Serious Mixing.

Arnar wrote on 8/14/2002, 8:59 AM

I have seen a lot of posts here where people seem to be using using Vegas in commercial studios.
Im a big fan of Vegas and i have mostly used it for sounddesign for short films, music for ads,and i absolutly love it for composing and recording my own stuff.

But as i have more and more clients which come to my studio to record albums i have started get a bit worried about the perfomance of Vegas

Mostly its with the routing which is obviously very basic, but..... im not here to bitch.

I would like to know for sure if people are using Vegas for the purpose of recoding albums.
I have recorded my own album on vegas and that was fine but im mostly doing electronic music which is quite different to 10-12 tracks just for a drum recording and then maybe 3-4 mics on every guitar take.

Its a differnt thing alltogether as well when you start mixing as you need a lot of eq,s and compressors.
As i said in another post im wondering if i can for example put some heavy processing on a top snare without the plugin latency making it phase with the bottom snare.

Bottom line....Are people doing any serious mixing with Vegas?

Comments

pettinati wrote on 8/14/2002, 10:39 AM

We are recording our new album on vegas, but it's hip hop music that is all electronic, except the vocals.

I started using vegas a few months back, and at first my mixes were shitty. Everything sounded tinny. But that had more to do with my signal levels, equing and pannning than anything else.

I think when it comes down to it (with this type of music), as long as your input level is high enough, and your mic and pre-amp are quality (I have a neumann and dbx), you can make a great sounding mix. but you have to know how to mix it right.

I had no previous mixing experiance, besides some home studio stuff I did on the vs-880. That's why my initial mixes on vegas sounded CRAPPY.

I bought and read three books lately that helped me tremendously to understand the aesthetics of recording and mixing.

Introduction to Mixing.
Introduction to Mastering.
soundforge power.

the author's names escape me, but you can do a search on amazon.com to find them.

Now, any book I can get my hands on (having to do with this subject), I read.

I'm getting better with every mix, and the sound quality is fine.

BUT, I'm still going to get it mastered by professionals.

PipelineAudio wrote on 8/14/2002, 10:58 AM

A few of us are doing a lot of serious recording and mixing in vegas. Check out my place www.studiozpro.com .

There are HUGE issues doing it this way, but , I dont think I've used any of our tape recorders ( 3 x Tascam DA-88, 5 x Tascam DA-38 ) since February. And I havent Mixed an album completely on a console in about 3 years.

I dont want to rant but there are a lot of things holding up progress

1: Lack of anyway to monitor in the usual typical multitrack paradigm. No auto input. Makes punching in traditionally impossible, requires " Y " cord solutions

2: Cant change volume on armed tracks when song is playing. Sounds like a small thing but this is actually a HUGE time waster and vibe destroyer.

3: No punch in or track arming/disarming on the fly...sometimes...sometimes, this wouldnt hurt

4: no "sticky" recording parts. Each time you record you need to reselect the event to be recorded, if you even move the cursor in the project area. Kind of a pain, certainly a time and vibe waster

5:Plug in Delay....Horrible, destroys drum mixes completely

6: Buss fx are POST fader. What can I say? makes any level based effect a real pain in the but

7: No buss automation

8: no true fader groups

9: no midi control of onscreen elements

theres plenty more but those are the ones off the top of my head

even with all that, I do manage to get quite a few projects done in vegas

KjipRecords wrote on 8/14/2002, 3:25 PM

That was a long list of cons... Why don't you use something else? Just curious.

Lars

PipelineAudio wrote on 8/14/2002, 3:43 PM

editing

see : http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=117078&Page=1

JoeD wrote on 8/15/2002, 5:12 AM

Yep, serious mixing is in the cards with Vegas.

My last CD was done in vegas, as were many others.
www.joedoriamusic.com if you want to hear (although they're MP3s).

I'd say with a fast system with a decent setup (DAW tweaks in xp, P4 1.8a on up, excellent preamps, waves/ultrafunk/db8/timeworks/etc plugins, scsi U160 audio drives and OS drive and scsi burner combined with Large fast IDEs)...you can easily handle most any project.

With the latest sammples on the website from the cd, I used 4 mics on the kit (although the overs were handling the meat of it), one on guitar, 3 on the Hammond.
Then I've handled quintets to octets...
all recorded and mixed with vegas. No real problems, especially when moving to v3.

Just make sure your system is lean (tweak for best DAW performance) and powerful and your HD's are up to snuff (and setup for optimum performance)..it'll handle the mix you want I bet.

If your updating a soundcard, make sure you research soundcard you want for xp.
The driver is half the success in the game..if not more.

JoeD

Arnar wrote on 8/15/2002, 7:43 AM

Yeah...well i can see that for instance Pipeline audio isnt too happy about doing serious mixing on Vegas but i do agree with him regarding the cons obviously.....but then again the reason im using Vegas is the same as PAudio, the editing ...its the fastest one around for moving about pieces, open copy in Sf and soforth.

the worst part is that you have no idea when the system is cracking up , is a quality eq on an insert enough to get a delay on that channel??
I have no idea and its making me paranoid and uneasy in sessions and i know by experience that ultimatly that will cause me to change programs.

but im stubborn and i will wait patiently for some time for SF to update the prog up to a usable standard

I absolutly love it for making tunes but its not working too well for mixing bands which is a shame actually,we can only hope that SF will see how much potential Vegas has.

One more suggestion that i just thought of....
I would absolutly love to have a "folder tracks" function as in being able to take a group of track and pack them into (visually) one track.

Editing of a folder track would be awesome but i would settle for being able to minimise the tracks im seeing at any given time.

PipelineAudio wrote on 8/15/2002, 11:49 AM

thats kinda the " glue " feature Ive been asking for, but a certain legend in his own mind has declared that that would be a stupid idea and would ruin vegas

KjipRecords wrote on 8/18/2002, 5:01 AM

Here's a nice article about how vegas was used for tracking and mixing.
prorec.com.

PipelineAudio wrote on 8/18/2002, 1:35 PM

The album was tracked on a tape recorder, then transfered to vegas

most studios dont have the patience to try and record without input monitoring. Hopefully that will change after acid 4 is out.

KjipRecords wrote on 8/19/2002, 2:26 AM

The drums was recorded on a 2" 16 track analog tape. The rest was recorded directly into vegas. Correct?
It's a nice article anyway.

Lars

PipelineAudio wrote on 8/19/2002, 10:40 AM

I think thats the story. It sure sounds good. And seems to have some of " the vegas sound" too

drbam wrote on 8/19/2002, 11:22 AM

<<And seems to have some of " the vegas sound" too>>

What is the "Vegas sound"? Obviously this is subjective but I'm curious about what you are referring to. Thanks!

drbam

brokeinside wrote on 8/19/2002, 11:48 AM

Hello' to every one. I come here and read these posts daily and since were talking about mixing I was wondering if everyone would take a listen to my newest track I Wrote/Recorded? not saying that its "serious mixing" but it does have alot to it. thanks for listening to who ever does heres the link - http://www.gigamerica.com/Band/Pages/public_band.asp?a1=,7036

PipelineAudio wrote on 8/19/2002, 12:57 PM

Theres just a certain sound that sounds like vegas. Sometimes its a weird papery kinda sound, sometimes its a real defined clear sound. I cant get it in other apps. sometimes thats good, sometimes its bad, but its never what you expect

PipelineAudio wrote on 8/19/2002, 1:00 PM

HOLY RnB SUPERSTAR!!!! brokeinside!!!

good job man

why dont you share some of the production details ?
when I think SF Vegas I think " METAL "....this is cool and unexpected

SonyEPM wrote on 8/19/2002, 3:12 PM

serious mixing!

TalawaMan wrote on 8/20/2002, 1:19 AM

I concure. I want this glue/folder feature sooo much. It is such a pain in the ass to have to turn up seven faders if I want my drums a little louder. I know I can select the seven tracks so that I can do it all at once, but I don't want to have to select them. Of any of the hundreds of features I could think of to enhance the product, this is the only one I'll mention at this time, since it would be the one I would vote for first.

TalawaMan

brokeinside wrote on 8/20/2002, 3:49 AM

Hey' Thanks a bunch Pipeline.... I was really curious how the song was gonna be taken and well, kind words are always nice to hear but I have to addmit I cheated a bit. The drums and keys are loops that I layed out and cut up in Acid3.0 and then threw them over to VegasV3.0. I then over-dubbed the Guitar, Bass, and then Vocals. Guitar was just from Guitar to wah peddal to the Built-In Pre' in my I/O Card, for the Bass I cut the one track strait from the built-in DI from my head strait to my C-Port 2000 I/O card then applying a DX BBE Sonic Maximizer and a EQ' dumping most of the mids then copied the bass into another track and cross EQ"d it dropping sone High's and Lows and keeping the solid mids and panned the two bass tracks open about 15%, then when tracking the vocals I ran it threw a good tube-pre/comp, compressing it on the way in. doubled the chours's and bridges for fat'ness, while pretty much using only track E'Q and Waves RE comp. did two effects inserts for a underlining reverb and delay for nice a ambiant feel to the vocal tracks and the little breath at the bgging was a load of reverb/delay/and Phaser all timeworks... I have to add also that this is my first cut completely recorded and produced by myself so thanks again for taking a listen... (sorry so long of a post)

brokeinside wrote on 8/20/2002, 3:54 AM

Oh yeah also, I would love to hear some constructive criticism on the tune if from a production standpoint. thanks again

Studio_de_Lara wrote on 8/20/2002, 9:28 PM

brokeinside,
Nice job! I listened to the tune at least five times. I am impressed with the production quality, as the MP3 sounded very good on crap-ola computer speakers.
Very balanced, all the frequencies were good, nothing bad jumped out and the vocals, very nice. You couldn't have done a better job (even in Protools).
Proves once again, it's not the app, it's the people behind it.
Regards,
Rich

brokeinside wrote on 8/20/2002, 10:59 PM

Thanks a Bunch Brown_Man1 that means alot

momo wrote on 8/21/2002, 12:34 PM

Brokeinside - tremendous stuff! I've listened to it three times already... the only bad thing I can say about it is that it's discouraged me from posting any of my Vegas stuff now...

keep it up!

-momo-

Arnar wrote on 8/22/2002, 11:04 AM

Well i have done some "serious mixing" myself but with a lot of hassle (Latency ,Busses etc etc......

If anyone´s interested then drop by here and have a listen.... its an Icelandic Rock band i recorded and produced on...eh....Vegas.
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/122/bris.html

Check out "Their Brenna" i think thats the best sounding one but there´s "Weimar" and "Blod" as well.

Also you can find my own tunes here
http://www.electronicscene.com/heckleandjive

All kinds of electronic music to be found there and all done in Vegas.
All the drum programming is done in Vegas as well and no other apps used.

Cheers

MaxH wrote on 8/27/2002, 10:52 AM

Brokeinside,
Really good job! Well done.

Regards,
Max