PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows iZotope plugins. Here are a few samples I recorded

The other day I was hasty and said I wasn't really impressed at my iZotope plugins. But it was the first day I was messing wit them. Turns out they are very good in my opinion. And work well with RealBand.

The Bundle is now 549 so I hope you didn't miss the 399.00 Christmas special. But who knows they might have a Valentine Sale!!

I just quickly recorded these the other night. They are not original BiaB backgrounds. Just some Karaoke tracks. My vocals are from of course my mic a Shure SM7B, then going into my TC-Helicon Voice Live Play GTX. The effects on is set to George M Faith 102. So it seems they were thinking about George Michael on this. From there I have two XLR's going to my Roland QuadCapture Audio Interface.

I imported my instrumental tracks into RealBand. And I used these plugins and settings
Nectar 2 setting- Wide Open and Clear under Jazz
Ozone 5 setting- Jazz Master Vocals
Alloy2 setting- under vocals- Warmer Tape Vocals

I know I Love Paris had all three going at once. I forget on the others. I think I went back and turned them on. But I know the Nectar 2 was running. Just listen to them and delete quickly!! I am just getting this all dialed in. I have to keep improving. Take the flaws out and learn to edit more. These plugins can get a person with no experience sounding pretty good right away.

Some guy in here was complaining how we won't know the difference when we change the settings in these plugins. Like we are so amateur we are too stupid to hear any subtle nuance some settings may give us. But he is wrong. I change the presets on all of these plugins and I have all the changes in sound with my headphones. But you do is find the best ones you like then you can make a change from there to fine tune it. So far I am just leaving them as they are. The pros probably took a while on each preset. I hope they really thought about it before they did however. Like Vintage Crooner for a preset. Does it really relate with a crooner from the 40's? Or did they just make some changes and say just call that vintage crooner? Randomly? I am going to write iZotope to ask them how viable are the names. Not sure if viable is the word. But how much truth is there to the name of the setting? Another name like Piano Bar, Warm Whisperer, Big Band, Intimate lounge. Many more of course. Maybe they hire some real pro audio engineers and know what they are doing. At any rate I like having these presets. So check out my rough recordings. I will keep working on my quality with my voice, my recordings. And soon I will be focusing on some BiaB tracks. Maybe do some covers to the songs I love to sing. I won't be putting up originals under they are registered copyrighted. What I will do is try and write maybe 30 to 50 songs and put them in one collection. Registering one collection is the same price as registering one song. So that is what I plan to do. I registered a collection years back of country songs. But this time my genre is Jazz Vocal music.


http://avatarradio.com/SlyRuby_Rough_Takes.zip

Hi Sly

I had a listen. I like your style, phrasing and timing. This really demonstrates that you're really well progressed with some of the techniques.

Nice Karaoke tracks, and the Shure really sounds clean. Good work.

Great job, I especially Baubles Bangles And Beads, but they are all delivered nicely.

Trevor

By the way, were you ever a novelist?

Hey Trevor, thanks a lot for the compliments. I need all the confidence I can get. I have been singing this genre for a year in Second Life a virtual world. Doing shows live. But not too much lately though. I will keep working on getting to a professional level. To be up with Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, might never happen but you keep working on it.

When you can listen to a song you have recorded and it doesn't make you cringe then you know you are improving. You may have felt that pain before when you record something and you just didn't sound good? Once you get to where you can appreciate what you have recorded that is great.

I will start working on some BiaB tracks again soon. I appreciate you taking the time to download those tracks. Let me know where your songs are I will check out a couple.

Sly, I took a listen and you really do have a great voice! You have that genre nailed down pretty well. Glad to hear the tools are starting to pay off for you!

thank you, it all takes time to familiarize yourself with it all. I have to keep working on it all. I don't like hearing any breathing in the recordings so maybe I can do a couple things. Maybe I can think about breathing lighter when I sing? Maybe there is a technique to have quiet breathing. Anyone knows let me know. Someone tried telling me how to lower the volume the other day. I have to ask him exactly how or research that in RealBand.

Your Nectar includes a module called Breath Control! Check it out!

yes I want to use that. I can't find it. Where is it located? I wasn't sure if they just had it for the voice over settings. I want to use it so let me know where it is if you can.

It is installed as a separate plugin separate from the main Nectar plugin. So just look for it in the same place you found the main Nectar plugin. If you do not see it maybe you did not install it yet?

Ok I have it. It starts out with these settings:

Target: -30.0
Sensitivity 60%

Then there is a Breaths Only button. You hover your mouse over it and it says: Solo only the breaths that are being detected.

Do you use this plugin? If so what are your settings? And what is the Breaths Only button all about?

If you use the Breaths Only setting, only the sounds of the detected breaths are processed. This is the opposite of what you probably require, although this can be helpful is ensuring that your settings are capturing 'breaths' and nothing else. In other words, you hear what is being eliminated instead.

nice

i'm thinking you would do well on streetjelly

Very nice!

You would also do well on the User Showcase.
Thanks for sharing.

LLOYD S

Sly,

Re: Cheap and easy ways to eliminate breath sounds:

Work on breath control and phrasing in general. I used to "punctuate" lyric sheets with symbols for emphasis and for when to breathe in order to minimize breath sounds when performing and recording.

Develop the habit of averting your mouth from the microphone when you breathe in. Judicious use of a compressor set up as a gate can help.

A compressor with an EQ in the sidechain can be made to serve as a pop eliminator. You already have the plugins; search online to see how it's done. You can also get a simple passive device from Guitar Center and elsewhere for $50-$100, or make one from a coat hanger and pantyhose if you're not fussy.

HTH,

Richard

learning where and when to breathe is the ticket, as Richard is saying.

Part of the (included with BB/RB) DXi plugin called PGDynamics is the Expander/Gate.
Just as a compressor 'compresses' the levels, the Expander expands them. PGDynamics plugin includes both.

To try to explain this; using an Expander the lower volume sounds are made even lower, and higher volume sounds are made louder.
They add 'Gate' to the name because, if set just right, you can virtually eliminate lower level sound.

The more you know!

SLY, You have spent your money well. I do like your style. Keep on keepin on.------Leon

Nicely done, you got a very nice end result. You really have a grasp on that genre.

I will have to see about setting up a compressor as a gate. I will have to find out more about it. Seems simple enough. I have to see how it is done. Learn about the functionality of a gate. I guess I have all these capabilities within my three iZotope studio plugins. I could probably accomplish this. Once I can suppress some of the breathing my recordings will sound much better. That is just one thing to bring me up to a more quality sounding recording. I will see if I can figure out a gate setup thanks. Not to mention I guess I can only have so many plugins on one track in RealBand right? I don't know how I can hook up this compressor as a gate also. But I will see what I can do. Last night I tried adding that de-breath iZotope plugin to the vocal track. That made it 4 plugins. But when I played it back the vocal track was off. It was somehow starting late. Maybe 2 seconds late. Like all the plugins slowed it down. Some processing. And pushed it all to the left. I think I posted on that. I still have to check and see what anybody said. At any rate this compressor gate situation could be better than this de-breath plugin.

Sounds like a good plugin for this rharv. PGDynamics. I will see if I can find that. I wonder if my iZotope plugins have this also. I have three and I know there is some kind of expander I am sure. I am just learning about these things. And maybe PGDynamics is perfect for this.

the other thing you can do is simply edit your comped/final vocal track and manually remove or lower all the breaths. does not take very long to do and you don't need any plugins to do it!