When you record a baritone, what EQ settings would you use to bring out the depth in the voice, especially the low end?

Hard question to answer - it's dependent on the singer. I would start with...... nothing, other than high pass filtering the singer right at the mic, if the mic has a HP switch - use it.

I personally don't think you can make EQ recommendations for voice to 'bring out' any particular tone. You have to be really careful with it because the vowel formants will really light up if you cross into some area where you've boosted frequency content.

How about record and post first then ask if folks have some EQ recommendations for the particular voice/song?

Yes, I have lit up a few vowels in the past, not to mention creating some funky F's.

I will try to post a clip.

It's not difficult. Find a decent parametric EQ, dial in a narrow Q, sweep the frequencies and boost/cut the desired freqs. Cutting is better than boosting. Rather than boost the low mids you are trying to accentuate, try cutting adjacent freqs. IMO, boosting low mids is never a good thing.



Regards,


Bob

To add to Bob's tips, if you do end up boosting (which I agree with him is not recommended practice), dial the Q down so it's not so narrow. Narrow cuts work well, narrow boosts are usually a bad idea from a sound quality standpoint. Try it yourself and you'll hear the difference. You can apply a fairly broad boost successfully without it 'honking'. This idea is found in lots of tip forums - here is one link that summarizes things fairly well: http://www.hometracked.com/2008/02/07/vocal-eq-tips/

Also, you will probably want to high-pass filter everything with a cutoff between 80 and 200 Hz - adjust to taste. Do the cutoff frequency adjustment while auditioning the vocals against the other elements of your mix. Dial up the cutoff frequency until the vocal sounds 'thin', then dial down the high pass cutoff frequency just a hair from wherever that 'thin' point is.

That article addresses high pass filtering to some extent, without getting into the method of where to set the cutoff frequency.

Bob, is there a parametric EQ in RB/BIAB? I don't recall there being one. I'm not sure where to buy one either. I use the one that's shipped with my DAW software. Long ago, I bought a parametric EQ DX plugin from the maker of N-Track, even though I don't use N-Track.

There are a few available in the freebie part of the plugin database but I don't have any experience with any of those that are there.

easy to use high pass filter available here:
http://www.gvst.co.uk/downloads.htm

Hi Scott.

Just jumping in here.

RB/PT has a good parametric, but unfortunately it's not real-time. That is, you can only render with it.

I tend to use the Antress Modern Deep Purple quite a lot and find it very effective. Antress do quite a few EQs and you can see the range here -

http://www.gersic.com/plugins/hosted/antress/index.php

Hope you find this useful.

ROG.

Scott,

I usually use the little Cakewalk parametric in Sonar. It's simple, but functional.



Rog,

Thanks for reminding me about the Antress plugs. I love their Modern Compressor on vocals! Gotta try the Deep Purple.


Regards,


Bob

I'll have to check out Deep Purple as well, though I'm fairly spoiled by the parametric EQ's that are in my host DAW software.

I did take some time to peruse the KVR plugin database, and BlueCat has one that is a freebie, with a nice graphic display of the computed frequency response. It also has high and low shelving filters. You can just leave these alone if you like or at least use the low end shelving filter to zap unneeded low frequency content.

-Scott

Thanks guys,

The Antress stuff is 32 bit so will not work for me. However, I am mixing in Sonar X1 PE, so I have plenty of tools.

Here is an example of a song I wrote and recorded with a voc that I feel needs some help.

Rollin' On


The voc was recorded Shure SM7B. I removed the harmonies, so you can hone in on the lead.

Notice how the it seems a bit "stuck in the mud"? I've have an HPF on both the voc and electric guitar.

Robb,

Here's my opinions for what it's worth:

1. The electric guitar has no high end - that's why it sounds 'stuck in the mud.

2. The snare has a distortion sound to it that makes too much out front in the overall song's spectrum content.

3. On the vocals, I think you could probably raise the HPF cutoff another 50 to 100 Hz and the muddiness that is present at times (it doesn't sound muddy to me the whole way through like the electric guitar does) will start to fade. The vocal is also very dry. A tad reverb wouldn't hurt it at all, AFTER you cut some more low end out of the vox.

I'd love to have an opportunity to re-mix this for you - if you can save off the individual tracks as high bit rate .mp3 files (to keep the overall project size small), and identify what is squirrelly with that snare first, I'll take a crack at re-mixing the song for you.

-Scott

Thanks Scott!

I'd like to take you up on the offer. Give me a while to post the separate tracks.

The drums are RealDrums Country Train 8
The guitar is RealTrack #384 Southern Rock
The bass is RealTrack #288 Metal Ev

I'll check my settings to make sure I didn't do anything to mess them up. I'll post them dry.

I've sliced a diced the others tracks from various sources.

Isolated, you can hear my kids on the current voc track. It is a rare treat for me to record in isolation (6 kids).

Would you like the harmonies?


Thanks again for your help!


-Robb

No harmonies - just the lead vocal. I may have to back off my offer.

Tonight my oldest daughter was using our Samsung RV511 lappy (the same one I have my recording software on) and after awhile she says to me - "Dad, the laptop won't power on".

Sure enough, no combination of battery in/out, AC adapter plugged in/not plugged in, holding power button down, etc. will bring this thing to life.

No sign of death beforehand.

power light lights on indicator of whether AC adapter is plugged in or not, but no come to life with the power button. Methinks the mobo is gone. So, it stays plugged in tonight, with a hope and a prayer for real, to see if she powers up in the AM. If not, there's a few of them for sale on e-Bay that I might be able to snipe.

I'm having some bad luck with lappys - I bought expensive with a Thinkpad and had nearly this same issue, and this one I bought on clearance at Best Buy - and I've received about a year and a half life out of it.

I'm a hair shy of simply saying hang it all and going with a Mac.

I know this sounds simplistic but take the battery off and try powering up just with the ac. Weird but it works with my crummy old hp

Thanks, been there and done that - I know that routine well from a previous laptop. Running memtest86 when I get home tonight.

You may want to check the voltage output of the power adapter. The adapter may have bit the dust and is no longer charging the battery. I've had that happen a few times and had a bad ac power chord to the adapter.

Well, memtest86 revealed about the whole 4GB range of the single DDR3 module as bad.

I'm not sure what would have caused this to happen - but I suspect flexure of the cheap plastic case on this thing may have somehow allowed too much voltage to hit the memory module - if it's even bad.

BIOS shows that the module is present and accounted for.

Got some 2 GB mem sticks from local Craigslist, installed last night, after Windows repair and restore of a recent restore point, I'm typing this on the previously defunct lappy.

I'm still nervous about this laptop, but it's alive right now! I think it could have been case flexure, that allowed something bad to happen to the single 4GB DDR3 module. So, it's no longer to be used on someone's lap. Transport only happens with power off, etc. We'll see if that keeps it alive.

So, robb, I can take the tracks. High bit rate .mp3 or .wav compressed to monkey's audio first. I do have a dropbox, but I don't remember my password for it. Send me a PM if you want to go forward with it and we'll work out a way to get the tracks to me and my mixdown back to you.

I'm glad you got your computer working again.

I have exported individual tracks and tucked them inside of a .zip. You can download it here:
Rollin' On zip file

On the vocal track you can hear my toddler playing with Duplos in the background; it disappears in the mix. At least the parrot was quiet.

Thanks again for the effort.

Can you convert to .mp3, 320 kbps then zip the file?

The .zip file now contains .mp3 files encoded @320 bits.
Rollin' On zip file

I'm excited to see what a fresh ear brings.

Thanks again,
Robb

Rob,

I have finally started working on this. Today I simply just listened through the tracks one by one.

I hear a couple of issues with the raw tracks:

1. The Bass and Guitar tracks are simply dead above about 3 kHz. I can fix that to some extent.

2. The drums sound 'smeared'. Here is what probably happened. The RT is native at probably 20-30 BPM higher than what you used. This means that in order to use it at the BPM that you are using it, one of two things have to happen: The time stretch algorithm breaks up the track into very small chunks and stretches those chunks, sometimes by repeating them, so that they will map into the BPM of the song. 2. The RT has position markers for each dynamic event and these position markers are re-mapped into the slower BPM. This usually sounds better, but if there is a big difference in the BPM, then it will be distasteful because gaps form in the RT.

I think #1 happened with this track.

What is the RT's native BPM? WHat is the BPM of the song?

Bottom line - A different RT is going to be needed for the drums. A good portion of what I hear as 'mud' is this smeared drum sound. The snare simply doesn't have any snap any more. This can't be fixed with EQ. I have some country drum loops that might be usable but I need to know the precise BPM of the song in order to try them out.

-Scott

ACW could give you that in less time than typing that reply!
just sayin ..
some features of PGProducts like the ACW are worth the price of admission by themselves

Robb, you have a PM with a private link to my first cut.

On the vox, there were some resonances that I was able to manage with EQ. I would highly recommend that you get a parametric EQ plugin that you can audition live while looping different sections of the song. It's probably the room you are recording in.

If you want me to post the link here, let me know. I didn't do much 'arranging', that is, mimicing where you raised and lowered levels of tracks - just EQ'd bass, vocals, guitar, fiddle and mandolin.

All of those needed some EQ to make their own space in the mix. Others would probably EQ differently, but there were plenty of overlapping stuff that muddied up the mix. I also used some reverb and sent different tracks different amounts.

rharv, I assume you are referring to Auto Chord Wizard determining tempo, correct? I'd like to get the actual project BPM if possible, to avoid any potential error that could build up over the project length.

ACW can be way more accurate then simple BPM, for the record.
It allows you to adjust the tempo map into /thousandths of BPM if there is any variation at all (on any given measure).

Not uncommon to end up with a Tempo map showing tempos like 120.56764436 on one measure and 120.133644 on the next measure.

If you are looking for a simple rounded number it should be easy to tap the Tempo button and find it.

For fun I ran his song rollinon thru ACW
Says it's about 126;
example tempos inserted:
126.2148657834 (measure 8)
125.9175539825 (measure 9)
126.0495194541 (measure 10)

I am under an assumption that it is a simple interval for BPM. When I tried to tap tempo it, I got 125 (roughly) for a portion.

Unless the song was recorded free form, I would be very surprised to see a variance in BPM. The variances that you list above are small enough that I would count that as error for an auto tempo detect algorithm. (edit - or even variance from conversion to .mp3)

I'll try 126 and see how it rolls!

It probably doesn't matter in the end, I got a usable drum sound from the existing track with some judicious EQ and compression. The smeared snare sound is less prominent.

I'll wait for Robb's review of what I did so far.

It probably was indeed done at an even 126 originally.
I only posted the results to show you how accurate you can get the ACW to be.

Even if a song was done in free form, with the ACW you can set a tempo map that is pretty exacting. Then loops and realtracks/drums can follow it. I've seen free form recordings range from 97 to 102 within a few measures .. but I could still line up generated parts once the ACW wrote the tempo map.

Just one of many tools in PGProducts that doesn't get enough notice/props.

Scott,

I sincerely thank you for your effort.

The original track was indeed recorded at a steady 126bpm. I can upload the BIAB file if it would be helpful.

I am having difficulty really listening to the new mix as the tracks are misaligned (I probably made some sort of error when exporting them). I will take the EQ settings you sent me via email and apply them to the original tracks and see how that works.

You are more than welcome to post the link and/or settings as you wish. It may prove to be educational to others. I will do the same.

Robb, if you want to re-export the .mp3 files for the whole song, each track individually, I should be able to slot them in for the tracks already sent.

Better yet - try the EQ stuff I mentioned first as to what I did in my version and see what it turns out like.

If you grab either of those parametric EQs and use the settings I sent to you, do some gentle panning, maybe some compression on the individual tracks, I'm guessing you'll be pleasantly surprised.

-Scott

Sonar has a couple of built in parametrics. I am going to apply the EQ settings you suggested to the original mix. I'll post the results.

Don't forget the panning in addition to EQ.

Also I just surfed YouTube to see if I could see some of the parametric stuff in Sonar, and I ran across this (it's in ProTools, but the concept is just about exactly the process that I went through on your tracks) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdDDVortvRU

-Scott

I finally had time this weekend to get back to this song.

Rollin' On EQ'd

I applied the recommended settings with the following 2 exceptions:

For the vox I applied a HPF @ ~150Hz with the slope set to HP Order of 12dB.
To cut the BOOM of the kick I applied a HPF @100Hz also with the slope set to 12dB.