Thinking Outside the Box, Part 3: Stripping the Channel

Tutorial: Dax Liniere

THE SPICE OF LIFE

Console emulation is not the only reason you should consider using saturation on channels. Sometimes our source material is cosmetically lacklustre and needs a dab of makeup, or perhaps we want to go the other direction and ugly it up a little.

For harsh or strident sounds — this could be cymbals, distorted guitars, vocals, brass, strings; almost anything, really — instead of reaching for an EQ to cut top-end, try a ‘warming’ saturator to round out the sound. A source that’s lacking bass or low-mids? Try a ‘fattening’ saturator like u-he Satin or FabFilter Saturn (the Warm Tape mode is a great place to start). Sometimes you’ll get a sound that’s too dull, so give it a bit of excitement with a saturator that generates strong upper harmonics. Maybe you have a loop or sample that’s boring and lifeless, if so, you could give it a bit of crunch. There are lots of saturators that can be used as a special effect. Try them on a small part you would usually tuck away in your mix. Like a sprinkle of chilli, it might just be the spice your mix needs. Plug-ins such as Voxengo’s Tube Amp, Togu Audio Line’s TAL-Tube and Camel Audio’s CamelCrusher are all very effective and also free.

To me, the best thing about ITB mixing is not the cost, but the flexibility. You may have already realised that different console emulation plug-ins could be used in different places in your mix. In the box, you are free from the restrictions that working in the analogue domain imposes. You’re free to use the forward midrange sound of an API for your drums, the fatness of a Neve for your bass and the wide low-mids of a Trident for your guitars. Even the use of different tape types and speeds can be decided on a per-track basis. You cannot practically do this when mixing in the analogue domain.

Better still, you can choose to have no colouration at all on a sensitive source like vocals. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the single best thing about mixing In-The-Box: wherever you don’t want colouration, you don’t need to have it. While we can simulate the non-linearities of the analogue world in digital, analogue cannot pass a signal from one end of the chain to the other without imparting colouration and distortion. In short, In-The-Box can deliver the Outside-The-Box sound, but OTB cannot deliver the ITB sound.

MORE WIDTH

In Issue 96, I wrote about width in analogue mixes and how crosstalk affects the stereo image. There are many things at play inside any analogue circuit that may affect the perception of width, making it either wider or narrower. An analogue console contains thousands of electronic components: resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors and integrated circuits. Although each of these has a specified value within the circuit design, the actual value may vary within a few percent, this is called the component’s tolerance. These minute differences between components accumulate throughout the signal path, resulting in subtle differences in frequency response, noise (amount and spectrum), dynamics and saturation. It’s been suggested that the noise present at a console’s output is perceived by the brain as an increase in reverb and because this noise is left-right uncorrelated (i.e., different on both sides) the ‘additional reverb’ appears wide. All of these left-right differences can contribute to the perception of subtle widening.

The important thing to remember is that this widening is uncontrolled. Your stereo field (including your centre image) will always be slightly spread by an amount that varies with temperature and age. In the box, you can choose to apply plug-ins that simulate this behaviour only on the channels you want to affect.

EQUALISERS

We’ve looked at the console input stage, its output bus and the tape it records to, but sitting in between all that is the humble equaliser, another great source of colouration. Every EQ circuit design has different properties that reflect the philosophies of its designer. Some are clean, some add character, some are surgical, and some ‘musical’. Whether Pultec, Neve, API, Helios or Trident, supplementing console EQs with outboard is a long-standing practice which can avail a broad palette of sound-shaping tools. New toys are fun, but learning the tools you have, especially your ears, is most important. The best advice I could give any engineer about equalisation is to practice ear training. The faster and more easily you can identify frequencies, the more efficient and better your work will become. This is especially true for live sound, where reaction time can be the difference between smiling and frowning musicians. It will also help you to identify how other mixes are constructed and how sounds are placed, which is a great way to learn and improve your own mixing.

There are many ear-training apps available based around one-third-octave bands. Quiztones is one that’s available for iOS and Android and costs less than a beer.

Now what are you going to do with these newly learned skills? Put them to good use with these great EQ plug-ins!