These videos are great and very informative. For anyone that begins to worry too much, just remember the most important rule of them all. If it sounds good, it IS good. Have fun making music before over thinking it. Then only watch real channels like this one to improve some skills.
Thanks Baph, really appreciate how you slowly and methodically explain your concepts. You explain the concept from so many angles too. The opposite of most 5 second (low attention span) "tips" videos. Your videos don't just say "Do this." They say.. "Here's why you should do this."
Quick question: I'm work in Logic mainly.. do you know of a good scoping solution to see the sub phase relationship in this daw? Mabye the best way is to temporarily route sub and kik to a separate bus and monitor that? Bigwig seems ideal for this..
i'm late, but just one comment on the ProMB part... you should change the knee to 0 (hard knee) to perfectly time and control the release, plus you should change from "band" to "free" on the sidechain to make it react to the full kick. One you get that and the filter type right, there should be almost NO problems. And of course, on a SUB like this I'd also sidechain the whole sub, but on more complex basses (that really have more mids and high frequencies) ducking the low part of the spectrum with a multiband sidechain can be a really interesting mixing technique (and always keep an eye to phase issues!, of course)
I have witnessed this firsthand, where the phase cancellation was so bad in one case with shaperbox I thought it was broken code. Eventually I realized it was this, but my fix was to just raise the frequency of the crossover. Like 300 to 500 ish. Yes you carve out more frequencies in which case just applying ducking to the sub in totality would be a better option but the higher crossover is WAY less noticeable if even at all I’ll give em that. Shame they didn’t advertise it that way, since this “problem” is almost inherent in all these plugins by design. Great video man.
Started using shaperbox not long ago while watching Fox Stevenson's stream. He's using the 6db crossover at 300hz and that's what I also do. That's pretty transparent at this frequency without any phase issue as you said the problem occurs when the crossover is in the sub-range only I guess.
shaper box doesn't use linear phase filters. or at least not in this video. i don't have that plugin myself. the thing is: if a plugin doesn't use linear phase filters you can't expect the filters to keep your phase intact. linear phase filters come with their own cost though. they can only be modulated slowly, they are cpu-hungry, they only work fine in daws that can compensate the plugin's latency correctly and they introduce pre-ringing the steeper they go. that's why you might not want to bother with them in many cases. but knowing what they do helps a lot in understand when to apply them. this video showed how confusing it can be that filters alter the sound wave so much. but the result from that shouldn't be to be against certain filter types but to inform yourself about their up- and downsides.
Interesting claim, however you havent tested this correctly. Lowering the threshold in Pro-MB will make that band more sensitive to the sidechain, which means it will duck more and therefore prevent the issue you are having with the signal from the bass being added to your kick. The same can be said for Pro-Q3. As the range control is also the amount of ducking that will take place, your settings are only at -12db which isnt comparible to -inf ducking from Duck or Cableguys. The release still isnt controlable. Multiband ducking is actually a legitimate technique, in addition, full multiband sidechaining is also excellent, it just depends on the sound you are going for. Please continue to share such in-depth videos!
I tend to agree. Baph also didn't move the knee setting in Pro-MB to hard if he wanted a more extreme duck. With that said, I think Baph brings up a great point and I'm going to try his methods a bit more in my work to see if my results improve.
this is why you always have the raw 'fundamental' seperated from your bass sounds that way you won't get any weird phasing issues when you sidechain the sine/fundamental sub on it's own.
The Sub Lockstep low end trick is awesome!! very good production idea, thanks! also makes the low end much more managable (if you have more than 1 bass sounds that is...)
So, using Devious Machines "Duck" without engaging crossover is the most transparent /less destructive way for sidechaining and would be the best option?
Thanks for the detailed video, although took some time to get to the point. Not sure I agree with calling the technique wrong. Like all techniques it has it places, and you of course have to consider how you carry it out as well. Firstly, no point at all using this technique on a sub bass. It is useful for bass sounds with more presence in the high frequencies and can help keeping a bassline rolling nicely. Secondly, if you do split band processing on bass, around 100Hz is like the worst place to split at. Typically it is done at 200-250Hz.
You're not wrong, of course, but there's some nuance here depending on the genre in which you're producing. Also, I chose 100 Hz to amplify the problem and being able to see/hear it. Also, you might be surprised how many bass music producers will choose a band split in that general area because their goals and challenges are different from those of producers in other genres.
@@Baphometrix I think the example was very informative, describing a real issue very well, only missed a bit of context as to when it is problematic and when it is useful. Great to know the details, but In the end it is about what sounds good of course. I know producers that use multiband processing plugins without doing any processing, just shifting the crossover until the phase inconsistencies introduced makes it sound good and gel with the kick. Might sound like a horrible idea on paper, but they get excellent sound from that technique.
You a freaking legend man, thank you so much... Idea for a vid: Frequency splitting techniques for sound desifn processing - pros, cons, considerations? I've seen a bunch of tutorials about this online but clearly it's not as simple as they make it out to be.
I don’t know what differences you think you are seeing in the waveform when Shaperbox isn’t being triggered, but the 6db/oct filter phase cancels perfectly. So it’s not affecting the sound of the sub, at all. Also, in regards to the ‘little jaggies’ in the kick when using the crossover. They are the upper harmonics of sub. They are the exact reason for using the crossover in the first place. So you can hear the note of the bass right when the kick hits, without all the sub information. In the specific kick/sub combo of your example, this isn’t really necessary. But there are plenty of examples where you might want to hear what note the bass is playing, right on the kick.
I mean, you see the waveform changing right there in the video. Maybe ShaperBox has done something different since then? This video IS 2+ years old by now.
@@Baphometrix I watched on a phone screen so couldn’t really see the waveform in your video, but I did double check the null test just to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. Yeah maybe they have updated the filters. I was under the impression that all 6db filters resulted in no/negligible phase shift. But I could definitely be wrong about that. I remember testing a bunch, but maybe I just got lucky with the ones I tested.
@@TjMoon91 In my experience so far, any type of multi-band splitter using Linkwitz-Reilly crossovers will change phase at the crossover points. This isn't much of an issue for mids and highs, nor for complex signals (at summing points). Nor is it an issue in sound design processing of an original sound. Except for subs. IMO it's not a good idea to mess with the phase of the sub range in any complex signal that includes the sub itself. Remember that the sub acts pretty much as a "carrier wave" for your entire spectrum when the subs are happening.
@@Baphometrix I don't disagree with anything you've said about phase shift being a problem in the lower frequencies. Just that Shaperbox's 6db crossover causes these problems. I honestly don't know what a Linkwits-Reilly crossover is, but if that's the case, then it's not used by Shaperbox or Pro-MB (for the 6db/oct crossovers at least) because they both nulled when tested. And sure, with a 6db/oct filter you have to set your crossover pretty high to get your sub level to actually duck enough, but in my experience that still allows you to hear the note the bass is playing, right as the kick hits, if that's what you're going for.
Hey, great vids. What would you say on ducking kicks with basses (not just subs). I make music using analogue instruments so often the basses are recorded and have sub frequencies, but aren't just sub basses. If that makes sense ha. Just use duck agains the whole bass without the crossover in your opinion? Cheers
This may not be the best solution You could use a frequency splitter on your full bass sound, and reroute the sub frequencies of that bass only and then use the aforementioned volume ducking technique, leaving your mid frequencies unscathed
Yeah, i've been playing around with these ideas on acoustic instruments & electric bass guitar. Because the phase of bass guitar isn't locked to the kick every time, i tend to wide-band duck the bass for much of the kick to get out of the way. Otherwise we get some weird sounding kicks here and there
You could just copy the multi-band plugin to the kick track as well, keeping the crossover in the same place but with no ducking obvs. This way the kick and the sub both get the same phase shift, and the relationship between them frequency-wise will stay the same as it was before you added the multi-band plugs
@@proverbalizer no, the phase shift comes from the crossovers in the multiband plugin (compressor, saturator etc). Even when the plugin is doing nothing (ie no saturation, no compression, no makeup gain on individual bands) the phase shift is present. You can test by duplicating a track in your daw (with an audio file on it) and putting a multiband comp on one of those channels. Even if you set it to no compression, no makeup gain changes, it will not null with the original channel when you flip the phase.
@@c1184701 what about dynamic eq? or even static eq. are the bands in an eq causing phase shift even if you make no boosts or cuts? does is matter whether dynamics for a band are engaged or disengaged?
@@proverbalizer dynamic EQ tends to be bell cuts and/or boosts, that are triggered by certain level-dependent thresholds. A bell boost/cut usually causes a very small amount of phase shift, whereas a high-pass or low-pass filter (as used in multi band crossovers) usually cause significant phase-shift. Some exceptions: you can use linear-phase mode in most EQs and multi band plugins, which prevents any phase-shift. However linear-phase filters tend to smear transients, so there's a compromise there. And for the hipass/lopass filters, you can switch them to 6dB per octave which has no phase-shift whatsoever. 6dB filters are rather shallow though, you can split the lows from the highs, but they're not so good at separating the lower bass from the upper bass (for example).
Your god send took good throughout explainations with tons of examples that proof what your saying is correct I wish they’re were in engineers like you
That kick and bass in phase alignment makes no sense because after the 808 gets pitched up and down on sampler the phase is gonna change again and it will be out of phase again ,,,,
be careful about some assumptions again. the kick and bass notes are only stable if the bass synth has phase randomization turned off. you should make that clear if you talk about that kinda stuff because most synths have it turned on by default. the kick merging perfectly with a bassline in the middle of a note is also not a given for any combination of kicks and basslines where you made it sound good on same noteOn times. only if the kick's body's average frequency is a multiple of that note you can make it kinda work. i liked the part where you showed how you phase align the bass sound manually to reduce the potential of phase cancellation at the crossover from kick to bass. that is actually really cool. now i will not talk about all the plugins that you tried except for pro-mb because none of the other plugins had linear phase filters. in pro-mb you presented the effect with the natural phase mode, which is a compromise between linear phase and normal. put it to linear phase to get a maximally phase-retaining processing. then slap the knee all the way to hard and use the free-button to let the processing be triggered by the highend rather than the lowend in order to make it work a little bit more snappy and deeper. a bit of lookahead can help too. my point is that this will even more make your bassline come back to its normal shape after the split spectral areas are being added together again. that's the point of linear phase filters. their disadvantage is that they introduce pre-ringing. so your bassline would essentially start a little earlier already and softly fade in. you might not want that in a hard-hitting genre, where it is indeed better to just shape the dynamics manually like you did before. but it's very useful for more natural genres, in which drums might have bleed or don't always hit or even never align with the bassline the same way. even some quite hard-hitting genres, like liquid dnb, profit from this technique, because reese basslines also have very complex phase behaviour where you can't just tune their phase to work with the kick at all times.
I produce a lot of bass heavy Dubby music and usually build my bass with several basses ,one is always a Sub. Im always battling the sub and kick frequencies and while im not using a crossover to duck my sub I sometimes use EQ or a compressor to duck. Sometimes both if im having a lot of problems. This is very helpful since im still trying to sort this out.
Just set the split frequency to something like 200-250Hz, not only 100. It's not a surprize you have SOMETHING additional on the kick and 100 is definitely not enough at all. :) Sometimes I have a single bass sound, containing both sub and mid/high frequencies (and I like it as it is) - and then I need to split the signal to duck everything below 200Hz to zero, and over 200Hz like 50-60% of max ducking. Then it sounds more natural and glued together. Ducking the whole bassline in the whole spectrum is way too aggressive for me - unless I want that effect. Also, having a separate sub often doesn't sound as good as a single, solid bass preset - it is a long discussion, but I would have to move the highpass filter freq with every higher or lower note to just get rid of the first 2-3 fundamentals/harmonics of the sound or I would have to generate my midbass with additive synthesis, cancelling the lowest 2-3 tones precisely. A single, fixed crossover doesn't do it for me. I need a consistent bassline that is exactly the same on lower and higher notes - I hope you understood what i mean exactly. I always check both elements, kick and bass in oscilloscope and I phase align everything with a similar obsession as you have + I care if my kick is too deformed or not, but it doesn't have to be 100% clean because you always have some higher freq content on the kick, it's never completely clean unless you duck your whole mix to it 100% :D PS. I will also test Ozone 8 Imager or Dynamics as a signal splitter for this sidechaining case - and will see on the oscilloscope if it's messed up or not. I noticed that I can even use it to split the signal into 4 bands while SAMPLING a kickdrum and it magically stays exactly the same in the sub region as the original kick. Like... No phase issues at all, no change in sound, waveform etc. While Ableton's Multiband Dynamics destroys the phase completely...
All good comments and nuances. Re your second paragraph though, it's highly dependent on genre and intent (of the producer). For example, go listen to the latest ep by UHNK (on the Producer Dojo label). You'll hear that UHNK's style is to have a constantly moving subbass line, which has many benefits in user experience at clubs/festivals, as well as being a very valid creative choice on UHNK's part. :)
@@Baphometrix thanks for your response, will check it out. I really like your approach to mixing and mastering - yesterday I binge watched 5h of your tutorial videos - they were surprisingly interesting and detailed - in the TH-cam ocean of myths, misinformation and basic content for beginners. Keep it up with the deep dives, absolutely loved it, even though I'm more into producing trance, house, 4x4 edm and pop. Still very informative, especially about clipping vs compression, just wow - eye opening stuff.
If you're making brostep/riddim/hybrid trap having a separate sub is a must for your drops. Layering your growls and Basses with a separate sub cleans things out. Therefore it depends on the genre.
Greetings and good day. I hVe a question in regards to vocals. I looked on your TH-cam page and didnt see any videos for mixing vocals in music. I would like to know do you have any videos about mixing the vocals and if so qill you direct me to them pls. Oh and by the way, that clip video you have has helped me out tremendously with getting a louder, cleaner mix. Thank you so much for sharing.❤
I haven't done any specifically on mixing vocals. This video is a great place to start. Karra (and Reid Stephan) have made a lot of great videos about vocal recording, processing, and mixing. th-cam.com/video/F6rf8O5UJqw/w-d-xo.html
I know this might be a bit late but are you not worried about your kick transients being destroyed by the tail of the sub like we can see at 26:25. Look at the difference between the transient of the kick playing on and off the sub!
@@Baphometrix no I'm pretty sure the kick transient has been shifted up. It might be just for a few ms but it looks to me like it is really doing that. Either that or the oscilloscope is just telling you the wrong information. You can see there is a bit of a thicker line used to display the transient (I think it is using 2 pixels there because the oscillation is so fast) for the kick playing during silence it oscillates around the 0-crossing line while for the kick on the sub it looks like it is oscillating around the position of the sub right before it. Thanks for the reply btw
Awesome video! Where did you get this kick sample? I love kicks like this. Also, what are some of your favorite sample packs in general for drums in the genres dubstep, deep dub, trap, hip hop, etc.?
Hi! new sub here... first thx for all those videos where u show explicit how and where to look to make better together sound !! .. second.. what kind of scope do u recommend? i find hard to use my native scope ( studio one 5 artist ) ... even the manual doesnt exist ( wtf xd ) . So, i like the one u r using here... it looks very clear and pleasent !!! thx for all your sharing !! ♥
+1 on the songwriting on the second subbass usage where the sub is grooving under the midbasses... is in that case an aligning of the midbasses to the sub and the kick to consider? thank you for this follow up! i guess you could make 30days everysingle day a tutorial about the low end of the track, from designing, arranging to mixing and then mastering! you are great !
Good question. When your sub is outlining and following every midbass sound (classic brostep), it's rare that the kick and sub happen at the same time except maybe on downbeat growl. In most cases, you want the kick happening all by itself on the first downbeat of each bar, and then all the midbass noises happen mostly in the gaps *between* each kick (and snare). Everything is checkerboarded, to give the drop a nice vertical feel and allow every sound to sit by itself not layered with any other sound, so that each sound can be made super loud. So in this case, phase alignment of the kick and sub isn't really an issue at all except MAYBE on the downbeat. But a lot of producers will let that big heavy dubstep kick hit all by itself to carry the energy and impact of the downbeat. If they do place a midbass growl there on the downbeat, listen close and you'll see it's either offset quite a bit late, or it's sidechained with a long gap and release so that the there is audible space after the kick before the growl "pumps up" after the kick itself (making one longer downbeat impact). In short, don't obsess too much over this technique and the notion of phase alignment between kick and sub. A lot of desirable sequencing approaches can make it a non-issue entirely.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on sidechain your track against a snare using band-ducking. Like if you ducked everything above like 120 hz against your snare (but not the sub) , would this still affect the phase of your sub? Cuz I wanna sideshain to my snare, but not have the sub duck cuz the snare doesn’t take up those frequencies
I'm still very much a fan of wideband ducking for anything to do with drums. For vocals, I prefer using a VERY light amount spectral ducking to help the vocals sit on top of the mix. In addition to the potential phase issues caused by band-specific ducking, there's another issue entirely. When you don't duck the entire spectrum, then SOME amount of signal is left that sums up on top of the kick and snare, which in many louder genres (especially dance-oriented genres) are already consuming all the space right up to 0 dBFS, and are already stretched to their breaking point with clippers. If you let more energy sum up with those important framework sounds, then the drum hits are going above 0 dBFS and will ultimately need to be clipped even harder to keep the peaks down at 0 or below. So band-specific ducking also makes it harder to have the cleanest, punchiest kicks and snares possible in louder genres.
Trackspacer is great. SmartComp is more surgical than Trackspacer, which isn't always what you want when doing "unmasking" ducking across the full spectrum.
Hi Bapho, first of all thanks again for the great video! What I wonder: If I do the ducking with a dynamic EQ (sidechained TDR Nova from Kick to Sub for example) and set it so that whenever the kick hits, exactly those frequencies of the kick are pushed down in the bass, is that also a problem? Or only if you do it as in the video with DUCK and the crossover? Thank you!!! EDIT: OK, from about Minute 40 on you do kind of explain what I was asking. 🙂 Not exactly what I was asking for but enough to answer it for me.
would be nice if the ducker had some kind of automatic phase alignment with an attack time so you can decide how much time after triggering the alignment happens
A proper linkwitz riley crossover shouldn't be creating any Jaggies on the Oscilloscope when no gain reduction is happening. I feel like the crossovers in the shaperbox plugin are not functioning properly.
Hey Baphometrix, great tutorials. I've seen a few and since then I gave it a try to this Duck VST. It's quite good but I just noticed today that it makes a click at the beginning (or end, it's hard to say) of the signal. Do you got any tips to get rid of this? Any explanation for why it does so? And may my 808 had not much attack, but I had the feeling, that ewhen sidechained to my kick, it was still ducking when there was no kick hitting. Great work. Keep providing interesting tuto.
First, try the smoothing knob. Second, try setting Lookahead to 1ms or 2ms. Third, remember that if you duck a fat subby sine in the middle of its phase (not at a zero crossing), you're going to get clicks. You can try making sure your 808s are hitting in the right phase at the downbeat when your kick transient is hitting.
@@Baphometrix Thx for the answer, I'll try these settings. I realised that the click at the start of the signal happens when I load a VST after Duck. Anyway I'll try to figure this out. Still searching for the best sidechain tool for trap/drill 808s
If you cut a sound too quickly, you're always gonna get a click. Imagine soicing an audio track and the increasing or decreasing the volume of one of the halves by 10db, you're probably gonna get a click where they meet unless you crossfade to smooth the transition
Because phase interaction issues are generally most audible and "bad" when it happens in the low end. From the mid range up, this type of phase interaction isn't very noticeable, and if a critical ear *can* hear it, it's usually not "bad sounding".
Can you make a video about using these techniques in FL studio for trap music? I feel like I run into this problem with some of my mixes. I’m also completely blind so trying to follow you without any visual information is a little difficult but I want to get a better grasp on this phase alignment concept. You make a lot of great videos by the way kudos!
Hello Baphy! Can I achieve the same 'only volume duck'-effect with FabFilter ProMB using only one full band (e.g. no band specific ducking)? Or am I overlooking some things? Thank you so much for your work! Best wishes
The problem with Fabfilter Pro-Q or Pro-MB dynamic filters is that you cannot precisely control the shape and length of the ducking slice. But it all depends on the music and what you're trying to duck to what else. For myself, I greatly value the precise control over length and shape that a dedicated ducking plugin can give me.
Damn, it seems all the other mixing tutorials I watched were just to learn the terms and vocabulary in order to finally get a proper education here lol
thats why i always create my sub seperately and volume sidechain it
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love the work baph! ı have a question what are your thoughts about natural and linear phase options on the pro q 3 ? is it helping for the possible low cuts on the kicks, basses etc?
The real deal with linear/hybrid phase EQ is simple: You don't need it at all for _most_ EQ tasks. Like, you don't really need it on any individual track. It hurts more than it helps for normal track EQ adjustments. The only place it _might_ be useful is up on your mix bus, if you feel you need to put a high-pass filter anywhere in your sub or bass region. Bascially, just try a normal minimum-phase high-pass filter first, then toggle that filter on and off while listening carefully to the sounds that live in the sub and low-bass region. If you hear any sound seeming to lose power, then try a hybrid mode. If you still hear some sound seeming to lose power, then try a linear mode. But don't use linear or hybrid unless you need to fix the audible power loss you _might_ be hearing. If you don't hear a power loss, then leave it alone.
Linear phase EQ's maintain phase relationships but may introduce pre-ringing. They really should only be used for drastic EQ moves (Steep filters) on instruments with similar phase relationships (EQing multi-mic'd instruments separately).
@@RyanCara tbh Pro-Q 3 in linear phase seems to introduce pre-ringing even with no slope active at all, it's tiny but if you boost the silence by 24db you can see it. At least in my DAW
KeyX Yes, there are sidechain duckers on several of my project group busses, and several different ducking sources. The basic three sounds you need to push down OTHER sounds in pretty much every project are: kick, snare, and vocals. So where you place ducker plugins depends on how your projects are organized into (group) busses. I tend to roll everything up into two main group busses: Instrumental and Vocals. The Instrumental group has several sub groups inside it: Drums, Spice, Subs, and Synths. The Synths group has further subgroups inside it: Drop Sounds, IBO Melodic, and Atmos/FX. So with that general project routing structure, I duck the Subs group only to the kick. And I duck the Synths group to the kick and snare, and I duck the ENTIRE Instrumental group to the Vocals. I use the plugin “Duck” for ducking things to the kick and the snare, and I use the plugin “Trackspacer” for ducking things to the vocals.
@@Baphometrix Thanks a lot for the breakdown! After rewatching your 2 lessons, I have some more questions if you have time: 1. When doing multi band processing for synth or mid bass, do you recommend using linear phase EQs? Is it a bad thing that Bitwig multiband container doesn't null with the source material? Tbh they sound the same to my ears, but I'm not sure if I'm missing something under the hood. 2. In the other video, you've explained the "wrong" ducking shape. But if I understand correctly, it's only wrong when you have a fat kick and a sub running together right? So that shape might still be usable for ducking higher sounds, or when you have a thin kick and a sub for example?
Hello, I want to ask you something, because you are a Bitwig expert. Is there a way to rename (and save) the piano roll notes - I have only found a way for doing this with the drum machine and sampler, but that is a too inefficient workaround - we need 128 samplers per track, right? (In Abl. Live we can do this with just a midi effects rack.) (This is very important for microtonal music composing; it is very confusing to look into 12 equal piano note names when the pitches don't correspond to them.)
By "rename and save", do you mean "export MIDI clips as .MID files? If so, you can but it's currently messy/tricky in Bitwig. They want you by default to save a MIDI clip as a **clip** in your Bitwig User Library (by just dragging the clip into your browser window). But that approach is Bitwig-only. If you want a simple, universal .MID file that you can load into any DAW, you need to do something non-intuitive. I have a video about that somewhere in my "Producer Tutorials" playlist. Look for a title like "How to export MIDI clips".
@@Baphometrix, no, I am talking about renaming the piano roll symbols - in 19 equal for example C# and Db are unique, because minor diesis is not tempered - and save these names as a template that can be loaded in other projects.
Linear phase filters may be less problematic when band-splitting for targeted low-end processing. Sidechain follower driving volume ducking definitely introduces waveshaping, if the follower reactivity speed is too fast.
I did show linear phase filters in one part of this video. They do deform the waveshape less, but it's beside the point because it isn't the waveshape change brought on by a high pass (or low shelf) filter that is the REAL problem with band-specific ducking of your sub. Instead, the REAL problem is that anything that does band-specific ducking leaves too much waveform energy DURING the kick, and the resulting phase mis-alignment changes the timbre of the kick significantly.
My bad, i wrote my comment before the video ran to the end. i use a convolution reverb to make linear phase splits. The wet level can be brought down to silence, so automating that with a follower can duck the filtered component down to silence, if required.
Baphometrix caution is well worth understanding. Sometimes, the instrument(s) providing the sub have brighter content. Overall volume ducking has an alternative, in applying band-split, to preserve the level of the higher content, while having sympathetic ducking. A case in point, is when two instruments play sustained notes and you want the low end of one to make room for the low end in the other.
@@tubedLeVeNdiS Well, you're absolutely correct that in (mid) bass sounds that also provide sub you don't want to duck ALL of the spectrum for those sounds to the kick! However, there's STILL a much better way to handle that situation than to use band-specific ducking. I did mention this "better way" in the video but didn't dwell on it for long because I thought it was fairly common knowledge among producers. Most of us handle this situation by quite literally REMOVING the sub energy from all of our (mid) bass sounds in a project (though high pass filters), and then building an entirely separate sub track to provide the sub energy for the track. If you do that (which most of us DO), then you're down to ONE track providing the sub energy for the entire song, and now everything I explain in this video applies, and the big danger is that you'll end up with very inconsistent timbres and transients and dynamics for your kicks if you do band-specific ducking on the sub track.
I don't agree fully with this. Ducking a subs volume causes sudden DC offset / clicking which then has to be eq'd anyway. I tend to use a combination of half ducking 40-60% and half dynamic eq specifically bx dyneq2. A Q of 0.3 isn't going to cause phase issues. A 24db filter will cause phase issues but lighter curves wont. It's the combination of the two that gives the best results and you have to sometimes offset the sidechain earlier than usual and take care to fine tune the attack and decay.
what about automating a dynamic bell (e.g. on something like waves F6) to duck out the bass frequencies of a bass guitar? Would it introduce the same phase problems? Is the phasiness related to the steepness of the filter (Q) ?
Yes, it would introduce similar phase problems. Also, dynamic EQs aren't fast/precise enough to create the ducking shape you need for a clean "gluing" of the sound you're ducking with the sound that's doing the ducking.
@@Baphometrix thanks. I guess I need to revisit some of my mixes to see whether there is an audible phase difference. at least F6 had attack and release parameters as opposed to Q 3. By the way I quite like using Trackspacer to give room to vocals against other elements such as the guitar bus - again, not across the whole spectrum but only in the mids or high mids for intelligibility. not sure if that is another can of worms with phase?
A 6db octave crossover like in Shaperbox doesn’t introduce any phase problems. I know Baphometrix said it does, but he’s mistaken on this specific point. If you do your own null test you’ll see the signal is completely unaffected when no ducking is occurring. Regarding Trackspacer ducking instruments for vocals, you probably haven’t phase aligned your guitars and vocals in the first place, so I wouldn’t worry about phase shift there. Phase shift often isn’t an issue in higher frequencies, but one specific example where it’s extremely important is when layering transients. For example, layering a kick with a hat. If you flip the phase of the hat you could end up with a completely different sounding transient.
@@carlosp.1846 If you like it, you like it. But I have at least one video out there that explains why ducking based on specific frequency bands is generally a bad idea when it comes to ducking in the low end. I'm a firm believer in ducking the low end only by managing the amplitude. Now, for something like "making vocals cut through the mix", then yes, band-specific ducking is the way to go. For that I tend to use either Trackspacer by Wavesfactory, or smart:compressor (in inverse ducking mode) by sonible.
@@Baphometrix Is multi-band ducking still a potential issue when dealing with an acoustic kick and bass, where the bass line is moving? Phase alignment is likely to be rare to start within that case. However, am I correct to assume that frequency-based ducking on bass, regardless of how aligned it is with the kick, still produces some phase distortion affecting the tonality of the instrument?
@@sammiller9855 Phase interaction isn't _inherently_ bad. All manner of processing causes phase interactions. The acid test is whether you can *hear* the interaction and whether what you're hearing sounds subjectively worse somehow. And yes, in genres were the bass line is constantly moving around, the interaction is less frequent. Don't overthink this too much. It's just something to be aware of.
I appreciate the perspective, but this isn't as big of a deal as your title suggests. There are plenty of successful songs that have used band-specific ducking, it worked out fine.
You gave us already so much, so it might be rude to ask: Could You make a new Episode on Your PreMaster Magick, because otherwise TH-cam wouldn't not be interesting anymore, as I already watched all your Explainations here, which could lead someday maybe to wisdom about 'Real Audio Processing after Baphometrix's C2Z Method'. Hope we can expect new mindblowers on this channel. We try to keep up with your Mastering Clearity. All The Best. Fanmail
These videos are great and very informative.
For anyone that begins to worry too much, just remember the most important rule of them all.
If it sounds good, it IS good. Have fun making music before over thinking it.
Then only watch real channels like this one to improve some skills.
Exactly what I was thinking, good note
One of the best channels a the moment!! No bullsh*t, just brilliant tips and tests!
Thanks Baph, really appreciate how you slowly and methodically explain your concepts. You explain the concept from so many angles too. The opposite of most 5 second (low attention span) "tips" videos. Your videos don't just say "Do this." They say.. "Here's why you should do this."
Quick question: I'm work in Logic mainly.. do you know of a good scoping solution to see the sub phase relationship in this daw? Mabye the best way is to temporarily route sub and kik to a separate bus and monitor that? Bigwig seems ideal for this..
@@ToddPentney Oszillos Megascope (by Schulz Audio) will do the trick nicely on OSX and Logic.
@@Baphometrix Looks great, clear layout. Do you recommend this over Psyscope Pro?
Nevermind. I see psyscope is windows only. Thanks for the help and reply!
Your videos are like free college level lectures. You're awesome Baph! Thanks for all your hard work.
I agree. I will buy anything he's produced. I am so glad I found Baph.
100%
i think this is the best channel for low end, thanks dude, nice demonstration!
i'm late, but just one comment on the ProMB part... you should change the knee to 0 (hard knee) to perfectly time and control the release, plus you should change from "band" to "free" on the sidechain to make it react to the full kick. One you get that and the filter type right, there should be almost NO problems. And of course, on a SUB like this I'd also sidechain the whole sub, but on more complex basses (that really have more mids and high frequencies) ducking the low part of the spectrum with a multiband sidechain can be a really interesting mixing technique (and always keep an eye to phase issues!, of course)
I think the biggest issue there was not setting threshold low enough
I have witnessed this firsthand, where the phase cancellation was so bad in one case with shaperbox I thought it was broken code. Eventually I realized it was this, but my fix was to just raise the frequency of the crossover. Like 300 to 500 ish. Yes you carve out more frequencies in which case just applying ducking to the sub in totality would be a better option but the higher crossover is WAY less noticeable if even at all I’ll give em that. Shame they didn’t advertise it that way, since this “problem” is almost inherent in all these plugins by design. Great video man.
Started using shaperbox not long ago while watching Fox Stevenson's stream. He's using the 6db crossover at 300hz and that's what I also do. That's pretty transparent at this frequency without any phase issue as you said the problem occurs when the crossover is in the sub-range only I guess.
shaper box doesn't use linear phase filters. or at least not in this video. i don't have that plugin myself. the thing is: if a plugin doesn't use linear phase filters you can't expect the filters to keep your phase intact. linear phase filters come with their own cost though. they can only be modulated slowly, they are cpu-hungry, they only work fine in daws that can compensate the plugin's latency correctly and they introduce pre-ringing the steeper they go. that's why you might not want to bother with them in many cases. but knowing what they do helps a lot in understand when to apply them. this video showed how confusing it can be that filters alter the sound wave so much. but the result from that shouldn't be to be against certain filter types but to inform yourself about their up- and downsides.
Interesting claim, however you havent tested this correctly.
Lowering the threshold in Pro-MB will make that band more sensitive to the sidechain, which means it will duck more and therefore prevent the issue you are having with the signal from the bass being added to your kick.
The same can be said for Pro-Q3. As the range control is also the amount of ducking that will take place, your settings are only at -12db which isnt comparible to -inf ducking from Duck or Cableguys. The release still isnt controlable.
Multiband ducking is actually a legitimate technique, in addition, full multiband sidechaining is also excellent, it just depends on the sound you are going for.
Please continue to share such in-depth videos!
I tend to agree. Baph also didn't move the knee setting in Pro-MB to hard if he wanted a more extreme duck. With that said, I think Baph brings up a great point and I'm going to try his methods a bit more in my work to see if my results improve.
this is why you always have the raw 'fundamental' seperated from your bass sounds that way you won't get any weird phasing issues when you sidechain the sine/fundamental sub on it's own.
The Sub Lockstep low end trick is awesome!! very good production idea, thanks! also makes the low end much more managable (if you have more than 1 bass sounds that is...)
So, using Devious Machines "Duck" without engaging crossover is the most transparent /less destructive way for sidechaining and would be the best option?
Thanks for the detailed video, although took some time to get to the point.
Not sure I agree with calling the technique wrong. Like all techniques it has it places, and you of course have to consider how you carry it out as well.
Firstly, no point at all using this technique on a sub bass. It is useful for bass sounds with more presence in the high frequencies and can help keeping a bassline rolling nicely.
Secondly, if you do split band processing on bass, around 100Hz is like the worst place to split at. Typically it is done at 200-250Hz.
You're not wrong, of course, but there's some nuance here depending on the genre in which you're producing. Also, I chose 100 Hz to amplify the problem and being able to see/hear it. Also, you might be surprised how many bass music producers will choose a band split in that general area because their goals and challenges are different from those of producers in other genres.
@@Baphometrix I think the example was very informative, describing a real issue very well, only missed a bit of context as to when it is problematic and when it is useful. Great to know the details, but In the end it is about what sounds good of course.
I know producers that use multiband processing plugins without doing any processing, just shifting the crossover until the phase inconsistencies introduced makes it sound good and gel with the kick.
Might sound like a horrible idea on paper, but they get excellent sound from that technique.
@@ResonantSoundStudio sounds like psytrance techniques. Works well in that genre for sure
You a freaking legend man, thank you so much... Idea for a vid: Frequency splitting techniques for sound desifn processing - pros, cons, considerations? I've seen a bunch of tutorials about this online but clearly it's not as simple as they make it out to be.
I don’t know what differences you think you are seeing in the waveform when Shaperbox isn’t being triggered, but the 6db/oct filter phase cancels perfectly.
So it’s not affecting the sound of the sub, at all.
Also, in regards to the ‘little jaggies’ in the kick when using the crossover. They are the upper harmonics of sub. They are the exact reason for using the crossover in the first place. So you can hear the note of the bass right when the kick hits, without all the sub information.
In the specific kick/sub combo of your example, this isn’t really necessary. But there are plenty of examples where you might want to hear what note the bass is playing, right on the kick.
I mean, you see the waveform changing right there in the video. Maybe ShaperBox has done something different since then? This video IS 2+ years old by now.
@@Baphometrix I watched on a phone screen so couldn’t really see the waveform in your video, but I did double check the null test just to make sure I wasn’t mistaken.
Yeah maybe they have updated the filters. I was under the impression that all 6db filters resulted in no/negligible phase shift. But I could definitely be wrong about that. I remember testing a bunch, but maybe I just got lucky with the ones I tested.
@@TjMoon91 In my experience so far, any type of multi-band splitter using Linkwitz-Reilly crossovers will change phase at the crossover points. This isn't much of an issue for mids and highs, nor for complex signals (at summing points). Nor is it an issue in sound design processing of an original sound. Except for subs. IMO it's not a good idea to mess with the phase of the sub range in any complex signal that includes the sub itself. Remember that the sub acts pretty much as a "carrier wave" for your entire spectrum when the subs are happening.
@@Baphometrix I don't disagree with anything you've said about phase shift being a problem in the lower frequencies. Just that Shaperbox's 6db crossover causes these problems.
I honestly don't know what a Linkwits-Reilly crossover is, but if that's the case, then it's not used by Shaperbox or Pro-MB (for the 6db/oct crossovers at least) because they both nulled when tested.
And sure, with a 6db/oct filter you have to set your crossover pretty high to get your sub level to actually duck enough, but in my experience that still allows you to hear the note the bass is playing, right as the kick hits, if that's what you're going for.
23:00 if you want the point.
I subscribed and I love all this in depth knowledge. I got into you trying to learn more about hard clipping which I've implemented heavily.
Hey, great vids. What would you say on ducking kicks with basses (not just subs). I make music using analogue instruments so often the basses are recorded and have sub frequencies, but aren't just sub basses. If that makes sense ha. Just use duck agains the whole bass without the crossover in your opinion? Cheers
Yeah! We're very excited to see your reply, Baph
I’d like an answer to this question also.
This may not be the best solution
You could use a frequency splitter on your full bass sound, and reroute the sub frequencies of that bass only and then use the aforementioned volume ducking technique, leaving your mid frequencies unscathed
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Yeah, i've been playing around with these ideas on acoustic instruments & electric bass guitar. Because the phase of bass guitar isn't locked to the kick every time, i tend to wide-band duck the bass for much of the kick to get out of the way. Otherwise we get some weird sounding kicks here and there
You could just copy the multi-band plugin to the kick track as well, keeping the crossover in the same place but with no ducking obvs. This way the kick and the sub both get the same phase shift, and the relationship between them frequency-wise will stay the same as it was before you added the multi-band plugs
innnttterestingggggggggg
Doesn't the phase shift come from actually doing something with the filter, not just the existence of the filter in the first place?
@@proverbalizer no, the phase shift comes from the crossovers in the multiband plugin (compressor, saturator etc). Even when the plugin is doing nothing (ie no saturation, no compression, no makeup gain on individual bands) the phase shift is present. You can test by duplicating a track in your daw (with an audio file on it) and putting a multiband comp on one of those channels. Even if you set it to no compression, no makeup gain changes, it will not null with the original channel when you flip the phase.
@@c1184701 what about dynamic eq? or even static eq. are the bands in an eq causing phase shift even if you make no boosts or cuts? does is matter whether dynamics for a band are engaged or disengaged?
@@proverbalizer dynamic EQ tends to be bell cuts and/or boosts, that are triggered by certain level-dependent thresholds. A bell boost/cut usually causes a very small amount of phase shift, whereas a high-pass or low-pass filter (as used in multi band crossovers) usually cause significant phase-shift. Some exceptions: you can use linear-phase mode in most EQs and multi band plugins, which prevents any phase-shift. However linear-phase filters tend to smear transients, so there's a compromise there. And for the hipass/lopass filters, you can switch them to 6dB per octave which has no phase-shift whatsoever. 6dB filters are rather shallow though, you can split the lows from the highs, but they're not so good at separating the lower bass from the upper bass (for example).
Your god send took good throughout explainations with tons of examples that proof what your saying is correct I wish they’re were in engineers like you
5:08 Finally learned the key secret that Baphometrix uses - fairy dust!!! \o/
That kick and bass in phase alignment makes no sense because after the 808 gets pitched up and down on sampler the phase is gonna change again and it will be out of phase again ,,,,
+1 for the workflow video
Bro u r the best teacher. I never see like u and u r awesome and tnx bro I learn lot
your chanel is home to me thanks baphometrix
Indeed it would be interesting to see a video about that songwriting workflow.
Honestly none of that matters at all not even slightly , duck or don't duck doesn't matter . If it sounds good it sounds good .
Nice follow up vid on the deep dive phase alignment
be careful about some assumptions again. the kick and bass notes are only stable if the bass synth has phase randomization turned off. you should make that clear if you talk about that kinda stuff because most synths have it turned on by default. the kick merging perfectly with a bassline in the middle of a note is also not a given for any combination of kicks and basslines where you made it sound good on same noteOn times. only if the kick's body's average frequency is a multiple of that note you can make it kinda work. i liked the part where you showed how you phase align the bass sound manually to reduce the potential of phase cancellation at the crossover from kick to bass. that is actually really cool. now i will not talk about all the plugins that you tried except for pro-mb because none of the other plugins had linear phase filters. in pro-mb you presented the effect with the natural phase mode, which is a compromise between linear phase and normal. put it to linear phase to get a maximally phase-retaining processing. then slap the knee all the way to hard and use the free-button to let the processing be triggered by the highend rather than the lowend in order to make it work a little bit more snappy and deeper. a bit of lookahead can help too. my point is that this will even more make your bassline come back to its normal shape after the split spectral areas are being added together again. that's the point of linear phase filters. their disadvantage is that they introduce pre-ringing. so your bassline would essentially start a little earlier already and softly fade in. you might not want that in a hard-hitting genre, where it is indeed better to just shape the dynamics manually like you did before. but it's very useful for more natural genres, in which drums might have bleed or don't always hit or even never align with the bassline the same way. even some quite hard-hitting genres, like liquid dnb, profit from this technique, because reese basslines also have very complex phase behaviour where you can't just tune their phase to work with the kick at all times.
I produce a lot of bass heavy Dubby music and usually build my bass with several basses ,one is always a Sub. Im always battling the sub and kick frequencies and while im not using a crossover to duck my sub I sometimes use EQ or a compressor to duck. Sometimes both if im having a lot of problems. This is very helpful since im still trying to sort this out.
Just set the split frequency to something like 200-250Hz, not only 100. It's not a surprize you have SOMETHING additional on the kick and 100 is definitely not enough at all. :) Sometimes I have a single bass sound, containing both sub and mid/high frequencies (and I like it as it is) - and then I need to split the signal to duck everything below 200Hz to zero, and over 200Hz like 50-60% of max ducking. Then it sounds more natural and glued together. Ducking the whole bassline in the whole spectrum is way too aggressive for me - unless I want that effect.
Also, having a separate sub often doesn't sound as good as a single, solid bass preset - it is a long discussion, but I would have to move the highpass filter freq with every higher or lower note to just get rid of the first 2-3 fundamentals/harmonics of the sound or I would have to generate my midbass with additive synthesis, cancelling the lowest 2-3 tones precisely. A single, fixed crossover doesn't do it for me. I need a consistent bassline that is exactly the same on lower and higher notes - I hope you understood what i mean exactly.
I always check both elements, kick and bass in oscilloscope and I phase align everything with a similar obsession as you have + I care if my kick is too deformed or not, but it doesn't have to be 100% clean because you always have some higher freq content on the kick, it's never completely clean unless you duck your whole mix to it 100% :D
PS. I will also test Ozone 8 Imager or Dynamics as a signal splitter for this sidechaining case - and will see on the oscilloscope if it's messed up or not. I noticed that I can even use it to split the signal into 4 bands while SAMPLING a kickdrum and it magically stays exactly the same in the sub region as the original kick. Like... No phase issues at all, no change in sound, waveform etc. While Ableton's Multiband Dynamics destroys the phase completely...
All good comments and nuances. Re your second paragraph though, it's highly dependent on genre and intent (of the producer). For example, go listen to the latest ep by UHNK (on the Producer Dojo label). You'll hear that UHNK's style is to have a constantly moving subbass line, which has many benefits in user experience at clubs/festivals, as well as being a very valid creative choice on UHNK's part. :)
@@Baphometrix thanks for your response, will check it out. I really like your approach to mixing and mastering - yesterday I binge watched 5h of your tutorial videos - they were surprisingly interesting and detailed - in the TH-cam ocean of myths, misinformation and basic content for beginners. Keep it up with the deep dives, absolutely loved it, even though I'm more into producing trance, house, 4x4 edm and pop. Still very informative, especially about clipping vs compression, just wow - eye opening stuff.
If you're making brostep/riddim/hybrid trap having a separate sub is a must for your drops. Layering your growls and Basses with a separate sub cleans things out. Therefore it depends on the genre.
Super important video, thank you
what about if you use pro mb in linear phase mode or mspectral dynamics? I can't hear audible pre ringing with pro mb but with mspectral dynamics yeah
Greetings and good day. I hVe a question in regards to vocals. I looked on your TH-cam page and didnt see any videos for mixing vocals in music. I would like to know do you have any videos about mixing the vocals and if so qill you direct me to them pls. Oh and by the way, that clip video you have has helped me out tremendously
with getting a louder, cleaner mix. Thank you so much for sharing.❤
I haven't done any specifically on mixing vocals. This video is a great place to start. Karra (and Reid Stephan) have made a lot of great videos about vocal recording, processing, and mixing.
th-cam.com/video/F6rf8O5UJqw/w-d-xo.html
I know this might be a bit late but are you not worried about your kick transients being destroyed by the tail of the sub like we can see at 26:25. Look at the difference between the transient of the kick playing on and off the sub!
The resolution/zoom of the oscilloscope during that segment might be misleading you?
@@Baphometrix no I'm pretty sure the kick transient has been shifted up. It might be just for a few ms but it looks to me like it is really doing that. Either that or the oscilloscope is just telling you the wrong information. You can see there is a bit of a thicker line used to display the transient (I think it is using 2 pixels there because the oscillation is so fast) for the kick playing during silence it oscillates around the 0-crossing line while for the kick on the sub it looks like it is oscillating around the position of the sub right before it.
Thanks for the reply btw
Thank you very much, 4 sharing your rare KNOWLADGE!!
Gracias por tus vídeos . Saludos desde España me has ayudado mucho . Cálido abrazo
Awesome video! Where did you get this kick sample? I love kicks like this. Also, what are some of your favorite sample packs in general for drums in the genres dubstep, deep dub, trap, hip hop, etc.?
what trigger mode do you use for duck? midi or sidechain?
Hi! new sub here... first thx for all those videos where u show explicit how and where to look to make better together sound !! .. second.. what kind of scope do u recommend? i find hard to use my native scope ( studio one 5 artist ) ... even the manual doesnt exist ( wtf xd ) . So, i like the one u r using here... it looks very clear and pleasent !!! thx for all your sharing !! ♥
Thank you again for this video! You are a great teacher :)
+1 on the songwriting on the second subbass usage where the sub is grooving under the midbasses... is in that case an aligning of the midbasses to the sub and the kick to consider?
thank you for this follow up! i guess you could make 30days everysingle day a tutorial about the low end of the track, from designing, arranging to mixing and then mastering! you are great !
Good question. When your sub is outlining and following every midbass sound (classic brostep), it's rare that the kick and sub happen at the same time except maybe on downbeat growl. In most cases, you want the kick happening all by itself on the first downbeat of each bar, and then all the midbass noises happen mostly in the gaps *between* each kick (and snare). Everything is checkerboarded, to give the drop a nice vertical feel and allow every sound to sit by itself not layered with any other sound, so that each sound can be made super loud.
So in this case, phase alignment of the kick and sub isn't really an issue at all except MAYBE on the downbeat. But a lot of producers will let that big heavy dubstep kick hit all by itself to carry the energy and impact of the downbeat. If they do place a midbass growl there on the downbeat, listen close and you'll see it's either offset quite a bit late, or it's sidechained with a long gap and release so that the there is audible space after the kick before the growl "pumps up" after the kick itself (making one longer downbeat impact).
In short, don't obsess too much over this technique and the notion of phase alignment between kick and sub. A lot of desirable sequencing approaches can make it a non-issue entirely.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on sidechain your track against a snare using band-ducking. Like if you ducked everything above like 120 hz against your snare (but not the sub) , would this still affect the phase of your sub? Cuz I wanna sideshain to my snare, but not have the sub duck cuz the snare doesn’t take up those frequencies
I'm still very much a fan of wideband ducking for anything to do with drums. For vocals, I prefer using a VERY light amount spectral ducking to help the vocals sit on top of the mix. In addition to the potential phase issues caused by band-specific ducking, there's another issue entirely. When you don't duck the entire spectrum, then SOME amount of signal is left that sums up on top of the kick and snare, which in many louder genres (especially dance-oriented genres) are already consuming all the space right up to 0 dBFS, and are already stretched to their breaking point with clippers. If you let more energy sum up with those important framework sounds, then the drum hits are going above 0 dBFS and will ultimately need to be clipped even harder to keep the peaks down at 0 or below. So band-specific ducking also makes it harder to have the cleanest, punchiest kicks and snares possible in louder genres.
When Un-Masking: Trackspacer or Smart Comp to duck only the frequencies of targeted other instruments (side chain)
Trackspacer is great. SmartComp is more surgical than Trackspacer, which isn't always what you want when doing "unmasking" ducking across the full spectrum.
Hi Bapho, first of all thanks again for the great video! What I wonder: If I do the ducking with a dynamic EQ (sidechained TDR Nova from Kick to Sub for example) and set it so that whenever the kick hits, exactly those frequencies of the kick are pushed down in the bass, is that also a problem? Or only if you do it as in the video with DUCK and the crossover? Thank you!!! EDIT: OK, from about Minute 40 on you do kind of explain what I was asking. 🙂 Not exactly what I was asking for but enough to answer it for me.
Great video. Thank you for this. I would love to see how Multiplicity performs in this usage.
would be nice if the ducker had some kind of automatic phase alignment with an attack time so you can decide how much time after triggering the alignment happens
Oooh so this is the channel that's actually finna take me to the next level
A proper linkwitz riley crossover shouldn't be creating any Jaggies on the Oscilloscope when no gain reduction is happening. I feel like the crossovers in the shaperbox plugin are not functioning properly.
Good info but 48 mins for a video that could be done in 20. Most of us wont sit through the whole thing
Thanks for saving our careers !! ;)
Awesome to see someone put so much effort into their videos! Insta-sub =)
Great videos!!! Thanks .
Hey Baphometrix, great tutorials. I've seen a few and since then I gave it a try to this Duck VST. It's quite good but I just noticed today that it makes a click at the beginning (or end, it's hard to say) of the signal. Do you got any tips to get rid of this? Any explanation for why it does so? And may my 808 had not much attack, but I had the feeling, that ewhen sidechained to my kick, it was still ducking when there was no kick hitting.
Great work. Keep providing interesting tuto.
First, try the smoothing knob. Second, try setting Lookahead to 1ms or 2ms. Third, remember that if you duck a fat subby sine in the middle of its phase (not at a zero crossing), you're going to get clicks. You can try making sure your 808s are hitting in the right phase at the downbeat when your kick transient is hitting.
@@Baphometrix Thx for the answer, I'll try these settings. I realised that the click at the start of the signal happens when I load a VST after Duck. Anyway I'll try to figure this out. Still searching for the best sidechain tool for trap/drill 808s
If you cut a sound too quickly, you're always gonna get a click. Imagine soicing an audio track and the increasing or decreasing the volume of one of the halves by 10db, you're probably gonna get a click where they meet unless you crossfade to smooth the transition
Interesting topic but video way too slow and long and too many words in getting across your point.
Mosquito brain
lmfao
Love your videos. Very technical! Is that oscilloscope with the A/B channel available as a VST (for Abelton) ? Looks very useful!
I do gain automation for the bass, depending on the sample of the kick.
So Wavesfactory trackspacer should NOT be used for Kick Bass BUT can I use trackspacer to duck mids when a vocal is introduced?
Because phase interaction issues are generally most audible and "bad" when it happens in the low end. From the mid range up, this type of phase interaction isn't very noticeable, and if a critical ear *can* hear it, it's usually not "bad sounding".
Can you make a video about using these techniques in FL studio for trap music? I feel like I run into this problem with some of my mixes. I’m also completely blind so trying to follow you without any visual information is a little difficult but I want to get a better grasp on this phase alignment concept. You make a lot of great videos by the way kudos!
Which oscilloscope are you using?
Are there any videos on HOW ? not just WHY ?
You should not or you should.... you should always make that what you think sounds good! Great video tho
Hello Baphy!
Can I achieve the same 'only volume duck'-effect with FabFilter ProMB using only one full band (e.g. no band specific ducking)? Or am I overlooking some things?
Thank you so much for your work!
Best wishes
The problem with Fabfilter Pro-Q or Pro-MB dynamic filters is that you cannot precisely control the shape and length of the ducking slice. But it all depends on the music and what you're trying to duck to what else. For myself, I greatly value the precise control over length and shape that a dedicated ducking plugin can give me.
@@Baphometrix Thank you! This makes way too much sense now you say it! xD
Damn, it seems all the other mixing tutorials I watched were just to learn the terms and vocabulary in order to finally get a proper education here lol
should we also avoid band specific ducking normal basses like slap bass, synth bass , 808 with higher order harmonics OR is this only for Sub bass?
Mostly only for sub basses.
What if you use Pro MB to split the band and then use a volume shaper to duck that band?
thats why i always create my sub seperately and volume sidechain it
love the work baph! ı have a question what are your thoughts about natural and linear phase options on the pro q 3 ? is it helping for the possible low cuts on the kicks, basses etc?
The real deal with linear/hybrid phase EQ is simple: You don't need it at all for _most_ EQ tasks. Like, you don't really need it on any individual track. It hurts more than it helps for normal track EQ adjustments. The only place it _might_ be useful is up on your mix bus, if you feel you need to put a high-pass filter anywhere in your sub or bass region. Bascially, just try a normal minimum-phase high-pass filter first, then toggle that filter on and off while listening carefully to the sounds that live in the sub and low-bass region. If you hear any sound seeming to lose power, then try a hybrid mode. If you still hear some sound seeming to lose power, then try a linear mode.
But don't use linear or hybrid unless you need to fix the audible power loss you _might_ be hearing. If you don't hear a power loss, then leave it alone.
Linear phase EQ's maintain phase relationships but may introduce pre-ringing. They really should only be used for drastic EQ moves (Steep filters) on instruments with similar phase relationships (EQing multi-mic'd instruments separately).
@@RyanCara tbh Pro-Q 3 in linear phase seems to introduce pre-ringing even with no slope active at all, it's tiny but if you boost the silence by 24db you can see it. At least in my DAW
thanks bro
Do you have everything else other the sub (and of course kick and snare) go through a similar sidechain group? Good vid btw!!
KeyX Yes, there are sidechain duckers on several of my project group busses, and several different ducking sources.
The basic three sounds you need to push down OTHER sounds in pretty much every project are: kick, snare, and vocals. So where you place ducker plugins depends on how your projects are organized into (group) busses.
I tend to roll everything up into two main group busses: Instrumental and Vocals. The Instrumental group has several sub groups inside it: Drums, Spice, Subs, and Synths. The Synths group has further subgroups inside it: Drop Sounds, IBO Melodic, and Atmos/FX.
So with that general project routing structure, I duck the Subs group only to the kick. And I duck the Synths group to the kick and snare, and I duck the ENTIRE Instrumental group to the Vocals.
I use the plugin “Duck” for ducking things to the kick and the snare, and I use the plugin “Trackspacer” for ducking things to the vocals.
@@Baphometrix Thanks a lot for the breakdown! After rewatching your 2 lessons, I have some more questions if you have time:
1. When doing multi band processing for synth or mid bass, do you recommend using linear phase EQs? Is it a bad thing that Bitwig multiband container doesn't null with the source material? Tbh they sound the same to my ears, but I'm not sure if I'm missing something under the hood.
2. In the other video, you've explained the "wrong" ducking shape. But if I understand correctly, it's only wrong when you have a fat kick and a sub running together right? So that shape might still be usable for ducking higher sounds, or when you have a thin kick and a sub for example?
Hello, I want to ask you something, because you are a Bitwig expert. Is there a way to rename (and save) the piano roll notes - I have only found a way for doing this with the drum machine and sampler, but that is a too inefficient workaround - we need 128 samplers per track, right? (In Abl. Live we can do this with just a midi effects rack.) (This is very important for microtonal music composing; it is very confusing to look into 12 equal piano note names when the pitches don't correspond to them.)
By "rename and save", do you mean "export MIDI clips as .MID files?
If so, you can but it's currently messy/tricky in Bitwig. They want you by default to save a MIDI clip as a **clip** in your Bitwig User Library (by just dragging the clip into your browser window). But that approach is Bitwig-only. If you want a simple, universal .MID file that you can load into any DAW, you need to do something non-intuitive. I have a video about that somewhere in my "Producer Tutorials" playlist. Look for a title like "How to export MIDI clips".
@@Baphometrix, no, I am talking about renaming the piano roll symbols - in 19 equal for example C# and Db are unique, because minor diesis is not tempered - and save these names as a template that can be loaded in other projects.
azraksash Ah, I see what you want now. No, Bitwig cannot currently do that.
Well, changes in the low end will always Shift the phase, so its a big no no !
Linear phase filters may be less problematic when band-splitting for targeted low-end processing.
Sidechain follower driving volume ducking definitely introduces waveshaping, if the follower reactivity speed is too fast.
I did show linear phase filters in one part of this video. They do deform the waveshape less, but it's beside the point because it isn't the waveshape change brought on by a high pass (or low shelf) filter that is the REAL problem with band-specific ducking of your sub. Instead, the REAL problem is that anything that does band-specific ducking leaves too much waveform energy DURING the kick, and the resulting phase mis-alignment changes the timbre of the kick significantly.
My bad, i wrote my comment before the video ran to the end.
i use a convolution reverb to make linear phase splits. The wet level can be brought down to silence, so automating that with a follower can duck the filtered component down to silence, if required.
@@tubedLeVeNdiS That can work. :)
Baphometrix caution is well worth understanding.
Sometimes, the instrument(s) providing the sub have brighter content. Overall volume ducking has an alternative, in applying band-split, to preserve the level of the higher content, while having sympathetic ducking.
A case in point, is when two instruments play sustained notes and you want the low end of one to make room for the low end in the other.
@@tubedLeVeNdiS Well, you're absolutely correct that in (mid) bass sounds that also provide sub you don't want to duck ALL of the spectrum for those sounds to the kick! However, there's STILL a much better way to handle that situation than to use band-specific ducking. I did mention this "better way" in the video but didn't dwell on it for long because I thought it was fairly common knowledge among producers.
Most of us handle this situation by quite literally REMOVING the sub energy from all of our (mid) bass sounds in a project (though high pass filters), and then building an entirely separate sub track to provide the sub energy for the track.
If you do that (which most of us DO), then you're down to ONE track providing the sub energy for the entire song, and now everything I explain in this video applies, and the big danger is that you'll end up with very inconsistent timbres and transients and dynamics for your kicks if you do band-specific ducking on the sub track.
I don't agree fully with this. Ducking a subs volume causes sudden DC offset / clicking which then has to be eq'd anyway. I tend to use a combination of half ducking 40-60% and half dynamic eq specifically bx dyneq2. A Q of 0.3 isn't going to cause phase issues. A 24db filter will cause phase issues but lighter curves wont. It's the combination of the two that gives the best results and you have to sometimes offset the sidechain earlier than usual and take care to fine tune the attack and decay.
Why are you trying to make quantum physics out of trivialities? The whole idea could be explained in less than 5 minutes imho.
what about automating a dynamic bell (e.g. on something like waves F6) to duck out the bass frequencies of a bass guitar? Would it introduce the same phase problems? Is the phasiness related to the steepness of the filter (Q) ?
Yes, it would introduce similar phase problems. Also, dynamic EQs aren't fast/precise enough to create the ducking shape you need for a clean "gluing" of the sound you're ducking with the sound that's doing the ducking.
@@Baphometrix thanks. I guess I need to revisit some of my mixes to see whether there is an audible phase difference. at least F6 had attack and release parameters as opposed to Q 3.
By the way I quite like using Trackspacer to give room to vocals against other elements such as the guitar bus - again, not across the whole spectrum but only in the mids or high mids for intelligibility. not sure if that is another can of worms with phase?
A 6db octave crossover like in Shaperbox doesn’t introduce any phase problems. I know Baphometrix said it does, but he’s mistaken on this specific point.
If you do your own null test you’ll see the signal is completely unaffected when no ducking is occurring.
Regarding Trackspacer ducking instruments for vocals, you probably haven’t phase aligned your guitars and vocals in the first place, so I wouldn’t worry about phase shift there.
Phase shift often isn’t an issue in higher frequencies, but one specific example where it’s extremely important is when layering transients.
For example, layering a kick with a hat. If you flip the phase of the hat you could end up with a completely different sounding transient.
I usually duck with soothe2, but never analysed the result with an oscilloscope, curious about the result.
Soothe is not a ducking tool. Soothe is a "dynamic resonance (harshness) control" plugin. Apples and oranges. I'd never use Soothe to "duck".
@@Baphometrix the sidechain feature is powerful , works good to make space to some other tracks. 🤷🏻♂️
@@carlosp.1846 If you like it, you like it. But I have at least one video out there that explains why ducking based on specific frequency bands is generally a bad idea when it comes to ducking in the low end. I'm a firm believer in ducking the low end only by managing the amplitude. Now, for something like "making vocals cut through the mix", then yes, band-specific ducking is the way to go. For that I tend to use either Trackspacer by Wavesfactory, or smart:compressor (in inverse ducking mode) by sonible.
@@Baphometrix Is multi-band ducking still a potential issue when dealing with an acoustic kick and bass, where the bass line is moving? Phase alignment is likely to be rare to start within that case. However, am I correct to assume that frequency-based ducking on bass, regardless of how aligned it is with the kick, still produces some phase distortion affecting the tonality of the instrument?
@@sammiller9855 Phase interaction isn't _inherently_ bad. All manner of processing causes phase interactions. The acid test is whether you can *hear* the interaction and whether what you're hearing sounds subjectively worse somehow. And yes, in genres were the bass line is constantly moving around, the interaction is less frequent. Don't overthink this too much. It's just something to be aware of.
I appreciate the perspective, but this isn't as big of a deal as your title suggests. There are plenty of successful songs that have used band-specific ducking, it worked out fine.
Also if you have huge punchy low kick and make 20 hz cut on master it will lose all this low punch.
Why the gate on your mic?
I work in a super noisy room. For example, person right next to me typing away on a keyboard, and other misc background noises.
@@Baphometrix Nothing to worry about. maybe a longer release on that gate and nobody will notice.
Why the obvious question?
@@Dyallo1988 .. It sounds kind of bad, to be honest.
TrackSpacer?
Just saw your coments about it thanks!
Please start time stamping ure videos...
Hm hm hm I learned band specific ducking from Lu Diaz and Andrew Scheps
band-specific ducking has problem in sub/bass-heavy genres, as I demonstrate. It's less problematic in rock, alt, country, jazz, etc. etc..
You should set up a Patreon bruh
Yeah, but I don't want to monetize. That just turns this into a job. I make videos when I have time and there's a fun/interesting question to answer.
get to the point
You gave us already so much, so it might be rude to ask: Could You make a new Episode on Your PreMaster Magick, because otherwise TH-cam wouldn't not be interesting anymore, as I already watched all your Explainations here, which could lead someday maybe to wisdom about 'Real Audio Processing after Baphometrix's C2Z Method'. Hope we can expect new mindblowers on this channel. We try to keep up with your Mastering Clearity. All The Best. Fanmail