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PLEASE SAVE US! Using backing tracks Live

kyral210

kyral210

Sep 14, 2007
1,966
1,661
UK
#1
Hey JMJ!

You have played with everyone worth playing with and must have picked up some knowledge of setup. My band uses Ableton Live running from a Mac Power Book as a backing track as we just cant find a drummer or a keyboardist. Despite state of the art equipment sound engineers always say our sound is 'thin'.

What can we do to get that backing track out (like your friends in NIN do night after night).


Thanks

Chris
 
#2
You need to make an honest assessment at the source as to the sound quality of your tracks as they are with no EQ or anything. Aside from that, experiment with gain structure (the mix within Live, the master output of Live, and the master volume of the Mac). Beyond that, it'll come down to the quality of your D/A...we use Apogee, sounds great. Something like that, or even something like an M-Audio interface, will dramatically improve the quality of your tracks over the standard Mac 1/8" output.

JMJ
 
#5
We are in the same boat as kyral210 as far as backing tracks are concerned; having depth and being able to cut through. All of our current backing tracks are on dvd (along with video that goes to projection screen and any video monitors in the venue). Always experimenting with different sounds and mixes to get it right. The next step is to incorporate the Firepod with either Final Cut or Vegas doing the video work.

All ideas and suggestions are very welcome!
 
#6
Beyond that, it'll come down to the quality of your D/A...we use Apogee, sounds great. Something like that, or even something like an M-Audio interface, will dramatically improve the quality of your tracks over the standard Mac 1/8" output
Click to expand...

Our guitarist has just gone out and purchased an M-Audio '[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]'. However I fear it is a mear input interface, and not an outboard preamp, which I think you were talking about before. However I am a bass player and not a sound engineer.
 
#7
Yeah, you need something with good sounding OUTPUT. If it has built-in preamps, that's great, you can use it for recording too. But it's the outputs, and their level of quality, that will help determine how the tracks will come out. Not entirely, but it will influence the sound to some extent.

As I said before, it's all going to come down to the depth, quality, and richness of your source material, more than anything.

For advice on interfaces, maybe go check out the "low end theory" discussion forum on Gearslutz.com.

Bet,
JMJ
 
#9
Kyral210:

I second everything said here, I have a band in a VERY similar situation and here is what we have found:

1. Gain structure amounts to a lot. Having the levels set up properly in Live (which is our DAW too) is the first thing. Then, having good (loud) levels on our soundcard goes a long way.

2. One thing not mentioned before that we have had good results with is - we use 32 Bit 192kHz source material for our Clips (obviously, we program all this ourselves, you couldn't buy loops like that). If you have the luxury to do that I would actually say that outputting at that resolution WILL add warmth and definition to your sound that rivals analog sources.

3. We always apply compression/limiting to Live's main buss and inform engineers of that so that they will not try to apply those effects over ours, thus giving us a very consistent sound at various venues. That is a principle that has helped out a lot - the more we control and the less random club sound guy does, the better we sound.

Hope that is helpful!
 

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