'Mastering' for live performance
Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 3:16 am
interested to hear peoples experience for doing some mastering, and I guess general mixing aswell, for live electronica/dance via Ableton. I guess mixing isn't as much of a concern for me as I will be mostly using sounds that are pre-mixed for eachother, as apposed to random mashups of different sources.
Does anyone have any cool ideas for racks that they can easily adjust on the fly?
I've come up with a quick prototype -, basically it's a frequency splitter, one chain to compress sub bass, other for multi band comp on everything else - and then a limiter on the end.
It has the following macros
Multiband Amount, Multiband Ratio, Low/high output amount, mid output amount
Sub crossover, sub threashold, sub ratio, master limiter input.
all the macros have 'sensible' upper and lower limits - it's pretty intuitive and straight forward to use in studio for rough master dynamics, with basic control over some frequencies.
In your experience is there much point having any degree of control over that, given that it is difficult to understand what the rig sounds like for the audience? is it just another control to worry about?
Perhaps you're better of getting the best overall compromise at home on monitors and locking in those parameters and hoping for the best?
or do you just run a slightly cooler signal into the DJ mixer, boost the gain a bit there and rely a bit of the PA's comp and limiting? I've heard that one before too. (I've DJ'ed for a few years now but tbh I'm not massively savvy with club/festival PA gain structure and dynamics processing)
I'm not after a really compressed/loud sound (I've heard some laptop sets that are blatantly running -10db Waves L2 and it sounds like absolute arse). I do want some dynamics, just a sensible compromise I guess.
Does anyone have any cool ideas for racks that they can easily adjust on the fly?
I've come up with a quick prototype -, basically it's a frequency splitter, one chain to compress sub bass, other for multi band comp on everything else - and then a limiter on the end.
It has the following macros
Multiband Amount, Multiband Ratio, Low/high output amount, mid output amount
Sub crossover, sub threashold, sub ratio, master limiter input.
all the macros have 'sensible' upper and lower limits - it's pretty intuitive and straight forward to use in studio for rough master dynamics, with basic control over some frequencies.
In your experience is there much point having any degree of control over that, given that it is difficult to understand what the rig sounds like for the audience? is it just another control to worry about?
Perhaps you're better of getting the best overall compromise at home on monitors and locking in those parameters and hoping for the best?
or do you just run a slightly cooler signal into the DJ mixer, boost the gain a bit there and rely a bit of the PA's comp and limiting? I've heard that one before too. (I've DJ'ed for a few years now but tbh I'm not massively savvy with club/festival PA gain structure and dynamics processing)
I'm not after a really compressed/loud sound (I've heard some laptop sets that are blatantly running -10db Waves L2 and it sounds like absolute arse). I do want some dynamics, just a sensible compromise I guess.