Cry For Help on Mixing Hip Hop

[brrrse]

I have absolutely no answers for you, but wanted to thank you for posting this!! I'm looking forward to following this and seeing what gets figured out!

[cassmcentee]

I'm looking forward to hearing some good advice as well!
So far, for me, I've been leaning towards making sure the monitors can handle the kick and bass at full volume (I do use a sub)
That includes a High Pass Filter over the Low End till the monitors are happy with what they are getting hit with!
and then everything else sits well below that. So where in one of my acoustic tracks the drums and instrument faders will be at similar positions,
...but with my latest hip hop attempts the instrument faders are less by at least half compared to the kick

I was just thinking of this--- When the speakers are pushing the big LOW END it makes it harder for the HIGH END to get pushed as it would be for a Singer/Writer song.
To Create the big Low End our monitor cones have to be jumping, It's hard to yell and whisper at the same time
I just experimented with Heavy High Passes over the low end of the instruments and gave heavy HighZ boosts to the instruments.
Those boosts would be way too much in another genre, but it allowed the speakers, which are jumping/pulsing, to still produce a pleasing High End.
It also allowed for the instrument volumes to remain relatively low yet still cut through with definition.
Now it's starting to make sense how the guys that are great at this get so much open space.
I would like to know how they deal with the reverb, if any at all!

(Edit) P.S. A Taxi Friendly Library had a call out for some Latin Hip Hop, I started two tracks and then threw up my hands as I felt I wasn't going anywhere with the tunes.
I don't listen to Hip Hop so that is a big hurdle to jump over. But for the sake of the discussion, here is a clip of what I was working on before I surrendered:
https://soundcloud.com/robert-cass-mcen ... re-de-rojo
I'll remove the tune from Soundcloud in a couple of days since it is rather embarrassing !

[waveheavy]

Here's an example of a pretty heavy kick and low bass in the genre. It's the Waves L3 limiter that's helping keep it under control. But there's also EQing.

Don't have your volume up too high please; I did all this using my headphones:

https://soundcloud.com/waveheavy/hiphoptest2/s-wK05H

Telefunkin, are you wanting more than that?

If so, then EQ and limiting is still going to be the same kind of process on the low end. In my example there's a low end roll off of the kick at 30Hz and a roll off of the bass at 40Hz. I have a narrow dip in the bass at 55Hz where the kick has a strong narrow boost at 55Hz (its sweet spot). I have another strong boost around 4kHz for the kick beater. I have the kick triggering a sidechained compressor on the bass. Only thing lacking with the bass style is it needs some kind of saw synth added or distortion effect, but that's going to be higher frequency stuff.

[cassmcentee]

Graham, can you post the MP3 that's distorted?
Might give some better clues as to what's happening

[lesmac]

Hi Graham,
Some good points already made by "folks in the know".
I'll join the discussion , not saying I have the answer for you but will throw in a few things I've picked up lately.

I think your track sounds pretty good musically and mix wise except for your bass problem. The low end bass rattled things in my studio. Admittedly I haven't been listening to real bass heavy tracks or I would probably have removed the culprits but it really got the sub "working".

That tip about setting the kick and bass is a good one and Gram from "the recording revolution.com" has a you tube vid on that. {Using RMS level}

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECRx4WF3pcc

Warren Huart from "produce like a pro" has some tips on mixing bass, one where he duplicates the bass track and puts a high pass filter on one and a low pass on the other. He compresses the low passed track to control it and on the high passed track accentuates the harmonics so it translates over smaller speakers.

I use "Maxxbass by Waves to bring out bass harmonics and it works well.

Another tip I've seen on You tube is where the presenter imports reference tracks in the desired genre and sweeps a filter right down to compare the low end to his track. Maybe do that and use your visual tools to check.

None of the points above were specifically hip hop related but the principal should be the same. Not saying the above points are even relevant here but a good tip is worth sharing anyway.

Others with more knowledge on mp3 conversion may provide more but I'm guessing there is too much content down low for the conversion to handle. I'm prepared to be "set straight" here. Sorta along the lines of what Cass was saying.

I'd use RMS metering on the master bus as well as other buses and individual tracks.

Looking forward to see how this one pans out. {pun intended }

[waveheavy]

I was wondering if you were using some kind of limiter on your Master bus and also were watching a spectral analyzer of the bottom end.

If your analyzers are correct and not revealing overs on the peak and loudness (RMS) meters, and there's no 'intersample peaks', then the bounce should be no problem. Ozone is one of the few tools that picks up intersample peaks, a condition that on normal peak & RMS meters won't show distortion, yet the intersample peak can still contain distortion.

http://www.musictech.net/2012/09/10mm-n ... ple-peaks/

Dave, that sounds fine to me, and I really appreciate the reply. Are you saying I simply need to use a Waves L3 And possibly HP filtering to make it all work and not distort when converting to mp3? I believe I've effectively been doing that, although using other tools. Yet whilst my metering plus visible and audible indications suggest I've not been over-cooking it, the distortion in my mp3 tells me otherwise. Honestly, I still don't know what I've got wrong. It sounds easy from your demo and from what you say, and that's what I expect, but there's something about what I'm doing that the conversion does not like and I'm still not sure what it is. Have I missed your point?

[waveheavy]

Here's screen shots of my EQ settings:

Kick:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5dq5xbfsnogki9x/Kick.PNG?dl=0

Bass:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ixoaqmf3z6g0hrp/Bass.PNG?dl=0

Both of them have compressors on them too. The bass track is sidechained to the kick, so when the kick hits it drives down the compressor on the bass. This is one of the production tricks of Hip-Hop and Rap for the bottom end, and also EDM.

Also, if I compare my track with yours Dave (according to the you sent) mine is nowhere near as load or bassy/powerful. I know sound choice has a lot to do with that but I'd be happy get the result you got. If I were to mix exactly those two stems then convert to mp3 would I get the same track power and clarity? You'd hope so, but I'm beginning to wonder.

[waveheavy]

Telefunkin, those examples I would probably not go that extreme if I were doing a Hip-Hop or Rap track. I did that mainly to show one can... go to that extreme and still prevent digital overs. But an engineer instructor told me to never be afraid of doing something that extreme; if it's needed and sounds good, it is good. One would be surprised how much top engineers cut and boost to make some tracks fit a mix. I recommend looking into the Waves bundle if you can't get Ozone to handle it. Ozone should handle, it's not that cheap, and is a good mastering piece of software.

[andygabrys]

Keep in mind you have to try this out to make sure it works for you, but.....:

if the actual 44.1 or 48 k 16 bit WAV or AIF sounds clean, but the mp3 is distorted - then the issue is having the output ceiling on your master limiter set to close to 0.0 dB.

If you pull down the output ceiling on your master limiter (always the last plugin in the chain) far enough you will never see a red light on the master channel or the output limiter meters.

you need to experiment what works on your system and setup and brand of master limiter.

So say if you use the Waves L316 or L3 or L2 or even the venerable L1 - and you set the output ceiling for -0.1 dB.
If you haven't pushed the track HARD with limiting, then the WAV / AIF bounce will likely be "clean" and if you are super lucky the mp3 conversion will be too.
if you have PUSHED it HARD to give a commercial apparent volume of say 9 dB between peak and RMS volume then the WAV / AIF might still be clean, but the mp3 conversion will likely exhibit some distortion.

So you start backing down the limiter ceiling until both your WAV / AIF and Mp3 conversion sound clean.

On the Waves limiters I usually use -0.2 dB and have good results, but you might have to back it down to -0.5 dB or more. This will make your master slightly quieter in peak level - but if that's an issue go ahead and bounce an mp3 with output ceiling at -0.2 dB, and one at -0.3 dB and see if you can tell the difference in a blind test. If you can honestly - then maybe its an issue for you. Most people won't be worried about it, and a track usually sounds 'louder" if the RMS level is higher.

If you want to use a really cool convertor to take your WAV / AIF master and make mp3s, check out the Sonnox products:

https://www.sonnox.com/plugin/fraunhofer-pro-codec

and

https://www.sonnox.com/plugin/codec-toolbox

Basically what they do is turn down the output level of your master so that when the MP3 is encoded its clean. You can demo them and try them. I did so with the Pro Codec years ago when it first came out - and I found instead of $400 or whatever they wanted for it, that I could just turn down the output ceiling on my master limiter and get a similar result.

If you have a decent interface, you might also have meters on it that will indicate how hot your master is - both in peak volume and RMS. And if you get a lot of hot peaks you might get red lights going off as well. The Apogee Duet 2 does this. The master in mp3 format still sounds "clean" but the red lights go off. Indicating its def a hot master.

RE: eq and mixing low bass sources

yeah the eq curves posted ahead aren't that extreme (the bass anyways) but the kick can be handled in a different way.

any "round" sounding low sound like an 808 Kick, or a Sub bass made from a Sine wave sound can have lots of trouser flapping effect on big monitors, yet be nearly invisible on smaller speakers or earbuds.

one trick to make it show up is to add parallel distortion (or overdrive or saturation or harmonics or whatever you want to call it). This adds harmonics of the fundamental frequency that show up in the midrange. Even if you high pass the bass after adding parallel distortion, the ear picks up the midrange frequencies and recreates the IMPRESSION of the fundamental frequency down low.

You will find a number of plugins like Waves Rbass, or MaxxBass, or UAD enhancer HZ etc that do this in a plugin. You can also just send from your bass track or kick track to an aux with an overdrive on it like Waves GTR Stomp with the green overdrive on the stock setting. Send until you get a nice balance being able to hear the low source and it doesn't sound like Lemmy's bass sound (unless you are going for that).

Why you would want to do this rather than just eq? Go ahead and try out the two. If my kick sounds great, but I just need more nail in the paddle - then I eq midrange up. If my kick sounds great but disappears on small speakers - you can't eq something that isn't there. So in that case add some harmonics and all of a sudden the midrange appears - then you can still add extra midrange on the kick sound if you need it.


Hope that helps.

[cassmcentee]

Link not working...