long as you don't understand the difference, your music will sound like MIDI, but not like actual music. For example: MIDI cannot easily recreate the interaction happening between multiple instrumentalists playing along, which is a vital part of a musical sounding piece. You would also have to think of articulation. MIDI typical triggers one articulation or you switch between a fixed set of a few pre-recorded articulations, whereas a real musician can articulate the performance freely in a multitude of ways.

 

most of the time when I encounter people who work on electronic music comment about a track being "done via midi" it is because they are used to making their tracks primarily with samples. they are usually beginners who are just using poor/inaccurate terminology.

 

Again, that's not the point at all. I don't know whether 20+ years of making music would qualify as "beginner"?

 

Try JADE from Acustica Audio. The 40k is amazing. Can confirm the remaining AA recomendations.