Making your laptop audio punch like Vinyl

diverdee · Post by **diverdee** » Sat May 14, 2005 1:42 pm

http://www.elementalaudio.com/products/inspector/

is also a decent free apectrum analyser.

ikeaboy · Post by **ikeaboy** » Sat May 14, 2005 2:48 pm

MrSleep wrote:Which Spetrum Analyzer????

Can anyone reccomend please??

i'm starting to feel like a girl at a Star trek convention

, did you read my post at the top of the page.

If your looking for a great free Spectrum analyser try http://www.voxengo.com/downloads/#VoxengoSPANVST

ikeaboy · Post by **ikeaboy** » Sat May 14, 2005 2:50 pm

MrYellow wrote:For those using RME... Digicheck... which is pro-quality, hardly any CPU, and
free to RME users. I didn't realise how handy it was for ages until I
downloaded it and set it to the Totalizer setting.

-Ben

i've never used it that way (or anyway to be honest). i don't seem to have a Totalizer setting. I'll visit the site for an update so...

MrYellow · Post by **MrYellow** » Sat May 14, 2005 3:05 pm

i've never used it that way (or anyway to be honest). i don't seem to have a
Totalizer setting. I'll visit the site for an update so...

Check the function menu...

It has a bunch of different screen setups, same toolset just different
combinations.... Totalyser has... Vector Audio Scope (shows u
left/right/phase, Goniometer i believe it's called), 30 band levels, master
RMS and Peak levels, overall phase correlation....

Then Options -> Settins or the little blue button that looks like a knob....
Has settings where u can make the peaks hold and change the timing of
the sampling.

Awesome tool.... always thought it was something I didn't need.... but it's
gold. From what I can tell (maybe wrong) the analysis is happening inside
the multiface and being sent back to Digicheck for display... thus it's not
CPU hungry.

-Ben

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Tue May 17, 2005 10:24 am

I've made a lot of stuff with SX in the past and it worked well on this same club's PA.

first things first: what is changed in your way of working and/or hardware setup (except obviously your host program)?? Do you f.e. use a different soundcard now? Use different samplerates than in SX? Use other plugins? etc.etc.

second: it is said before but make sure you cut away the low frequencies from around 40/50 or even 60Hz downwards with quiet a steep slope.... these frequencies take up lots of energy and will "choke" the PA system ..

third: when a master is cut to vinyl the cutting engineer is EQ'ing it often to make sure it's cut as good as possible into the vinyl master... this means often bandpassfiltering, ie cutting away the lows and the highs, to make use of the effective frequency range of vinyl ... you can achieve this with an EQ as said in the second point above.....

but.... when cutting, and especially when reproducing using a turntable/needle/cartridge a lot of (harmonic) distortions are introduced into the signal...these are the holy grail in audio recording/reproduction (vinyl as well as tape artifacts) .... most distinctive is the added distortion on drum-sounds, and on highhats ....you can try to reproduce this using hardware (f.e. Fatso) which is often very expensive, or using plugins (f.e. voxengo analogsuite tape insert, Live vinyl distortion plugin, steinberg magneto/datube/truetape and especially grungelizer) .... the added harmonic distortion will make your drums cut through much better..kicks will have a rougher edge, and more dynamics, due to the harmonic distortion and removed sub-freqs, highhats will also cut through better due to the added harmonics..the typical sound of vinyl so to say...

experiment!

Olaf

wilsonrx · Post by **wilsonrx** » Tue May 17, 2005 10:36 am

I second that. Distortion is great. Even just a little bit of applied here and there can give your sounds a very different feel. A tamebreat breakbeat can become some kind of industrial monster with just the tweak of a few knobs!

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Tue May 17, 2005 10:39 am

wilsonrx wrote:I second that. Distortion is great. Even just a little bit of applied here and there can give your sounds a very different feel. A tamebreat breakbeat can become some kind of industrial monster with just the tweak of a few knobs!

yes...but of course in moderation.....vinyl doesn't add distortion over the entire frequency range (unless you have a worn out needle of course

but only over selected frequencies (as said before, most noticeably the drums and the highs) ... also make sure to check the gain-structure of the mixer, do the line and phono channels use the same gain- and EQ setting?

Olaf

wilsonrx · Post by **wilsonrx** » Tue May 17, 2005 10:57 am

Sorry yes, I don't try to recreate Vinly distortion - just plain old distortion for the sake of it! But once again stressing that too much of it is a one way trip to headache city.

Has anyone heard the latest Prodigy album? That sounds like it has been distorted all the way through; it does kind of add something to the sound but at other times it does my head in.

MrYellow · Post by **MrYellow** » Tue May 17, 2005 11:51 am

Speaking of distorting drum sounds........ For fun.... not to reproduce vinyl.

I've been playing with the Scream distortion in Reason quite a lot recently....
I'll setup a Rex player, sometimes with an EQ or other effects. Then on a
send I setup a Scream (on a send for setup reasons).... Then I'll play with
the presets, and some tweaking to get interesting harmonics. Then I'll chop
up the beat, put in fills, make 16,32 or more bars of changing drum
patterns to keep me interested.

edit: with scream on a send u need to tweak send levels..... 50 pre in
channel... 100 in master.... brings it back to normal... otherwise the levels
end up way too high.

I'll play with the Rex player settings, filter, pan, sync'd envelope stuff.

Then if a sound is a bit weak or loses it's tone too much from the
distortion, I can always add a second Rex player with only that sound
playing (copy the midi and remore the other sounds with a quick drag).

Tweak individual sounds so they go together, mix it all, dump to Live.

-Ben

telekom · Post by **telekom** » Tue May 17, 2005 12:56 pm

But Chris J, Minidisc is KING

You can record at wav rate, mp3, wma or atrac.
The recordings I had were wav.

As a small live recording device it is unbeatable - you just can't get a better portable. The durability, price and re-recording capabilities of the media are unique. Plus, my new (3rd) portable now has 1 GB discs that are dirt cheap.
Sorry, I just love minidisc, and couldn't recommend anything better as a medium for live recording, cheap storage or demos. I don't think the media has anything to do with the crappiness of the master I made.

Hey Anonymouse,
Minidisc relies on human hearing recreating certain bass frequencies below a set level (Don't know what the roll-off is). Therefore Minidisc is not reproducing exact frequencies from your original, but is monkeying around with the bass end assuming that your perception will redress the balance. Also AFAIK, isn't Minidisc using a sample rate of 32kHz? CD uses 44kHz and DAT uses 48kHz. So I totally respect that you love the sound and convenience and quality of Minidisc. It isn't however the most accurate or high-fidelity of the available formats. Probably best of all would be 24-bit 192kHz through top quality hardware into a super high spec recording program. But that might be a little less pocket sized...

I totally agree with your comment that this thread has been really helpful, great comments, hitting the spot exactly. Many Thanks folks.

MrYellow · Post by **MrYellow** » Tue May 17, 2005 1:09 pm

Minidisc relies on human hearing recreating certain bass frequencies below
a set level (Don't know what the roll-off is). Therefore Minidisc is not
reproducing exact frequencies from your original, but is monkeying around
with the bass end assuming that your perception will redress the balance

I'd assume this would be the 5ths thing.

2 tones a 5th apart reproduce the original missing fundamental harmonic
an octave below.

The deep part of a male voice isn't actually produced by the vocal chords,
instead 2 tones a 5th apart are mixed to produce the low tone. Telephone
companies take advantage of this in their compression by eliminating the
fundamental and allowing it to be reproduced on the other end. I assume
minidisk works in a similar way.

This is also a good way of getting deep sub-bass outta your synths.

-Ben

wavejumper · Post by **wavejumper** » Tue May 17, 2005 1:12 pm

telekom, AFAIK the new md players use data disks, you can store wavs files, like a rewritable cd-r, capacity is around 1gb or so. compression is only a question if you choose a different a compression standard like atrac which is normally used on audio minidisks.
haven't seen many in europe as mp3 players are all the rage here, despite the shit quality.

anonymouse · Post by **anonymouse** » Tue May 17, 2005 1:14 pm

telekom wrote: Minidisc relies on human hearing recreating certain bass frequencies below a set level

Even when recording lossless wav?

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Tue May 17, 2005 1:36 pm

i like to use camelphat free lately, to give drums and bass that nice rough edge

Olaf

malarky · Post by **malarky** » Tue May 17, 2005 4:34 pm

the best thing that ever happened to the dynamics of my music was getting a pair of these...

http://www.zzounds.com/item--EVETR5

before that i had used my home stereo speakers, studio headphones, computer speakers, cheap roland monitors, etc... sure, the sound quality of my tracks was great while making them, but it was always hit or miss anywhere else.

after finally getting nice monitors my music instantly went from generally sounding muddy on club systems to consistently sounding more alive than the djs playing vinyl.

it doesn't matter what mastering tips and techniques and plugins you use if the speakers you are using to do the final mix your songs is compromising the sound. most home stereo and headphones have built in exaggeration of the bass and treble ranges that can throw you off when trying to mix something that will sound good on a wide variety of systems.

also... have you checked to see if your minidisc player might have some sort of bass boost or built-in eqing feature that was turned on.