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Question about Spectal View
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Tomos
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 15:10
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I am constantly looking for ways to improve the overall balance and quality of my sound. I have spent some time this week examining mastered music in the spectral view of Cool Edit pro.
I looked at some extremely well mixed and mastered folk rock music which appeared to have loads of headroom, so nothing was squashed, a huge dynamic range. Although the classic waveform view showed the track wasn't rammed to the top, it also had a lot of valleys and peaks, however the spectral view
showed a completely flat top and even colour distribution.
http://tinyurl.com/2pcb7q
(Correct me if I'm wrong) Spectral analysers plot frequency against amplitude over time, so this means all the frequency's are a similar amplitude, despite rises and drops in instrument volume through the song.
Mastered dance music was obviously very near the maximum headroom, but the track also seemed 'hotter' the colours were deeper and more tightly packed. Perhaps because the song was longer?
http://tinyurl.com/23xmea
I compared this to a track that I had finished, compressed and maximised as best I could (having only my ears to trust and no mastering background)
The track sounded okay, punchy and balanced nicely, I tested it on numerous systems and I believe it held up pretty well to a professional releases.
However - checking the spectral view
http://tinyurl.com/2g9bkp
What the hell, peaks are crazy, the colour distribution is all over the place and the lines are distributed randomly.
I have to ask, are the well mastered tracks run through some sort of EQ system that levels things out. Because I don't see how an engineer can just use his ears to tweak a mix into a perfectly flat spectral view.
Is it my mix that's bouncing all over the place without me knowing? To me it sounds good.
Towards the end of finishing a piece of music I often do some compression and maximise myself to kind of hear how the engineer might finish the track, this way I can see what really sticks out in my mix, so I can adjust it and present the real engineer with a better mixed track.
I don't claim to be a mastering engineer, but I would like to achieve the best mix I possible can. Am I being too excessive or can I just use my ears to judge a good mix and do the best I can and leave the rest of the polish to the mastering stage?
How close do your mixes look in spectral view to a finished product?
Would dividing sounds into compression groups help balance the frequency range? |
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makus
Overdream
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 15:14
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Tomos
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 15:27
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I don't know if I should just post up large clips of other peoples music. The first was
Crosby Stills and Nash - Lay Me Down.
(Which sounds equally good on Vinyl)
The Psy track was one of our own forums artists - Colin OOOD, and anything off the We are Free album, which is one of the best mastered albums I've heard in electronic music. |
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Tomos
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 15:55
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Oops, spelt Spectral wrong in the title. |
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makus
Overdream
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 15:57
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i think they dont mind of a 1 min 128 kbps mp3 clip, 'coz you can easyly find such clips at any online stores (saikosounds offer even 4min clips)
its hard to say anything just looking on the graph without hearing the actual sound.
www.overdreamstudio.com |
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shachar
Basic
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 17:11
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first of all, you can make the mix perfectly balanced.
you dont have to use just your ears...you can use analyzer during the mix process.
its a long process to learn the "fullness"
you have to know every part and band of the mix.
and offcourse about the art of mixing itself.
the master can equalize & balance your mix but first its important to fix those clips between the parts and fill the "holes".
looks like you lack low-mids in the mix where alot of "meat" is.
alot of un-necessary high end is appear.
interesting, the folk song is High-cutted on 16KHZ,
but seems like it sound really nice and warm..
if you see the lower bottom of the spectrum it got really nice low to low mids. better than the over crushed, loud, dance track..
Master engineers use Eq almost every time they master a track. its my opinion tho and not google fact.
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makus
Overdream
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 18:09
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Speakafreaka
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 18:26
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I reckon you have a hat on something will lots of top end - its interesting if that its not present in one part of the track - this implies that something is coming in at some point with all that hi energy
Use Span to go through your percs and check to see what your percussive elements are doing. LP anything over 18khz maybe (obviously this depends on how it sounds, but recently, I've been LPing *everything* very high up - there is a definite sweet spot to each sound!)
Either that or LP the track
As for the troughs... maybe they have more complicated high percussion parts then you, or use a lot of delay or reverb on them? All of those solutions would fill out the uppers.
I don't really think its a major issue though.
One minor thing, the high end sounds seem to be less bright (ie have less volume) then the rest of the mix, so you might want to have a look at that.
Hope this helps - of course, without hearing YOUR clip, its very hard to give precise advice.
.
http://www.soundcloud.com/speakafreaka |
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Spindrift
Spindrift
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 19:02
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I would try to get a more usable tool for analysing tracks in.
It's very hard to get any kind of decent view of the spectral content of the tracks in those images.
You do get a rough idea about the treble, but everything below 2k is hard to get any idea about, at least for me...I have no idea how shachar can come to any conclusions about the low mid.
It's not really that important to graph the response over time, and much more useful to get a more detailed picture of the average and peaks values overall.
If you can run the tracks through span or PAZ it would be a lot easier to spot where the issues could be.
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Tomos
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 19:38
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Thanks guys.
I completely understand there is not much information to be gained from this view of tracks other thanthey are well mixed and mastered I do use span to check things while making.
The low mids seem to be an issue for me because I think thats where the most masking and sound clash occurs.. everything element fundamentally begins or has energy in that part, and I always seem to HP it there and I think it takes a lot of meat out of the sounds.
I will check my percussion for highs. Perhaps I think it sounds louder because there is a lot of high frequency content, if I LP it, I could probably bring it up more in volume.
I will post a clip anywhere when I'm a bit more happy with it. |
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Speakafreaka
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 19:46
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If you find you are having issues getting the low mids to sit right in the mix, then that suggests your issues are tied into the kick and the bass sounds in your mix, IMO.
What kind of freqs are you HPing parts at would you say, typically?
.
http://www.soundcloud.com/speakafreaka |
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Colin OOOD
Moderator
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 19:47
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Quote:
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On 2008-01-23 19:02, Spindrift wrote:
I would try to get a more usable tool for analysing tracks in.
It's very hard to get any kind of decent view of the spectral content of the tracks in those images.
You do get a rough idea about the treble, but everything below 2k is hard to get any idea about, at least for me...I have no idea how shachar can come to any conclusions about the low mid.
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+1
You're not really going to get a decent idea of the spectral balance of the tracks from looking at the whole thing crammed into one screen; it would be more informative if you chose eg. 2 minutes of the peak of each track and compared them so the horizontal scale was the same for each track. It looks to me as if the spectrogram is set up not to show frequencies with an amplitude lower than a certain level, which will give an inaccurate view of the highs, for one, and my preferred colour-scheme for spectrograms is one colour (generally yellow) fading from black at -96dB to full saturation at whatever amplitude the loudest frequency hits; this way you get a full gradation of shade over the whole dynamic range of the track. Also a logarythmic frequency scaling would be much more informative as the bass is totally crammed into the bottom few mm of the graph (the first frequency scale marking is 2KHz, ffs!), and the highs spread out in a way that does not relate to the way we hear things.
PS. Was it The Humming? 
PPS. Sachar - lol
Mastering - http://mastering.OOOD.net :: www.is.gd/mastering
OOOD 5th album 'You Think You Are' - www.is.gd/tobuyoood :: www.OOOD.net
www.facebook.com/OOOD.music :: www.soundcloud.com/oood
Contact for bookings/mastering - colin@oood.net |
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Tomos
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jan 23, 2008 21:08
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Of course, I didn't mean to say I use the spectral view of Cool Edit as an everyday tool, just as a way of observing how tracks looked overall. It takes 10 seconds to analyse the track, so its not even useful as a real-time view.
Thanks for the colour tips Colin, very useful and the settings you suggested are quite similar to what I have set up in Spectralab which is a far more useful analyser.
Although right now I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at and how I should go about implementing what I observe into making better mixes. I think I'm on the very bottom rung of the understanding of visual analysis. But I think my ears are reaching their limit, and the next step is learning to look at things differently. Any advice there is appreciated.
And no, it wasn't The Humming, that isn't on that album. 
It was.. Bubbles of Nothing.
Quote:
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On 2008-01-23 19:46, Speakafreaka wrote:
If you find you are having issues getting the low mids to sit right in the mix, then that suggests your issues are tied into the kick and the bass sounds in your mix, IMO.
What kind of freqs are you HPing parts at would you say, typically?
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Well, having gone back to this track and moved some of the high passes lower (previously above 200-300hz) sounds are a little bit more defined and they don't seem to have interfered with the very low bass.
I also took your suggestion and did low pass on a percussion group as an experiment to remove high frequency peaks and did my usual job on the track and it now looks like this:
http://tinyurl.com/ywg9vq
And seems to sound much more together!
Yay, looks like I've taken a tiny step forward.
Although why there seems to be a dent running through the track now around 13k is weird.
Perhaps a track with phase error? |
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Colin OOOD
Moderator
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Posted : Jan 24, 2008 02:12
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Quote:
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On 2008-01-23 21:08, Tomos wrote:
Thanks for the colour tips Colin, very useful and the settings you suggested are quite similar to what I have set up in Spectralab which is a far more useful analyser.
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Indeed, been reliant on this software for quite a few years now 
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And no, it wasn't The Humming, that isn't on that album.
It was.. Bubbles of Nothing.
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Damn, too many albums with 'Free' in their name... Glad you liked the mastering though, did it myself.
I find the specrum analyser in Spectralab more useful for production than the spectrograph as it seems to me to be more accurate, especially with the restriction on the size of the spectrograph window... my personal tips for using a spectrum analyser would be as follows (of course your own production style may mean that not all of these apply):
I'd strongly suggest that you don't use PAZ, as it's shit, or anything that imposes a 'curve' on the display like Span or GlissEQ do; you want to see what's coming out of your master buss, not what the software thinks you're hearing. Your ears can take care of the sound; let your eyes look at the same information. My rule of thumb with regards to full mixes (as opposed to individual sounds) is to use the analyser sparingly until you've finished the track and are pretty happy with it, and then use it to confirm or add more detail to what you hear: when you play the tune back you should have - in general - a reasonably straight line between about 200Hz and 20KHz, with a significant bass hump below that. Assuming you know how to EQ your sounds, whether that line angles down to the right or is fairly horizontal will be down to your monitors and room, if you're referencing your production with released tracks, and as long as your mix is 'internally consistent' the degree of slope is relatively irrelevant (up to a point) as it is easily dealt with in post-production. Lead sounds should poke above this notional line, but not too much. I aim to get the fundamental and first partial of the bass sound just a tad lower in level than the loudest part of the bottom of the kickdrum; the next few partials should be clearly defined in the area between 100 and 250Hz, with relatively little interference from other sounds in at least the lower part of this area (but don't make things too weedy!). When soloing the kick and bass together, checking that they both have a similar spectral 'shape' will be a good pointer to the way they complement each other. Muting the kick and bass should leave a spectrum with zero action from DC to 50 or 60Hz.
All these details will have their equivalent manifestation in the spectragraph.
Hope this helps Mastering - http://mastering.OOOD.net :: www.is.gd/mastering
OOOD 5th album 'You Think You Are' - www.is.gd/tobuyoood :: www.OOOD.net
www.facebook.com/OOOD.music :: www.soundcloud.com/oood
Contact for bookings/mastering - colin@oood.net |
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LS.
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Jan 24, 2008 13:00
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Very interesting topic.
[/quote]
you want to see what's coming out of your master buss, not what the software thinks you're hearing. Your ears can take care of the sound; let your eyes look at the same information.
when you play the tune back you should have - in general - a reasonably straight line between about 200Hz and 20KHz, with a significant bass hump below that. Assuming you know how to EQ your sounds, whether that line angles down to the right or is fairly horizontal will be down to your monitors and room, if you're referencing your production with released tracks, and as long as your mix is 'internally consistent' the degree of slope is relatively irrelevant (up to a point) as it is easily dealt with in post-production.
[/quote]
Colin, is their any software that you know about or have heard about that might be able to do the same thing but is for MAC AU?
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