Hi,

Recently I sent a song off for mastering, the engineer came back with a couple of requests which I understood just fine and have complied with however he sent one which threw me as I had no idea what he was talking about and have no idea how to carry it out. I will copy and paste the message below:

'vocal is too loud, and it also needs some offline edits, as there are some bumps around 70-80Hz'

When I then asked for clarification he sent back:

'offline edits - editing vocal in this case and removing those 70-80Hz big peaks

with pencil rather then any other processor (removing issues by hand)'

I am relatively new to the mixing process so I'm willing to come across as an idiot by asking this. If anyone has any ideas as to what this means and how I can carry it out I'd be very happy. I'm using Logic Pro X.

Thanks a lot!

 

The only way I could take that is that he's asking you to record the parts again, just a bit quieter. Sorry I'm not much help here, but that's the only way I could take that.

 

Thanks, I hope not though

 

Maybe sonogram editing, like in izotope rx.
Choose places where the bumps are, selected them with free editing tool at 70-80 Hz and gain them down, several dBs.

 

I think he wants you to just manually remove the peaks, rather than simply putting on a limiter or equalizer on the track so it affects the whole thing. Find the peaks, cut them and turn them down maybe?

 

hi James. vocal may be too loud, but he should be able to notch those resonant frequencies out. share the file here i see what i can do.

 

It sounds like the frequency bumps are not consistent all the way through the vocal(s) track(s), If that is the case I think that the person means utilize automation to remove the problem areas via automation (If you have a spectrum analyser and as suggested a sonogram like the iZotope RX editor which is spectral based, Very good stuff it is too), Also the offline edits, I presume the person again is referring to some specific areas and not the entire track(s) which is sorted much easier by going in and manually editing the problem sections.

It is hard to say though without context as korte1975 points out, Uploading it so people can listen and checkout the offending track(s) would make it easier to say what is being mentioned for you to remedy. If you aren't sure which bits then personally I'd e-mail asking for notes on the time of each problem along with what the problem is, That leaves no areas of vagueness as is currently the case.

 

you want to put a automated high pass filter that you draw in at the appropriate spots, as far as being to loud he is describing the "impact" of the transients and the harmonic content of the track or group itself, you can layer either tube, tape, transformer, or transistor plugins or hardware stacking them in such a way where when solo'd they dont sound like doing anything but when they add up (like stack of 5) you can iron out the wrinkles of the fine grain detail in the audio to smooth the transient information making the transients the same thickness through the sound itself , for example lets say you have a recorded dry vocal track where the sibilant sss and tttt are tiny pin pricks but the body of the vocals are thick and full transients. you stack analog vst like 5 or 6 maybe on it each doing barely anything auditioning each one so when added up the sss and ttt are same thickness as the warm body of the track all transients same thickness now you can add compression to change it all together to control the snap attack and decay of the audio track equally throughout ( note it takes all this to explain this but i can show you it in 5 seconds haha funny how that works with mixing lol)