Month: May 2024

Both the practical and written elements of this unit have been incredibly helpful in expanding my knowledge about the use and capabilities of many aspects of production and mixing. I am pleased with the progress between the mix of our track for the first set of modules and the mixes that I have produced for this group project and now feel much more comfortable in making informed decisions in both the recording and the mixing process. Exercises such as the one displayed in my second blog have been helpful in better understanding a piece of music through critical listening and through this better understanding what makes the mix work well. I have been practicing this technique with songs that I enjoy and this has improved my ear for production and further helped me to make informed mixing decisions.

Learning about reference tracks has been helpful in that it is now a tool that I use frequently. I found when mixing for the group project I would routinely take a break from mixing and listen to the current mix in between other songs of similar style while walking. This has on multiple occasions given me insight that had passed by me when sat at my DAW that I have been able to come back and implement into my mix. Some examples of these reference tracks were:

Learning the basics of mastering has allowed me to experiment with mastering chains and work out what sounds right to me. Through use of plugins such as multi-band compressors, limiters and additive and deductive EQs I have made a master that I am happy with for both of my mixes. Finding a line between loudness and dynamic range was something that I took into account after research on the loudness wars and I eventually decided to master my mixes slightly quieter to allow for this dynamic space.

Today in class we went over the basics of Dolby Atmos mixing in logic but as a precursor to this we looked briefly into ambisonics.

‘Ambisonics is a technology for surround-sound which aims specifically at not making four (or any other number) of loudspeakers audible as separate sources of sound. It is designed using appropriate engineering methods and psychoacoustic theory that has shown good predictive value to make best use of available channels of communication (two or more ), and of loudspeakers’. (Fellgett, 1975) Ambisonics has a unique use case above 5.1 or 7.1 setups for example as it will support as many speakers as you want it to. This allows you to get creative with unique setups for more immersive experiences.

Peter Fellgett (Professor of Cybernetics and Instrument Physics, University of Reading)suggests that ambisonics can be utilised best by:

1. Using more loudspeakers.
2. Using more channels of communication.
3. Making better use of the available number of loudspeakers and channels.
4. Extending directional information from the 60˚ frontsector of stereo to a full 360˚ surrounding the listener in the
   horizontal plane, or to complete spherical surround reproduction including height. (Fellgett, 1975)

Dolby Atmos most commonly utilises a 7.1.4 speaker setup. this includes seven surrounding speakers, one LFE (Low Frequency Effects) and four overhead speakers. (diagrammed below) The overhead speakers give a wider sense of range on top of the traditional 7.1 surround setup and are used in all Dolby Atmos setups.

We looked into methods of mixing for Dolby Atmos at home using a binaural rendering engine with headphones and how to set this up on logic. I am going to be mixing the group project in this format and will need to take into account how this will sound on such a grandiose speaker setup.

You can get a good grasp of what the sound will be like on this setup with headphones but will never truly know until you listen on the real thing. When mixing for surround it is easy to make certain elements of the song sound isolated or separated due to the size of the audio field so I will be taking this into account when mixing.

Fellgett, P. (1975) (PDF) introduction to Ambisonics. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280010078_Introduction_to_Ambisonics (Accessed: 03 May 2024).

I am going to be looking into Bruce Botnick for this weeks blog. He is most renown for operating as an engineer (and producer for L.A. Woman) on every album by The Doors and operating as producer on Forever Changes by Love.

I am picking Bruce Botnick as he has talked a lot about his experiences with mono, stereo and surround.

In an interview with Stephen Anderson of VMP, Bruce talks about mixing in mono and the benefits and limitations that come with it. He says ‘Being that AM radio was our only mode of getting it over the airwaves, mono was it. So we always mixed in mono and then would open it up into stereo.’ When I first read this I thought that he was implying that this was inherently a negative thing but he goes on to talk about the beauty of mono recording and compares it to watching a black-and-white movie where you’re not distracted by the colour. I had never thought of it this way and in a way he is right, there’s less to perceive and less space for the individual tracks to occupy and as such, will have to be mixed differently. He says that there’s nowhere to hide. Theres nothing coming out of the right. Theres nothing coming out of the left. There are no distractions. It’s just this image.(Anderson, 2021) I find that the opposite is true when mixing in surround and I can’t help but feel that a lot of surround mixes can leave certain parts sounding very isolated, most often the vocals. Through experimentation with dolby atmos in logic I have found a challenge in spreading out the parts without isolating them from one another. A lot of the beauty of a good mix is overlapping sounds and how they play off of each other and with surround it is very easy to entirely separate each sound around the audio field. Experimentation with this made me realise just how important it is to create a unique mix for each sound format.

“The mono and the stereo are two different animals. It’s the same music, the same echo chamber, same everything. But when you open things up, they do different things. It’s its own person, mono.”(Anderson, 2021)

Anderson, S. (2021) ‘let it happen’: Legendary Bruce Botnick on engineering ‘the doors’, Vinyl Me, Please. Available at: https://www.vinylmeplease.com/blogs/magazine/bruce-botnick-the-doors-interview (Accessed: 02 May 2024).