ok, ladies and gentlemen, i need your help. Maybe someone of you can help me out. I am currently working on the dj intro of a track. Kick, intro arpeggio and offbeat OHH are working very well together. Suddenly, when a 4 on the floor rides cymbal comes up, the kick (4 floor really deep kick, G, bottom at 49 Hz) distorts on my limiter in the master chain (Invisible limiter, input gain at about + 2db). Lowcutting the rides extremely doesn't help, clipping the rides extremelely doesn't help, replacing the limiter doesn't help. Carefully lowcutting the kick doesn't help. Only thing that helps is setting back the input gain of the limiter. The question is: why do these very high frequencies making my kick distorting on my master limiter? The problem is not new for me. Same thing when a crash (lowcutted or not) comes in. I am not mastering myself but am mixing into a complete (provisional) master chain. Everything is blown up to maximum. I think i know what i am doing, so please no comments like "do not mix into a limiter" or similar things. Cymbals and sometimes Highhats are making my kick or subbass to distort. I simply have no clue why. Has anyone any suggestion ?

 

Well, there are a few possible reasons this is happening. Could be a plugin on your mastering chain introducing distortion to the sound. Or if you're listening on headphones it could be your headphones not handling the extreme sub bass frequencies or the super high ones. Can you upload the song somewhere so I can take a listen to it?

 

thank you but there is just a waves ssl comp on my master chain. Really blowing up my sound but switching off does not help at all. And yes, i am mixing on phones. I use beyerdynimics dt 770 pro and mostly used Sennheiser HD 650. It is always the same... And Yamaha NS 10s along with a custom made subwoofer.

 

Ok, yeah this happens sometimes and sometimes you might have missed something somewhere or left a plugin somewhere and forgot. Sometimes too much compression on the kick will cause distortion or if the attack or release time is too fast. What DAW are you using? Sometimes in Ableton live the delay compensation can cause distortion and weird noises if it's too short. Start from scratch and remove all the plugins in your project or at least on the tracks that you suspect are causing the problem and see if it goes away. Again, if you can upload your song somewhere that we can listen to it that would be great.

 

hmm, i'm on logic and my kick is not compressed at all. And believe me, i've tried out everything, removing all plugins step by step. I try to post a soundcloud sample today afternoon.

 

Listen/solo the the kick at each point in the chain from it's source forward. At what point does it begin to distort? And if it's not a faulty device, all I can say is "gain staging". On another note- all the females here seem to be ladies, but some of the males may have to stretch the truth a little to qualify as "gentlemen".

 

Hi man, are there only the cymbal that's running with the kick when u listen the distortion? if not try to mute other thing that run togheter.. if not.. if u mute the kick do u listen again the dist? and if u mute the cymbal?

 

Limiters will start to distort bass, including the kicks, when pushed too hard. You can use this to your advantage when setting the limiter as it will be the first thing to notice.

Assuming you're working with stems:

If certain elements are peaking, compress them individual. Then run all of your drums into one track (bus) and compress the bus to limit the dynamic range while still keeping the track 'alive'.

Judging by what you said, you most likely need to compress the cymbals (hi-hats, cymbals etc.) so they don't trigger the limiter so much. If you're at the mastering stage with only one audio file, you could 'De-ess' the hi-hats with compressor that has a side-chain EQ (Waves C1-SC etc).

The more you control your peaks, the more you can drive the audio into the limiter.

 

Proper gain-staging!
Turn shit down.

 

are you Gain Staging you can put a Limiter on the Kick Track to if you are trying to keep the volume and punch or you can use a Waves PuigTec EQ P1A and do the Pultec Low End Trick to keep the punch and be able to lower the volume

 

hi, thanx for all your suggestions but finally i found my problem. Fuad was really close to it. I overlooked the "glue" in my kick bus beeing in parallel mode at about 30% wet. The big big problem with it was not the attack or release setting but it beeing highpassed (accidentally, i never had the idea of highpassing it) at about 130 Hz. It's completey senseless to have a subby kick and compressing it while the comp is highpassed above the complete body of it. Switching highpass off solved the problem. I know that was silly and dumb. Sorry for the inconveniance. Really embarrassing *no*