Actually, I would told my younger me to just freaking start doing what you have in your heart and your mind. Because, ultimately achieving projects from start to finish was the best way for me ( And honestly I think for most people) to learn and improv.
I went back about 15 years and told younger me to show up to the capitol records building with a resume and ask to speak to the head of production. When I returned to the present, I was living in a mansion with two Grammys on the main mantle.
Thanks for the vid. Truly enjoying your channel. You mentioned about mixing in to a limiter and 'setting it up correctly'. have you done a vid on this? I'd be keen to see how others are doing it. Cheers from OZ.🤘
I'm not gonna lie, I'm still pretty lazy so I mix through smart limit as it sets it own attack & release haha (I manually turn off saturation & eq) BUT I did shoot it out vs other limiters on the channel and got mastering engineers involved so I know I really like the sound of it. Here's my take. A limiter is actually very simple if you understand compression. You've simply just got to listen for how the attack and release times affect the mix. You are looking for a setting that you push to get you the end LUFS level as transparently as possible with the least amount of distortion. You also need to consider your ceiling (threshold) and how much headroom you leave for intersample peaks. My advice would be to find a few good mastering engineer and ask them how they set up their limiter
Funny because I started to use a limiter on my masterbus but heard from a mastering engineer not to do it. My masterbus is simple but I mix almost completely analog. On the daw I have some plugins on the 2trk which I sometimes engage to see if I’m close to what I want. I have to say that I consider my mix as a pre-master and let the mastering over for a mastering engineer. I have to say that I like what I get now but still not completely satisfied with my mixbus 😅
I get why a mastering engineer would advise for you to take the limiter off when bouncing but don't understand the logic for them advising not to make your mixing decisions through a well set up limiter at the very end of the chain 🤷♂️ Each to their own I suppose but a crap ton of industry mixers I've asked told me they mix into limiters and it's all for the same reason. Plus.. They don't need to know how you mix your records 😜
You are right Paul, I’m just now reading an article about top down mixing into a mastering chain. It all depends on the workflow I guess. But we know if it sounds shit it is shit unless….. hahaha 😜
+1 for mentorship. YT is great for learning little nuggets but the format promotes piecemeal dissemination and there's no one to take your mix to and ask, "What am I doing wrong?". I nearly went with PLAP Academy but chose URM Academy because I'm more Rock/Metal focused, but either offer a goldmine of information and are worth several times their asking prices when compared to college. Should have done it way sooner.
Yeah you need a few trusted ears when you are on the journey. Me and Ed use each other and a few others. Letting your ear wander off track can be a dangerous thing, always good to keep it on track 🤓
100% on all of this, as someone who didn’t do it at uni and it’s grown from a hobby to a passion, I would also have said “you love this, fucking prioritise it”. On the technical side probably understand what reverb and delay settings can do, pre-delay on reverbs to create different depths, mucking with delay settings so they aren’t necessarily in time with the song to create interest etc: greetings from fife anyway man, keep on keeping on
Thx mate, too good ❤ For me I realized, if you like fe analog voltage heavy warm italo/house/wave/techno, and you have this Passion for this warm Sound, you need to get an analog di, neve clone and mixing desk, orherwise its way More work, Frustration and way less fun making music. Another tip, ure music Computer should be just for music
Mixing into a limiter is a very divisive subject as there's a lot of professional mixing engineers that, on the contrary, would say that doing so is counter productive...
That's why you've got to experiment and make your own decisions. My mentor taught me to do it, then jaycen was advising it at Abbey Road, Tim Palmer does it when I asked him so for every mixer that says not to do it, there will be a mixer that advises to do it. Again, try it and if it doesn't work for you then don't do it. That's how I treat everything in audio
I did know it, and was taught about it but from more of a recording perspective. I didn't think it really applied to emulation plugins until I dug deep into aliasing and saturation. The video isn't about what I wasnt taught about, it's about going back and telling myself what would be important to me later on. Just because you are taught something in a certain context when you are in your early 20's doesn't neccisarily mean that it'll stuck with you later in your career. All I wanted to do was record and mix. I remember moaning about having to learn about adat, aliasing and sample rates as "when will I ever need this?".. You are just naive when you starting out and take the "boring" stuff for granted FYI you don't pay for college or university in Scotland
Great video Paul🤘 The mentor part is important. I’m mixing a song I recorded as a tribute to one of my favorite 80’s bands Ratt. My best friend growing up and I used to listen to them when we were in our teens. Along with VH and Dokken. Anyway I emailed Beau Hill for tips on how to mix the song. Beau emailed me back with some tips on mixing vocals and using delays. Beau mixed all the early Ratt, Winger, Warren albums. You’d be surprised who will help. All you need to do is ask. Rock on Paul🤘
What a video! It resonates huge with me. I´m doing this for over 10 years but still struggle with consistency in mixing. Im obsessed with nailing the midrange. I did months of investigating this year because the inconsistency pisses me off. I love mixing so much but I want a plan (listening, picking a few tools that just work every time, making decisions) that works every time. I tried many different templates (J.Joshua, M.Brauer) and everything in between. I tried using only Fabfilter, Leapwing or Sonible AI. I tried the Hifiman curves for my DT1990 and so on. I still struggle. Pocket eqing, MTM Fuser and Reference and all that stuff but it still is a hustle to nail the midrange. Mixing a lot Rock and Country like songs and trying to achieve a balance and tones like Luke Combs or the new Rolling Stones song for instance. It´s fucking hard - I always have a lack of feel, warmth and grainy but real midrange. I feel I need to mix into some hardware at some point. My SPL Kultube I sold years ago gave me that something extra which plugins still don´t achieve. It´s probably me but I don´t nail the midrange with plugins only.
Depends what you are mixing though man. Jaycen is completely 100% itb as is a lot of big mixers in the industry. Honestly the roughs he recieves from producers are already practically mixed. My advice would be to stop hyper fixating on a certain band or artists sound and just serve the song you have in front of you. If you spend more time on doing whatever makes your clients happy then you won't need to worry about how subjectively perfect your midrange is... Because here is the sickener.. You may nail the sound you want but your client might hate it and if that's the case, you'll end up in a sticky wicket. I was taught to just stick to the rough and make it sonically better. I've tried mixing a record how I feel it should sound and had the client raging at me cause I've not really stuck to their rough. Honestly, serve the song and you'll find you think way less about stuff
BUT NEW PLUGINS ARE FUUUN PAUL!!! ~sigh~ I actually don't buy many plugins, but I do fuck around with my plugins a lot instead of getting my lazy finger out and scraping together the dough to buy something better than my battered JBL 305's
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: [0:00](ua-cam.com/video/SEynUOp9hMA/v-deo.html) 🎓 Introduction and background of the speaker 01:36 🎧 Importance of monitoring in audio mixing 03:23 🎚️ Understanding gain staging 04:22 🔌 Use of Stock Plugins 06:12 🩺 Use of Plugin Doctor 07:34 🥁 Importance of Drum Samples 09:55 🎛️ EQing and using high pass or low pass filters 12:45 🎚️ Mixing into a limiter 13:54 🙋 Importance of having a Mentor 15:45 📚 Learning from UA-cam and other platforms 16:58 🎚️ Conclusion and future plans Made with HARPA AI
Great video P 😊 I’m intrigued as to why you did a Uni degree in audio/sound engineering and hadn’t managed some practical experience at the time and learned enough to understand the basics of what is required throughout the 2-3 years? Cheers
My 4 years were split up into a 2 year HND at an avid endorsed college program which was more focused around recording, and a 2 year honours degree after that at a university which was really more tailored for foley, film and games. The HND was where I learned all about audio and recording. I got to record and mix bands but there wasnt really a dedicated mixing part of the course. You were either recording or learning about recording & audio science. They taught all about drum phase and all that but you were always taught to get it right at the source, so you assume most recordings you'll get in the future will be correctly phase aligned. Your just naive at the start Tbh a lot of the "boring" stuff they taught me at the time went in one ear and out the other. When you are early 20's in a place that had 2 kitted out live rooms with a consoles in each room, neumanns etc your not that interested in the "boring" stuff. You just want to get on the console and record. I still had dreams of being a recording artist ffs haha 🙈 you are just wet behind the ears I learned all about nuquist, oversampling, aliasing etc but it never felt like anything id actually bother about. I already knew a lot of what I spoke about in this video but it was about going back and giving me a shake and telling me that the "boring" stuff that I thought I didn't need was actually way more important than I first thought At the end of the day, my lecturers weren't Spike, Serban, Manny or Jaycen, they were lecturers who had backgrounds in audio. They weren't all out label mix engineers, they were mostly guys with more experience in live recording. I learned a hell of a lot from them but deep down I had no interest in being a recording engineer. I wanted to mix
Hey Paul! I want to recommend a plugin for you to check out. I know you love TDR Limiter (and I do too) on treating anything cymbal related, maybe you want to give PSP Binamp a try with drive+high end rolloff. Cheers :)
@@PaulThird sorry, some kind of tutorial or wisdom. Some video or literature of some form I guess. I used to live in the country and now live in an apartment. I've never learnt how to mix with headphones. Always sounds terrible and unintentional on speakers
Thanks for this valuable video. No need for the word waffle, details matter! Can people get good results with stock dynamics/effects and maybe a wee pro q3?
As a casual engineer for my own music, I wish I had known about pre fader metering ages ago. Rookie mistake. Oh well, live and learn. But I completely agree with your high pass/low pass advice. Such a simple way to carve out room and still sound natural. Thanks for the advice here. Helped me tremendously.
What really helped me to sort plugins was to split it into two categories, just fixing and mixing. And turns our I don't need much at all in fixing category I have RX and melodyne. Drum trigger and phase align. In mixing, I just have fabfilter bundle. DSM 3 and snap heap/multipass if I need some creative fx and to be honest I never had the problem of not getting the sound I wanted with juts this plugins. Ou and Paul if you have time to explore DSM 3 pls do it. even manual does poor job explaining what this plugin does and what is it useful for.
Good list. As for me I would add - buy the fu**ing auratones!! They have showed me so many flaws in the mids that I couldn't notice on the other speakers and some little balance and dynamics problems.. It is still mind-blowing for me how much they help me with achieving great results on a daily basis - very clean midrange (separation and definition) between the instruments and perfect levels. Auratones are also best for vocal and effects automation. They show 'the meat' of a mix very clearly. If the mix is sounding great on Auratones you only need to correct the subs and air frequencies on bigger, full-frequency monitors and headphones and it sounds great everywhere. Also no. 2 I wish I knew before is find the best sounding references for each genre of music. It's crucial to compare your mix to the refrences while mixing to notice problems with your work very quickly and fix them before you start adding more bad decisions into your mix (like mixing everything too muddy or too bass-heavy)
The 1st 20 years of my career i used to mix in the pitch dark and used to see the sounds as a picture in my mind lol But as you say monitoring is so massively important and its the one thing i wish new at the start :)
It’s interesting that most people seem to use tons of third party plugins in the beginning and go to using less later. For me it’s the opposite, I spent 20 years mixing almost only with stock plugins and now wish I could tell my younger self to invest in some good plugins.
You'll always end up investing in more advanced tools further down the road but I think that when you are starting out, getting the most out of stock tools is the way to go. Once you understand your limitations with the tools you have, you'll end up with a better idea of exactly what you require instead of just buying shit cause of marketing and who uses it
@@PaulThird That's absolutely right. 20 years was just maybe a bit of a long time to discover that some limitations were not due to my supposed lack of skills but simply lack of the right tools.
I wonder if I’m over stacking on outboard gear when I’m tracking my vocals. I use 4 compressors and 2 EQs when tracking my vocals. And I wonder if that’s a problem? 🤔
Could be. Non linearities going into non linearites going into more non linearities. Phase differences going into phase differences etc etc Put it this way.. In that chain, What comes out at the other end just on passthrough is vastly different to what went in haha That's not to say its bad though, but definitely different
Nah we're starting it up again but this time without produce like a pro. Means we can have it on youtube now. Recorded an episode last night for release on 30th and back weekly after that
Tbh its mostly because you don't want to learn the "boring" stuff at 22/23. You just want to be recording bands and pushing faders. I remember doing a test about nuquist and sample rates and saying.. "when the fuck am I ever gonna need to worry about this!?" Oh how naive I was 😂
Regarding gain staging, in my opinion, it's just about making sure you can disable your plugins and the volume more or less doesn't change that much. Wherever the VU meter hits doesn't matter to me. If there isn't enough saturation, push the meter harder. If a more subtle effect is desired, back off the meter. I think Steven Slate said the same thing. I don't understand the argument of trying to hit 0 VU at -18 dBFS.
ua-cam.com/video/zNCebtz5tGM/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/w0DTz1XGDJo/v-deo.html Those videos are why I care about where the VU hits. Faithful Analog emulations are made to behave like the analog which you would gain stage. You wouldn't just pin the meter all the time and not check your input levels going in. Gain staging is also about workflow ie Jaycen Joshua's template only works for him if he gain stages the correct way going into certain plugins. He spent a big chunk of his session going over the importance of gain staging
@@PaulThirdHope you're doing well, can't believe it's been 5 months, whoops! Anyway, those videos are really great, and I'm very thankful for your content. I've been rethinking my entire workflow recently and now use VU metering on every track. I'll check out Jaycen Joshua, that's interesting.
As a drummer, I think I can say with a good amount of certainly that it’s not much easier to mix drums. Questions about what “proper” drum sounds “should” be are just replaced with not being sure what of the many many options are right for a song. Like when compressing drums, instead of just saying “are my attack and release settings helping the drums “breathe” with the tracks,” I start worrying about the drummers performance and intent, “was this drummer trying to be on top of the mix, in which case I should make the drums extra punchy to help the performance come out as intended, or were they trying to fall more to the background, in which case I should speed up my attack times so the drummers intent to be out of the way of the guitars is honored…” trying to put myself in too many peoples shoes because I have the experience on drums to imagine what the drummer might have been thinking only slows me down because I later realize that I’m not making decisions that just make the song sound as good as it can, I’m making decisions I think I should make because I’m worrying about what I as a drummer would be thinking if someone else were mixing my performance. It’s a can of worms that doesn’t help and I often wish I could just go back to being a clean slate and trust my gut and ear more than feeling obligated to also tap into my 20 years of experience as a drummer. Sometimes it’s really helpful to have that background like when setting up the drums in space (as a right handed drummer, I feel very very strongly that the hi hat should always be on the left, and I never have confusion about where sounds should come from). It helps me know what to listen for because I know what a well tuned snare sounds like. I know how loud the crash should be relative to the snare. But when it comes to questions about phase, mic relationships, compression in the mix, etc, I think my experience is just distracting. It’s a grass is always greener situation
I wouldn't say that. Mixers like Tim Palmer put A LOT of work into the drums to get the right feel and timing. Spike Stent is another one that works a lot on the timing of a song. I wouldnt say thats something you want to lose
@@PaulThird well in reference to timing, now that I think about it, the way my drumming experience really comes in handy when mixing isn’t with the drums specifically. It’s my deep understanding of rhythm. Understanding tempo and the different rhythmic patterns for setting delay times, knowing how to predict how the placement of various elements of a song along will sound in different places along the time grid, and even being able to say “this bus compressor should be opening with the shuffle off the groove here, so I gotta find the release speed that gets the needle to bounce in triplets against the downbeat.” But any well studied musician would have that toolset, not just drummers
I totally agree with you on Plugin Doctor. It gets stick for no reason... or, more accurately, from people who have an axe to grind about what it exposes about plugins. O yes, I agree about drum phase and sample packs too!!
I got out of audio school two years ago. I too had high hopes. I currently teach guitar to beginners. Not where I saw myself two years later. Going to an engineers networking event in a few weeks though, fingers crossed that pays off with some new connections
I get the occasional mix to work on, and have done a few free lance podcasts in the mean time, but it’s not the same as working in a studio. I get a lot more work as a live engineer than I get anything related to console work. People always need someone to watch the faders at a live gig tho, so that’s been my main way of staying in the game. I’ve had some success recording the multitracks off the mixer and then offering the bands a fully mixed version later but live stage multitracks never come out the same so it’s not the best way to demonstrate what I could do for their studio recordings. But that’s me “playing the game”
What would you tell your younger self if you could borrow my quantum leap watch?
Like you said. As a guitar player, learn what makes for great drum sound 🤘
“USE EARPLUGS WHEN DRUMMING!!!”
I would tell myself to go all in on mixing and audio engineering 😊
Actually, I would told my younger me to just freaking start doing what you have in your heart and your mind. Because, ultimately achieving projects from start to finish was the best way for me ( And honestly I think for most people) to learn and improv.
I went back about 15 years and told younger me to show up to the capitol records building with a resume and ask to speak to the head of production. When I returned to the present, I was living in a mansion with two Grammys on the main mantle.
Thanks for the vid. Truly enjoying your channel. You mentioned about mixing in to a limiter and 'setting it up correctly'. have you done a vid on this? I'd be keen to see how others are doing it. Cheers from OZ.🤘
I'm not gonna lie, I'm still pretty lazy so I mix through smart limit as it sets it own attack & release haha (I manually turn off saturation & eq) BUT I did shoot it out vs other limiters on the channel and got mastering engineers involved so I know I really like the sound of it.
Here's my take. A limiter is actually very simple if you understand compression. You've simply just got to listen for how the attack and release times affect the mix. You are looking for a setting that you push to get you the end LUFS level as transparently as possible with the least amount of distortion. You also need to consider your ceiling (threshold) and how much headroom you leave for intersample peaks.
My advice would be to find a few good mastering engineer and ask them how they set up their limiter
Funny because I started to use a limiter on my masterbus but heard from a mastering engineer not to do it. My masterbus is simple but I mix almost completely analog. On the daw I have some plugins on the 2trk which I sometimes engage to see if I’m close to what I want. I have to say that I consider my mix as a pre-master and let the mastering over for a mastering engineer.
I have to say that I like what I get now but still not completely satisfied with my mixbus 😅
I get why a mastering engineer would advise for you to take the limiter off when bouncing but don't understand the logic for them advising not to make your mixing decisions through a well set up limiter at the very end of the chain 🤷♂️
Each to their own I suppose but a crap ton of industry mixers I've asked told me they mix into limiters and it's all for the same reason.
Plus.. They don't need to know how you mix your records 😜
You are right Paul, I’m just now reading an article about top down mixing into a mastering chain.
It all depends on the workflow I guess. But we know if it sounds shit it is shit unless….. hahaha 😜
Break all the "rules" early and intentionally to understand how things work, and most importantly, how to diagnose what is going wrong.
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*Sees new video posted 40 seconds ago* I'M READY, SENSEI THIRD!
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+1 for mentorship. YT is great for learning little nuggets but the format promotes piecemeal dissemination and there's no one to take your mix to and ask, "What am I doing wrong?".
I nearly went with PLAP Academy but chose URM Academy because I'm more Rock/Metal focused, but either offer a goldmine of information and are worth several times their asking prices when compared to college. Should have done it way sooner.
Yeah you need a few trusted ears when you are on the journey. Me and Ed use each other and a few others. Letting your ear wander off track can be a dangerous thing, always good to keep it on track 🤓
100% on all of this, as someone who didn’t do it at uni and it’s grown from a hobby to a passion, I would also have said “you love this, fucking prioritise it”. On the technical side probably understand what reverb and delay settings can do, pre-delay on reverbs to create different depths, mucking with delay settings so they aren’t necessarily in time with the song to create interest etc: greetings from fife anyway man, keep on keeping on
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Thx mate, too good ❤
For me I realized, if you like fe analog voltage heavy warm italo/house/wave/techno, and you have this Passion for this warm Sound, you need to get an analog di, neve clone and mixing desk, orherwise its way More work, Frustration and way less fun making music.
Another tip, ure music Computer should be just for music
🤓🤓
Mixing into a limiter is a very divisive subject as there's a lot of professional mixing engineers that, on the contrary, would say that doing so is counter productive...
That's why you've got to experiment and make your own decisions.
My mentor taught me to do it, then jaycen was advising it at Abbey Road, Tim Palmer does it when I asked him so for every mixer that says not to do it, there will be a mixer that advises to do it.
Again, try it and if it doesn't work for you then don't do it. That's how I treat everything in audio
8:40 - thanks! 🙋🏼♂️🔥
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I put all hearts that I can find on emoji list ❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤍
Hahaha 🤜🤛
Why?
It's Emrah, the engineer I owe a lot of my journey to. Basically repaying the kind words I said about him
Nice!
I agree with ye Paul.. I would have told you the same back then. Just kidding dude I've no got a clue..
😂😂
A Scot declaring they are super tight.. Who woulda thought..
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one wonders how you can leave an audio degree without knowing about gain staging? Jeez, I'd want my money back! :D
I did know it, and was taught about it but from more of a recording perspective. I didn't think it really applied to emulation plugins until I dug deep into aliasing and saturation.
The video isn't about what I wasnt taught about, it's about going back and telling myself what would be important to me later on.
Just because you are taught something in a certain context when you are in your early 20's doesn't neccisarily mean that it'll stuck with you later in your career.
All I wanted to do was record and mix. I remember moaning about having to learn about adat, aliasing and sample rates as "when will I ever need this?".. You are just naive when you starting out and take the "boring" stuff for granted
FYI you don't pay for college or university in Scotland
Great video Paul🤘 The mentor part is important. I’m mixing a song I recorded as a tribute to one of my favorite 80’s bands Ratt. My best friend growing up and I used to listen to them when we were in our teens. Along with VH and Dokken. Anyway I emailed Beau Hill for tips on how to mix the song. Beau emailed me back with some tips on mixing vocals and using delays. Beau mixed all the early Ratt, Winger, Warren albums. You’d be surprised who will help. All you need to do is ask. Rock on Paul🤘
100% 🤜🤛
I thought I had some cracking photos of when I was younger, but WOW Paul. 🤣🤣 Take care, Darren (Wales, UK)
Great advice though! 👍
Couldn't find my graduation photo so just used that 🤣
When are you going to make a "Paul Thudd" Tshirt. UA-cam says you should 😅
If youtube gets paople to buy them I'll make them haha
not shocked to hear a dundonian admit to being tight with money. never had a pint fae a dundidian. fife4life.
My ald man is the opposite of me tbf haha
That's the story of my life. Been there, did same mistakes. We grow and we learn. (:
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What a video! It resonates huge with me. I´m doing this for over 10 years but still struggle with consistency in mixing. Im obsessed with nailing the midrange. I did months of investigating this year because the inconsistency pisses me off. I love mixing so much but I want a plan (listening, picking a few tools that just work every time, making decisions) that works every time. I tried many different templates (J.Joshua, M.Brauer) and everything in between. I tried using only Fabfilter, Leapwing or Sonible AI. I tried the Hifiman curves for my DT1990 and so on. I still struggle. Pocket eqing, MTM Fuser and Reference and all that stuff but it still is a hustle to nail the midrange. Mixing a lot Rock and Country like songs and trying to achieve a balance and tones like Luke Combs or the new Rolling Stones song for instance. It´s fucking hard - I always have a lack of feel, warmth and grainy but real midrange. I feel I need to mix into some hardware at some point. My SPL Kultube I sold years ago gave me that something extra which plugins still don´t achieve. It´s probably me but I don´t nail the midrange with plugins only.
Depends what you are mixing though man. Jaycen is completely 100% itb as is a lot of big mixers in the industry. Honestly the roughs he recieves from producers are already practically mixed.
My advice would be to stop hyper fixating on a certain band or artists sound and just serve the song you have in front of you. If you spend more time on doing whatever makes your clients happy then you won't need to worry about how subjectively perfect your midrange is... Because here is the sickener.. You may nail the sound you want but your client might hate it and if that's the case, you'll end up in a sticky wicket.
I was taught to just stick to the rough and make it sonically better. I've tried mixing a record how I feel it should sound and had the client raging at me cause I've not really stuck to their rough.
Honestly, serve the song and you'll find you think way less about stuff
BUT NEW PLUGINS ARE FUUUN PAUL!!! ~sigh~ I actually don't buy many plugins, but I do fuck around with my plugins a lot instead of getting my lazy finger out and scraping together the dough to buy something better than my battered JBL 305's
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@@PaulThird Ah, that's too kind. I'm just a lazy doughboy 🍩🍩
Your video about gainstaging is easily one of the best explanations on the subject
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😳 I thought you was 25-28 years old 😂😂
Nah I'm 34 🤣
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
[0:00](ua-cam.com/video/SEynUOp9hMA/v-deo.html) 🎓 Introduction and background of the speaker
01:36 🎧 Importance of monitoring in audio mixing
03:23 🎚️ Understanding gain staging
04:22 🔌 Use of Stock Plugins
06:12 🩺 Use of Plugin Doctor
07:34 🥁 Importance of Drum Samples
09:55 🎛️ EQing and using high pass or low pass filters
12:45 🎚️ Mixing into a limiter
13:54 🙋 Importance of having a Mentor
15:45 📚 Learning from UA-cam and other platforms
16:58 🎚️ Conclusion and future plans
Made with HARPA AI
Glad to hear I'm not the only one blowing money on plugins the first time lol
I think everyone does the first time haha
Where can we find the podcast on youtube? You mentioned it's going to be on here but I can't seem to find it
Being released on 30th of this month. I'm just doing this as a precursor.
@workingaudiotools should be the handle for it to subscribe to
@@PaulThird thank you, Paul! It wasn't showing up in the search previously
"I over-analysed things way, way too much". How do you expect me to believe that 😄
Goes without saying 🤣
@@PaulThird I spend ages creating a synth sound because I know better, only to find a preset.
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Any chance you'll put the podcast on Google podcasts? It sounds great
Think so. Can't remember where acast uploads to. Pretty sure it's mostly everywhere
@@PaulThird What's the name of the podcast? I didn't quite catch it
@workingaudiotools
Good work, Paul.
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Paul, I did not find another post about limiting so I’ll ask here. What plug would you recommend for final limiting? Most look like crap in Plug Doc
I use smart limit
@@PaulThirdthanks
ua-cam.com/video/hoh7-jRlo5E/v-deo.html
@@PaulThird Thanks, Paul!
Paul, do you have a name for that alter ego personality with the English accent? He should have a name and be a regular guest on your channel! 😂
I don't but could probably come up with one haha
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Remember to check out my autism channel if you want to learn more about my life 🤓🤓
Great video P 😊 I’m intrigued as to why you did a Uni degree in audio/sound engineering and hadn’t managed some practical experience at the time and learned enough to understand the basics of what is required throughout the 2-3 years? Cheers
My 4 years were split up into a 2 year HND at an avid endorsed college program which was more focused around recording, and a 2 year honours degree after that at a university which was really more tailored for foley, film and games.
The HND was where I learned all about audio and recording. I got to record and mix bands but there wasnt really a dedicated mixing part of the course. You were either recording or learning about recording & audio science.
They taught all about drum phase and all that but you were always taught to get it right at the source, so you assume most recordings you'll get in the future will be correctly phase aligned. Your just naive at the start
Tbh a lot of the "boring" stuff they taught me at the time went in one ear and out the other. When you are early 20's in a place that had 2 kitted out live rooms with a consoles in each room, neumanns etc your not that interested in the "boring" stuff. You just want to get on the console and record. I still had dreams of being a recording artist ffs haha 🙈 you are just wet behind the ears
I learned all about nuquist, oversampling, aliasing etc but it never felt like anything id actually bother about.
I already knew a lot of what I spoke about in this video but it was about going back and giving me a shake and telling me that the "boring" stuff that I thought I didn't need was actually way more important than I first thought
At the end of the day, my lecturers weren't Spike, Serban, Manny or Jaycen, they were lecturers who had backgrounds in audio. They weren't all out label mix engineers, they were mostly guys with more experience in live recording. I learned a hell of a lot from them but deep down I had no interest in being a recording engineer. I wanted to mix
Thanks Paul for this precious feedback and look back !!!! Mr Dan Worrall ¿ seriously ¿ no way !!!!
Yup, recording the week after I come back from centreparcs 🤓
I would of tell myself the same things you mentioned Paul, like you said i was too stubborn. Great video!
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Hey Paul! I want to recommend a plugin for you to check out. I know you love TDR Limiter (and I do too) on treating anything cymbal related, maybe you want to give PSP Binamp a try with drive+high end rolloff. Cheers :)
I would use acustica blond pre-mixer for this kinda thing
Dot pointing all this. Doesn't seem like i can confidently cross much off the list. Thanks for exposing me
Haha 😅
@@PaulThird could I ask you for a good resource for mixing on headphones? I've never really done it successfully
What do you mean by resource?
@@PaulThird sorry, some kind of tutorial or wisdom. Some video or literature of some form I guess.
I used to live in the country and now live in an apartment. I've never learnt how to mix with headphones. Always sounds terrible and unintentional on speakers
ua-cam.com/video/Rgno6hl29o0/v-deo.html
Epure v3 is great for filters, and they sound great. If you have BLACK though by Acustica that is also really good, very different sounding filters
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Thanks for this valuable video. No need for the word waffle, details matter!
Can people get good results with stock dynamics/effects and maybe a wee pro q3?
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As a casual engineer for my own music, I wish I had known about pre fader metering ages ago. Rookie mistake.
Oh well, live and learn.
But I completely agree with your high pass/low pass advice. Such a simple way to carve out room and still sound natural.
Thanks for the advice here. Helped me tremendously.
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What really helped me to sort plugins was to split it into two categories, just fixing and mixing. And turns our I don't need much at all in fixing category I have RX and melodyne. Drum trigger and phase align.
In mixing, I just have fabfilter bundle. DSM 3 and snap heap/multipass if I need some creative fx and to be honest I never had the problem of not getting the sound I wanted with juts this plugins.
Ou and Paul if you have time to explore DSM 3 pls do it. even manual does poor job explaining what this plugin does and what is it useful for.
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I learned how to shop like a billionaire thanks to Temu.
It's fucking everywhere.. And out of nowhere too
@@PaulThird wow...even in Europe?
Ads are everywhere
Good list. As for me I would add - buy the fu**ing auratones!! They have showed me so many flaws in the mids that I couldn't notice on the other speakers and some little balance and dynamics problems.. It is still mind-blowing for me how much they help me with achieving great results on a daily basis - very clean midrange (separation and definition) between the instruments and perfect levels. Auratones are also best for vocal and effects automation. They show 'the meat' of a mix very clearly. If the mix is sounding great on Auratones you only need to correct the subs and air frequencies on bigger, full-frequency monitors and headphones and it sounds great everywhere. Also no. 2 I wish I knew before is find the best sounding references for each genre of music. It's crucial to compare your mix to the refrences while mixing to notice problems with your work very quickly and fix them before you start adding more bad decisions into your mix (like mixing everything too muddy or too bass-heavy)
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The 1st 20 years of my career i used to mix in the pitch dark and used to see the sounds as a picture in my mind lol But as you say monitoring is so massively important and its the one thing i wish new at the start :)
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Thanks for the video. Great to have your perspective. And wait, they didn’t teach and demonstrate the importance of gain staging in school? 😅
They did, but more in regards to recording, not so much in regards to mixing
It’s interesting that most people seem to use tons of third party plugins in the beginning and go to using less later. For me it’s the opposite, I spent 20 years mixing almost only with stock plugins and now wish I could tell my younger self to invest in some good plugins.
You'll always end up investing in more advanced tools further down the road but I think that when you are starting out, getting the most out of stock tools is the way to go. Once you understand your limitations with the tools you have, you'll end up with a better idea of exactly what you require instead of just buying shit cause of marketing and who uses it
@@PaulThird That's absolutely right. 20 years was just maybe a bit of a long time to discover that some limitations were not due to my supposed lack of skills but simply lack of the right tools.
Going by the thumbnail, your neighbour is definitely Mike Myers. :p
I wish I got that reference.. We talking Wayne's World?
I wonder if I’m over stacking on outboard gear when I’m tracking my vocals. I use 4 compressors and 2 EQs when tracking my vocals. And I wonder if that’s a problem? 🤔
Could be. Non linearities going into non linearites going into more non linearities. Phase differences going into phase differences etc etc
Put it this way.. In that chain, What comes out at the other end just on passthrough is vastly different to what went in haha
That's not to say its bad though, but definitely different
@@PaulThird Thank you for answering my question Mr 3rd
Is working audio tools podcast finished?
Nah we're starting it up again but this time without produce like a pro. Means we can have it on youtube now. Recorded an episode last night for release on 30th and back weekly after that
Funny how much you had to learn after engineering school, they should really include all of this stuff in there😅
Tbh its mostly because you don't want to learn the "boring" stuff at 22/23. You just want to be recording bands and pushing faders. I remember doing a test about nuquist and sample rates and saying.. "when the fuck am I ever gonna need to worry about this!?"
Oh how naive I was 😂
Nice to see Joe Pasquale doing well for himself!
Times have been tough for poor ole Joe
Regarding gain staging, in my opinion, it's just about making sure you can disable your plugins and the volume more or less doesn't change that much. Wherever the VU meter hits doesn't matter to me. If there isn't enough saturation, push the meter harder. If a more subtle effect is desired, back off the meter. I think Steven Slate said the same thing. I don't understand the argument of trying to hit 0 VU at -18 dBFS.
ua-cam.com/video/zNCebtz5tGM/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/w0DTz1XGDJo/v-deo.html
Those videos are why I care about where the VU hits. Faithful Analog emulations are made to behave like the analog which you would gain stage. You wouldn't just pin the meter all the time and not check your input levels going in.
Gain staging is also about workflow ie Jaycen Joshua's template only works for him if he gain stages the correct way going into certain plugins. He spent a big chunk of his session going over the importance of gain staging
@@PaulThirdHope you're doing well, can't believe it's been 5 months, whoops! Anyway, those videos are really great, and I'm very thankful for your content. I've been rethinking my entire workflow recently and now use VU metering on every track. I'll check out Jaycen Joshua, that's interesting.
Que buenos concejos! Definitivamente tienes toda la razón !
Great ! video Paul! 🤟🏻
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🙏🙏🙏Thanks a lot for this video
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One of your best videos ever, and you’ve got a lot of great videos.
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As a drummer, I think I can say with a good amount of certainly that it’s not much easier to mix drums. Questions about what “proper” drum sounds “should” be are just replaced with not being sure what of the many many options are right for a song. Like when compressing drums, instead of just saying “are my attack and release settings helping the drums “breathe” with the tracks,” I start worrying about the drummers performance and intent, “was this drummer trying to be on top of the mix, in which case I should make the drums extra punchy to help the performance come out as intended, or were they trying to fall more to the background, in which case I should speed up my attack times so the drummers intent to be out of the way of the guitars is honored…” trying to put myself in too many peoples shoes because I have the experience on drums to imagine what the drummer might have been thinking only slows me down because I later realize that I’m not making decisions that just make the song sound as good as it can, I’m making decisions I think I should make because I’m worrying about what I as a drummer would be thinking if someone else were mixing my performance. It’s a can of worms that doesn’t help and I often wish I could just go back to being a clean slate and trust my gut and ear more than feeling obligated to also tap into my 20 years of experience as a drummer. Sometimes it’s really helpful to have that background like when setting up the drums in space (as a right handed drummer, I feel very very strongly that the hi hat should always be on the left, and I never have confusion about where sounds should come from). It helps me know what to listen for because I know what a well tuned snare sounds like. I know how loud the crash should be relative to the snare. But when it comes to questions about phase, mic relationships, compression in the mix, etc, I think my experience is just distracting. It’s a grass is always greener situation
I wouldn't say that. Mixers like Tim Palmer put A LOT of work into the drums to get the right feel and timing. Spike Stent is another one that works a lot on the timing of a song. I wouldnt say thats something you want to lose
@@PaulThird well in reference to timing, now that I think about it, the way my drumming experience really comes in handy when mixing isn’t with the drums specifically. It’s my deep understanding of rhythm. Understanding tempo and the different rhythmic patterns for setting delay times, knowing how to predict how the placement of various elements of a song along will sound in different places along the time grid, and even being able to say “this bus compressor should be opening with the shuffle off the groove here, so I gotta find the release speed that gets the needle to bounce in triplets against the downbeat.” But any well studied musician would have that toolset, not just drummers
@zwsh89 it's a struggle for me as its not natural to think that war where its second nature to Ed. Never lose that side of your mixing
I totally agree with you on Plugin Doctor. It gets stick for no reason... or, more accurately, from people who have an axe to grind about what it exposes about plugins. O yes, I agree about drum phase and sample packs too!!
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@@PaulThird ima gonna out-emoji you 👺🤔🤣
🤓😅😂😜🤷♂️🤣🤛🤜😓👋👀🙈👇☝️😳🤔😎🤞🤟❤️😢👍💪🙌📝🕳️😷😭
Keep on with kind of vids my dude 🤟
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Good stuff, Paul!! 🙂👍✌
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Could you please provide the UA-cam links which you are talking about in mentor section
You need to be more specific
From 15:19 to 15:59sec you have mentioned two engineers name…not able to find them …some more info of these artists would be appreciated
Emrah Celik (Mixyap) and Warren Huart (produce like a pro)
Thanks!
I got out of audio school two years ago. I too had high hopes. I currently teach guitar to beginners. Not where I saw myself two years later. Going to an engineers networking event in a few weeks though, fingers crossed that pays off with some new connections
I get the occasional mix to work on, and have done a few free lance podcasts in the mean time, but it’s not the same as working in a studio. I get a lot more work as a live engineer than I get anything related to console work. People always need someone to watch the faders at a live gig tho, so that’s been my main way of staying in the game. I’ve had some success recording the multitracks off the mixer and then offering the bands a fully mixed version later but live stage multitracks never come out the same so it’s not the best way to demonstrate what I could do for their studio recordings. But that’s me “playing the game”
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keep grinding!@@zwsh89
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Dear Paul, can you mention Amber's channel?
Amber?
emerichellik The mentor you mentioned at 15:20 @@PaulThird
@@PaulThird😂 ithink Emra or some thing like this name 🎉
Well if you speak Turkish I can share his channel but i have a feeling that may not be the case haha
@@PaulThird thank you anyway