Sound Quality issue

[Soeren]

Hello all,

For a while I ve been having a problem, when I listen to professional musics, their instruments sound pure and clear.

In my concern I use Kontakt instruments with a protools duet sound card 192 khz 24 bits, and I can figure when I crank the volume a bit for final mix, not above the limit though, that it gets crushed and saturated sound very unpleasant and unharmonic to hear, like a whole mess of instruments stuck together, say for orchestra and so on...

I'm looking for settings improvement I could have missed, but this is a total enigma for me, because this tools are made for quality sound, and their original recording should sound good enough. What should I try to do to improve ?

Thank you

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Soeren

Hello all,

For a while I ve been having a problem, when I listen to professional musics, their instruments sound pure and clear.

In my concern I use Kontakt instruments with a protools duet sound card 192 khz 24 bits, and I can figure when I crank the volume a bit for final mix, not above the limit though, that it gets crushed and saturated sound very unpleasant and unharmonic to hear, like a whole mess of instruments stuck together, say for orchestra and so on...

I'm looking for settings improvement I could have missed, but this is a total enigma for me, because this tools are made for quality sound, and their original recording should sound good enough. What should I try to do to improve ?

Thank you

Why are you using 24/192? There's no reason to do so for most people. Read this thread: http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=390984 and the article I linked to. Unless your whole playback system is up to snuff it'll sound just like you're experiencing. 24/44.1 or 24/48 if you're doing video is about all you'll need.

[Soeren]

Thanx for helping.

I did several tests, root instruments combination in a 44 khz session, instead of 192. Nothing change at all, it sound good on medium level, but saturated on high volume. I've tried leveling volume with different tools, as well as getting it loud straight from kontakt. Made special care that no instrument pass the red line and Ive put limiters.

I'm gonna try some other stuffs, but I thing its just a matter of soundbank quality. Real groups don't use virtual instruments, or then electronical ones like hip hop or techno. Demos I've heard of orchestra softwares were made with 40 k dollars hardware, so I guess I just have to deal with it....

any other Idea is welcome

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Soeren

Thanx for helping.

I did several tests, root instruments combination in a 44 khz session, instead of 192. Nothing change at all, it sound good on medium level, but saturated on high volume. I've tried leveling volume with different tools, as well as getting it loud straight from kontakt. Made special care that no instrument pass the red line and Ive put limiters.

I'm gonna try some other stuffs, but I thing its just a matter of soundbank quality. Real groups don't use virtual instruments, or then electronical ones like hip hop or techno. Demos I've heard of orchestra softwares were made with 40 k dollars hardware, so I guess I just have to deal with it....

any other Idea is welcome

You have a lot to learn about gain-staging. You really shouldn't rely on limiters - that can be why your stuff sounds squashed and like crud. I only use a limiter as a brickwall device to catch the odd peak. I suggest getting a good metering plugin like the Brainworx bx-meter at https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/p.../bx_meter.html
Pay attention to what the display is showing you. Certainly soundbank quality can play a part but the stuff done for Kontakt is of decent quality but it's all in how you use it.

A good mix should have dynamics (Metallica's Death Magnetic not withstanding). If your final two-track waveform looks like a solid brick then you have a serious problem in your workflow. What exact plugins are you using on that final two-bus?

[Soeren]

Watch the attachement.

Hear this link, and crank volume up.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2D...ew?usp=sharing

looks computerish, and not real pure sound

[DonaldM]

First of all, its a pretty piece of music. Without seeing exactly how you have everything set up, or what plugins you're using its difficult to comment on what may be causing the issues you describe.

However, if I might suggest a couple of things. Have the audio output from each instrument module in Kontakt go to its own AUX track in Pro Tools. Adjust the output volume from Kontakt so that the meter on the AUX track is just into yellow. Think of it this way. If you were recording live players, with all sorts of mics coming into the recording booth, you'd adjust the gain on the incoming mic signal to get a clean signal on the audio recording. Essentially, that's what you're doing here with Kontakt. Think of the mixer in Kontakt as your line in mixer for your instrument recordings. Get as a clean a signal as you can. That's how I do it with East-West or Omnisphere or any other VI.

Once you're satisfied with you levels, then you can commit to audio. Once in audio, if you need a bit more gain, you can use clip gain a bit...but be careful with that too. Add your fx (delay, reverb, eq whatever you're doing). You shouldn't need a lot of compression on orchestral type instruments. Less is more.

Watch the meter on your Master fader. Keep it around -6db to -8db.

An orchestral track like this isn't going to be at the radio ready volume levels you hear in pop or dance music. Its a different kind of mix altogether.

I personally don't have Kontakt, but from all I've ready, they have some really nice orchestral sounds to work with and there are any number of good sample libraries out there for it. Its a real art to get good orchestral sound from sample libraries. There's a lot tweaking, sometimes working with different sample articulations for the same instrument track and all that.

Also, don't be afraid to layer up you're sounds to fill them out and add some depth. Pay attention to EQ as well. There's a lot to it.

Also, I think Jack was right. You shouldn't need to work beyond 44.1k sample rate, 24bit. (Unless you're scoring for video, in which case use 48k sample rate). The higher sample rates won't do you much good unless you're working on some really high end stuff in post-audio or big production.

Another issue could be your studio monitors. How does your mix sound on different speakers?

Good luck