Finalizing In Renoise

[Paulie_Phonick]

@florian:

wow! sorry, but that sounds really conceited. there are plenty of artists that regularly blurr the lines between production and composition, aphex twin, autechre, futuresound of london. and plenty of acts that totally produce themselves.

You’re right, I was not thinking about that kind of acts making my statement. Perhaps that’s due to my point of view as I rather make tracks composed in the classic sense rather than experimental stuff - so I might have made a subconscious generalization that most people do the ‘usual’ type of music and not experimental tracks.

But then again - do standard rules and techniques of mixing and mastering apply to experimental stuff? I guess they have to find their own ways to make their stuff sound good most of the time…

quality of production on computers is not a function of how much cash you spend on your gear, but how you put that gear to work.

Yes and no. Without a good listening environment you won’t get far - so that’s an investment that has to be made. I don’t think getting good results with a SoundBlaster 16 and a pair of multimedia speakers is at all possible, regardless of how you put that gear to work.

It’s quite similar when it comes to mastering. You can get good results with freebies (like mda series or the Kjaerhus Audio Classic series), but it requires plenty of skill, knowledge and effort. You can get good or better results more easily when you combine freebies with cheap/mid priced mastering plugins (like stuff from Elevayta or Voxengo). Still, when you compare your home productions with a work of a good sound engineer (or let one master a mix of yours), you’ll hear the difference.

Now what I’m saying is - when your making music for fun, it’s enough to get to the ‘satisfactory results’ level, which can be achieved with little investments made into gear and knowledge (-that’s mainly a time investment unless you decide to go for a mastering course).

When you want to go commercial with your tracks, you’ll have to either make some more gear (again, mainly virtual) investments and teach yourself how to master properly or leave the job to the sound engineer, which in my opinion is a better option since instead of thinking how to make that bass sound more punchy and selective you can think of a new song.

telling people that you need to invest years at recording school to learn how to mix tracks properly is buying into RIAA-type dogma.

I never said you have to attend schools to learn how to master (especially for your own needs) - there are plenty of tutorials and guides online. A school has one advantage - there are plenty of people there who, when asked how to make that bass sound better - will simply tell you: do this and that. You won’t have to reinvent that knowledge by trial and error on your own.

Still, a friend sound engineer that will answer your questions over a pint comes cheaper

mastering is a process of determining averages, you make several mixes, listen to them on a variety of stereo systems and steer for the happy medium.

To you, me and most of here - yes. We have to experiment, because we lack good listening environments, trained ears (Parsec laughed at) that would tell us exactly what to listen for and knowledge+experience that would give us answers to arising problems right away. If we were trained sound engineers in good studios we wouldn’t have to waste as much time searching for an optimum, because we would simply know what it sounds like, how to achieve it and have means of achieving it.

studio experience helps you identify what to look for, but half the time studio pros mixing unknown musician’s tracks will just set the levels and leave them.

Choose a mastering studio that won’t charge you for repeating the mastering process if you’re unhappy with the result. XARC Mastering has such policy.

the only advantage a pro studio has is nice preamps, microphones and dead sound rooms. the modern pc is an excellent mastering and mixdown tool.

I would still add qualified sound engineers to the advantage of a pro studio. A pair of extra ears is something a PC will certainly not offer you, since, as you wrote, it’s nothing but a mixdown tool.

the reason studios are so expensive is because they have bills to pay, egos to feed and don’t want to get buried in working out every crappy garage band’s album. a high price tag weeds out lightweights, adds an air of exclusivity and makes people on music production forums reverse-justify the expense as evidence of higher quality.

Wanna make a blindfold test? Too bad the XARC promotion offer period is over - you could send them one track to master free of charge. You’d hear the difference for yourself.

@ceejay:

There’s a discussion @ KvR about sound differences of hosts, you might want to have a look at - “Different hosts produces different sound ?” . I think the differences, if there are any - a mathematical test would show this best, would be too little to be audible, unless of course the hosts don’t only do plain mixing, but add some magic.

As far as Renoise is concerned, still some improvements have to be made in terms of what you hear is what you get - but regardless, you’ve inspired me to do a test of my own. I will try to do a mix in Renoise and the render to tracks and mix somewhere else as will see what changes I get.

[vvoois (vV)]

@florian:

quality of production on computers is not a function of how much cash you spend on your gear, but how you put that gear to work.

Yes and no. Without a good listening environment you won’t get far - so that’s an investment that has to be made. I don’t think getting good results with a SoundBlaster 16 and a pair of multimedia speakers is at all possible, regardless of how you put that gear to work.

mastering is a process of determining averages, you make several mixes, listen to them on a variety of stereo systems and steer for the happy medium.

To you, me and most of here - yes. We have to experiment, because we lack good listening environments, trained ears (Parsec laughed at) that would tell us exactly what to listen for and knowledge+experience that would give us answers to arising problems right away. If we were trained sound engineers in good studios we wouldn’t have to waste as much time searching for an optimum, because we would simply know what it sounds like, how to achieve it and have means of achieving it.

Good equipment in mastering requires actually a good sound-card, two sets of output amplifiers and a good equalizer:The one on your computer and the one in your livingroom. Making your computer-room noise-absorbent is not that expensive if you know where to buy the foam, for unbiased mixing probably the more noise absorbsion, the better, you can’t use echo from the walls.

If all your bands are set properly flat, your song does not supposed to sound spectaculair in it’s levels but all tracks should be in proper harmony.
Further more there are some global tricks one need to know and do not require a special ear, like vocals in the center, baselines in the center and the majority balanced across both sides depending on the position of the instrument where you want it to have it.

If you don’t have a trained ear:play your song in mono and see if there are any particular parts that come over unbalanced or pop out excessively over the rest, or even cause crackles on your headphones:this is another trick The song has to sound without fuzz in mono as well as in stereo.
When all your levels are balanced and your tracks harmonized, your song is mixed down properly, you can test it out by playing it on your dolby set and play with various band settings as none of them or all of them shouldn’t cause overdrive effects when shifted to full. If they do, level down the bands that cause the overdrive.

It’s not always quickly done, but imho you don’t really need that studio, but a good set of speakers and a high-end sound-card is ofcourse inevitable!

At this part, i’m currently happy that Renoise doesn’t support Dolby 5.1 recording, but on the other hand, it may be something to make Renoise an exclusive tool (Using EAX technologie etc.)

[Shane_Turner]

wow! sorry, but that sounds really conceited. there are plenty of artists that regularly blurr the lines between production and composition, aphex twin, autechre, futuresound of london. and plenty of acts that totally produce themselves. quality of production on computers is not a function of how much cash you spend on your gear, but how you put that gear to work. telling people that you need to invest years at recording school to learn how to mix tracks properly is buying into RIAA-type dogma. you are wrong wrong wrong. mastering is a process of determining averages, you make several mixes, listen to them on a variety of stereo systems and steer for the happy medium. studio experience helps you identify what to look for, but half the time studio pros mixing unknown musician’s tracks will just set the levels and leave them.

Totally agree with the sentiments but I think this conversation has started to mix up post-production and mixing processes with mastering (the final gloss).

Its more than just bills and ego, its listening to your track objectively on a pair of 50,000$ monitors that will reveal errors and imbalances in your mix that won’t show up on the average nearfields in some apartment. (This of course has to take into consideration that the person doing the mastering is familiar with electronic music.) It also means that for example that synth drone won’t distort when played too loud on your friend’s stereo, because it has a 1000hz tone in it that didn’t sound so loud on a pair of better speakers. Another thing too, unless you have an extremely large rectangular room and excellent subs and bass traps, forget mixing your bass properly, it will always be a guessing game. (Just play a deep bass tone, walk around your room, you should hear what i mean, spots where bass rises in volume significantly, and drops significantly.)

An aquaintence of mine who does gigs around Montreal started a while ago having all his stuff mastered, even his loops he uses to play live, the difference is significant.

And Autechre does have their stuff mastered separately, by a guy named Frank Arkwright.

the reason studios are so expensive is because they have bills to pay, egos to feed and don’t want to get burieppy garage band’s album. a high price tag weeds out lightweights, adds an air of exclusivity and makes people on music production forums reverse-justify the expense as evidence of higher quality.

edit by It-Alien: fixed quoting errors

[Parsec]

Some time ago (using older Renoice version) i compared fully Renoice mixed track with rendered to tracks and mixed in other software track (dry mix, w/o any fx added). And i must admit - it seems that side-mixed track sounds little better and cleaner. But i don’t sure 100%, it’s like perception feeling of sound. So it’s a question of ‘mixing’ engine and algorithm of software i suppose.

Ahh… so it seems we’re coming to the point. “how good is Renoise at mastering” ? Is it just a choice of “I’m feeling more comfortable like this” ? are there also tech reasons?

It surely has nothing to do with audio quality, but is much more than just an interface style - it results in better ergonomics…

See, I don’t care much about the ergonomy. I’m talking about sound quality.
For sure I’m always looking for an “better” way of doing things (easier, fastest, etc) but speaking about “mastering” I’m for sure not discussing the “manual” operations you do in mastering “click here - adjust that knob - etc” so it becomes useless to discuss what program has a better ergonomics. If we continue this way we’ll end up discussing of what pro studio has the better waiting hall…

but it is simply necessary in many cases as the processor cannot handle generating the sounds from scratch and applying the mastering effects at the same time

I see what you mean… but this is not facing the point, is just giving a good reason to turn around it. This is what happens in case your tracks have plenty of VSTi running… and plenty of DSP running along… etc… what if we have a plain, simple, oldschool track that takes no CPU at all because being mostly made of samples? Past beatbattles were done in this way.

You may laugh at the “overflow of technical issues”, but this is something I’m telling this from my own experience.

I’m not laughing at all. I’m just pointing out that, as you see, there is a common WILL of being concerned with technical issues among Renoisers and other musicians… and having problems to coordinate the two things it might just be a problem of your that you’re unconsciously extending to the rest of the musicians…

trained ears (Parsec laughed at)

Man… seems like I laugh a lot about everything… or you seem paranoid about being the laughing stack? I just pointed out that to me it makes no sense at all giving up with learning “technical issues” or giving up with “brainstorming to improve Renoise” just because there is other people who can “do it better”… If this had to be true then it would be the same with “composing” music and everyone would stop buying renoise to just buy themselves some new CD at their fav store. As far as people (good or not good) is WILLING to compose their music… there will be also people (good or not good) willing to master/finalize on their very own because these are just parts of the same process of “creating music” and that’s what every Renoiser is after.
To me, suggesting “Stop trying to learn how to master and have some pro doing it for you because they are better” is really like saying “stop trying to learn how to compose music and have some pro doing it for you because they are better”.

the question you asked was why do people tend to render their tracks down to disk and do their mastering in some “big” sequencer instead of mastering in Renoise

I’m not asking for this at all. WHY people tend to render their tracks on qbase? this is -their- business. They could not compose at all but the point about developement and features would still be up as far as Renoise exists.
I’m infact NOT asking because I just “want a reply”… there is no precise information to be vehiculated from Renoisers to me as I thought I stated clearly with this phrase: Note that I’m NOT “really” asking. I’m just trying to focus about the future developement of Renoise and trying to have other users (and possibly the devs?) focusing on it aswell. Some sort of “devil’s advocate” I would have posted this on “Beginner’s questions” otherwise
I was replying to you when writing this… but in the very next phrase you reply I tried to address that question and didn’t think of giving plugin and mastering guide links. If you want to improve your mastering skills and/or get better plugins, I strongly recommend KvR-VST as the starting point - make a search in their forum and you’ll find a number of mastering tips, guides and plugin recommendations I don’t really know what to say about it.
I -am- considered some sort of PRO here. I render my stuff to obtain previews to be heard by editors and so… I bring my stuff to studio… I publish music and I’m paid to do it. I TEACH to people how to approach the computer to obtain music. Now I hope it’s better defined that I am NOT waiting for a suggestion on how to master songs and neither I need to be suggested what program is better at mastering/mixing… I am speaking about Renoise, its features, the way it goes. I’m stimulating a discussion that should hopefully result in an eventual way of improving Renoise.

[Shane_Turner]

To me, suggesting “Stop trying to learn how to master and have some pro doing it for you because they are better” is really like saying “stop trying to learn how to compose music and have some pro doing it for you because they are better”. … (snip)

I am speaking about Renoise, its features, the way it goes. I’m stimulating a discussion that should hopefully result in an eventual way of improving Renoise.

Well lets make an analogy. You can be an author and proofread your own material. Its still better to get someone else to do it, though because they’ll catch mistakes you might not notice. That hardly makes you less an author or means you should stop writing, as just about any published work is proofread.

Back to your original point though, to make renoise suitable for mastering, definitely having the FFT graph is a good first step, but the problem I consistenly find is that the “center wave” doesn’t always work, and when samples are pitched down things can get muddy easily. Hence i have to eq things per channel. But thats a mixing issue, not a mastering issue. In order to master properly you need to see the waveform, its really that simple. Then you can see where its clipping, get an overall visual representation of the volume of the track, interpolate out clicks if there are any, etc etc. In other words, you need a wave editor. Trying to master in renoise is like going back in time to the 1970s before digital editing, because its linear mastering, you can only watch the volume level bob up and down on the gauge and hope it means something.

They’re just two different things. One is a production tool, the other is a mastering tool. Mixing, producing, is not mastering.

You can try to master yourself, personally I can’t afford to have my tracks mastered, so I do what I can, and it is interesting to learn from experience.

There’s more to mastering than just relying on softwear. Especially after having had the opportunity to sit in a proper studio, I had to admit, there’s just no comparison between what I can do and what can be accomplished in a pro studio with high end equipment by a person who’s been mastering every day for years. Right away they start to notice things like “too much treble here” or "this is too compressed’ etc. Even I could hear things in my tracks that I didn’t hear on my own monitors or my test systems, like tails cutting off on my samples, etc. Aside from that, on the equipment end, as far as mastering gear goes, there’s no software limiter/compressor or aural exciter that I know of that can compete with dedicated high end module (although Waves ultralimiter sounds pretty good), and most people I doubt can afford that kind of gear…

Even if I had the gear, I’d still have my friends over for a second opinion… : )

[Florian_Mosleh (florian)]

i think channel volume bars would be a very useful asset in the mixing process.

[Paulie_Phonick]

@Parsec:

Sorry, but I’m not getting into replying to your post in detail, though you still misjudge and misunderstand my points and intentions (not to mention plain taking my lines out of context). Further discussion about whether one should do all on his own or not makes little sense - especially as far as the point of this thread is concerned.

One thing though. The fact that you’re considered some sort of a pro around here (which I didn’t know about - but I don’t feel I have to know all about each of 1100+ Renoise forum members) does not entitle you to making impolite comments about me or my ideas. No, I’m not paranoid about being laughed at - it’s just the sarcastic tone of your posts and the use of smiley emoticons made me think that you wanted to make fun about my posts. Actually, it’s the tone of your posts that made me unsure what you’re aiming at in this thread and made me misjudge how experienced user/composer/musician you are. Believe me though, that I didn’t mean any disrespect to you in my replies.

Going back to the point - I think the final answer to the question if there’s any difference in mixdown quality between Renoise and other hosts is to make a test. Mix a song down in Renoise and the take separately rendered tracks and mix them down in other hosts. Let’s take one of BeatBattle .RNS songs (drop a link, please) to use for such a test and create mixes in as wide spectrum of hosts as we can get, with help of other Renoisers (I can make a Sonar and Ableton Live 2 test).

@Shane Turner:

I agree entirely with your post. I guess better mastering capabilities in Renoise will require additional work on the Spectrum Analyzer accuracy and perhaps adding other visualisation tools as well, like stereo image analyser. Waveform visualisation and analysis capability will probably come with implementation of direct-from-disk streaming and other means of dealing with long samples.

@Florian Mosleh:

Channel volume bars will probably appear when a mixer console gets implemented - but they won’t help much when doing mastering, which requires other means of sound analysis, like spectrum and stereo image analyzers, statistics (peaks, RMS)…

[Parsec]

There’s more to mastering than just relying on softwear. Especially after having had the opportunity to sit in a proper studio, I had to admit, there’s just no comparison between what I can do and what can be accomplished in a pro studio with high end equipment by a person who’s been mastering every day for years.

I totally agree. I’m not discussing how good a studio is… I guess almost everyone knows that bringing your stuff to a studio and have a -pro- tweaking the knobs will result in a much better track, most of the times. Better micworks in a sound-proof room, better mixing on separate channels on their mixer, “trained ears” like Paulie said… and so on… I hope this is not put into doubt.
I have been lucky finding a couple of producers letting me use their studio for free… Studios that I could NOT afford elseway because of lack of economical support, more or less like it happens to other Renoisers… and that includes you aswell, as far as you said
I assume “going the self-made way” as a base to start this thread… even if I am so lucky that I don’t need to do it on my own, see what I mean? In some way I feel that putting myself in a position of disregard toward the issues of EQing and mixing makes me know less about my own job… so even when letting someone else do the trick I’m there checking and trying to “steal the skill” as much as I can.

The comments I’ve read so far (correct me if I’m wrong) they all tend to describe Renoise as a bad tool in terms of functionality (you compare it to “going back in time to the 1970s before digital editing”). As to say that the tech to obtain a “perfect EQ-Mixed-finalized-mastered track” are all there already… but they just can’t be put to good work because of Renoise very structure… right? In some way what I wanted to focus on it’s the “tech”, the “audio quality” of the tool. It doesn’t really matter (yet) if the process is slow to be done in pragmatic terms… is Renoise good at it?
To reach for a final reply I guess we’ll have to give a look to Paulie’s experiments! (I’d like the Devs to come in here too now)

@Paulie

The fact that you’re considered some sort of a pro around here does not entitle you to making impolite comments about me or my ideas

Impolite? I am universally known for my “impolite” comments regardless of my musical career. Infact you can think about me as one of the most impolite and shameless persons on this planet just because most of the “local human traditions” does not apply with me. You can expect me to speak very clear right in your face about my ideas even if this is considered “impolite” among a very wide number of cultures.
Some people (few) tend to think this is a virtue more than an “impolite behaviour” because in this way you always know IF there is something wrong with me… and WHAT is wrong with me… and in the end, sometimes, even what is wrong with yourself (if you’re into self-consciousness).
You really can’t say the same about everyone in life… not even in this forum.
But I don’t want to hurt anyone… and I don’t assume that everyone consider this as a virtue… so please, let me know if I have to “act” with you masking what I think… or if you “can take it” when I say what I think.

No, I’m not paranoid about being laughed at - it’s just the sarcastic tone of your posts and the use of smiley emoticons made me think that you wanted to make fun about my posts

I am very sorry to read that you thought that I wanted to make fun of you or of your posts, this is simply not true. The use of emoticons was intended to show I’d like to laugh about something with you… not to laugh about you. I am simply not used to laugh about people.

Believe me though, that I didn’t mean any disrespect to you in my replies.

I had to read this more times before understanding where is it that you have seen this eventual “reaction to disrespect”
I hope you get this point: I did not felt disrespected, offended or hurt at all. My speech about my activities in music was not a proud “reaction” to an offense. I’m not “that” way.
I just intended to state clear that I was playing “the devil’s advocate”.

If one senator in a parliament say “ok, suppose I was a poor man” in order to remark the shortcomings of its own government… it would be quite funny that people around him, honestly moved, start to give him spare coins… or suggest him some charity dorm hall… “Guys… you got me wrong”

I think the final answer to the question if there’s any difference in mixdown quality between Renoise and other hosts is to make a test. Mix a song down in Renoise and the take separately rendered tracks and mix them down in other hosts.

That’s a truly good and very interesting experiment to be done!
Guys… is there anyone else willing to help Paulie on this?

[Shane_Turner]

In some way I feel that putting myself in a position of disregard toward the issues of EQing and mixing makes me know less about my own job… so even when letting someone else do the trick I’m there checking and trying to “steal the skill” as much as I can.

The comments I’ve read so far (correct me if I’m wrong) they all tend to describe Renoise as a bad tool in terms of functionality (you compare it to “going back in time to the 1970s before digital editing”). As to say that the tech to obtain a “perfect EQ-Mixed-finalized-mastered track” are all there already… but they just can’t be put to good work because of Renoise very structure… right? In some way what I wanted to focus on it’s the “tech”, the “audio quality” of the tool. It doesn’t really matter (yet) if the process is slow to be done in pragmatic terms… is Renoise good at it?

As far as sound quality goes, Renoise sounds pretty spiffy, especially at 24/96 running some nice waves plugins… what initially drew me to it was the sound quality (and also that it is a great tool). Especially after using modplug, with its interpolation that just sounds… murky.

Nowhere did I say renoise was a bad tool (otherwise why would I be here.) I said it just wasn’t a tool for mastering. Renoise is great for mixing, composing, splicing audio, etc… but MIXING AND MASTERING ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS!!! When you can edit the final rendered waveform of your mix in Renoise (and a few other features such as the ones Paulie mentioned), then you can attempt to do a semi self-mastering job…

Come to think of it, this might be possible to attempt with the new render highlighted section option, if you also had some good pluginsn (such as fft analysis,etc)… although you’d still be limited visually…

[Parsec]

Renoise sounds pretty spiffy

that just sounds… murky

I’m sorry but… define these two terms because… well… I wasn’t able to understand if this is good or bad…
my damn rusty english…

Nowhere did I say renoise was a bad tool (otherwise why would I be here.) I said it just wasn’t a tool for mastering. Renoise is great for mixing, composing, splicing audio, etc…

Yes… no doubt about this. A “bad tool” in terms of being a mastering tool… this is what I meant… we were speaking considering Renoise as a Mastering tool and stating that it could actually even have the “tech power” to do the job… but it’s a “bad” (outdated - poor - not suitable) tool to practically handle the job… wasn’t your post about this?

[Shane_Turner]

I’m sorry but… define these two terms because… well… I wasn’t able to understand if this is good or bad…

Yes… no doubt about this. A “bad tool” in terms of being a mastering tool… this is what I meant… we were speaking considering Renoise as a Mastering tool and stating that it could actually even have the “tech power” to do the job… but it’s a “bad” (outdated - poor - not suitable) tool to practically handle the job… wasn’t your post about this?

ok ok.
spiffy=great, neat, etc. Renoise sounds great.

murky= foggy, muddy. I don’t like the sound of how modplug interpolates samples, i always felt it destroyed the crispness and clarity of treble frequencies on the sample when pitch shifting. Of course I haven’t used it for at least a year now, maybe its improved…

And for your other point I guess after the developers have conquored the MIDI piano roll, pattern arranger, and whatever is currently planned, what else would be left but to add a proper mastering feature

[Atlantis]

My 2 cents (and I apologise, I haven’t read the topic through yet):

Renoise is not mastering software and it never will be. You can’t have both a (good) sequencer and mastering application in one because the CPU load just doesn’t allow for it. For small projects, yeah, it would probably work. But anything bigger and the processor has to do twice the work (processing the sequence data as well as apply compression, EQ and reverb).

And another issue, which I can’t say I’ve tested myself, but what happens when you put a compressor on a track and adjust the track volume? Does the signal going into the compressor change as well? Because in a real multi-track environment it shouldn’t. I would never be able to master in Renoise if it worked that way.

For serious mastering you really have to export and use another application specifically designed for mastering.

[Atlantis]

I’ve just been reading down this topic a little more and I fully agree with Paulie Phonick’s posts. Specifically regarding the mastering during the composing stage issue. I ended up doing this so much myself that in the end I just gave in and moved on to focusing on the mastering only, but good composers really shouldn’t focus on mastering, I agree.