String Quartet Recording

[orpheus_2]

Hi,

I made some really nice recording of our string quartet with tow mikes and an MBox 2.

However, every time I try to enhance the recording with the Plugins I got with the PT LE, the results are unsatisfactory. I don't have much experience with PT, but my impression is that half of the PlugIns doesn't even come in question when dealing with classical music. The other half delivers a bit too crude results.

Are there some 3rd party plugins we should get?

Or are we completely at mercy of "mastering engineers"??

[GTBannah]

What kind of "enhancements" are you trying to make? With a such a recording, any use of plugins in the post production stage should be cautious and sparing.

Mastering engineers are not a disease to be avoided. They can help.

Lets talk ....

[Doug Ring]

Hey Orpheus, I don't understand what you want to do. You say you've made a very nice recording, isn't that enough? What "enhancements" do you want to bring to it? More bass, more treble, more stereo, more overdubs?

You say "our" string quartet, so I assume you play in it. I'm sure you didn't just pick up your instrument and start making beautiful music; you had to put in hours of practice. It's the same with Pro Tools.

The LE plug-ins are capable of subtle results if used subtly. If you spend some time with them I'm sure you'll get to know what they can do. And if you tell us what you want to achieve, someone will have an answer for you.

[Naagzh]

I suppose you could EQ out the low-lows (45 Hz and below), or lightly hit it with Analog Channel, and maybe add some reverb, but there's probably plenty of ambience in the 2 signals you recorded. There isn't much (if any) mixing to be done on your part. As far as the utility of PT's stock plug-ins, you're right: they're not mastering tools (apart from Maxim, which is a "decent" look-ahead limiter); they're mixing tools. The stock EQ and Compressor are, IMHO, quite useful when mixing a 20-track plus ensemble.

But to slap a Comp/Dyn III across your mix thinking that you'll get things as good as an experienced M.E. with sophisticated listening skills and mastering tools is a bit misguided.

That said, if you're willing to spend the time and money, it's possible to create terrific sounding masters within PT. Maybe not as nice as Bob Ludwig would make it, but MUCH better than nothing. But before you make any purchases, get together with an ME and ask him/her lots of questions. And search mastering right here on these forums. To say the very least, it's been discussed before...

[orpheus_2]

Hi everybody,

first of all, I hope we didn't offend any of mastering engineers, as there is really no reason for anybody to feel offended from what we wrote. However, some of our colleagues were not happy with some masterings, so we are trying to learn as much as we can, so that when we get our fine recordings ready for publishing, mastering engineers get nice stuff to work with...though, good ones in the classical world ARE expensive...and also - mastering people DO have better reputation than recording engineers, that's what all of my "bandmates" would confirm

What our recording (although very good and clean) needs is some nice reverb and EQ. Finishing touches - like adjusting loudness on all tracks etc. - are the things we would let an ME do. Also, we would improve some balancing of the parts on a few occasions. So, there are a few things we need to all agree upon, and we want to control, that's all.

If PT is sufficient for what we do, and we need a little more routine to use everything with caution, than it is good news.

I was trying before to find some posts about it, but it appears generally to be very hard to find stuff relevant to classical music

[hmorovic]

I did what I wouldn't call "mastering" but sound enhacement to a couple of my (classical contemporary) pieces, and the process was, in this one , EQ (MC DSP Filterbank) > Compressor (Waves Rennasaince) > Reverb (Altiverb) > Waves L2. All of them used in a very decent way (L2 , -1 dB, just for the "spaceness"; Compressor with a gain of 2 or 3 dB, no threshold manipulation, also just for the color; and Altiverb Vienna Mozart Hall algorihtm very dry, just to hear the tail on pauses...).

First of all, if you want to do it, you have to invest in some quality plug-ins, and, as somebody above wrote, practice . You have to learn to tell when a effect is really good and when only the change of it leads you to think something is good (or better than the previous one).

Hope this helps,

H.

[orpheus_2]

I did what I wouldn't call "mastering" but sound enhacement to a couple of my (classical contemporary) pieces, and the process was, in this one , EQ (MC DSP Filterbank) > Compressor (Waves Rennasaince) > Reverb (Altiverb) > Waves L2. All of them used in a very decent way (L2 , -1 dB, just for the "spaceness"; Compressor with a gain of 2 or 3 dB, no threshold manipulation, also just for the color; and Altiverb Vienna Mozart Hall algorihtm very dry, just to hear the tail on pauses...).

First of all, if you want to do it, you have to invest in some quality plug-ins, and, as somebody above wrote, practice . You have to learn to tell when a effect is really good and when only the change of it leads you to think something is good (or better than the previous one).

Hope this helps,

H.

Cool Hector, thanks, I'll check it out, the above described procedure is helpful.

Which quality plugins would you mean? Are the PT included ones really useles for our situation? I see that what you were using was not included in PT 7.

Nice music BTW, we are into Kurtag at the moment.

[orpheus_2]

In my opinion you can use the EQs and Dynamics (Compressor, Limiter) from PT directly. However, setting up the Compressor/Limiter Dyn3 may be sometimes more complicated than setting up a maximizer (such as Waves L2, again: practise required). If you don't have any hardware reverb unit available (I have good experience with Lexicon devices for classical music), you will need a good reverb plugin which is missing in the Pro Tools distribution.

Jakub

Hi Jakub,

thx very much for the input!

Which Lexicon device do you have in mind? We can borrow MX300, if software fails.

[hmorovic]

First of all, thanks for your kind comments!

The plug-ins I could advice, without hesitation and which go in almost every mix of mine are:

- EQ:
- MC DSP Filterbank (I have the LE version, it used to cost $195) For me, it's the best sounding Soft EQ
I would also recommend the URS Classic Console EQ Bundle, but since I got the MC DSP, it doesn't get used that much.
Digi's own EQ III is also nice sounding, but I prefer the sound quality of the other ones I mentioned before.

- Reverb:
- Altiverb without a doubt! The best natural sounding Reverb, with lots of Impulse Responses, and since version 5, very tweakable. I don't know the current price, I guess $300 or $400?

As for compressors and limiters, althought I have the Waves Rennasaince (included in the Renn Bundle) and the L2 (in the Masters bundle), I'd rather stay away from Waves because of WUP (which is basically an anual fee you have to pay Waves if you want to be able to upgrade).

As soon as I upgrade to PT 7 I'll go with Sonalksis for compressors and Sony Oxford (now SONOX, I think) for a limiter.

I hope this has helped you and throw me a mail when your mixes with Kurtag are ready, I'd love to hear them (I met Kurtag in Darmstadt in 1998, a very nice -and quiet- guy)

All the best,

H.