Hi all,
I'm doing my first real DAW project and I'm almost done laying down all of my virtual instruments. After that I'll be recording a few guitar tracks direct. I'm finding a lot of great info here which has taken me a long way and in a great direction. At this point I have not added any effects. As far as mixing goes, I have only done some LCR panning to give my tracks some space and some gain staging to keep everything from clipping. I have some questions.

1. How do you folks print your virtual instruments to audio? Meaning do you bring them in hot and gain stage after printing or do you gain stage before printing?

2. Same thing for panning... Do you pan before or after printing?

3. Do you do any kind of mixing, (eq, compression, limiting etc...etc) before printing?

4. I'm using Steven Slate drums and have routed my drums to seperate tracks. SSD4 has a mixer set up and all of the drums are stereo tracks. I have routed them in as stereo tracks. I put all of the toms on one track. It may be a preference but is it good to go stereo or should I bring the drum tracks in mono? And should I give the toms their own tracks or print them as one track?

I'm just trying to get some feedback on what your workflow is like at this stage of production.
Thanks for reading this,
Strumlord.

 

If I'm bouncing to audio I try and strip off any processing and apply it to the audio, that way I can make decisions later.

 

If you don't have processing power problems I don't see any advantage in freezing tracks and yes.. I prefer stereo drums! and being the mastering engineer of myself I do mixing and mastering at the same time!

 

I treat virtual instrument prints like audio. If any processing within the instrument gives it its signature sound (say, compression in Addictive Drums), I'd print it with processing on. Likewise, if a virtual drum kit brings the sonic foundation of a song, anything that sounds right to my ears at that moment is printed like that. In case of virtual drums, printing the tracks in stereo preserves the spatial information among the kit. Just in case, I also print individual drums in mono stems just in case I feel later like modifying the stereo balance or the gain of such drums will serve me later. I don't do seps of any cymbal. In my view it's useless and messing with that increases chances if ending up with artificial sounding drums in the mix.

As for gain staging, virtual instruments usually run way hotter than needed. Even when composing, I usually lower their master knob or output fader to -6 or -12 peaks. And that's how I print them to file.

 

Apologies.... by printing, I mean bouncing or rendering the virtual instruments to audio for processing.

 

Yes you do all your EQ comp what ever makes it sound good in the Mix Panning and so on gain staging nothing clipping and leaving give some Head room at the Stereo/Master Buss for Mastering it is kind of in depth

 

Hi strumlord,
there is obviously many ways. But here is few tips:

Never print your virtual instruments at HOT gain stage unless you know what you do and need this PARTICULAR procedure.
So print as something let you between -6 to -12db of gain . By this you keep lot of headroom for further steps …

Well there, it depends. But I would go for a straight pan at center, then during the mixing phase, I'll pan it /or not <>> check in case, if your material does have any modulation ( delay reverbs, chorus, phazer, flanger… with a specific setup which would be pan in a certain way… i'm I clear ?

Again it depends of my needs. Sometimes I print with nothing just to have it in audio and let free some cpu… Or just because in audio, I can then edit it , chop, mangle it in several ways.…
Or sometimes, I EQ it to CLEAN not to COLOR, idem for a 'lil compression. like this I clean all the needs before going to make it sounds in certain way. In the CREATIV' MIXING part.

Slates stuff are great , I've got few of his plugs. For drums well, same senario . What you have to be aware is the low end of your drums. kick obviously, but not only. Toms, snare and sometimes even HH & cymbals. All that without speaking about what kind of track is it. Room ? mono/stereo ? Overheads ? 2 mono or 1 stereo ? ect… All that to say USELY low end is mono. So check your needs. 'cause it's not THE law Sometimes a classy kick is a bit widen and it gives a nice and deep effect, impression on your mix. But all that depends of the music. How it is constructed. Where is room for this or this, where there is too much traffic in same place,
around same frequency( es), ect… Try with BUSSES like let's say you have :
K, SN,HH, TOM, CYM, Track.
Create a STEREO DRUMS BUS where all the drums tracks SENT, not routed ( by this you 're kipping these tracks "virgin" ).
Then another one STEREO BUS specialized in "trash" like special compressor settings, or with an overdrive/saturation, possibilities are endless...
So you have your TRACKS + BUS 1 + BUS 2. You can even ROUTE all these in STEREO BUS let's call it DRUMS STEM to finalize the drums sound processing. ( This "Bus old trick" works for all kind of tracks/material of course)

All that to have something VIABLE before the ART taking his part. I mean by this, the time when in mixing it's no more about just mixing, but sound painting.
Have a nice shots !

Cheers

 

I always treat virtual instrument tracks the same way I treat hardware synth/drum machine tracks when recording("printing") the audio. I realize this probably runs counter to how a lot of people do it, but I come from an analog background:

1) Drums. Once I have the MIDI drum track the way I like it, I usually separate the MIDI tracks into snare, kick, hats, toms and overheads. Some people prefer routing each instrument to their own sound output and recording them that way. As a rule of thumb, I try to record kicks, snares and hats (plus specialty percussion, like tambourines, shakers and rattles) in mono, toms and overheads in stereo (as you would a real kit). I use EZDrummer/Superior Drummer as my main drum VIs, so this is where it gets a little tricky. EZDrummer kits usually have a "direct mic" output, a "compressed drum" output and a "room" output. These are mixed together in each kit preset to create the drums' overall sound. If you try recording a mono snare this way, for example, by "freezing" the snare with the compressed and room outputs on and the VI's pan turned all the way left or right (then bouncing the frozen audio to a mono audio track), you'll get weird phasing as a result of combining a r/l stereo signal into a mono signal. To overcome this, I've recorded all my drums in stereo, even the ones I know are supposed to be mono, which sounds okay, but it's neither close to what I actually want, nor does it give me control over compression or room sound once the audio is recorded. Therefore, I'm probably going to end up switching off the room and compression outputs, record the kicks, snares, hats and specialty percussion in mono, toms and overheads in stereo, then record the overall room output (which will include the entire kit in one shot) in its own separate stereo file. Now, I should have something approximating what a real drum kit would be recorded like. I can also compress the drums using an auxiliary drum bus, without adding more compression to "already compressed" drums. I also always record guitars and bass VIs in mono.

2) I always record everything so that it peaks at -0 dB, or as close to it as I can get. If there's some weird peak that somehow causes the rest of the track to remain at a lower-than-average level by comparison, I will record with an L1 limiter set to catch just that peak. I also normalize all my tracks after recording so that they peak out at 0 dB. Not sure what "leaving headroom for processing means" -- you adjust your output after EQ or dynamics via that plug's output controls. A simple test here is, you should be able to switch the EQ on and off and hear a change in the sound ... not the volume. If adding an EQ also adds +6 dB to your track's volume, that's a major problem. Compressing a track will change its perceived volume, but theoretically should be hitting the same peaks as the uncompressed track. If you run a compressor plug and suddenly notice that your output is staying in the red, you have to turn the compressor's output DOWN.

3) I never print EQ, dynamics or effects, unless I'm going for a specific sound that NOT recording it that way would change. If you print EQs and effects during the tracking process, there is no way to go back and take it off without recording it over again.

That's just my way of doing it. Hope that helped!

 

Printing is actually the right term.

 

You might be undermining your virtual instrument prints. I say might. If it works for you, so be it.

Be kind to read the following article on gain staging in Sound On Sound.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep13/articles/level-headed.htm

Long story short: In the early days of digital recording, 16-bit depth yielded 93 dB of headroom, and the signal-to-noise ratio was less than ideal. Nowadays, 24-bit recording gives you about 115 dB of gain, and analog consoles with the revered sound of yore, offer a lot less. Modern-day plugins are made to take this into account and perform their best around -6 to -12 peaks (around -14 to -20 dB average).

Further reading on leaving headroom for processing:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun08/articles/qa0608_2.htm

Peace.

 

Hi all,
Thanks for the feedback so far.

@ mercurysoto... You're not kidding about virtual instruments being hot from the get-go. And turning them down in the plugin vs the host is something I wondered about. I just read a lot about headroom and the opinion is varied. It seems that everything I read on gives mixing tips for when the music is already printed and that's mainly why I posted. I'm just trying to make sure I print the best material to audio so that I have something really solid to mix.

@Iggy... it looks like I already have my drums set up very closely to the way that you described. Again, the stuff I've read has varied opinions.. (mono vs stereo) being my biggest concern. There are multi kick and snare channels in the preset that I'm using. I've currently routed all the kicks and snares to their own single stereo track (meaning three kicks share one stereo channel in studio one and the same for the snares and wondered if I would be better served to rout them individually and in mono. But then the phase issue is brought up. There is also overhead and room channels and that gets a little daunting. Much to learn for me with drums overall.

@davea... thanks for all of your feedback. Great info

I guess I should have mentioned what type of music I'm working in the original post. I'm doing a cover of a Fusion/Rock song from the mid 70's.The artist is Jean Luc Ponty and the song is called Cosmic Messenger.

 

Great stuff in these articles mercurysoto. Thanks!
Cheers

 

It depends on what you're shooting for with your drums. If you're doing something like trance or dubstep, or you're going for an analog drum machine sound, it's not going to matter if you record everything in stereo. I mainly record acoustic kits from EZDrummer, so I tend to treat them like I would if I were recording an actual analog kit. If that's what you're going for, the idea of recording your traditionally-mono drum instruments in mono and stuff that's usually recorded with at least two mics, like your toms or overheads, in stereo is probably the way to go. Also, bear in mind that EZDrummer/Superior Drummer, Addictive Drums, Steven Slate Drums and most Kontakt kits are all designed to be recorded live in one shot along with the rest of your virtual instruments for stereo mixdown (they assume you're probably not going to bother with printing individual tracks and mixing them with your DAW's mixer after the fact, which a lot of people don't), so they pre-mix the room mics or the compression output to give the kit their sound. This is why I'm pretty much set on recording the room sound separately and not using the compression (in EZDrummer, the only control you have for your compression output is the fader, since it's pre-recorded when they record the direct mics and the room mics), not any of the traditional compressor controls, like knee, ratio, release, etc. In Superior Drummer, I believe they handle it with an actual mini-plug insert in the mixer window. I'd advise recording the direct mic output for each instrument individually (mono and stereo to taste), then recording the room mics all in one stereo pass. Try mixing the direct mics first with the room mic track off. You could even try using a convolution reverb of a decent room, which might sound a bit more fluid than the sampled room sound from the room mics. Once you have the audio tracks mixed, try strapping a compressor across an auxiliary track and see how it sounds overall. You may like the sound of the drum VI's room mics over a convolution or even an algorithm reverb, but now, you can actually test it out and see if you like one over the other.

By the way, "overheads" = "cymbals". They're almost always recorded in stereo. Toms are usually direct-mic'd and panned after recording (sometimes, recorded with the overheads, sometimes, just recorded in stereo), but most drum VI's and even old drum machines are set up so that the toms are already panned to their proper positions and their individual volumes aren't a problem, so you're not losing anything by simply recording them in one stereo track.

I'll definitely check these out -- I'm certainly not claiming I've been doing it the right way all this time! Thanks! By the way, I forgot to mention I record, mix and master at 32-bit float, which a lot of people argue is no different than 24-bit.

 

Printing?!
Common!
ITs ok to be autodidact and develop hes own vocabulary, but if someone asks for subject and is lazy sufficient to aks us to guess what he intends is brutal.
Thats why so many bands fight each other because they do not have a common language that surprise: already exists!
In my studio and as a teacher I see it a lot and lost the time of everyone (included himself) who does not what to study the correct language.
I study a lot and recomend the same, espeacially for the the ones who have their own and particular dictionary!
Wake up pleaaaaaaseeee!

 

????
I'm not sure if your post is a rip or not. If I'm using the incorrect term when I say printing, I've already apologized and explained what I meant. I'm new to recording/mixing/engineering, etc...etc. I could also possibly not be asking or explaining myself clearly which again would be due to the fact that all of this new to me. I want to point out that I'm not attempting to be spoonfed here. I simply have a grey area about VI's. There is a wealth of info out there but I'm not finding much on "printing", "bouncing", "rendering" VI's to audio. That's why I posted. I just wanted to get feedback on how you worked on your music at this stage.

 

Thanks again iggy,
I'm definitely going for a real acoustic sounding kit. I'm working on a Fusion/rock tune and I want all of my tracks to sound natural. Truth be told, I'd rather record all of my instruments without VI's but I can't. That being said I think the VI's that I have sound amazing. There's just a learning curve with all of this stuff but I'm coming along. I was on the right track with my drums and the feedback here is helping a lot.

 

i listen the midi track back once and if it sounds good i print it. later i add the fx's. midi gives you headaches, audio is king,more fluid.