Where Should You Use Saturation in Your Mix? + Stereo Saturation Bass Trick
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- Опубліковано 1 лип 2024
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In this video, I delve into the intricacies of using saturation in sound design and mixing, particularly focusing on bass-heavy electronic music within Ableton Live 12. I showcase a drum and bass track I co-produced, emphasizing how saturation aids in achieving loudness without heavy reliance on limiting during mastering.
I highlight the importance of avoiding saturation on the master track due to intermodulation issues, instead preferring to apply it on individual sound tracks, submixes, and sparingly on the master.
I demonstrate my approach to applying saturation to individual bass sounds using Ableton Live's "Roar" saturation device. I explain the significance of enabling oversampling to prevent aliasing distortion and showcase various saturation algorithms available in Roar, such as soft, digital clip, diode clipper, tube, rectifier, polynomial, among others.
I explain my method of dialing in saturation settings while maintaining a balance between dry and wet signals, avoiding excessive stereo widening in the low end, and using multi-band mode to control saturation on different frequency ranges.
I touch upon modulation options within Roar, demonstrating how to use LFOs to modulate parameters like tone to add movement and interest to the sound.
Additionally, I share some practical tips for managing saturation levels, such as using peak level meters to ensure consistency in perceived loudness before and after applying saturation.
Finally, I express excitement about the versatility of the Roar device and encourage viewers to experiment with its features in their own projects.
★ SKIP TO SOMETHIN’ ★
0:00 Intro
0:22 Demo Song
2:32 Where Do You Use Saturation in a Mix?
5:29 How to Saturate a DnB Bass Stab
8:05 Introducing Roar - The New Ableton Live 12 Saturator
10:04 How to Gain Stage Correctly with Saturation
11:43 Exploring Different Saturation Styles
13:25 How and Why to Use Audio Effect Racks with Stereo Saturation
15:40 Why I Layer in Saturation in Parallel
17:40 Adding Modulation for Enhanced Stereo Width
20:51 Keeping the Low End Focus with Multi-Band Mode
23:01 Outro & What to Watch Next
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One point of clarification. In the section where I'm talking about gain staging down after saturation, it's important to match perceived loudness. I showed peak level in the LEVELS plugin, but in fact a saturator will shave off peak level while increasing perceived loudness, so it's a better idea to match loudness by ear in this case. If you just use peak level, then the post-saturation signal will sound way louder even through peak level may be lower. Cheers! ua-cam.com/video/WB7Tk5McHtM/v-deo.html
Respect
Nice! Roar is definitely my most used Live device since 12. Those modulation parameters are astounding along side those routing options (M/S, Multiband..). Super glad Ableton upped their Saturation game. My fav Saturator for mixing use-cases is Wavesfactory Spectre.
Totally agree! I love Roar. I wish Spectre had a few more features like a spectrum, AB compare and undo.
Woohoo fresh Warp Academy. Thanks so much man! Excellent stuff. I really like the idea of pushing the loudness before the limiter. Appreciate the work as always mate, and thank you for the free template!
Happy to help! Thanks for watching and commenting, and I hope you enjoy the template. Subscribe the channel and stay in touch.
Hi, old school engineer here. Are you saying that up until the digital age (mid-90's and beyond) when records were made on tape on top of tape on top of tape (24 track 2" to 1/4" mix to 1/2" master, etc) that it was bad (due to intermodulated distortion) because the saturation was done on the mix/master tapes in at least 2 generations? I like setting up my mixes to emulate tape, then analog console non-linearities, then tape again to get that old school saturation effect.
Hey hey. Thanks for the question. I'll admit that tape stuff was way before my time, so I'm just theorizing. The concept is that anything that generates harmonics / distortion / saturation can intermodulate. The big question is, can you hear it, and if you can, does it sound bad to you?
I'd run a test by playing 2 pure sine wave tones separately into a tape emulation effect, and then bussing them together and repeating the test. Listen for the intermodulation.
A ton of records were made on tape, and recording tape onto tape onto tape, so I'm sure you can get away with it. It's just a matter of if you like the sound. Don't be afraid to try it, just be aware of what may potentially happen. Hope that helps. Cheers!
@@warpacademy thank you, great work you're doing on your channel!
My pleasure. And thanks for the visit!
Again, thank you! I've was using mid side splitters for a lot of my distortion processing especially if not using a dedicated sub channel. i didn't realize roar even had a ms mode. i free trialed black box ms after watching your video with it and MAN does it sound good! i wish they would standardize the modulation between the devices.
You're most welcome. Yeah M/S routings can be neat. One big point here is that side channel processing can only work with what's there. It cannot create side information. This technique is a different animal because it creates side information. If you wanted to, you could then process it with a M/S routing downstream, but in this case it's wide enough. Other things that create side information are chorus, Haas delay, stereoize plugins like NUGEN Stereoizer, Haaze, or iZotope Ozone Imager etc. All super fun stuff to play with. All the best with your music!
@@warpacademy gotcha. another tool that isnt a hammer to add to my belt. i just snagged your template its similar to what i was using minus a few limiters haha but laid out way more intelligently. having the sidechain triggers right in the drum machine is a forehead slapping moment for me. still digging through it like a kid with a limitless credit card in a candy store
Right on. Yeah the template changes over time. I update it regularly as I find new and better ways of working. This is the current state and it's been a big evolution over the last 10 years or so. Enjoy!
@@warpacademy i appreciate how everything is summed. i was doing it from very generalized instrument groups into main and bass outputs then summing those and sending to premaster. having it all in one place for mixing down the line from the groups is a huge workflow speed increase and way smarter. i was using white noise on audio for sc triggers and just linking the channel to whatever myu kick was on for editing. now i just feel silly. . this is like the dif between a fingerpainting of a template and something youd see in a museum.
Glad you're enjoying it. A lot of this type of routing I learned from engineers like Luca Pretolesi. Having a flexible but powerful sub-mixing structure allows for layers of control. It also gives you the ability to do stem mixes easily if you don't want to, or can't, dig further into the mix. Cheers!
about measuring at peak levels: i disagree in a way that the loudness might be different from the looks of the peaks, especially if using saturation
Totally hear you on this. Did you see the pinned comment where I addressed that? I misspoke in the video and corrected myself afterwards to say to adjust to perceived loudness and not peak level so you’re not experiencing a psychoacoustic loudness jump that would bias you.
Good catch! Because in this example the peak level was significantly reduced while sounding louder.
@@warpacademy that was just a comment on my behalf, i did not read anything below the video prior to writing. you know what you do, and its normal to misspeak smtmes
gonna build this rack ! cool
Right on. Let me know how it turns out. Cheers!
Love the content but can you turn down the lows a little bit in your mic recordings? Your narration is very boomy, it distracts from what your doing in the daw
Noted. Thanks for the feedback.
@@warpacademy of course!