Ableton Forum

I'm trying to get a really spacial, layered and warped quality to the tune I'm working on now, and I'm having a lot of trouble with my samples ending up sounding sort of muddy.

Do spacial fx plugins help for this sort of thing? Reverb works to some extent but I'm afraid to abuse it (and end up with something more muddy).

Any particular tricks for making a mix sharp and separate, yet meaty?

-Chris

Play with your eq... try to isolate which freqs are muddy and see if you can't peal them off... then you could use reverb to thicken the sound out... or maybe some delay to double up the sound in a rhythmic way.

Render e'thing to wav/aiff and mixdown in a dedicated multitracker might improve your overall mixquality as well ... the audioengine since 2.01 has improved exponentially,but still haven't found the time to find out how Live would handle mixdown of entire rendered trax to wav ...

I slightly misunderstood your question. In general i'm referring to applying this on "space-filling" ambience samples, not to the whole track.

Although not specific to Live:

1st LAW OF MIXING: EQ on a per track/sound basis. Remove non-essential components, typically cutting freqs below 120 Hz on non-bass instruments. For example, an accoustic guitar can create alot of mud below 150 Hz, especially with some compression. THIS IS THE KEY TO CREATING CLEAR MIXES.

REGARDING REVERBS AND THE LIKE:

Applying reverb to a whole track in generally a no-no unless you're doing an Anne Murray [sorry Anne] record, or perhaps The Ventures.

Part of creating space in a track in allowing each element in the track to occupy their own space. For example, for the psy-trance style [i'm producing at the moment] i'll typically put interesting sporadic percussive hits in their own reverb space, usually a big-one [grand canyon], leave the kick/bass dry. Hi-hats either get a little ping-pong delay and/or touch of reverb [room]. Lead sounds, i'll usually try one of the techniques i mentioned in the earlier reply.

So essentially the various components of the tune are contained in various aural spaces, some of them dynamic (moving around). The result is a crawling spatial monster.

CHEAP TRICK:

Listen to your track in mono. This will give you a better chance of spotting improper [or lack of] EQing.

- onnomonotronic

Onnomon!

Thanks for responding. Eitan and I have been hoping to get you involved with the track we are currently working on (and which spawned this thread, just to warn you).

Your tips are fantastic. From your live set at Gaian Mind, I know that you are able to create a very enveloping aural space. I will be sure to try the mono trick.

I have to repeat, however, that I wish Ableton had a global high quality switch for rendering to disk. On my current project I probably have about 10,000 individual clips. At least. To have to click on every one and press the "Hi Q" button would take far too long.

(I have subsequently realized that Ableton DOES have a global high quality switch - it's in the preferences/options folder, a subtle addition to 2.0.3. Good job guys, you made it before I could even find it!)

Add to that every reverb effect that has its own quality option ("Comfort" vs "First Class").... other effects no doubt have similar quality controls...

(This problem still remains.... what about a global high quality EFFECT switch?)

Anyone know a workaround for these problems?

try chorus.

Have you tried the Haas effect? More info here:

http://www.digido.com/bob-katz/depth-an ... ion-2.html

Hope this will help!

Woah! 5-year necrojack!

Allez Montpellier!!

Oh...mfg... resurrection...I believe now...