why are you guys always referring to this kick drum as 808? the kick here is something else and the bass line is a bass line
the kick is endeed fat

 

I personally find it interesting that people critique mixes as sounding 'bad' or 'wrong'. If there's some kind of technical deficiency, then yes, it is a 'bad' mix. But if there isn't and the person who's made it knows what they are doing, then who's to say it's 'wrong'? Perhaps it sounds exactly how they want it to sound? Mixes without depth where the dynamic range means everything is in your face seem far too common these days for that many people to be making mistakes. I don't personally enjoy music that sounds like that, but I'm reminded of a story from a few years back where younger people actually preferred lower bit-rate MP3s over full fidelity versions of the same tracks. We may actually be entering an era where what we all once considered as sounding 'wrong' no longer applies any more and whatever it is that younger people like about mixes that sound smashed to bits to our ears is exactly the sound they are chasing.

 

It's just loud, not good. I do not like the mix.

 

... kick's deffinitely a 909 (of some sort).

 

@muaB I'll verify or falsify that statement once my freakin streaming recorder records the music and not me farts...Oh, I'm not recording anything...

And yo, the guy definately has a sub bass and a 808 type kick/tick you got to listen carefully thru all the digital clipping distortion and purposeful distortion...well, it's not so hard to hear actually...

Hey, don't start with a 909 or a 303, I'm still learning about the 808. The kick can be either from an "808" if it's the sub bass, or the kick can be an 808 if it has that "tick" with it at the beginning, which is I think the crappy but best they could do before daws in the 1980s for a machine they could sell for $1,400. (That's a lot of money now!)

I didn't record the track and put in it Reaper to use my forensic plugins, but some how it became background noise, so I'm gonna not record it again. Will be back...
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Hey, wait, did I not see a pussycat? If it's something else, I need the cliff notes to your comments.

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[Update 808, and Thugger, the wonder years]

Ok, so I approached this anal...analysis like I was auditing something that I didn't know:

First, wtf does it look like in the track?

It looks over limited and clipped. By how much? Between 4-6db.
ok, then, how is he handling his "total energy" from a look at the spectra?
He's wasting a lot of energy 0-20hz, (or as high as 28hz) without using a low cut with a high slope. So he's giving up a ton of RMS for energy the listener can't hear. (hence his overlimiting)
How is his stereo imaging?
Bass:
vox:
Though, imo, most trap is not played in quadraphonic so all the energy not left and right only but dispersed front and back is also wasted energy...I think it's not played in quadraphonic, is it?
That's good.

So, technically, what the ears here hear and have said was accurate but meanly stated: crappy mix, violent limiting, distorted track.

But it's fixable, if he still has the tracks not the master mixdown only...

This is my opinion after a long history in the industry of 2 months. I know I'm missing at least one thing about harmonics, and 2 other things I can't even remember cause I forgot and I can't find a cool spectral plugin cause I forgot it's name and manufacturer!

 

Last edited: May 19, 2016

In that picture YOU are limiting the signal with iZ Maximizer.

Diamond shape on goniometer is the sign of clipping. Not necessarily bad (genre dependent) but usually goes wrong in the unexperienced hands/ears.

 

Well, I did say I had mixed feelings with iZotope. It fights me all the time, saying it doesn't want to work for me. I ass u me d that if I have things set to factory settings, it would do nothing. (Or other things set to unity (0db) I would be not affecting that sound.) Now, I'll only ass u me it's not operating on the signal if bypassed and check.

It's good to know that that specific shape indicates clipping. I just wondered why I didn't see that and I thought, center, means center, if it's spread front to back, you're also wasting energy, unless you want 5.1 surround sound or something. Wtf is the name of the plugins with the goniometers cause I used PT given they sort all my plugins at least by manufacturer and type, but I still couldn't find the one I was looking for (I have at least 700 plugins, and I don't know how to move them to an "unused plugin" folder like one DAW had (which one I forgot).

Now that I think about it, on the attack of the 808 sub, I did see it go diamond shape and then resolve to the oval that reminded me of female privates. On the vox it did a pretty swirl first. I never saw that before. Either way, ty for the disclosure.

 

Isn't this a phase vectorscope which shows a very DRC'd & wide audio?

 

@junh1024 @jay said the diamond shape is indicative of clipped audio. To me, it only looks like the place I would have my head, if I didn't want to get kicked out of bed.

What's DRC'd mean? Nvm, but since limiters are just a special case of a compressor, I don't see why that would be useful?

On the up side, I know what a Roland TB 303 is, only fk'ing music history! Like the TR 909... I didn't know it could store a whole song of drum sections like the 808...

 

Last edited: May 20, 2016

Do you think the almost quarter of a million people who've listened to it, the seven thousand people who've called it a favourite or the 213 people who've commented positively really care that the producer hasn't rolled off the subsonic bass frequencies?

Yes, the mix could be tidied up with some basic housekeeping, but better that than a terrible track exquisitely produced that nobody ever wants to listen to, in my opinion.

"What do you mean it's a crap track and you don't like it? Listen to how carefully I've controlled the lows without reducing their impact and perfectly balanced the bass with the kick with some judicious side-chaining!"

To draw a bit of an imperfect analogy. 'Production' is a bit like the fancy icing/frosting, ribbons and bows, candles on a birthday cake. You want it to look good and entice people in. But if the cake underneath is made out of dog sh*t, then your bakery isn't going to sell more than a single cake, ever.
The decorations on this particular cake aren't the neatest, but those people who've eaten a slice think it tastes absolutely delicious.

 

Dynamic Range Compressor(ed)

 

... and there's your quandary. The public gets so indoctrinated with bad sound quality and inferior audio file formats played over unsuitable speakers and devices that, yeah, they don't care if we do or don't roll off the subs or 12k plusses. Or if the track is squashed to pulp in order to fit the above mentioned idiocy. Ask yourself, is that what we want? A generation so brainwashed by the artifacts of the mp3 / laptopspeaker / iPad that they'll actually prefer mp3's to the real thing ? As Andrew Scheps mentioned in this google talk. Food for thought.

 

It's not my problem that listenners have bad practice...I have to have good ones.
On technical point of view this track is nothing but flawed. It'll never pass the stage of social media (as it is now).
And again this track has TWO kicks.
I listen to top 40s, radio and crap everyday, I hear loud things, but nothing that badly mixed. Not hearing that it is badly mixed, is kind of a problem.

 

Last edited: May 20, 2016

@artwerkski I'm not offering things other than ways to make it better. So it's neither needing to listen to critics or ignore them.

I have found in life, my enemies have provided my best data about myself...and what's awesome about that is, your enemy inadvertently made you stronger.

First I ask myself: Is that person's observation valid? If no, I ignore. If it is: I fix it.

That's only because your friends will never tell you the horrible truth, and that's why I'm indebted to so many women in my life, without them, and their Valkyrie belligerent hostile moods, I wouldn't have seen half the shitte I needed to fix.

Now, IF you're lucky enough to get criticism without having to spit blood like I have most of my life...if it's invalid, who gives a fk...if it's fixable, damn, tyvm!

Entiendes? From my perspective of an academician, ferocious debate is to make everyone stronger by letting only the strongest ideas survive. It's not being opinionated or argumentative. It's trying to help. [Idk y, I haven't cured myself of that ... trying to help]

 

Last edited: May 20, 2016

Claro q si.

my friends do, that's why they're my friends and I care so much for them and their opinions.

 

@artwerkski Well, count yourself blessed. Most ppl can't even be honest with themselves, and what sucks is, after all this, getting to see more of the world as it is, not as it has been presented to me, I'd be like the guy that made the deal with the machines to put himself back into the Matrix. 'Morpheus gave me a choice to take the red pill, and now I eat corn slop out of a tin cup, yup, steak it is.'

Fascinating fact: You can eat poop only once. If you eat it a second time thru it's too toxic and you die. So ppl poop eaters, beware.

Idk y, I think that was relevant to this discussion, but it doesn't change the fact that it's true, and worse, ppl died enough times for other ppl to learn not to eat poop on the second pass thru...

 

something like this :

image hosting without registration

 

@jeffglobal and anyone who truly cares about the art of sound. Yep, it's slightly different with music though. If you feed the people craploud-lossy-whateverthef**kyoucallthats**t, they'll take it over the real thing anytime. Ignorance is bliss . So in my opinion, it is up to us to keep this from happening and start at the roots; the producing, mixing and mastering community. Music is too wonderful and precious to go to waste like that. It will, if we keep reaching for the good ole L2 everytime. And now that were on-topic again, we as a community can do something about that. We can keep imitating what is being spoonfed to us by the mainstream and the musical 'establishment', or we can take a second and realize the truly luxurious position we're in; we're artists and we can choose. We can change things. We can bring back true dynamics to the one thing that brings so much joy, clarity and meaning to our lives; music! It's great that we understand how to make a signal loud and a kickdrum intelligable on laptop speakers, or even a track as loud as the next on the radio, but the loudness war is over, as Andrew Scheps stated in the above mentioned talk. He won it, so now lets get on with things and get back to the matter at hand; originality, headroom, the art of mixing and mastering things within limits. Shine. Room to breathe. For it is music that comes before all of the above, and always will.
So. Enough rant for today. Coffee and a Bach fugue. Cheers!

Luiz.

 

Well, I re-re-re-re-studied compression today with yet another video tutorial series, and this guy compresses the original kick, the original bass, and then light compresses the buss he sent them to to (sic) glue them together. Fk if I know what that means now. I thought glue meant something else, and I definitely thought wet meant something else until studying DAWs (It meant I had a girl's attention for a moment...)

I think the industry needs technical terms that are accurate to the topic at hand. OR we need a detailed specific definition, which I think so far "glue" doesn't have...I think he means that now, on the group bus, the RMS limiting of those two tracks together bringing both up with compression by lowering the peak energy blends both softer frequency spectrums together? No? RMS being how ppl perceive loudness, not as peak energy...

 

Last edited: May 21, 2016