mastering for propper soundsystems

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chickon
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Nov 09, 2010 5:16 pm

mastering for propper soundsystems

Post by chickon »

Ahoy, and hello. So I have my music ready to go and want to get some gigs doing live performances. The stuff I have made sounds all well and good on the speakers I have access to, but pro soundsystems are a very different beast and I have no intention of blowing drivers etc with incorrectly mastered tunes. I have recorded into audacity and I can plainly see that some basslines, hi hats etc are at way WAY too high a level and clipping hard (even though they don't sound it through my headphones and speakers).
What I'm doing at the moment is changing all the levels as I see each part in audacity so they aren't clipping etc.
My question is does anyone have experience of plugging an emx into a pro soundsystem, and how have you mastered it properly? If the rig is set up correctly then undesired frequencies shouldn't make it past the crossover, but I don't want to rely on this for fear of doing massive damage. I don't wanna put clipped bass through 25k of rig for obvious reasons ;)
Anyone doing pro work with their electribe, and how?
I hope that makes sense :/ and cheers for any help! :)
Tooranjian
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Mar 05, 2009 5:59 am
Location: Santa Rosa - CA
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Post by Tooranjian »

As far as live performances went, I would create a song on my emx, and save all the synth notes sound levels to 0. A friend of mine had owned a nice set of JBL crowns, and after tinkering with those for a few days, i came up with a pretty basic idea of what drum/snare values were just right, to high, and to low. After a bit i wound up making a preset template, DARK bassdrum, 808/707 snare, the HH-nrm2c and maybe a reverse Clap, that sound fine on any speaker system. Now synths were tricky because i wrote a strange style of dubstep, and used multiple layers of basslines, some with low-pass, some with high-pass, and some that were bit crushed beyond all reason. So i wound up keeping all of them saved with the sound off, so when i would set up at a show, depending on the amount of subs/moniters they had, i could improvise and on the spot moniter what was going to be just right, and what was going to be brutal on the ears.

Thats just the way i did it though, of course every now and then you might wind up at a gig thats got 15 subwoofers, and 2 moniters, and improv can get a litty tricky.

Ive heard of other ways of doing this to, I.E. investing in a nice set of head phones, and using a mixer to set the levels of each sound, while playing a rhythm in the background while you get your sounds ready.

This is a problem i ran into a few times though. Mostly because i drool when i hear the the SIN wave basslines from even the simple oscillators in the machine. That thick sound is a must in my music, but without spending time on a speaker system that was closely related to the ones i would be using at shows, I would wind up with a very murky sounding track.

I wound up just recording individual basslines, chorus's, snares, drums, and high hats through Logic, and saving them as a smaller sound file, and doing anything i wanted to with them after. I.E. running them into NNXT in reason, and using some of the sample Refills I have to make a stranger sounding song, or just loading up 100 sounds into Ableton live, and using my PadKontrol to active each part in order, while knowing ahead of time I wouldnt be hitting any notes to hard, to low, or to soft.

It all just depends on what you have at your disposal. If you've got time, i reccomend recording each sound and mastering them in software, and creating your song via Logic/Ableton.
If you all about the live feel of the electribes, maybe show up at the gig early and ask if you can tinker around with your sounds before the show starts so you dont blow someones ear drums out of their head.

Hope this helped :)
chickon
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Nov 09, 2010 5:16 pm

Post by chickon »

oh.kay,.,.,great stuff there, I knew there must be someone that knew what I was talking about! Thanks a lot. It's kind of nice to know that it aint easy and I'm not missing something, because i'm sure you could rip people's faces off with some of the noise that comes out of the emx and to be fair that's not the experience I want to deliver! Until I get it fully dialled I think the way forward is mastering tracks first, putting them on c.d, then dj'ing my own music. Thanks for the reply ::)
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