Sound card - sound quality

[Stephane Collin]

Hello community.

I'm trying to find ways to improve the sound quality of my vsl-mir mixes.

The fact is that I don't seem to be able to reach the sonic precision and detail of the best demos in the demo zone.  While I get great results, I'm afraid they are not as great as the said demos.  On strings material, as soon as I raise the wet control, I get some mud and masking.

Following some advice in this forum, I tried varying the mic setup in mir, which helps a lot.  Yet I don't get to where I would like to be.

Could it be that this be due to the sound card quality ?  I have a M-Audio Fast Track Ultra, I usually work in 44.1 kHz and 32 bit floating point.  Is it so that when working with vsl samples from programming to final master we stay in digital domain, and so the quality of the AD/DA converters should not come into play ?  By the way, when playing the mp3 files of the good demos from the demo zone, I hear clearly the precision and realism of the space, so the DA conversion seems quite ok.

Could it be that those demos benefit from esoteric mastering processes ?

Thanks for any advice.

[Dietz]

Hi Stepane,

I can assure you that no "esoteric mastering processes" :-) were used for VSL's own demo pieces, and I'm pretty sure the same is true for most (if not all) of the user-demos too.

I doubt that your soundcard is he problem (although it's always a good idea to use the best converters you can afford for monitoring purposes). It's more likely that your monitoring suffers from bad room-acoustics, which will it make much harder to take proper decisions. Mixing is much more about (conscious) hearing than anythig else ...

HTH,

[Stephane Collin]

Thank you Dietz.

That makes perfect sense, of course.  Room acoustics is the next thing I will spend money on.

That being said, when I listen to the good demos, the same monitoring and room are involved, shouldn't the same problems appear ?

But indeed, when I listen through my (I think excellent) headphones, I feel less problems in my mixes.  But of course, they don't translate nicely on the Genelecs.

I will definitely work on my room acoustics.

Thanks again.

[Beat Kaufmann]

@Stephane Collin said:

Could it be that those demos benefit from esoteric mastering processes ?

Hi Stephane

Of course there are better audio interfaces than your Fast-Track but keep in mind that mixing in a better way will much more improve your signal than a more expensive audio interface!

So to answer your upper question: Yes and no. The no stands for "esoteric".

As all Convolution based effects also MIR has its more or less coloured venues.

So you can try to improve your final sound on the one hand by chosing less coloured venues and of course with a "normal" mastering process.

On the other hand you also can increase the sound quality by doing a correct mix within MIR.

MIR is so easy to use that most of the musicians mean that they only can place the instruments and that they will get a result as we get it from "EMI".

That's unfortunately the truth. But if you are doing two "musts" you will come much more closer to your dream sound.

Must one: Cut the low frequencies of all instruments except the ones of the bass instruments.

This treatment will less blow up the total sound. In postive words: The mix will be more clear.

So use a "low cut EQ" with every instrument. Adjust the frequency from low to the higher frequencies until you notice that some bottom of the certain instrument sound disappears.

If you think it is too much you can go a little bit back.But often more is better than too less.

Even if the instrument seems to sound thin after EQing within the mix it's OK.

Further: reduce the dry/wet ratio over all to 35 - 45% (instead of 50%). Most time you get a nice room impression as well but less "mud".

Must two: EQ your final mix. Play it and compare it with another classical piece by switch to and fro.

Example ...(Second part: A MIR-mix: First part: an orginal recording of a similar Orchestra and music style)

You probably will recognice a coloured difference with your mix compared to a real recording as you get with the example above as well.

Compared to a real orchestra it can sound a bit (or a lot) cheesy, nasally or what ever.

Use your ears and a bell filter of an EQ. Set it as a starting point to - 8dB and Q = 1. Scan through the whole frequency range with your piece until the colour disappear more or less.

You probably have to adjust the EQ settings until you will have found the optimal sound. The "colours" are often somewhre between 100Hz and 3kHz.

OK, this seems to be a bit an unprofessional solution but it is far more than doing nothing.

I wish a lot of success

Save the money for a new audio interface and buy one more library ...better monitors or a good Mastering EQ

...or even better: all together 😉

Beat