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[Pudenfuhrer]

Digitalsin are a two piece industrial outfit

We are now finishing tracks for releasing on an EP in July- the first of which is available for download here

Keep an eye out for us on gig rosters late July

Edit - check out myspace if you like us and add friend by all means

[Stripey]

Hrmm. Interesting track ("digitalis"), just let down by poor production.

Originally Posted by Pudenfuhrer

Digitalsin are a two piece industrial outfit

We are now finishing tracks for releasing on an EP in July- the first of which is available for download here

Keep an eye out for us on gig rosters late July

Edit - check out myspace if you like us and add friend by all means

[Pudenfuhrer]

Hmm - what production issues do you notice?- what speakers are you using? -what seems too high or low?

[Stripey]

Originally Posted by Pudenfuhrer

Hmm - what production issues do you notice?- what speakers are you using? -what seems too high or low?

The overall volume is pretty quiet. There isn't a lot of percussive punch in the drums, they are all mids, lacking low end punch and high end sparkle and snare crack.
That single note piano line that comes in, the piano sound itself is horribly dry, and would probably benefit from at least some sustain and maybe some reverb to give it some character.
In terms of the overall mix, it doesn't sound like each element has it's own space to breathe, so the result is a muddy frequency smear lacking in dynamic range, and probably explains why the overall volume is that quiet.

It's a cool track anyway, it could just sound a hell of a lot better if it was mixed nicely. What software do you use?

[Pudenfuhrer]

Just to check- you listened all the way through? Its louder in some parts than in others, I'm not being silly here but I've posted snap gut feelings before grasping a track properly. Also thanks for qualifying your post.
Ok.. I'm not really sure about sustaining the piano it should be fairly clean and sound a little dramatic and scattered, not a wash of notes- and its actually a fairly meaty piano - maybe I should have played that phrase an octave lower?
The drums pass through tight distortion filters, I must admit I'm off to record drum hits to build up a bank of samples for future tracks next week- they are not supposed to sound clean however -, they are layered as follows: a fairly mid-bass distorted track that opens; a mildly reverberated track to pull up the snare and create a panning dynamic just prior and troughout the first 'heavy bit'; one thick flanged sound that appears after that; and an echoed track that creates the trippy drums later in the track. The drums have been scooped somewhat to create presence - each layer I'm trying to bring up different parts more than others.
I am using Homestudio for what its worth (not a lot its a budget solution). Furthermore I'm using a pair of linear studio monitors- there is plenty of low frequency in this track, particularily from the drums later on - as a guitarist I have to be careful not to create too much guitar presence and I also take it easy on 'scooping' the sound as much as possible because most people have an EQ loudness that they (knowingly or not) apply. I used a light mix compressor on the master track and I could push this a lot further - in fact there is still a fair bit of room before clipping anyway I think - to be honest we were still noodling the track a bit and I mixed it down with that spare room left. I will push that a bit as you say, thanks for pointing that out.
The track does sound full to me, with to my ears, plenty of dynamic range for the most part- I take on board what you have said and will no doubt listen and tweak it later - but I genuinely feel that most of your points might be subjective and you might basically just not like my production style! Thats fine of course!
Could I also ask what sort of things you like, musically, and what type of production you aspire to on a record? Maybe plug whatever bands or work you have done? You know what you are talking about as these are issues that I am aware of, entering instuments as continual overdubs - each instrument sounding fine on its own but together they are all trying to conquer the same frequency area. To solve these problems I had used left/right seperation and EQing and simply recording differently to create dynamic space- as you say - to breathe.
Personally (I think you can tell easy enough) I'm after a nin -eque sound, maybe some of Rammsteins grandure and meaty guitar feel? That was the intention I think, probably quite subconcious most of the time.

edit: i made some changes to improve the drum dynamics- cheers for the advice
p

[Stripey]

Originally Posted by Pudenfuhrer

The drums pass through tight distortion filters, I must admit I'm off to record drum hits to build up a bank of samples for future tracks next week- they are not supposed to sound clean however -, they are layered as follows: a fairly mid-bass distorted track that opens; a mildly reverberated track to pull up the snare and create a panning dynamic just prior and troughout the first 'heavy bit'; one thick flanged sound that appears after that; and an echoed track that creates the trippy drums later in the track. The drums have been scooped somewhat to create presence - each layer I'm trying to bring up different parts more than others.

gotcha, makes sense - when you run drums thru distortion, it chops off the peaks aswell doing unpleasant things to higher frequencies like hihats. What I usually do after distorting drums is mix the dry track back in again slightly quieter and put the some fairly aggressive compression on the distorted part, like attack around 11ms, release 150 or so, threshold around -12 and play with the settings until it brings back some of the percussiveness...

[Pudenfuhrer]

Yeah - I'd been thinking of running a clean track as well to beef it up as I want the knackered weak sound in there as well that the distortion brings-- I'll have a look...

[Pudenfuhrer]

Isn't the distortion stage clipping essentially making any need for a compressor rather pointless though? Is it just to try and get some peaks back in it or something?

[Stripey]

Originally Posted by Pudenfuhrer

Isn't the distortion stage clipping essentially making any need for a compressor rather pointless though? Is it just to try and get some peaks back in it or something?

distortion affects the tonal qualities of the drum sounds, yer using it to "beef up" the sound, in the way that you can make a totally bland synthesized drum machine kick sound really dirty - but it does this by ripping off the peaks and therefore destroying the dynamics. All you're doing is pushing the waveform past the ceiling and this is where the distortion comes from. You lose what is really the amplitude envelope that made it a drum sound in the first place and it just becomes a noise, so you need to recreate that percussive attack and decay with a compressor. A lot of the time you will find that the bottom end punch of kicks is destroyed in this process too, so it can be helpful to layer in a dry analogue synthesised kick to bring that back (sometimes).
I'd really recommend eq'ing the drum parts individually aswell, rather than just scooping the main drum bus, a lot of the important frequencies of the kick and thte snare are contained in the "mids".

Originally Posted by Pudenfuhrer

Digitalsin are a two piece industrial outfit

We are now finishing tracks for releasing on an EP in July- the first of which is available for download here

Keep an eye out for us on gig rosters late July

Edit - check out myspace if you like us and add friend by all means

hey pf, ya got me here, I'm just getting a login page instead of a dl, hmm....?