Tag Archive for: mixing

In The Making Podcast by Make Shift

/in , , , , /by

Recently I’ve been doing the audio post production on a new podcast by Make Shift called In The Making.

I’m really enjoying the content; it’s all about the arts and the use of creative practices for best mental health. Within each episode, the host, Jennifer Macey interviews artist from various disciplines about their creative practice and the role of creativity in their mental health.

The first two episodes are currently available from all the usual outlets and feature the fabulous Australia creators, Kirli Saunders and Drew Fairley. Click on the images below to access the podcasts from Spotify. Alternatively here’s Make Shift‘s page on Spotify.

       

From an audio production perspective, it has been enjoyable to ponder best practice for podcasts, and as a result below is a reflection on my current signal chain.

For the main interviewee and interviewer audio, the processing and order of processing that has been working thus far is:

1. UAD SSL G Bus Compressor with a quick attack time and a gentle ratio to control the dynamics

2. Waves DeEsser to tame any sibilance

3. Fab Filter Pro-Q3 to add some warm in the low mids, some articulation in the mids and some further control of the sibilance/ high frequencies around 8-10kHz via dynamic EQ, see the EQ curve pictured above.

4. Waves Vocal Rider to level the differences in levels through the recording

Beyond that chain of plugins, a further bit of volume automation has helped control perceived levels that the AI of Vocal Rider hasn’t addressed. Secondly, some Izotope RX 7 De-Clip has also been used to remove any clipping that occurred mid interview.

All the vocal content/ channels have then been bused to a Vox Bus channel where a touch more compression and EQ has been applied to polish the sound.

Beyond vocal content, the podcasts have all made use of some atmospheric sounds and music. These channels of content have been routed to a Music Bus where some side-chain compression has been applied so that the Vocal Bus will compress or duck the musical content to ensure that the vocals are always the focus or dominant sound.

Both the Vox Bus and the Music Bus then route to the master bus. The processing on this final bus is pictured below.

The master bus chain is currently:

  1. UAD Studer 800 – applying some gentle harmonic warmth and some dynamic and upper frequency gentle moulding
  2. Oeksound Soothe 2 – a dynamic EQ, for lack of a better description, that looks for resonances. In this case Soothe 2 has been used to reduce resonances that plague the type of playback devices that podcast listeners will typically use, ie laptop speakers and earbuds.
  3. Slate Digital VBC FG-Grey – this compressor is one of my favourite mix bus compressors and in this case has then been used to glue the whole mix. The setting used are a slow attack and quick release with a gentle ratio for minimal gain reduction.
  4. Fab Filter Pro-L has finally been used to bring the level up to the desired professionally competitive level. Generally it is held that podcasts only require an RMS of between -16 to -12dB. So this was the level aimed for.

I hope you enjoy the In The Making series, I know I’m enjoying the content as I polish it.

For more tips on podcast production, there is a good introductory article by Izotope that I would recommend reading entitled 10 tips for a great sounding podcast.

Nainiouman – Dominion

/in , /by

Early this year I mixed the track Dominion for the Central Coast artist Nainiouman.

It was released earlier this year with quite a graphic film clip on the label Pink Side of Purple. The subject matter was based on the 2020 Australian fires and the management or mismanagement of the our environment.

Due to the subject matter it created quite a bit of heated debate. The film clip is below.

Saad album finished + glowing Amnplify review

/in , /by

I recently finished mixing a contemporary Pop project for Sydney singer-songwriter, SaaD, aka Dylan Regtop.

The influences and brief for the overall album sound contained references such as Bon Iver, S.Carey and the like.

Challenges with the record included the artist’s desire to have drums and bass that could hardly be heard, yet still desiring a balanced mix, ie not too top heavy. As a result, I used a lot of very processed lo fi drums, and bass content, often stemming out to a cassette player and back into the DAW to achieve murkier sounds that whilst having more harmonics, had less attack and audibility within the mix.

The album was a pleasure to work on, and the brief precise. However, the vocals were by no means an easy mix. The takes were great, but the vocalist is quite sibilant, which when combined with the harsh top end of their mic, Rhodes NT2A, was hard to control in the mix. Sibilance had to therefore be dealt with in multiple stages, those including tape to mellow the high frequencies, standard de-essers, Pro Q3 dynamic EQ and F6’s dynamic EQ.

Another production journey that further related to the vocal, was the presence of mouth clicks, through out each track. The Rhodes’ brittle top end once again had any mouth noise unpleasantly emphasised, but through treatment by Izotope’s RX, we were able to de-click the vocals with a great outcome. Note a forth coming YouTube tutorial will be coming on RX and de-click vocals.

Finally, post the production journey, some positive reviews are starting to come in.

Amnplify comment;

“musically, the album is a pastiche of atmospheric genre pieces given depth by Regtop’s extraordinary ability to create sparse, but haunting soundscapes.”

Further, it seems we achieved the production brief, Amnplify comment,

“it’s tempting to draw comparisons to something like Bon Iver or Sigur Ros, though even those records are more akin to conventional structure than the individual pieces on SaaD. Sonically there are similarities to some sod ven stuff, perhaps even Beta Radio, but even then the sparsity of this album is probably beyond the reach of both of those acts.”