pouët.net

Thought it might be fun to get a discussion going on this. So you've finished your modmed669mdls3mxmit and you want to make a wave version for Cloudtube/etc. What now?

I like the idea that what comes out of the tracker file *is* the final version but sometimes it's nearly impossible to get a "professional sound" that way... I tend not to use a global compressor because Audacity's does weird things and I don't know how to use it. The problem is my mods can be a bit "spikey". I've been chopping them off with a hard limiter and normalizing to 0dB because *usually* the spikes are caused by e.g. 303/analog bass samples where a little distortion on the peaks doesn't matter.

Here are some of my recent examples, this is "Free Motion Machine" (link) :

^^ Spikey!

The culprit (mostly) - the 303 line:

^^ That's fresh off the sampler. Note (a) spikes, and (b) holyshit DC offset! Caused by me flipping the square/saw switch in the middle of the sequence. I'm not sure what to do about that, trying to remove it didn't accomplish anything because there are still (invisible at this scale) spikes to 0dB.

I clipped it off and amplified it, like this:

...better?

I didn't apply any *global* amplification above 0dB with this track, so the first figure is what went up on my SC. But it's still too quiet overall and some spikes are still there!

Here's another example, "Under a Foreign Sky" (link) :

^^ Raw recording, normalized to 0dB


^^ Slightly clipped the peaks, but brought the average level closer to commercial tracks. I will be the first to admit the mixing & mastering in this one isn't very good, actually I recorded this straight off my analog mixer and didn't multi-track so all I have is one 'raw' mix. (The 303/MC-202 parts were done "live", i.e. *not* sampled and pulled back into IT. Only rudimentary EQ was done using the mixer's frequency band knobs.)

Finally, here's "Sunspot" (link) for a more extreme example:

^^ Final track rendered in Milky with no interpolation. Here normalized to 0dB again.


^^ Limited and then amped up 3.2dB. Lots of clipping here, but honestly, the song is pretty raw and gritty anyway... to *my ears* it sounds fine like this, and its levels are way more comparable to "pro" tracks. A lot of peaks were coming from a synth run through a heavy metal distortion pedal, so what's a little more distortion? I *like* how this turned out, but there's still loads of room for improvement.

...

Maybe I should add some others' tracks for comparison.

Here's Pegboard Nerds - Self Destruct - typical "huuuuuugebro" Dubstep sound:

^^ Holy shit! They just cranked it up and to hell with the peaks.

Hoffman - Krunk'd:

^^ Same story, although not as severe. This is Hoffman's mp3 from his site. I have the mod of this, so I can render my own take:


^^ Milky, no interpolation, mono, normalized to 0dB again.

Compare that to another Hoffman & Savannah track that (I think) was *not* done in Protracker:


^^ Pushing it *right* to the edge...

Here's another 4ch mod that got a full studio mixdown & mastering by a professional engineer: cTrix - Tumble Run. This looks less severe (but sounds *awesome*, great mixing & killer album in all respects!)


...obviously there's more than one answer here. So what do you guys do? Clip off the peaks? Leave them alone? Massive compression? Apply global EQ? Let's hear some of your theories!

That jumpy 'DC' offset is really just what you described it to be: a square wave modulation of cca. 1/2min~=0.00833 Hz.

I _think_ it is completely safe to hard EQ this modulation out, and indeed everything below 1 Hz or even 10 Hz is completely safe to EQ out as it really does not add anything to your mix but the precise problems you are facing.

All that lowfreq stuff is inaudible yet it is present in the audio data for no good reason, making postprocessing a complete nightmare.

EQ your samples before you import them into your tracker/tune, this will help out a lot when getting to the later stages such as mastering.

Export your tune per-instrument before you load them into a DAW. That way you can fix DC offsets in the mix instead during master.

What Gargaj and Keito said. I'd add side-chain to that list too, best way of getting punchy drums. You can do this in the tracker, but its a lot easier with group tracks in a DAW.

Yeah, have been doing a little of that but not really thoroughly... Recommendations for a good sample editor that has a nice parametric EQ? Audacity is crap for working with anything other than 44/48kHz wav files. Wavosaur + VSTs is pretty boss but then I have to mess with virtual machines and Windows... bleah.

(I would *kill* for a nice DOS-based sample editor that loads Impulse Tracker samples natively and has good filters and multiband EQ... but I guess that doesn't exist.)

For hi-hats and percussion, send them through a hi-pass filter, no reso, just clean. I'd also put a frequency analyser after so you can see what you are cutting out compared to the sound. You'd be surprised at how much low end crap ends up in these samples and what an effect the summing of all this has to your overall track. In fact you can employ this technique to pretty much most tracks.

Also I'd recommend Reaper as a DAW, although I don't personally use it because I'm so used to Cubase, it's cheap and bloody good.

Well, any other audio editor for your favourite OS with plugin support? VST isn't the only plugin standard. I haven't tried it but I'd suspect that Wavosaur would also run pretty well in Wine. If you're running linux, there are also Windows VST adapters like dssi-vst or this one
As far as (Windows) VST EQs are concerned, my favourite is Electri-Q (the posihfopit is more than enough for almost all tasks).

I hope I don't come across as being obtuse for no reason here, but... I'd kinda prefer to keep out of DAW-type progs for mixing, if I can. I'd like to be able to get a mostly decent mix done 'in the box' in IT(/whatever tracker of the day I'm using), and have it "finished" before I render it to wave for mastering... tricky to do, but just my preference. (In other words - I want people who play the tracker file to have *mostly* the same experience as people who play the wav/mp3, but want the rendered versions to have that little extra polish...)

I do a lot of e.g. side-chaining in the tracker channels already, usually on the basses & kicks (I remember doing this before I even learned that it was a compressor 'effect' - I always assumed they did that in sequencing!) Same with delay/reverb effects, phasors, etc.

The global instrument volume sliders in IT are really nice to have for mixing, almost like a proper DAW mixer - but you only get 64 levels to work with which is a little cramped! But usually enough.

That all said I did do a full-on export-all-tracks parametric EQ remix of one of my old songs in Reaper last year, and was... pretty unsatisfied with the results. I think I didn't know what I was doing and managed to make it really flat and thin sounding. something went wrong here...

I have a 2014 version of this same track just about ready to go; done entirely as an IT file with a few bits backported in from the old reaper project and a LOT of fixes to dodgy samples/sequencing mistakes/etc. Will post that up in a couple days, I basically just need to do a final levels check and then render it out. I think it sounds a lot livelier.

The magic is to use all available volume sliders here :) You have sample volume (6 bits) + sample global volume (6 bits) + instrument global volume (6 bits) + channel volume (6 bits) and if you want, global volume as well (another 7 bits). And of course instrument envelopes (6 bits again). I know what you want to achieve and I do this too, but a lot of it is about pre-processing your samples with effect plugins, really. Compress them a bit, EQ them, put reverb on them, etc... This is how all my pure IT tunes are made.

Better preprocessing of your samples seems to be the best tip for you here. That gives both people who listens to the module and people listening to the mastered version the benefit of better sound, as well as solving a lot of your issues when mastering.

Especially what h0ffman said about high-passing samples that have no bass. It's paramount to having a clean mix (without random mud rumbling in the bass registers) *and* for having a louder mix (the low rumbling eats away headroom like there's no tomorrow).

master? just record all tracks as wave. shift the amplitude bugs with some wave xy "graphic" thing. you know... just like it looks as that amplitude graph. amplify/multiply/compress the loudness when you have it centered.

you can still save some work if you preshift your samples into the amplitude range when tracking.

I always clean my samples before. But sometimes (why ever) you have massive dc offsets with vst instruments and also some filters / eq automations add a dc offset. But there is an option to correct it with adobe audition / cool edit pro if you render them for a steam- or channelmastering.

Best is, what gargaj said. Clean the samples before. For exsample hihats with bass frequencies should get a fat lowcut. Leads could get lowcuts too when your drums and basses starts.

The final Mix should get a lowcut from 0-20hz before adding compressors or limiters. You Can also try the hardlimiter at Adobe audition / cool edit pro... it's very nice.

Cheers. :)

Ah and btw. When you produce dance techno stuff with an offbass, never open the release of a kick. It's better playing it online 1/8 beat without much release. Maybe 90ms release is ok for a fast fade out of the kick-tail. Otherwise you can get bad phaseshiftings..

For processing MODs/chiptunes for my Bitjam mixes I use the multiband compressor/limiter "Stereo Tool", available as Winamp-plugin, standalone EXE and VST:
http://www.stereotool.com

Here the basis settings I use, which I finetune according to each track ("Remaster" + "MOD"):
http://forums.stereotool.com/download/file.php?id=1134

These settings need version 7.03 of the software.
http://www.stereotool.com/download/stereo_tool_standalone_installer_703.exe
http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_stereo_tool_703.dll

Example:
http://youtu.be/MMTed96dDGQ?t=1h8m2s