Some questions about using Reaper, Mixing, and Mastering

[BonesawMcgraw13]

First things first I'm a bit leery on what the term "mastering" actually means. Is it just making sure your master track doesn't clip while keeping all the tracks evenly mixed?

Over the past few days I've been working on some live multi-tracks from rehearsal using reaper. I've been really happy with the results thus far but I'm still having a couple of issues with various aspects of the recording. I've probably spent more than 20 hours on just one track and it sounds a lot better than when I started but there are some things I think could still be a little better, I'm just not quite sure how to go about it. I'd say at least half of those hours were spent just learning the software since before last Friday I had never used reaper before.

The main thing I'm having issues with is making the vocals sound good with everything else. It seems like no matter what I do the vocals seem more like something that was thrown on top of the rest of the mix as opposed to being a part of it. That's the best way I can describe it.

At first they seemed to quiet when I would render it to mp3. In reaper they sound louder but the second everything is rendered it gets quieter. No other track in the recording seems to be doing this.

At first the vocals didn't sound great to me either but I was able to fix that. I added two layers of 4 band compression to the vocals as well as 100% saturation and a little bit of EQ. I think I used a volume adjustment plugin to bring the vocals up a bit as well. I also added a gate to this track and then created an envelope for the threshold so that I could raise it up while he's not doing anything and lower it when they come back in. The main reason for this was that if i kept it at a point where it was just right for the vocals the threshold was so low that the snare and sometimes the cymbals would engage it. If I set it it high enough to avoid this, sometimes the vocals wouldn't engage it until partway through the lines. I had originally just used a mute envelope and muted the vocals while there wasn't any but this made it sound a bit too choppy for my taste. The gate plus threshold envelope seemed to smooth that out.

For context, these are death metal vocals and all of those things except for the volume adjustment plugin and gate were suggestions I found in other forums related to mixing death metal vocals. It's just occurred to me as I'm typing this that taking out the volume adjustment might fix my issue since when I first added that in I wasn't using saturation yet and adding that made it sound a lot better and a bit louder as well. So maybe that extra volume adjustment is just a little overkill at this point. Any other suggestions of things I can do to play with the vocals would be greatly appreciated.

I used gates on all of the drum mics as well which I believe is pretty standard practice. For the drums I'm using eight mics. I'm using two Shure KSM137's as overheads, A sennheiser e602 for the kick, a shure PG56 for each of the toms, and a shure beta 57 on both the snare and hi hat. I've got a low cut on the overhead to try to pick up mostly cymbals. These are the only mics I didn't gate since the snare would always set it off no matter how high I set the threshold. I used presets for the EQ on most these and feel like I've gotten a pretty good mix for the drums. I had the biggest issue with the kick drum while mixing but finally smoothed that out after playing with a 4 parametric for a while.

I'm using a shure SM 57 on each guitar cab. The bass is two tracks. One being a direct out of my ampeg SCR-DI and the other being a shure MD-421 on my cab. I had little to trouble mixing these tracks. I used a blend of my two signals to find something I was happy with and just added a little bit of compression and EQ on the guitars.

As I said the biggest issue I've had is getting the vocals right. He's using a shure beta 58 but maybe a lower quality mic would be better for these types of vocals. Also his high end vocals tend to be louder than anything he does in the low to mid range. I was able to mostly fix this using a volume envelope but still haven't been able to get them to sit well in the mix. Either way it's a lot better than it was to start, just not perfect.

For reference here are my two most recent renderings of the project. The main difference between them being that the second one had a little more fine tuning on the vocal volume envelope and the master volume was set a little lower. I can't decided which one I prefer. Any feedback on which one sounds better and what I could do to make it sound better than it does not would be greatly appreciated. Sorry If this post is a bit long winded. I may have gone a bit overboard trying to get all the info out. I have a tendency to do that.

here are the links to the songs

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[BonesawMcgraw13]

I just remembered my other question. When my drummer listened to the track he said that he thought it needed more low end. I sort of took this with a grain of salt because he listened to the track through the speaker on his phone. I mixed it using a pair of AT headphones and thought it sounded fine as far as that goes. This brings me to my question. Is it common practice to add more EQ to the master track before rendering or do you just EQ all of the various tracks to sit well in the mix in their respective band?

 

[lakefx]

There's a lot that could be going on here. My first guess would be that your singer isn't staying in the same place at the same distance and angle from the mic.

Read this thread on the Reaper forums. Start at the beginning and read all the way through. This is one of the best resources on all aspects of making a recording that I have ever seen.
Why do your recordings sound like ass? - Cockos Confederated Forums

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

I know that he tends to move around while rehearsing and when we're playing live it doesn't seem to cause any problems. It does however make it fairly difficult when editing the recordings. I may be able to fix it by doing something as simple as rerecording the vocal tracks over what I already have while he stays stationary.

I'll read that thread as soon as I have a chance. I want to learn as much about all this as possible because ultimately I'd like to be able to produce recordings for my band where everything is recorded separately. It's just more time consuming than recording the entire rehearsal and editing the best takes.

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

I've also considered switching him to a different mic such as a PG48 or SM58 instead of using the beta58. I don't know if this is true for that mic but I know that the Beta57 will pick up more high end than the SM57. If that stands true for the 58 then maybe switching his mic would alleviate some the of the variations in volume since it's his highs that tend to be louder.

 

[lakefx]

If you're rerecording the vocals and he still moves around, then it won't fix the issue. Using a mic with a wider pickup pattern will help, but you can't do that with the whole band playing without getting a lot of bleed through the vocal mic. The reason it doesn't matter as much if he moves around live is because there's essentially multiple stages of compression from speakers, reflection off walls, and the way hearing works at high volume.

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

Yea that makes total sense. Maybe I just tell him not to move as much if we're trying to get a good live take of a song I haven't mixed yet. Once I have a decent live take of each song from our set list I won't be worrying as much about working with live recordings unless we write new material. Once I have a decent live cut of each song I'm going to be moving into doing them more studio style. I'm sure once I have everything isolated it'll make it easier to work with.

 

[silky smoove]

First things first I'm a bit leery on what the term "mastering" actually means. Is it just making sure your master track doesn't clip while keeping all the tracks evenly mixed?

Mastering is what happens after you mix. It's essentially another layer of processing that's applied to the stereo/surround mixdown after the fact. Think of mastering as the forest, and mixing as the trees. Mastering is where you make big picture decisions, not solve individual problems. To correctly master takes years of experience and a very well thought out facility. Lots of people get by doing it themselves, but a truly great mastering engineer can transform your mix. The simplest way to do it is just to apply a bunch of processing on your 2buss while still in the mix phase (near or at the end preferably). You can always just remove that processing without having done anything destructive.

It seems like no matter what I do the vocals seem more like something that was thrown on top of the rest of the mix as opposed to being a part of it.

I find this to be a common problem. Assuming you have your dynamics and EQ sorted out; Reverb and delay (use only as much as is absolutely needed) along with distortion (when applicable) are your friends in this regard. If you haven't got your dynamics and EQ sorted out it's likely that you've pushed the vocal too loud over the mix which is giving you the sensation that it's sort of floating on top.

At first they seemed to quiet when I would render it to mp3. In reaper they sound louder but the second everything is rendered it gets quieter.

Do you have processing on the vocal track(s) or possibly the 2buss that get bypassed when rendering? I'm not a Reaper guy, but I've seen this type of behavior in other DAWs as an option to get an unprocessed bounce. If that's not the case and what you render is different from what's living in the DAW, you've got a serious problem. If you don't know what the output will be, how can you make accurate mix decisions?

I also added a gate to this track and then created an envelope for the threshold so that I could raise it up while he's not doing anything and lower it when they come back in. The main reason for this was that if i kept it at a point where it was just right for the vocals the threshold was so low that the snare and sometimes the cymbals would engage it.

Why do you have snare and cymbal information on a vocal track? Did you track everything together as a band and the snare and cymbal sounds are from mic bleed?

I used gates on all of the drum mics as well which I believe is pretty standard practice.

It's a standard practice if what you're after is a gated drum sound. It's not a hard and fast rule by any means.

He's using a shure beta 58 but maybe a lower quality mic would be better for these types of vocals. Also his high end vocals tend to be louder than anything he does in the low to mid range.

The high end popping out more than the lower content might be a factor of mic choice. The Shure Beta stuff tends to be pretty bright through the upper midrange. It's likely peaking around the top of his vocal range. In general lower vocals don't cut as hard as higher ones.

I just remembered my other question. When my drummer listened to the track he said that he thought it needed more low end. I sort of took this with a grain of salt because he listened to the track through the speaker on his phone.

Ignore that request. Phone speakers are great for checking phase coherency in mono and reverb placement, but are otherwise pretty useless.

This brings me to my question. Is it common practice to add more EQ to the master track before rendering or do you just EQ all of the various tracks to sit well in the mix in their respective band?

Either is fine as long as it's the right tool for the job. They behave very differently and have consequences depending on independent track level as well as mix level. If you don't have much headroom left on your 2buss then you shouldn't add any low end there or you'll potentially push yourself into clipping. If you've got the room and want the entire mix, not just a particular element to have more low end, go for it. It may or may not work.

Maybe I just tell him not to move as much if we're trying to get a good live take of a song I haven't mixed yet.

If he's insistent on moving around a lot while tracking, take the mic off the stand and have him hold it. Any variety of 58 works well for this. It's not ideal, but it's better than having his proximity and axial relationship to the mic capsule change throughout the take. If he's a chronic mic cupper give him something with a closed back like a D112. Once again it's a case of forgetting about what's ideal and making the best of a bad situation. You can cup a D112 all you want while thrashing around and you'll get the same result as standing in front of it. You'll have hyped lows and highs with a dip in the mids, but that's better than being close, on-axis, far away, off-axis, somewhere in between, back to close, too close, way too far, way off axis, etc.

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

Thanks for the detailed response, I'm pretty new to this. I used to use Sony acid a bit about 5 years ago but it was mostly manipulating loops and samples and I didn't really ever record any thing. So even though i have a very small bit of experience I'm very new to recording altogether. It started as me just setting up a couple of compression mics in our practice space and running that into a solid state recorder just to get something to practice with. I have access to a lot of gear I otherwise could never afford because of my work so that quickly evolved into miking everything and running into a digital console then into the same recorder. Once I got the hang of digital boards that evolved into where I am now.

The simplest way to do it is just to apply a bunch of processing on your 2buss while still in the mix phase (near or at the end preferably). You can always just remove that processing without having done anything destructive.

I get the analogy about mastering and that makes sense but I'm not sure what this 2buss you mentioned is. Maybe it's different depending on what software you're using but I haven't noticed anything like that in reaper. Unless I'm missing something I have all of my normal tracks and then a master track that i can add more dynamics and EQ to.

Why do you have snare and cymbal information on a vocal track? Did you track everything together as a band and the snare and cymbal sounds are from mic bleed?

Yea it's from mic bleed. We have rehearsal every week and I just set everything to record while we're doing that so his vocal mic picks up a decent amount of other stuff but mainly those two things. That's the main reason I've been using gates on the drums as well. I imagine that as long as drums are the only thing your recording mic bleed within the drums aren't as big a deal so gating is a preference.

Ignore that request.

My thoughts exactly. I was trying to get feedback but I'll wait until he listens to it on something a bit more substantial to take it into consideration. Very few things sound good through a cellphone speaker even when mixed and mastered well.

Do you have processing on the vocal track(s) or possibly the 2buss that get bypassed when rendering? I'm not a Reaper guy, but I've seen this type of behavior in other DAWs as an option to get an unprocessed bounce.

If you don't know what the output will be, how can you make accurate mix decisions?

I'll look into the preferences when I get home and see if there's anything i can change that might be affecting this. I'm still not sure about the 2buss thing so that could be it. And yea that's why I've rendered something like 15 versions of this track. Most of them are minor changes I made to the vocals and rendered to see how it affected it. I have to be missing something. It's very time consuming to keep making a few changes and rendering it to see if it worked.

If he's insistent on moving around a lot while tracking, take the mic off the stand and have him hold it.

He does usually hold the mic more so than use his stand I think he just moves it further away from his face sometimes. Honestly it's hard to know exactly what he's doing because I'm playing too and I'm not watching him super closely. I'll just tell him to try and be more consistent with where he holds it. That or I can have him track vocals again later if it continues to be an issue and/or takes the fun out of rehearsal for him. We work together and all of the equipment is at my work as well so it wouldn't be a huge deal at all to stay a little late after work once of twice and retrack some of the vocals.

Again thanks for the response. This all helps a lot with trying to figure all this stuff out. I'll probably look into the preferences when I get home and see if there's something I'm missing in regards to the 2buss. I've never even seen that in there to be honest but it's entirely possible I'm just missing it considering I downloaded this software literally a week ago.

 

[lakefx]

The 2bus is the master L/R. In Reaper it defaults to the left hand side of the mixer window.

Reaper does not bypass plug-ins when rendering by default, so that shouldn't be an issue. The levels changing between mix and render is not something I have ever encountered and I've been using Reaper for a few years now.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you have a lot of bleed from loud bass or guitars in the drum mics, then gating the mics may not produce the results you want. When the drum is hit, it opens the gate. If there is a lot of bleed, this then increases the level of all of that other stuff as long as the gate is open, which can mess with the mix during that time. Gating close miced drums is standard to cut down the duration of the ringing and tighten up the sound. This is important for live sound to keep the mix clean. When recording, I get much better results by turning down the amps and using the Glynn Johns method for the drums. The drums then require minimal processing, which helps keep weird frequency spikes and interaction with other instruments to a minimum.

 

[ddnidd1]

In Reaper the 2buss is the track labeled 'Master'.

By default the individual instrument tracks are fed to the Master.

On the 'Rendering' page the 'source' should be 'master mix' and the 'bounds' should be 'entire mix'.

If you Google questions for Reaper there are an awful lot of information and videos online, plus the Reaper Forum is a gold mine of information.

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

One thing to keep in mind is that if you have a lot of bleed from loud bass or guitars in the drum mics, then gating the mics may not produce the results you want. When the drum is hit, it opens the gate. If there is a lot of bleed, this then increases the level of all of that other stuff as long as the gate is open, which can mess with the mix during that time.

Fortunately it's not an insane amount of bleed through on the drum mics from the bass or guitars. You can hear it ever so slightly but not so much that it is noticeably louder when the gate opens. Aside from the overheads most of the mics aren't really facing the guitars or bass either which may be why it's not a huge problem.

In Reaper the 2buss is the track labeled 'Master'.

That would explain why I've never seen it. I'll check the next time I render what it is set to and see if there might be something I missed that could fix this.

 

[silky smoove]

@lakefx and @ddnidd1 both covered it already, but 2buss is the master output buss, stereo output buss, etc. It's typically the last thing your individual signals go through before they go through a DA conversion stage. I'm a Logic guy and that's not even what it's called in that environment. I'm not sure where I picked up the term, but it's what I always say when I'm describing it. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[rufus.K]

I use Sound Forge in tandem with Reaper for individual tracks that need more detail. Also for quasi mastering after 2track bounce. Mostly for companding.

 

[ddnidd1]

That would explain why I've never seen it. I'll check the next time I render what it is set to and see if there might be something I missed that could fix this.

No. The Master track is the left most track on Reaper by Default. It should always be there.

The Render settings have nothing to do with being able to see the Master track. Unless you relabeled it, but it should still be the Master/2buss.

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

No. The Master track is the left most track on Reaper by Default. It should always be there.

I just meant that's why I'd never seen anything that says 2buss. I checked my rendering preferences and it says the source is the main mix and the bounds are the entire project which I think is the same as what you meant because it doesn't give me that option for "entire mix".

I've got another question. On all of the renderings I've done thus far I've been pretty happy with everything except for the vocals which have been giving me so much trouble. However, in order to get the kick drum to a level where it can be heard well I've brought it up to a point where it will clip occasionally but not constantly. I brought down the master so that it doesn't actually clip and when I render to mp3 it doesn't clip or anything. Should I be worried about this? Should I be trying to use more processing on the kick in order for it be better heard without clipping or is it not really any issue as long as my master isn't?

 

[ddnidd1]

You're correct - I should have said Entire Project.

Also on the Reaper site there is a free User Guide and tons of tutorial videos sorted by topic.

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

Yea I've been perusing the manual. That's how I actually figured out how to use envelopes and all that. It's just hard to find exactly what you're looking for all the time since the thing is like 450 pages. I'm sure the longer I use it the more I'll get the hang of it. I'm doing ok considering I've only had it about a week. Part of that was due to the long weekend and the old lady being out of town for the week.

I still can't figure out the variation in volume in the project versus what's been rendered. Even now to vocals are definitely quieter on the rendering than in the project and I can't for the life of me figure out why. It's the only track that seems to be doing that.

 

[BAG]

Read this thread on the Reaper forums. Start at the beginning and read all the way through. This is one of the best resources on all aspects of making a recording that I have ever seen.
Why do your recordings sound like ass? - Cockos Confederated Forums

Even if it doesn't help your current issues, I would recommend that you read the link. Such good information with the most common theme being "trust your ears".

 

[gjohnson441496]

I just remembered my other question. When my drummer listened to the track he said that he thought it needed more low end. I sort of took this with a grain of salt because he listened to the track through the speaker on his phone. I mixed it using a pair of AT headphones and thought it sounded fine as far as that goes. This brings me to my question. Is it common practice to add more EQ to the master track before rendering or do you just EQ all of the various tracks to sit well in the mix in their respective band?

imo It needs more bass... it could certainly use more bottom end, more depth, more deep pounding. Besides the vocal being over the top of everything else, it's clear as a bell. It just needs more bottom end.