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Monthly Archives: December 2018


Friday Tips: Studio One’s Hybrid Reverb

The previous tip on creating a dual-band reverb generated a fair amount of interest, so let’s do one more reverb-oriented tip before moving on to another topic.

Studio One has three different reverbs—Mixverb, Room Reverb, and OpenAIR—all of which have different attributes and personalities. I particularly like the Room Reverb for its sophisticated early reflections engine, and the OpenAIR’s wide selection of decay impulses (as well as the ability to load custom impulses I’ve made).

Until now, it never occurred to me how easy it is to create a “hybrid” reverb with the best of both worlds: using the Room Reverb solely as an early reflections engine, and the OpenAIR solely for the reverb decay. To review, reverb is a continuum—it starts with silence during the pre-delay phase when the sound first travels to hit a room’s surfaces, then morphs into early reflections as these sounds bounce around and create echoes, and finally, transforms into the reverb decay—the most complex component. Each one of these components affects the sound differently. In Studio One, these components don’t all have to be from the same reverb.

THE EARLY REFLECTIONS ENGINE

Start by inserting the Room Reverb into an FX Channel, and calling up the Default preset. Then set the Reverb Mix to 0.00 and the Dry/Wet Mix to 100%. The early reflections appear as discrete vertical lines. They’re outlined in red in the screen shot below.

 

If you haven’t experimented with using the Room Reverb as a reflections engine, before proceeding now would be a good time to use the following evaluation procedure and familiarize yourself with its talents.

 

  1. From the Browser, load the loop Crowish Acoustic Chorus 1.wav (Loops > Rock > Drums > Acoustic) into a stereo track. This loop is excellent for showcasing the effects of early reflections.
  2. Create a pre-fader send from this track to the FX Channel with the Room Reverb, and bring the drum channel fader all the way down for now so you hear only the effects of the Room Reverb.
  3. Let’s look at the Room parameters. Vary the Size parameter. The bigger the room, the further away the reflections, and the quieter they are.
  4. Set the Size to around 3.00. Vary Height. Note how at maximum height, the sound is more open; at minimum height, the sound is more constricted. Leave Height around 1.00.
  5. Now vary Width. With narrower widths, you can really hear that the early reflections are discrete echoes. As you increase width, the reflections blend together more. Leave Width around 2.00.
  6. The Geometry controls might as well be called the “stand here” controls. Turning up Distance moves you further away from the sound source. Asy varies your position in the left-right direction within the room.
  7. Plane is a fairly subtle effect. To hear what it does, repeat steps 3 and 4, and then set Size to around 3.00, Dist to 0.10, and Asy to 1.00. Plane spreads the sounds a bit more apart at the maximum setting.

 

Now that you know how to set up different early reflections sounds, let’s create the other half of our hybrid reverb.

THE REVERB DECAY

To provide the reverb decay, insert the OpenAIR reverb after the Room Reverb. Whenever you call up a new OpenAIR preset, do the following.

  1. Set ER/LR to 1.00.
  2. Set Predelay to minimum (-150.00 ms).
  3. Initially set Envelope Fade-in and Envelope ER/LR-Xover to 0.00 ms.

There are two ways to make a space for the early reflections so that they occur before the reverb tail: set an Envelope Fade-in time, an Envelope ER/LR-Xover time, or both. Because the ER/LR control is set to 1.00 there are no early reflections in the Open AIR preset, so if you set the ER/LR-Xover time to (for example) 25 ms, that basically acts like a 25 ms pre-delay for the reverb decay. This opens up a space for you to hear the early reflections before the reverb decay kicks in. If you prefer a smoother transition into the decay, increase the Envelope Fade-in time, or combine it with some ER/LR-Xover time to create a pre-delay along with a fade-in.

The OpenAIR Mix control sets the balance of the early reflections contributed by the Room Reverb and the longer decay tail contributed by the OpenAIR reverb. Choose 0% for reflections only, 100% for decay only.

…AND BEYOND

There are other advantages of the hybrid reverb approach. In the OpenAIR, you can include its early reflections to supplement the ones contributed by the Room Reverb. When you call up a new preset, instead of setting the ER/LR, Predelay, Envelope Fade-In, and Envelope ER/LR-Xover to the defaults mentioned above, bypass the Room Reverb and set the Open AIR’s early reflections as desired. Then, enable the Room Reverb to add its early reflections, and tweak as necessary.

It does take a little effort to edit your sound to perfection, so save it as an FX Chain and you’ll have it any time you want it.

New from iZotope

 

We’ve got amazing new stuff from iZotope over at shop.presonus.com! Check out the incredible mastering tools in Ozone, advanced audio restoration in RX 7, and the powerful mixing and analysis tools of Neutron… and more! These advanced audio tools are available both in full versions and lower-priced “Elements” editions. You can even get all of the Elements series in a single, affordable bundle!

Click here to shop and learn more about iZotope Add-ons for Studio One!

 

 

 

 

 

New: Overdose Drums from Craft Audio

 
Overdose Drums is a unique collection of analog synthesized drums and acoustic percussion for Impact XT. It bridges the divide between the synthesized and the organic for truly fascinating and versatile results… but that’s only part of what makes this collection unique. By using Studio One’s Musicloop format, you got total control over the Impact XT presets, mixer and FX settings, and notes within the Instrument part.

Click here to hear Overdose Drums and shop!

Better Reverb with Frequency Splitting

It’s convenient that Studio One has three significantly different reverbs, but none of them has separate decay times for high and low frequencies. This is one of my favorite reverb features, because (for example) you can have a tight kick ambiance, but let the hats and cymbals fade out in a diaphanous haze…or have a huge kick that sounds like it was recorded in a gothic castle, with tight snare and cymbals on top. Also with highly percussive drums, sometimes I’d like a little more diffusion than what’s available so that reflections aren’t perceived as discrete echoes, but rather, as a smooth wash of sound.

So let’s build the ideal Room Reverb for drums (other instruments, too). There’s a downloadable FX Chain that provides a big drum sound template, but note that the preset control settings cover only one sound out of a cornucopia of possible effects. Once you start modifying the reverb sounds themselves, as well as some of the parameters in the Routing window itself, anything’s possible.

 

ROUTING AND MACRO CONTROLS

Here’s the FX Chain routing.

Splitter 2 provides a Normal split. One split handles the dry signal, while the other goes to the reverbs. Splitter 1 does a Frequency split, with one split going to a single Room Reverb dedicated to the low frequencies, and the other split going to two Room Reverbs in series for the high frequencies. The Split point (crossover frequency) is set around 620 Hz, but varying this parameter provides a wide variety of sounds.

You might wonder “why not just feed two reverbs, and EQ their output?” EQing before going into the reverb gives each reverb more clarity, because the low and high frequencies don’t interact with each other in the process of being reverberated.

The three Mixtool modules provide mixing for the dry, low reverb, and high reverb sounds, as represented by the first three Macro controls. The other controls modify reverb parameters, but of course, these are only some of the editable parameters available for adjustment within the Room Reverb.

 

HOW TO USE IT

Here’s one option, although I don’t claim that it’s necessarily “best practices” (suggestions are welcome in the Comments section!).

Start with the Dry, Low Verb, and High Verb controls at minimum. Bring up the Low Verb, and adjust Low Verb Balance and Low Decay for desired low end. Then turn down Low Verb, bring up High Verb, and adjust its associated controls (Hi Verb Balance, Hi Verb Decay, and Hi Verb Damping). With both Low Verb and High Verb set more or less the same, go into the Routing section and vary Splitter 1’s crossover frequency (the slider below Frequency Split). After finding the optimum crossover point, re-tweak the mix if necessary.

Finally, choose a balance of all three levels, and you’re good to go.

 

WHAT ABOUT THE REVERBS THEMSELVES?

For the default FX Chain preset, the Low Verb has a shorter delay than the High Verbs, but still gives a big kick sound.

The reason for using two Room Reverbs in series for the high reverb component is to increase the amount of diffusion, and provide a smoother sound.

You want fairly different settings for the two reverbs so that they blend, thus giving the feel of more diffusion. There’s not really a lot of thought behind the above settings; I just copied one of the reverbs and changed a few parameters until the sound was smooth.

Incidentally, three Room Reverbs requires a decent amount of CPU, so there are switches at the bottom of the Macro Controls to enable the “eco” mode for each reverb. Choosing eco for the low frequency reverb impacts the sound less than choosing eco for the two high frequency reverbs.

IT’S A WRAP

Download the FX Chain and check out what this FX Chain can do—I think you’ll find that when it comes to reverbs, third time’s a charm.

Click here to get the FX Chain preset!

 

 

New from UJAM!

Check out the new Virtual Instruments from UJAM! These are full-on virtual instrument plug-ins… UJAM‘s offerings go well beyond the simple sample packs you may be used to. Their products include hundreds of complete musical phrases, riffs, and fills, performed in dozens of styles. Current offerings include four Virtual Guitarists in acoustic and electric formats, three different Virtual Drummers, and EDM and hip-hop production kits for Beatmakers. You can get UJAM products individually or save some money by purchasing in several bundles. They’re a great way to add some flavor to your existing tracks and also offer limitless inspiration to your existing projects. Check out the demos and you’ll hear that UJAM has got your bases covered. (And basses… we just added those the other day!)

PCAudio Labs Updates Hardware Offerings for 2019

Everybody knows that PC Audio Labs is one of the best places to get an audio workstation. But did you know that they sell PreSonus certified systems with Studio One pre-installed… and a whole lot more? Well, they have for a while now, and they recently updated their entire PSC system line with some exciting new options. 
Brian over at PCAL says: “We’ve updated the PSC line to include many new Intel CPUs, including the new i9 9900kl 8-core CPU with a top turbo boost speed of 5GHz; that’s probably the biggest selling point of the new upgrades.”
All PC Audio Labs purchases include a free 30-minute training session (on the phone with a real person!) and a lifetime warranty. How cool is that?
Details:
  • Newly updated Specs with latest-generation Intel CPUs and chipsets
  • New CPU offerings, including the new Intel i9 9900k 3.6GHz CPU with a top turbo boost speed of 5GHz!
  • Thunderbolt, Firewire, and AVB options available
  • The only PCs certified for use with PreSonus hardware and software
  • Includes PreSonus Studio One Artist, pre-installed and configured for audio production; upgrades to Pro available
  • Starting at just $1399

Click here to learn more and shop!

 

Friday Tip: Better Vocals with Phrase-by-Phrase Normalization

Unless you have exceptional vocal control, some vocal or narration phrases will likely be softer than others—not intentionally due to natural dynamics, but as a result of sketchy mic technique, running out of breath, or not being able to hit a note as strongly as other notes. Using compression or limiting to even out a vocal’s peaks has its place, but the low-level sections might not be brought up enough, whereas the high-level ones may sound “squashed.”

A more natural-sounding solution is to edit the vocal to a consistent level first, before applying any compression or limiting, by using phrase-by-phrase gain changes that even out variations. The advantage of adjusting each phrase’s level for consistency is that you haven’t added any of the artifacts associated with compression, or interfered with a phrase’s inherent dynamics. Furthermore if you do add compression or limiting while mixing, you won’t need to use as much as you normally would to obtain the same perceived volume and intimacy. A side benefit of phrase-by-phase normalization is that you can define an event that starts just after an inhale, so the inhale isn’t brought up with the rest of the phrase.

Ready to tweak that vocal to perfection? Let’s go.

  1. Open the vocal event in the Edit view, and open the Audio Bend view.

  1. Click on the Event, and choose Action > Detect Transients. Then click on Remove Bend Markers to start with a clean slate. Your event will look like the above screen shot. (Note: If the vocals have phrases that are separated by spaces, you can choose Transient Detection, Standard Mode, and then click on Analyze. Lower the threshold so that the Bend Markers fall only at the beginning of phrases. However, you’ll may need to move, delete, or add some markers with complex parts, which is why I find it easier just to place Bend Markers where needed.)

  1. You can now close the Audio Bend view if you want more room for the waveform height. Choose the Bend tool, and click at the beginning of each phrase to add a Bend Marker. If a section that needs to be adjusted starts in the middle of a phrase, you can add a Bend Marker before the section that needs tweaking anyway, even if there isn’t silence (we’ll explain why later).
  2. Once you’ve separated the phrases with Bend Markers, select the event in the Edit view by clicking on it with the Arrow tool. Then, choose Action > Split at Bend Markers. Now each phrase is its own event.

  1. Click on an event, and then adjust the gain so the event reaches the desired level. Do this with each event that needs tweaking—done!

 

Note that if audio continues before and after the Bend Marker so the Bend Marker can’t land on silence, Studio One generally handles this well if you place the Bend Marker on a zero-crossing. But if an abrupt level change causes a click at a transition, simply crossfade over it by dragging the end of one event and the beginning of the next event over the transition, and type X to create a crossfade. Adjust the curve for the most natural sound. In extreme cases, fading out just before the click and fading in just after the click can solve any issues.

So why not just do this kind of operation in the Arrange View? Several reasons. First of all, the Edit view is a more comfortable editing environment. But also, sometimes detecting transients will place the Bend Markers accurately enough that all you need to do is split and change levels—it’s much easier than doing a series of splits in the Arrange view. And if you count keystrokes, clicking to drop Bend Markers that define where to split and doing all the splits at once is easier than clicking and splitting at each split. Finally, while in Edit view, you can take advantage of the Bend Markers to adjust phrasing.

While this is a highly effective technique (especially for narration), be careful not to get so involved in this process that you start normalizing, say, individual words. Within any given phrase there will be some dynamics that you’ll want to retain—never lose the human element.

Friday Tips: Studio One’s Zero-Latency/Zero-Artifact Transient Shaper

Studio One doesn’t have a transient shaper plug-in…in theory. In practice, there’s a zero-latency, artifact-free transient shaper that’s ideal for emphasizing the attack in drum parts (and other percussive sounds as well, from bass to funky rhythm guitar). Here’s how to do it.

  1. Copy the clip to which you want to add transient shaping.
  2. Right-click in the copy, and choose Detect Transients.
  3. Right-click in the copy again, and choose Split at Bend Markers. The copy now has slices at each transient.
  4. With all the slices still selected, click on any slice’s fadeout handle, and drag it all the way to the left so that each slice has a sharp decay. Tip: De-select one slice before doing this, because once you drag all the fadeouts to minimum, it’s very difficult to change them. By de-selecting a slice, you can select all the slices, and use the de-selected slice’s fadeout handle to change all the slice fadeouts at once, regardless of the other slices’ settings.
  5. Click the node in the middle of the fadeout curve, and drag the node down to make all the slices even more percussive.

The top waveform is the original drum part, while the lower waveform adds a sharp decay to each drum transient.

 

The copy now has the transients isolated from the rest of the loop. Vary the mix of the copied track and the original track to set the balance of the emphasized attack with the loop’s “body.” (Studio One programmer Arnd Kaiser suggests this process might be a good candidate for a macro—that’s an excellent point.)

This technique is particularly effective with acoustic drum loops, because the drums tend to ring longer—so creating a copy as described makes for a super-percussive sound compared to the original loop.

Try this, and you’ll be shocked at how this can make drum parts become more vibrant and “alive.” However, there is one unfortunate side effect: now I wish I could go back and remix all my songs that have drum tracks!