well, if it serves as an example for what he is trying to demonstrate in the video, it works. and honestly i dont think its that bad, i've heard much worse music than his lol
As an educator, I adore how pedagogy-oriented your videos are. You have a supreme talent of deploying humor without ever contaminating the message, and every video of yours is an absolute joy to watch (usually more than once, to grasp more and more of the concepts). Thank you for everything you do!
I used this on some double tracked heavy metal guitars panned hard left and right. It made the guitars sound much wider due to more difference information, but unlike using a side high shelf or using a spreader plugin, when combined in mono, it sums into the flat frequency response again!
I used to use Cubase and accepted the fact that quite a few plugins won't load up properly, crash, or stop working at some point. Moving to Ableton only worsens the situation, as only a few actually loaded up. The first time I started Reaper I saw ALL the plugins I ever installed loaded perfectly waiting for me to use them. It was like seeing all my lost friends, I was almost in tears.
It seems I don't have much plugins yet...Pulsar Audio Echo plugin did crash it a few times, but nothing else did. I am a Voxengo and Fabfilter guy, maybe this is why
A similar trick that achieves something different, which I don't believe you mentioned in the mixing in stereo series. If you have a mono signal that you want to add some width to. Use a M/S decoder. Send the original mono to the M and then a high-passed, few ms delayed copy of that to the S, and let them be reintegrated. This creates a comb filter effect too, but with the inverse of the combs on the left and right. If the width of this new signal is decreased to nothing it becomes the original mono again. Less than a full collapse makes the combs less deep.
I like to add a haas copy to one side which is just 180'd on the other side. filter optional. great width and depth perceived out of a mono source but 100% mono compatible.
Adding equal and opposite amounts of something to left and right is literally exactly what happens when you add something to the side channel. So you're actually achieving the same result as Christopher above.
Amazing trick. Very exciting to hear that when the COMB bus is muted the whole mix sounds similar to some of the stuff I'm making now. Apparently I have a masking problem. I'm excited to try this out!
Dan, I think you might be one of the only people to help decipher audio engineering's greatest mystery. it has eluded many since the 90s and the original engineer Alan Moulder is a hermit that doesn't give interviews. On Nine Inch Nails's 2nd Album the Downward Spiral, the track "Ruiner" contains a truly outside the speakers 3d (non-binaural) vocal at 1:08 ish that I have not witnessed in any other recording before or since and no-one seems to know how it was done. especially in '94. I would love to open a discussion with you. Or maybe it might encourage a video.
@@dndamian haha yeah. it almost feels like they phased it as a function of frequency. because the upper frequencies appear to be nearer mono. On a good set up though it sounds like he's nearly behind my left ear its incredible.
Wow, that really is impressive. I just listened to that track on TH-cam... on 2013 Macbook Air laptop speakers so there wasn't a lot of bass response and the sound was merely "adequate". And it was STILL noticeable and startling. Yeah, I'd like to know how that was done as well...
Just listened to it. That moment actually threw me out of the song. I went from staring into the abyss, contemplating suicide, to picturing Trent Reznor standing behind a microphone in a recording studio. Anyway, are you sure that they didn't just crank the pan knob hard left?
I'd never thought of doing it, but as soon as I saw the thumbnail I knew what the trick would be. I've been a Reaper user for about 10 years now so I'm blissfully unaware of the limitations the users of other DAWs have to live with.
Other DAWs are not really limited. If you need 10 gazillion ways to route your tracks then you have other issues. Good music does not need ten billion ways to route audio.
@@axelfoley1768 Except a DAW is not only for mixing music; as its acronym suggests, it is an audio workstation. And as such, REAPER excels in its flexibility for audio engineering. This strength can play in favor of developing complex production strategies. For example, you could replicate a very similar system as the one Brian Eno used to create ‘Music for Airports’; which, in essence, was comprised of multiple mixers and delay units being fed into each other, with very little outside input to the system. With REAPER, the possibility of replicating a generative system like the previously described (and others) is digitally embedded in its construction!!
@@heanz yeah, audiophiles are listeners, hitmakers get on with the job. I've made tracks with no way to route audio. The current DAWs are miraculous for me, more than I'd ever need. If I needed those extra bits in Reaper then I wouldn't be using a different DAW, simple as that.
@@heanz Audiophiles are corksniffers, Dan's just a great engineer. What I'm saying is - audiophiles care about £1000 cables because they think it makes their listening experience better, good engineers care about being able to route audio in creative ways that make their mixes better.
I wish I knew half the stuff that Dan knows, but annoyingly, then it would still mean he knows twice as much, so I would still have to come back and heckle him some more. Awesome content !!!
I have been using Ableton for four years now and it suits my electronic music production needs perfectly. However, I have become more and more interested in Multitrack Mixing and there seems to be a huge obstacle in my way to get to a comfortable and quick workflow that makes sense. Started to use Reaper for all my mixing purposes and I am very happy. Cannot recommend it enough.
I can't recommend mixing outside of Ableton enough. It frees me from the mixing as you go curse so i don't feel the need to make everything fit perfectly before ive even thought about the mixdown
I use live for electronic composition ,production , sound design and mix mastering. You really can't beat the workflow for speed and that counts for a hell of a lot now. If I had more time I would go back to reaper as it is indeed more flexible but music is my living and music has deadlines and algorithms to please haha. When you get 80 million views on a track that took you 6 hours you kinda realise spending an extra week getting the mix perfect isn't actually a factor in A) paying the bills and B) other people's ears. its not enough of a difference to truly matter in the real world (unless your brand's audience just happens to be exclusively made up of engineers)
@@amphitheatre Do you mean the quantization and time stretching of beats? You can get some very similar functionality in reaper with the MK Slicer Extension, or even without that if you like doing it by hand, using stretch markers. You can get MK Slicer through Reapack, its really amazing! grabs all the transients based on a threshhold knob and then applies either a stretch marker or a split at them, then you can quantize them, or even randomize the order of the slices. Absolutely indispensable tool if you work with a lot of loops.
@@MantasticHams thank you so much for letting me know, this thing IS a big help, and yes i work with loops, the fact that it has a random slicer feature is brilliant, i love anything with a random button. however, thats not what i meant with my comment. ableton has stretch algorithms like "repitch" and "complex" that sound like nothing else, nothing to do with how it slices. MK Slicer seems very helpful for my experimental workflow, so again, thanks for commenting!
what makes reaper special for me are scripts, themes, and actions. There is so much untapped potential that even if the developers stopped updating the program, we could create features for decades. I've pretty much automated all articulations, track icons/colors by name, and modded a theme to show only the buttons I use and it wasn't as difficult as I thought. Well worth the money.
Yes man! The customization is amazing, for me the only thing it sucks about it is the fact that there isnt retrospective record without clumsy scripts, id love to have a quickpunch style in reaper
I had a mix where an overlap in two really aggressive synth sounds was blunting the edge on both of them and it was driving me insane. This trick was exactly what the situation needed, letting each one poke through the other. Thanks for saving the mix, Dan!
In my opinion the two biggest deficiencies of Reaper are pre-fx volume knob per channel and post fader fx inserts. These are very useful features and could be implemented easily. Dan, I know that the developers are consider your requests. Can you please help us to make them see these requests?
The nr 1 reason for me is that when I want to start Reaper it's up and running in 1 sec - it boosts creativity. Cubase, for example, takes 30 secs... and when I use, say, 10 instances of TH-U (a guitar amp emulator) it uses 3% CPU in reaper, in Cubase it is already creating pops and clicks... Reaper is a very well programmed music software.
@@rautshsale1948 I do enjoy having an idea and not having to wait 5 years to get it out of my head Contrary to what your sarcasm implies startup time is important
For anyone wanting a logic x work around. For the channel of which you want to polarity flip the send, send it to aux. Then set the output of this aux to no output, and plug in the logic stock “gain” plugin. Flip the polarity in the gain plug-in then send this channel to the comb filtering aux
That's actually the reason why I switched to Cubase many years ago. I was baffled how people need to load a plugin in Pro Tools just to flip polarity :'D it's like they enjoy suffering. It feels there's some sort of forced silence about it, it's actually the first time I hear somebody rooting for a DAW this strongly :D These videos are pure gold, thank you very much for the trick!
Thank you for exposing to us your reason, alongside the logic that leads you to this affirmation. I hope your fan-base is able to live with that. I, for one... Let's just say that it's gonna take me a bit to properly digest the facts.
My favorite feature of reaper is the flexibility of the routing. I tend to have sends running all over the mix and its caused me to create new and interesting sounds that would be almost impossible to do organically in pro-tools.
I wish reaper copied ardour‘s take on sends where a send is essentially an FX you can put *anywhere* in an FX chain. Pre or post FX is not enough at times.
Can I ask what limits you from doing it in pro tools? My projects tend to have tens of sends going around, normally 3+ per track and I haven't really had issues with it.
@@Wergiftfresch The way to implement the Ardour take in Reaper is to add as many channels to the track as you want to send, then in the settings for the last effect prior to the send, you also connect the output to the additional chennels. Finally you add a post-FX send from these additional channels to whereever you want to send it.
@@simongunkel7457 OK, assume I have three FX and I want to route post-1, post-2, post-3 out. Now I have 8 audio channels on the track. I set parent-send to 2 (1-2). I post-FX send 3-4 (= post-1), 5-6 (=post-2), 7-8 (=post-3). Note that I have to take care to add 4 channels to FX2 (or I'll overwrite 3-4 with post-2), and 6 channels to FX3 (same, but with 5-6). I cannot copy this FX chain elsewhere where I have multiple channels. It's finnicky, involved, verbose, manual and fragile. Compare that to CTRL-dragging a send over in the mixer window. You don't have to care about channels, routing, whatever, just drag that thing over and it becomes its own copy of the send you can manipulate with. Now imagine you could drag sends ANYWHERE in the FX chain and the send would just pass its channel audio tracks through (no matter how many!) and also send them to the destination. Voila, automatic, manageable, storable, templateable, copyable. This is what ardour does, and what I'm missing in reaper.
@@simongunkel7457 also you are aware that if I do that before e.g. a ReaComp, by default now I have the side-chain inputs connected to the FX-send of the previous FX (or some earlier FX, generally). It's just annoying and too involved, and especially fragile and not flexible. I wish cockos would just add a generic "send" and "receive" FX between which we could drag and drop and which were stable across tracks (so you could copy them). I don't get the distinction between FX and sends/receives generally in reaper, if you can do midi, audio and video in the same track (annoyingly always stereo, but hey), why can't you do sends and FX as the same abstraction?
You reminded me that I can use a variation on the comb filtering trick on an old project of mine with a single mono drum overhead. Turning the mono drums into Fake Stereo, which sits in the mix more nicely.
I made a "comb" track with a high-pass filter (to keep the kick in the center) feeding a delay (I set it for 5ms delay). Send panned to hard L, another send phase-flipped to hard R. Mix with the mono drums by ear.
I've been blessed enough to start my audio recording journey with Cockos Reaper in 2010 and it has been a fantastic one till this day. I want to thank you Dan, for being such a generous person and sharing so much of your knowledge which have helped me become a far better mixer than I was even a couple of months ago.
Reaper rules in so many ways! I've come from Pro Tools (as most of you i asume) and working with PT had always a little bit of what you can't do. So when i startet learning Reaper i was shocked of what it is capable of! I found new very useful features and workflows every day and session i did. Now I'm using Reaper for about 4 years and I'm still super happy. Won't go back. Cheers
You could replicate this in Ableton by creating an audio track, grouping stock Compressors into parallel chains, setting the sidechain sources to be the tracks you want to hear, and auditioning all of them to effectively disable the compressors and just hear the sidechain signal. Add your delay after this group, then you can invert signals as you please. Send the track to whatever reverb return you have.
Dan, you are a genius!! I can't tell you how much I've learned from you! Much success to you! Oh, and btw, Reaper rocks!!! However, leaning Reaper is a never-ending learning experience.....nobody can ever "master" that DAW, it's too complicated and customizable, but THAT makes it fun. IMHO
Even the built-in plugin parameter-link with manual offset sets Reaper apart. Control the threshold of three serial compressors (FET, opto, limiter, for instance) simultaneously, with their own offsets, by tweaking ONE mixer knob? Reaper can do it. Save the chain and load that configuration whereever you need it, all set up with that one fx parameter knob in your mixer. It's like building your own unique one-knob compressor.
"It's like building your own unique one-knob compressor." I don't think that is accurate at all. The more accurate analogue would be creating a preset that uses multiple plugins. Afterall, tweaking compressor threshold and other values is not quite the same as building a compressor itself.
@@anteshell Listen, I don't want to offend you, but you clearly didn't understand the logic or mechanics of my example. The threshold setting was only one kind of parameter. the attack times can be linked to the threshold as well. So can the ratio or the release. Let's say you lower the treshold and, at the same time, increase the attack time plus decreasing the ratio. Do you understand now? By saying "it's like building your own unique one-knob compressor" I meant the workflow. One knob on the mixer panel. And by unique I mean: you can adjust it to taste and create your own 2-stage attack, 3-stage release or whatever. You get a channel compression with a particular sound and you define which one.
@@Mansardian Sorry to break it to you but your ridiculous insinuations that I'm some fucking moron is just laughable. Not offending. But when you set the stage like that, I'm happy to oblige and consider you to be an idiot too. It is very clear from your comment that my above assesment is not far from the truth. In my comment I specifically said "_and other values_" which means exactly that; those other values that you keep complaining I somehow ignored. Screwing one comp is nothing more than making a preset. Screwing two comps is nothing more than making a preset. Screwing three comps and linking those parameters together is still nothing more than making a preset. I've been making patches in FL patcher long enough to understand that linking parameters together no matter how many and with how complicated curves, it is still nothing like making a new plugin from scratch. It is making a preset. Potentially more complicated preset than the used plugins ever was, but still nothing more than that. Now.. are you possibly ready to continue discussion as a civilized adult or do you still want to act like a dumb fuck? I would rather choose the former. In fact, I'd love that, but I do not want to continue myself if this kind of shit talk is all you can do.
@@anteshell Did you really think he meant to say "saving that preset is just like the effort involved in coding up your own one-knob compressor"? I'm pretty sure he meant what I heard him say, that using it is like using a one-knob compressor of your own custom design -- which it is. As for linking parameters, how do you think a one-knob compressor works? And as for being civilized adults ... well, you really don't want to have gone there, but you did. One of you said "I don't want to offend you", while the other said "your insinuations are ridiculous, and I'd be happy to consider you an idiot". Guess which one probably seems the more "civilized adult" to the rest of us?
It's actually a little difficult to hear what effect is happening here due to the synth sounds, and of course talking over the top. The lesson is as always a great one, explained in the best possible way, but i think the source sounds, and some clearer A/Bing to help everyone hear. As the synths are ducking in and out all the time from your voice, and they're already dancing around beautifully, it's hard to really know what's happened. Maybe using two guitars would have worked better, or a big static synth pad with a guitar, or something not already moving and changing every split second. :) You didn't ask me, but just thought i'd leave some feedback, it's the only time i feel i've wanted to with your videos that's for sure.
the point about talking over the music is valid, but if he made the A/B clearer, it would ironically obscure what he was trying to show, which is how much the sound stands out with the comb filtering trick when you're listening to the FULL mix.
@@DanWorrall Although I guess "phase" is more of a "time" thing, i.e. horizontal if we were to plot a wave with time as the X axis, whereas polarity is more of an "amplitude" thing, dealing with the Y axis... Phase is a time shift, Polarity is an amplitude multiplication by -1.
@@matthijshebly phase doesn't have to be a time shift. Polarity flip being the most obvious example, but I also have plugins that can shift phase by an arbitrary angle.
As probably your only regular viewer who also uses Reason as their main DAW, it's always fun to replicate these tricks as an exercise of how well I know my weirdo DAW of choice 😂
In case any other Reason folks are here, the way I replicated this is to just create parallels for both channels and route the output of those to a new mix track. Then place the effect as an insert in that third mix track. You can then invert one of the parallels. The reverb thing is the same, just set it up as a send on all three tracks. You could also do it without the parallel channels by splitting off a copy of each track to another mix channel using the Spider and include some other way of inverting one track's inputs (like the Itsy Audio Phase Inverter) along the way.
I recently switched from Logic to Reaper for mixing for similar reasons. I love the freedom it gives you with routing and the ability to optimize your workflow through customization. However, I still think Logic is superior for multitrack recording. The way it handles takes, comping, and group editing is incredibly intuitive.
Luckily Reaper does not suffer from bugs. I can't use Logic because of the playhead jumping back bug, that other people have reported as well. Apparently it appeared from v10.5 onwards.
@@kultw1837 I have been using Logic since V 4.xx and stopped using it when it went to V10. So after a few years I had to use Logic again and I installed 10.7.2 and it had this bug. I never saw it in the 15 years I was using Logic either. Re-openning the project and trying out different play start preferences does not change the problem. Weird..
you might be able to get some humor out of a VST implementation of a language model, but I don't think there are any VSTs that implement that level of artificial intelligence yet and they certainly don't have any controls for decibel level of the humor it outputs. might be something to check into in a future multimedia version of VCV rack or something like that. I'm looking forward to audio rate humor modulation
You can easily flip the polarity with in Ableton using a stock device that can be added to busses too. It can even switch left and right channel independently or both.
I'm using Reaper since 2 years, started yesterday eve for a third, I come from my first DAW Cubase in the 80's with a few samplers, like the S1 from Roland, and a digi piano, the D70 and a AKAI sampler. It was good for that time setting. Went to Ableton, because I was looking for a DAW that was good for editing, and also live use with a APC40mkII, playing those clips, was a great feature to play live music. Then I quit being DJ, so I took the best a man can get (sic) Protools9HD. Besides, it's so expensive and the fact, you have to restart PT for several times. When I noticed the price for PT10, I was looking for something cheaper and if it could a little more stable. A colleague get me into Reaper, And me and the DAW both fell in love, and it's now my main DAW, Still using the apc40mkII and Ableton, for DJing from time to time, I have on my system really great tools, all very cheap, but with people who care for their clients. Never seen so many tutorials from Kenny and Jon, Kenny for the basic stuff, Jon a little more for the experienced users. And not to forget, the stash with scripts, and the community where you can almost every hour of the day can ask questions. For me, this software is a no-brainer. Cheap prices, you can change pretty much every aspect from the GUI, Shortcuts are so easy to make, you can even make your own scripts. Without locking your software, and every day I learn a new feature after an update or one I didn't aware of. Cheers. PS: Yeah the stock plugins looks like the GUI's screens from Cubase, but they are doing the trick. Dan made a video about them in earlier episodes.
There is a new channel that is very much worth looking into, it's IDDQD Sound. A bit geeky, with lots of tricks and long videos about scripting. Plus the recent interviews of Justin Frankel, Jon Schwartz and Kenny Gioia. th-cam.com/users/IDDQDMusic
First of all thank you for ALL of the clear and concise explanations of these advanced mixing techniques. In that same spirit, I'll do the same with my question. BUT... Could the difference in the A/B test just be due to a change in level after combining the delayed/inverted signal?
The parts seem to get louder with the parallel channel added, and perhaps actually do a bit, because I've tuned the comb filtering to pick out important frequencies in both parts. If I tune it badly, or invert it to create the opposite, there is no perceived loudness boost. Remember that the parallel channel doesn't simply add to the dry signals due to the delay: it creates comb filtering with as many cuts as boosts.
I had thought about doing this on sources which have the same frequency range but never worked out how it could be implemented. Makes sense to do a inverted offset. Now I have another way to make the guitars sound huger!
hey dan , im totally speechless by the amount of creativity and knowledge i just wonder to myself how did you manage to measure the phase of both using plugin doctor thx in advance !!
In actually measuring the frequency response not the phase shift. I loaded Metaplugin into the doctor, then set up the parallel routing inside that. And I saved the curve with the delay in phase so you can still see it after I flipped the polarity.
Workflow is key for getting work done. There is little point in having a DAW with loads of features and tricks, but you have no idea how to use it. I've seen people buy an expensive Apple Mac, with pricey software because 'they need it to make music', then find they still can't make music as they don't how to use what they've just purchased. Thousands of pounds spunked up the wall with nothing to show for it. I recently started making tunes in Ableton. I've been making DJ mixes for years in it, and knew my way around, so it made sense to continue with that. It worked nicely for my purposes. I have made a few tunes, and have quite a lot of 'nearly there' projects. I've been able to learn more about the music making process, without the blocker of having to learn the DAW, first. So yes, there is a lot of truth to 'the one you know'. But it's also true that some other DAW has a feature you really want. There is no perfect DAW that satisfies everyone. But that's fine.
yup. as I wrote above. I use live for electronic composition ,production , sound design and mix mastering. You really can't beat the workflow for speed and that counts for a hell of a lot now. If I had more time I would go back to reaper as it is indeed more flexible but music is my living and music has deadlines and algorithms to please haha. When you get 80 million views on a track that took you 6 hours you kinda realise spending an extra week getting the mix perfect isn't actually a factor in A) paying the bills and B) other people's ears. its not enough of a difference to truly matter in the real world (unless your brand's audience just happens to be exclusively made up of engineers)
8:43 If you go to REAPER preferences, and allow feedback routing, you can make 2 tracks and make one the child of the other, then send from the parent to the child, and you get a genuine feedback loop. The child fader would control the amount. Is that not what you mean? :)
@@deadbeef hmmm somewhere on the forums I saw a jsfx pair, where one goes to the top and one at the bottom, and the bottom jsfx sends back to the top, and in between you can sandwich FX. Does that also rely on disabling PDC?
That’s really nice! I guess as a workaround, you can set up a separate send that just inverts polarity, before going into the delay, if you want to do this in a different daw :)
Reaper is basically the only DAW that I'd consider if I'd want to move away from Cubase for mixing (which I sometimes do, especially at times where I have to deal with licensing stuff there). But hey, Cubase still works for me rather brilliantly (and it also has a quick to access polarity switch in the mixer). But Reaper seems to have some quite fundamental features that makes it really interesting to me; it seems really flexible with many really creative possibilities if you are willing to go down and dirty with scripts etc.
My problem with Cubase is in the feel, it has confusing contrasts and colours although it can be tweaked to some extent now, then the icons, so many of them and all very difficult to differentiate. And the worst part is actually the number of clicks per action, and so many windows popping up all the time. What I find interesting is that I used it from VST24 to Cubase 5.1, then moved to Pro Tools, so I know the software relatively well. Reaper was not known for being beautiful from day one, but it got simplified over the years and now it looks very good stock, however some contrasts and colours could be improved still. This is what Pro Tools does the best, since version 8 it looks well defined, simple and it does not cause any eye strain with its good contrast/colour combination.
@@BojanBojovic I dunno, I've worked with Cubase so long (since it was just a MIDI sequencer on the Atari ST basically) that it just feels natural to me. Things are quite tweakable these days and things did get more streamlined over the years. There has been a time where Cubase was starting to feel quite clunky, but I think they did a good job in streamlining stuff better over the years. There are always some little niggles of course, but by and large I still find it a joy to work with and I can work very fast in Cubase. This probably has a lot to do with me being so used to it, but something I really love about Cubase is just how complete and integrated it feels out of the box. For so many things you don't even need plugins, it's just right there. So while I don't really feel the need to look elsewhere yet, Reaper has always fascinated me. It generally seems so incredibly well designed and flexible from the foundations of it, that it might tip me over at some point. At least as a secondary DAW to get the creative juices flowing in different ways. I like ProTools as well, it feels quite clean and focused to me, but I'd still miss some of Cubase's richness if I were to switch over. I feel Reaper has a good chance to win over a lot of ProTools guys/gals.
You can do all this in Logic with the stock Stereo delay, either on a mono channel or on a Buss/Aux. Wet/Dry, phase invert L/R, high/low pass with gentle slopes, all settings can be tweaked linked or unlinked
I am not sure, if I really understood the super seperator trick at all - but speaking about Reaper: being able to route whatever wherever I like, pretty sums it all up for me! I was using Samplitude for use, starting with V7, all the way up to 10, and following it further until version Pro X3. I realized that with every new iteration I was paying for useless add ons (useless for me at least), and 3rd party stuff. While bugs remained untouched, some of whom felt like features over time. A good year ago, I went over to Reaper - man, I really ain't looking back!
With the latest Reaper update, built-in per-FX oversampling is implemented. Over are the days of ReaEQ's frequency cramping or aliasing of distortion plugins which didn't provide OS.... (if you didn't want to set the whole session to a higher SR)
If you go to the Advanced tab in Project Settings (Alt+Enter) you can actually toggle an option to allow feedback in routing! I think this used to be default because I definitely damaged my hearing by messing that up once x)
I think the fl studio mixer with it's modular design in combination with the various native sidechaining plugins is the one with the most utility for mixing
@@DanWorrall Ok so now that I finished the video I understand what you mean haha I'm fine with someone respectfully explaining why he prefers one daw over the other (Benn Jordan did a great video where he tried Ableton Live for the first time and what he thought of it) but I generally don't like the whole "lol ur music sucks cuz you use ____ and not ____!" (You were joking when you said other daws suck if they can't do that, right?)
@@DanWorrall See? Now I appreciate you even more :) Jokes aside, I'm not a Reaper user but one thing I really appreciate about it, before we're even talking about technical aspects, is the business model. Demo it for as long as you want, and the license itself is cheap compared to other daws. Gotta appreciate that. And if we go into more technical stuff, I just love that you can assign shortcuts to load specific plugins.
Cool trick and nice video. However, I'm too used to using Cubase/Nuendo. One time, someone handed me a Reaper session and I had to edit an upright bass track. I thought that it would just be quicker and a nice opportunity to learn editing in Reaper. After 3 hours of of not finnishing the edits, I gave up and went to sleep. The next day, I moved everything into Cubase and had all the edits done in about 20 minutes. And we should have in mind that there are always (pretty much) workarounds for these types of tricks showed in the video. Love your videos (the ones on this channel and the ones on Fabfilter's) and the scientific ways you approach thinking about audio. Cheers!
I'm a Cubase-to-Reaper convert. Reaper is so far the closest thing to Cubase that I've tried (I've tried two others and can't stand them) so with the immense price difference I figured it was worth the learning curve. And so far I'm happy I made the switch, Reaper is not only inexpensive and essentially unlimited in functionality, it's also VERY customizable. You can change almost anything to act almost any way that might be more intuitive to your workflow.
@@TwoScoopsOfTubert I know Reaper is the smart choice and the most costumizable DAW, but Nuendo suits all my needs (still haven't found something I need to do that I haven't been able to). Furthermore, since I'm used to it's workflow, there's less faffing about with settings when I install it in a fresh system, just some minor aesthetic adjustments and a couple of keyboard shortcuts.
@@Crazyfistish Reaper is great, there's no need to change. I'm actually kind of sorry for myself for not having started out with Reaper and being used to it's workflow. If that were the case, maybe I would be using it today instead of a more costly option
@@MichaelDowComposer Yes! From my experience it actually saves more cpu to do it in a mixer channel rather than in patcher. But i'm using an older version. Cheers!
Dan,as some of this stuff that you come up with this pretty damned ingenious, I would value your opinion on the kirchhoff EQ before I spend big money on such a thing cuz I don't normally do such things. That is if you would be so kind. Thank you either way.
i love how in every video you praise Reaper like a corny sponsorship lol. but i love it, as a Reaper user myself i would love to tell the whole world how amazing Reaper is, if I had an audience. so Thank You Dan for doing this for us, i am sure you have introduced many people into Reaper sofar and i hope the community keeps growing.
@@DanWorrall Let's get Reaper on Times Square! No but seriously, I don't think Reaper is really advertisable - it's not for beginners (mostly). It's one of those things you just happen to come across and realise how great it is. You don't find Reaper, the Reaper finds you! ;)
Perhaps, just for my needs, I would like 2 implementations. Number 1: being able to conveniently assign the Solo output bus or output port routing (only limited by the hardware interface) and not only through the main output as it is today (it is also not solved by creating additional auxiliary output channels). That would give me the power of the AFL/PFL like in the best mixing consoles. Number 2: It was the ability to conveniently assign the point on the channel/bus/main; polarity, since I have found it necessary to invert it from the properties of the item or sample, due to (for example) cancellations in reverb effects on parallel channels, but this explanation of yours has totally solved my own carelessness in the use of the aux sends. Otherwise! is the best and most powerful DAW in existence.
Dan - you probably know this, but you actually *can* create feedback loops between tracks in REAPER, there's a checkbox in the project settings. Of course when you feed any amount of input into it the result is a cacophonous mess, but to be fair the same thing would happen with an analog feedback loop too, unless I'm mistaken?
Can someone clarify for me please: You might want to consider doing this trick when you have two elements sitting on top of each other in the mix? Instead of EQ cutting one of the elements, this can make them both clear at the same time? Dan always has unique tricks up his sleeve!
@@sirwanmusic You can use any delay in Ableton or the voxengo delay he recommended, then you can use a utility on any channel or send to flip polarity. I've set my default channels to have a utility on then already
Brilliant explanation to work with comb filtering. - 0:11, please consider uploading your videos with some tags, might help TH-cam suggesting your content.
I use Ableton Live and Reaper. Which one I choose depends on what I want to. I much prefer Ableton for sketching ideas and arranging using lots of soft-synth and MIDI. But Reaper is my weapon of choice for tracking audio, mixing and mastering (or at least pretending to do so).
You might like Ardour, though the "open source project constantly under development" has its downsides. About that trick you just showed: I use Reason, and if I understood you correctly, then I can actually make my send returns into their own mixer channels which have a polarity switch on them. So I can do your trick. I don't know about all the other DAWs. Nice to learn about audio engineering tricks always ! The "My DAW is better" pissing contest I'm less interested in.
@@woosix7735 Yes, the jankiness is the "open source project constantly under development" I was referring to. For signal routing though, Ardour is really powerful. That patch bay routing he talked about, in Ardour he could play around a lot.
Harrison Mixbus is based on Ardour, and has a *little* more polish. Though, I've not yet tried the V8 update, that's on the schedule for this weekend, it may have more polish still. What you're talking about is my favorite feature of Ardour/Mixbus. The "sends" are just inserts, even the channel fader is also handled like an insert. You can easily put a send between two insert effects. If you don't want reverb on the audio that's being sent, put the send before it, but you can still EQ first. Also I use Sound Radix Pi. It really wants to be post-fader, but is an insert. In Reaper that means making an additional channel for all the tracks. In Ardour just insert it after "Fader".
Samplitude also has polarity flip for aux sends plus some more spatial controls :) Samplitude is one of the mightiest DAWs regarding control and should be much more well-known :D
I've been doing a similar version of this trick to fit synths and strings into dense tracks. I used to do it in a really ratchet way though. I take an instance of NadIR (typically a stereo IR loader for guitars), set to mono, hi and lo pass the left side to taste, mix to 50% and then I mess with the delay setting until I hear a phase shift that makes the track sit right without removing too much of its main properties.
Thanks for the tip Dan! As a Logic Pro X user I’ll usually add the gain plugin for a polarity flip. It really should be on the channel and Aux sends. Also, nice beat!
Reaper is for sound nerds, you can even write your own plug in scripts. That's been the main reason I switched 10 years ago. And I absolutely hate dongles, especially when working with a laptop.
I used 2 synth on a song, but when i switched one on the seconds tends to disappear a little bit, so I used this trick to find what frequencies what walking on each other, and what frequencies were best to boost on each synths, and it worked great
Come to think of it, I have never used the phase polarity switch on my send in Reaper and never thought as to even what it would be used for. Now I know. Gotta say Reaper is a pretty awesome DAW. As powerful as any out there.
Great video and I love the result! I have always used Waves InPhase or Voxengo PHA to make extra-phasey analog synths sit in a mix. I would like to see if my workflow can come close or match your results. Would you be willing offer a download link of a short 4 bar or 8 bar loop of those phasey synth sounds from your song please; same section as the one in your video possible?
great tip, i´m returning to Reaper now and falling in love again. But there´s one feature that I miss the most as an Ableton user too: FX Rack. I know it´s an old request by users, but +1 :P
Thank god you posted recently I came here from White Sea (not that I'm not already subbed to you) but he has a video on the Kirchhoff EQ which seems better than Pro Q 3. He's sent us to come ask you to explain the features bc our smooth brains can't understand like at least56 half the features they have. WHAT IS 117 BITS? HARMONIC WHAT NOW? Please give us a deep dive on this plugin bc these guys seem to know what they're about
Sounds like a good thing to put it in a JS plugin. I have accidentally found that there are Splitters in the JS folder as well that might use the same trick you used (at least inverting the original signal nulled the output of the splitter). The FFT Splitter had a boost somehow at the crossover frequency but the others did the trick.
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i guess we can all agree that dan is a damn near infinite source of engineering knowledge, but why tf is the music in all videos this annoyingly bad?
Pinning your comment because I would also like to know the answer...
well, if it serves as an example for what he is trying to demonstrate in the video, it works. and honestly i dont think its that bad, i've heard much worse music than his lol
I actually like most of the music Dan uses. I would like to know why your opinion sucks so hard...
I think Dan's music is fantastic...
@@Shameless-Plugs-TM I completely agree
As an educator, I adore how pedagogy-oriented your videos are. You have a supreme talent of deploying humor without ever contaminating the message, and every video of yours is an absolute joy to watch (usually more than once, to grasp more and more of the concepts). Thank you for everything you do!
Absolutely agree!
I used this on some double tracked heavy metal guitars panned hard left and right. It made the guitars sound much wider due to more difference information, but unlike using a side high shelf or using a spreader plugin, when combined in mono, it sums into the flat frequency response again!
Hmmm you would need to tune the delay until it doesn't sound too lopsided but sounds like a great idea
I used to use Cubase and accepted the fact that quite a few plugins won't load up properly, crash, or stop working at some point. Moving to Ableton only worsens the situation, as only a few actually loaded up. The first time I started Reaper I saw ALL the plugins I ever installed loaded perfectly waiting for me to use them. It was like seeing all my lost friends, I was almost in tears.
It seems I don't have much plugins yet...Pulsar Audio Echo plugin did crash it a few times, but nothing else did. I am a Voxengo and Fabfilter guy, maybe this is why
@@voinrima Perhaps. Also there is a different with project sizes and CPU loads especially on different systems and different sample rates.
We are so blessed to have someone like you, please never stop making videos, your honesty and humbleness is applauded
A similar trick that achieves something different, which I don't believe you mentioned in the mixing in stereo series. If you have a mono signal that you want to add some width to. Use a M/S decoder. Send the original mono to the M and then a high-passed, few ms delayed copy of that to the S, and let them be reintegrated. This creates a comb filter effect too, but with the inverse of the combs on the left and right. If the width of this new signal is decreased to nothing it becomes the original mono again. Less than a full collapse makes the combs less deep.
I like to add a haas copy to one side which is just 180'd on the other side. filter optional. great width and depth perceived out of a mono source but 100% mono compatible.
Adding equal and opposite amounts of something to left and right is literally exactly what happens when you add something to the side channel. So you're actually achieving the same result as Christopher above.
@@DanWorrall exactly. I was meaning to phrase it in a much simpler way.
There's a plugin called "Wider" that I do believe does exactly this. A nice little cheat plugin to use to widen percussion/backing vocals/synths/etc.
Can’t believe you drop a video addressing an issue I’ve been having in a mix the day after I run into it. Cheers!
Amazing trick. Very exciting to hear that when the COMB bus is muted the whole mix sounds similar to some of the stuff I'm making now. Apparently I have a masking problem. I'm excited to try this out!
As a mix engineer for music and film, your videos make my brain melt. Love your stuff so much Dan.
Dan, I think you might be one of the only people to help decipher audio engineering's greatest mystery. it has eluded many since the 90s and the original engineer Alan Moulder is a hermit that doesn't give interviews.
On Nine Inch Nails's 2nd Album the Downward Spiral, the track "Ruiner" contains a truly outside the speakers 3d (non-binaural) vocal at 1:08 ish that I have not witnessed in any other recording before or since and no-one seems to know how it was done. especially in '94. I would love to open a discussion with you. Or maybe it might encourage a video.
I went straight looking for this. Fckng hell! Alan Moulder!!! That voice at 1:08 feels like it has more low end than anything in the song
@@dndamian haha yeah. it almost feels like they phased it as a function of frequency. because the upper frequencies appear to be nearer mono.
On a good set up though it sounds like he's nearly behind my left ear its incredible.
wtf???
Wow, that really is impressive. I just listened to that track on TH-cam... on 2013 Macbook Air laptop speakers so there wasn't a lot of bass response and the sound was merely "adequate". And it was STILL noticeable and startling. Yeah, I'd like to know how that was done as well...
Just listened to it. That moment actually threw me out of the song. I went from staring into the abyss, contemplating suicide, to picturing Trent Reznor standing behind a microphone in a recording studio.
Anyway, are you sure that they didn't just crank the pan knob hard left?
I'd never thought of doing it, but as soon as I saw the thumbnail I knew what the trick would be. I've been a Reaper user for about 10 years now so I'm blissfully unaware of the limitations the users of other DAWs have to live with.
Other DAWs are not really limited. If you need 10 gazillion ways to route your tracks then you have other issues. Good music does not need ten billion ways to route audio.
@@axelfoley1768 Except a DAW is not only for mixing music; as its acronym suggests, it is an audio workstation. And as such, REAPER excels in its flexibility for audio engineering. This strength can play in favor of developing complex production strategies. For example, you could replicate a very similar system as the one Brian Eno used to create ‘Music for Airports’; which, in essence, was comprised of multiple mixers and delay units being fed into each other, with very little outside input to the system. With REAPER, the possibility of replicating a generative system like the previously described (and others) is digitally embedded in its construction!!
axel Foley, great username by the way, he is right. There is a difference btw audiophiles and hitmakers.
@@heanz yeah, audiophiles are listeners, hitmakers get on with the job. I've made tracks with no way to route audio. The current DAWs are miraculous for me, more than I'd ever need. If I needed those extra bits in Reaper then I wouldn't be using a different DAW, simple as that.
@@heanz Audiophiles are corksniffers, Dan's just a great engineer.
What I'm saying is - audiophiles care about £1000 cables because they think it makes their listening experience better, good engineers care about being able to route audio in creative ways that make their mixes better.
I switched to Reaper from Cubase years ago when my cat broke the USB dongle used for Cubase, and I have never gone back. Love it.
I wish I knew half the stuff that Dan knows, but annoyingly, then it would still mean he knows twice as much, so I would still have to come back and heckle him some more. Awesome content !!!
I have been using Ableton for four years now and it suits my electronic music production needs perfectly. However, I have become more and more interested in Multitrack Mixing and there seems to be a huge obstacle in my way to get to a comfortable and quick workflow that makes sense. Started to use Reaper for all my mixing purposes and I am very happy. Cannot recommend it enough.
I can't recommend mixing outside of Ableton enough. It frees me from the mixing as you go curse so i don't feel the need to make everything fit perfectly before ive even thought about the mixdown
i did the same for awhile, now ive switched to reaper full time and only use abletonfor its unique warp functions only
I use live for electronic composition ,production , sound design and mix mastering. You really can't beat the workflow for speed and that counts for a hell of a lot now. If I had more time I would go back to reaper as it is indeed more flexible but music is my living and music has deadlines and algorithms to please haha. When you get 80 million views on a track that took you 6 hours you kinda realise spending an extra week getting the mix perfect isn't actually a factor in A) paying the bills and B) other people's ears. its not enough of a difference to truly matter in the real world (unless your brand's audience just happens to be exclusively made up of engineers)
@@amphitheatre Do you mean the quantization and time stretching of beats? You can get some very similar functionality in reaper with the MK Slicer Extension, or even without that if you like doing it by hand, using stretch markers. You can get MK Slicer through Reapack, its really amazing! grabs all the transients based on a threshhold knob and then applies either a stretch marker or a split at them, then you can quantize them, or even randomize the order of the slices. Absolutely indispensable tool if you work with a lot of loops.
@@MantasticHams thank you so much for letting me know, this thing IS a big help, and yes i work with loops, the fact that it has a random slicer feature is brilliant, i love anything with a random button. however, thats not what i meant with my comment. ableton has stretch algorithms like "repitch" and "complex" that sound like nothing else, nothing to do with how it slices. MK Slicer seems very helpful for my experimental workflow, so again, thanks for commenting!
what makes reaper special for me are scripts, themes, and actions. There is so much untapped potential that even if the developers stopped updating the program, we could create features for decades. I've pretty much automated all articulations, track icons/colors by name, and modded a theme to show only the buttons I use and it wasn't as difficult as I thought. Well worth the money.
Yes man! The customization is amazing, for me the only thing it sucks about it is the fact that there isnt retrospective record without clumsy scripts, id love to have a quickpunch style in reaper
I had a mix where an overlap in two really aggressive synth sounds was blunting the edge on both of them and it was driving me insane. This trick was exactly what the situation needed, letting each one poke through the other. Thanks for saving the mix, Dan!
In my opinion the two biggest deficiencies of Reaper are pre-fx volume knob per channel and post fader fx inserts. These are very useful features and could be implemented easily. Dan, I know that the developers are consider your requests. Can you please help us to make them see these requests?
the mic drop when he zoomed on the send polarity switch. Amazing
The nr 1 reason for me is that when I want to start Reaper it's up and running in 1 sec - it boosts creativity. Cubase, for example, takes 30 secs... and when I use, say, 10 instances of TH-U (a guitar amp emulator) it uses 3% CPU in reaper, in Cubase it is already creating pops and clicks... Reaper is a very well programmed music software.
Sure I also get so inspired when my DAW opens fast
@@rautshsale1948 I do enjoy having an idea and not having to wait 5 years to get it out of my head
Contrary to what your sarcasm implies startup time is important
luckily with my computer its fast enough to open cubase in like 5 seconds so its not much of a problem for me
@@robotronixgaming2933 think about the majority of us who lacks NASA computers.
on a Mac i havent heard a click or a pop in 8 years.
but I miss cubase a lot
For anyone wanting a logic x work around. For the channel of which you want to polarity flip the send, send it to aux. Then set the output of this aux to no output, and plug in the logic stock “gain” plugin. Flip the polarity in the gain plug-in then send this channel to the comb filtering aux
Isn’t it easier to NOT set to 'no output', and instead set the output to the channel with comb filtering? Or am I missing something?
That's actually the reason why I switched to Cubase many years ago.
I was baffled how people need to load a plugin in Pro Tools just to flip polarity :'D it's like they enjoy suffering.
It feels there's some sort of forced silence about it, it's actually the first time I hear somebody rooting for a DAW this strongly :D
These videos are pure gold, thank you very much for the trick!
Thank you for exposing to us your reason, alongside the logic that leads you to this affirmation. I hope your fan-base is able to live with that. I, for one... Let's just say that it's gonna take me a bit to properly digest the facts.
My favorite feature of reaper is the flexibility of the routing. I tend to have sends running all over the mix and its caused me to create new and interesting sounds that would be almost impossible to do organically in pro-tools.
I wish reaper copied ardour‘s take on sends where a send is essentially an FX you can put *anywhere* in an FX chain. Pre or post FX is not enough at times.
Can I ask what limits you from doing it in pro tools? My projects tend to have tens of sends going around, normally 3+ per track and I haven't really had issues with it.
@@Wergiftfresch The way to implement the Ardour take in Reaper is to add as many channels to the track as you want to send, then in the settings for the last effect prior to the send, you also connect the output to the additional chennels. Finally you add a post-FX send from these additional channels to whereever you want to send it.
@@simongunkel7457 OK, assume I have three FX and I want to route post-1, post-2, post-3 out. Now I have 8 audio channels on the track. I set parent-send to 2 (1-2). I post-FX send 3-4 (= post-1), 5-6 (=post-2), 7-8 (=post-3). Note that I have to take care to add 4 channels to FX2 (or I'll overwrite 3-4 with post-2), and 6 channels to FX3 (same, but with 5-6). I cannot copy this FX chain elsewhere where I have multiple channels. It's finnicky, involved, verbose, manual and fragile. Compare that to CTRL-dragging a send over in the mixer window. You don't have to care about channels, routing, whatever, just drag that thing over and it becomes its own copy of the send you can manipulate with. Now imagine you could drag sends ANYWHERE in the FX chain and the send would just pass its channel audio tracks through (no matter how many!) and also send them to the destination. Voila, automatic, manageable, storable, templateable, copyable. This is what ardour does, and what I'm missing in reaper.
@@simongunkel7457 also you are aware that if I do that before e.g. a ReaComp, by default now I have the side-chain inputs connected to the FX-send of the previous FX (or some earlier FX, generally). It's just annoying and too involved, and especially fragile and not flexible. I wish cockos would just add a generic "send" and "receive" FX between which we could drag and drop and which were stable across tracks (so you could copy them). I don't get the distinction between FX and sends/receives generally in reaper, if you can do midi, audio and video in the same track (annoyingly always stereo, but hey), why can't you do sends and FX as the same abstraction?
You reminded me that I can use a variation on the comb filtering trick on an old project of mine with a single mono drum overhead. Turning the mono drums into Fake Stereo, which sits in the mix more nicely.
I made a "comb" track with a high-pass filter (to keep the kick in the center) feeding a delay (I set it for 5ms delay). Send panned to hard L, another send phase-flipped to hard R. Mix with the mono drums by ear.
I've been blessed enough to start my audio recording journey with Cockos Reaper in 2010 and it has been a fantastic one till this day.
I want to thank you Dan, for being such a generous person and sharing so much of your knowledge which have helped me become a far better mixer than I was even a couple of months ago.
Reaper rules in so many ways! I've come from Pro Tools (as most of you i asume) and working with PT had always a little bit of what you can't do. So when i startet learning Reaper i was shocked of what it is capable of! I found new very useful features and workflows every day and session i did. Now I'm using Reaper for about 4 years and I'm still super happy. Won't go back. Cheers
well, coming from pro tools, everything is a huge upgrade lol xD
It's like leaving a wife with children (projects) for a younger sexy chick. This is disgusting.
Using Soothe feeding in a sidechain of what is losing focus is a good one for this, very effective.
You could replicate this in Ableton by creating an audio track, grouping stock Compressors into parallel chains, setting the sidechain sources to be the tracks you want to hear, and auditioning all of them to effectively disable the compressors and just hear the sidechain signal. Add your delay after this group, then you can invert signals as you please. Send the track to whatever reverb return you have.
Sweet tricks. Already concocting a Volcano based method for spooky dialogue effects I‘m going to make use of in tomorrows mix.
Dan, you are a genius!! I can't tell you how much I've learned from you! Much success to you! Oh, and btw, Reaper rocks!!! However, leaning Reaper is a never-ending learning experience.....nobody can ever "master" that DAW, it's too complicated and customizable, but THAT makes it fun. IMHO
i just happened to buy a hardware box that does something similar, couldn't stop thinking about this, pretty excited to compare the two
Even the built-in plugin parameter-link with manual offset sets Reaper apart. Control the threshold of three serial compressors (FET, opto, limiter, for instance) simultaneously, with their own offsets, by tweaking ONE mixer knob? Reaper can do it. Save the chain and load that configuration whereever you need it, all set up with that one fx parameter knob in your mixer. It's like building your own unique one-knob compressor.
"It's like building your own unique one-knob compressor."
I don't think that is accurate at all. The more accurate analogue would be creating a preset that uses multiple plugins. Afterall, tweaking compressor threshold and other values is not quite the same as building a compressor itself.
@@anteshell Listen, I don't want to offend you, but you clearly didn't understand the logic or mechanics of my example. The threshold setting was only one kind of parameter. the attack times can be linked to the threshold as well. So can the ratio or the release. Let's say you lower the treshold and, at the same time, increase the attack time plus decreasing the ratio.
Do you understand now? By saying "it's like building your own unique one-knob compressor" I meant the workflow. One knob on the mixer panel. And by unique I mean: you can adjust it to taste and create your own 2-stage attack, 3-stage release or whatever. You get a channel compression with a particular sound and you define which one.
@@Mansardian Sorry to break it to you but your ridiculous insinuations that I'm some fucking moron is just laughable. Not offending. But when you set the stage like that, I'm happy to oblige and consider you to be an idiot too.
It is very clear from your comment that my above assesment is not far from the truth. In my comment I specifically said "_and other values_" which means exactly that; those other values that you keep complaining I somehow ignored.
Screwing one comp is nothing more than making a preset. Screwing two comps is nothing more than making a preset. Screwing three comps and linking those parameters together is still nothing more than making a preset.
I've been making patches in FL patcher long enough to understand that linking parameters together no matter how many and with how complicated curves, it is still nothing like making a new plugin from scratch. It is making a preset. Potentially more complicated preset than the used plugins ever was, but still nothing more than that.
Now.. are you possibly ready to continue discussion as a civilized adult or do you still want to act like a dumb fuck? I would rather choose the former. In fact, I'd love that, but I do not want to continue myself if this kind of shit talk is all you can do.
@@anteshell Did you really think he meant to say "saving that preset is just like the effort involved in coding up your own one-knob compressor"? I'm pretty sure he meant what I heard him say, that using it is like using a one-knob compressor of your own custom design -- which it is. As for linking parameters, how do you think a one-knob compressor works?
And as for being civilized adults ... well, you really don't want to have gone there, but you did. One of you said "I don't want to offend you", while the other said "your insinuations are ridiculous, and I'd be happy to consider you an idiot". Guess which one probably seems the more "civilized adult" to the rest of us?
Is that a rare feature in DAWs?
It’s fairly simple to to in Ableton with Effect Rack macros
What a fantastic trick! Any chance you could recommend a book with more ideas like this?
It's actually a little difficult to hear what effect is happening here due to the synth sounds, and of course talking over the top. The lesson is as always a great one, explained in the best possible way, but i think the source sounds, and some clearer A/Bing to help everyone hear. As the synths are ducking in and out all the time from your voice, and they're already dancing around beautifully, it's hard to really know what's happened. Maybe using two guitars would have worked better, or a big static synth pad with a guitar, or something not already moving and changing every split second. :) You didn't ask me, but just thought i'd leave some feedback, it's the only time i feel i've wanted to with your videos that's for sure.
The effect was applied to the synths with similar sounds panned to the middle. At least I thought I was hearing that!
Try from 6:37 to hear the effect clearly.
the point about talking over the music is valid, but if he made the A/B clearer, it would ironically obscure what he was trying to show, which is how much the sound stands out with the comb filtering trick when you're listening to the FULL mix.
Yeah. A couple of whacky-pulsey synth sounds are not the best example sources.
Totally agree. Very difficult to actually hear what is happening.
Good trick! Me Likely. Also, Reaper routing is the main reason I have been using it to mix for years. I agree with you there 110%
Thank-you for using the correct terminology of 'polarity'. I guess 'phase' just fits better on the console.
Phase is also correct, just less specific.
Polarity= + & - Phase = 0- 180°
@@RP-vq4wd a polarity flip causes 180 degrees of phase shift. Therefore calling it "phase" is not incorrect.
@@DanWorrall Although I guess "phase" is more of a "time" thing, i.e. horizontal if we were to plot a wave with time as the X axis, whereas polarity is more of an "amplitude" thing, dealing with the Y axis... Phase is a time shift, Polarity is an amplitude multiplication by -1.
@@matthijshebly phase doesn't have to be a time shift. Polarity flip being the most obvious example, but I also have plugins that can shift phase by an arbitrary angle.
As probably your only regular viewer who also uses Reason as their main DAW, it's always fun to replicate these tricks as an exercise of how well I know my weirdo DAW of choice 😂
In case any other Reason folks are here, the way I replicated this is to just create parallels for both channels and route the output of those to a new mix track. Then place the effect as an insert in that third mix track. You can then invert one of the parallels. The reverb thing is the same, just set it up as a send on all three tracks. You could also do it without the parallel channels by splitting off a copy of each track to another mix channel using the Spider and include some other way of inverting one track's inputs (like the Itsy Audio Phase Inverter) along the way.
I recently switched from Logic to Reaper for mixing for similar reasons. I love the freedom it gives you with routing and the ability to optimize your workflow through customization. However, I still think Logic is superior for multitrack recording. The way it handles takes, comping, and group editing is incredibly intuitive.
Luckily Reaper does not suffer from bugs. I can't use Logic because of the playhead jumping back bug, that other people have reported as well. Apparently it appeared from v10.5 onwards.
@@nectariosm I have never experienced this and playhead bugs that have happened have been fixed by reopening the project, not affecting workflow.
@@kultw1837 I have been using Logic since V 4.xx and stopped using it when it went to V10. So after a few years I had to use Logic again and I installed 10.7.2 and it had this bug. I never saw it in the 15 years I was using Logic either. Re-openning the project and trying out different play start preferences does not change the problem. Weird..
@@nectariosm maybe its about the hardware. I have been using logic since 2014 so only v10 onwards
I literally clicked the clickbait and then heard your voice, was shocked, but always happy for some content from this channel :)
Your knowledge is so valuable Dan, thank you for sharing it. And your engineer's dry wit is the icing on the cake. Is there a plug-in for that?
you might be able to get some humor out of a VST implementation of a language model, but I don't think there are any VSTs that implement that level of artificial intelligence yet and they certainly don't have any controls for decibel level of the humor it outputs. might be something to check into in a future multimedia version of VCV rack or something like that. I'm looking forward to audio rate humor modulation
Routing in Reaper is superbly intuitive!
Just tried it.. adds so much depth it’s magical. Thank you for the knowledge bomb 🔥🤓👌
You can easily flip the polarity with in Ableton using a stock device that can be added to busses too. It can even switch left and right channel independently or both.
I'm using Reaper since 2 years, started yesterday eve for a third, I come from my first DAW Cubase in the 80's with a few samplers, like the S1 from Roland, and a digi piano, the D70 and a AKAI sampler. It was good for that time setting. Went to Ableton, because I was looking for a DAW that was good for editing, and also live use with a APC40mkII, playing those clips, was a great feature to play live music. Then I quit being DJ, so I took the best a man can get (sic) Protools9HD. Besides, it's so expensive and the fact, you have to restart PT for several times. When I noticed the price for PT10, I was looking for something cheaper and if it could a little more stable. A colleague get me into Reaper, And me and the DAW both fell in love, and it's now my main DAW, Still using the apc40mkII and Ableton, for DJing from time to time, I have on my system really great tools, all very cheap, but with people who care for their clients. Never seen so many tutorials from Kenny and Jon, Kenny for the basic stuff, Jon a little more for the experienced users. And not to forget, the stash with scripts, and the community where you can almost every hour of the day can ask questions. For me, this software is a no-brainer. Cheap prices, you can change pretty much every aspect from the GUI, Shortcuts are so easy to make, you can even make your own scripts. Without locking your software, and every day I learn a new feature after an update or one I didn't aware of. Cheers. PS: Yeah the stock plugins looks like the GUI's screens from Cubase, but they are doing the trick. Dan made a video about them in earlier episodes.
Jon who? Would like to check their stuff out!
th-cam.com/users/TheREAPERBlog
There is a new channel that is very much worth looking into, it's IDDQD Sound. A bit geeky, with lots of tricks and long videos about scripting. Plus the recent interviews of Justin Frankel, Jon Schwartz and Kenny Gioia.
th-cam.com/users/IDDQDMusic
First of all thank you for ALL of the clear and concise explanations of these advanced mixing techniques. In that same spirit, I'll do the same with my question.
BUT...
Could the difference in the A/B test just be due to a change in level after combining the delayed/inverted signal?
The parts seem to get louder with the parallel channel added, and perhaps actually do a bit, because I've tuned the comb filtering to pick out important frequencies in both parts. If I tune it badly, or invert it to create the opposite, there is no perceived loudness boost. Remember that the parallel channel doesn't simply add to the dry signals due to the delay: it creates comb filtering with as many cuts as boosts.
I had thought about doing this on sources which have the same frequency range but never worked out how it could be implemented. Makes sense to do a inverted offset. Now I have another way to make the guitars sound huger!
hey dan ,
im totally speechless by the amount of creativity and knowledge
i just wonder to myself how did you manage to measure the phase of both using plugin doctor
thx in advance !!
In actually measuring the frequency response not the phase shift. I loaded Metaplugin into the doctor, then set up the parallel routing inside that. And I saved the curve with the delay in phase so you can still see it after I flipped the polarity.
@@DanWorrall almost made it , but i have no clue how to flip the polarity in metaplugin :/ ,
thx alot for your time again !
Me neither. I loaded a Pro-Q3 just to flip the polarity. Other polarity flipping plugins are available. Sorry, that was an important detail!
Workflow is key for getting work done. There is little point in having a DAW with loads of features and tricks, but you have no idea how to use it. I've seen people buy an expensive Apple Mac, with pricey software because 'they need it to make music', then find they still can't make music as they don't how to use what they've just purchased. Thousands of pounds spunked up the wall with nothing to show for it.
I recently started making tunes in Ableton. I've been making DJ mixes for years in it, and knew my way around, so it made sense to continue with that. It worked nicely for my purposes. I have made a few tunes, and have quite a lot of 'nearly there' projects. I've been able to learn more about the music making process, without the blocker of having to learn the DAW, first.
So yes, there is a lot of truth to 'the one you know'. But it's also true that some other DAW has a feature you really want. There is no perfect DAW that satisfies everyone. But that's fine.
yup. as I wrote above.
I use live for electronic composition ,production , sound design and mix mastering. You really can't beat the workflow for speed and that counts for a hell of a lot now. If I had more time I would go back to reaper as it is indeed more flexible but music is my living and music has deadlines and algorithms to please haha. When you get 80 million views on a track that took you 6 hours you kinda realise spending an extra week getting the mix perfect isn't actually a factor in A) paying the bills and B) other people's ears. its not enough of a difference to truly matter in the real world (unless your brand's audience just happens to be exclusively made up of engineers)
Reaper is the one that not only I know best, but the one that helped me do the stuff that other DAWs wouldnt. So its the best DAW for me.
Learn all Daws and love the one you choose to use, because that’s the best DAW for you.
8:43 If you go to REAPER preferences, and allow feedback routing, you can make 2 tracks and make one the child of the other, then send from the parent to the child, and you get a genuine feedback loop. The child fader would control the amount. Is that not what you mean? :)
you lose PDC if you do that, though, and right before he mentioned feedback routing he emphasized delay compensation :)
@@deadbeef hmmm somewhere on the forums I saw a jsfx pair, where one goes to the top and one at the bottom, and the bottom jsfx sends back to the top, and in between you can sandwich FX. Does that also rely on disabling PDC?
That’s really nice! I guess as a workaround, you can set up a separate send that just inverts polarity, before going into the delay, if you want to do this in a different daw :)
Yes that should work.
You, Sir are a breath of fresh air.
I get it now! - Thanks for adding the follow-on video. That clarified alot of confusion for me.
Amazing technique Dan, AMAZING. Thank you so much to sare it with us.
Reaper is basically the only DAW that I'd consider if I'd want to move away from Cubase for mixing (which I sometimes do, especially at times where I have to deal with licensing stuff there). But hey, Cubase still works for me rather brilliantly (and it also has a quick to access polarity switch in the mixer).
But Reaper seems to have some quite fundamental features that makes it really interesting to me; it seems really flexible with many really creative possibilities if you are willing to go down and dirty with scripts etc.
My problem with Cubase is in the feel, it has confusing contrasts and colours although it can be tweaked to some extent now, then the icons, so many of them and all very difficult to differentiate. And the worst part is actually the number of clicks per action, and so many windows popping up all the time. What I find interesting is that I used it from VST24 to Cubase 5.1, then moved to Pro Tools, so I know the software relatively well.
Reaper was not known for being beautiful from day one, but it got simplified over the years and now it looks very good stock, however some contrasts and colours could be improved still.
This is what Pro Tools does the best, since version 8 it looks well defined, simple and it does not cause any eye strain with its good contrast/colour combination.
Reaper is so tweakable things like a polarity switch in the mixer are only a menu away to set forever
@@BojanBojovic I dunno, I've worked with Cubase so long (since it was just a MIDI sequencer on the Atari ST basically) that it just feels natural to me. Things are quite tweakable these days and things did get more streamlined over the years. There has been a time where Cubase was starting to feel quite clunky, but I think they did a good job in streamlining stuff better over the years. There are always some little niggles of course, but by and large I still find it a joy to work with and I can work very fast in Cubase.
This probably has a lot to do with me being so used to it, but something I really love about Cubase is just how complete and integrated it feels out of the box. For so many things you don't even need plugins, it's just right there.
So while I don't really feel the need to look elsewhere yet, Reaper has always fascinated me. It generally seems so incredibly well designed and flexible from the foundations of it, that it might tip me over at some point. At least as a secondary DAW to get the creative juices flowing in different ways.
I like ProTools as well, it feels quite clean and focused to me, but I'd still miss some of Cubase's richness if I were to switch over. I feel Reaper has a good chance to win over a lot of ProTools guys/gals.
Well it's true for me too reaper is a DAW on a whole another level in every aspect of audio production. Period!
You can do all this in Logic with the stock Stereo delay, either on a mono channel or on a Buss/Aux. Wet/Dry, phase invert L/R, high/low pass with gentle slopes, all settings can be tweaked linked or unlinked
Such a great tip. I've never tried this method and that seems to insane to me now that I know about it.
I am not sure, if I really understood the super seperator trick at all - but speaking about Reaper: being able to route whatever wherever I like, pretty sums it all up for me! I was using Samplitude for use, starting with V7, all the way up to 10, and following it further until version Pro X3. I realized that with every new iteration I was paying for useless add ons (useless for me at least), and 3rd party stuff. While bugs remained untouched, some of whom felt like features over time. A good year ago, I went over to Reaper - man, I really ain't looking back!
With the latest Reaper update, built-in per-FX oversampling is implemented. Over are the days of ReaEQ's frequency cramping or aliasing of distortion plugins which didn't provide OS.... (if you didn't want to set the whole session to a higher SR)
Reaper seems to have the best stock plugins, as a Cubase fan I must admit that
If reaper had playlists and track based group editing, I think it could take over the world. Everything else about it is fantastic.
@@ranajoyshil oh yeah, I just posted a thank you in the forums for the track based group editing. So happy about it!
If you go to the Advanced tab in Project Settings (Alt+Enter) you can actually toggle an option to allow feedback in routing! I think this used to be default because I definitely damaged my hearing by messing that up once x)
Yeah. But there's a buffer of delay inside that feedback loop, and it also breaks PDC.
I am leaping into the comments in outrage.
I'm supporting your rage with random facts.
I too would like to express outrage!
But because I want to fit in.
I think the fl studio mixer with it's modular design in combination with the various native sidechaining plugins is the one with the most utility for mixing
And of course there's the flip polarity button for every channel. Aux send etc (you can basically do everything with every channel)
30 seconds in and I'm already reminded why I'm subbed in the first place. Daw wars should be a thing of the past.
I'm afraid I'm about to spoil it all :)
@@DanWorrall Ok so now that I finished the video I understand what you mean haha
I'm fine with someone respectfully explaining why he prefers one daw over the other (Benn Jordan did a great video where he tried Ableton Live for the first time and what he thought of it) but I generally don't like the whole "lol ur music sucks cuz you use ____ and not ____!"
(You were joking when you said other daws suck if they can't do that, right?)
@@ethai1 they suck because I haven't learnt how to use them :)
@@DanWorrall See? Now I appreciate you even more :)
Jokes aside, I'm not a Reaper user but one thing I really appreciate about it, before we're even talking about technical aspects, is the business model. Demo it for as long as you want, and the license itself is cheap compared to other daws. Gotta appreciate that.
And if we go into more technical stuff, I just love that you can assign shortcuts to load specific plugins.
Cool trick and nice video. However, I'm too used to using Cubase/Nuendo.
One time, someone handed me a Reaper session and I had to edit an upright bass track. I thought that it would just be quicker and a nice opportunity to learn editing in Reaper. After 3 hours of of not finnishing the edits, I gave up and went to sleep. The next day, I moved everything into Cubase and had all the edits done in about 20 minutes.
And we should have in mind that there are always (pretty much) workarounds for these types of tricks showed in the video.
Love your videos (the ones on this channel and the ones on Fabfilter's) and the scientific ways you approach thinking about audio.
Cheers!
I'm a Cubase-to-Reaper convert. Reaper is so far the closest thing to Cubase that I've tried (I've tried two others and can't stand them) so with the immense price difference I figured it was worth the learning curve. And so far I'm happy I made the switch, Reaper is not only inexpensive and essentially unlimited in functionality, it's also VERY customizable. You can change almost anything to act almost any way that might be more intuitive to your workflow.
I started on Reaper, then convinced myself to move over to a "proper" DAW and chose Nuendo. I don't know what I was thinking!
@@TwoScoopsOfTubert I know Reaper is the smart choice and the most costumizable DAW, but Nuendo suits all my needs (still haven't found something I need to do that I haven't been able to). Furthermore, since I'm used to it's workflow, there's less faffing about with settings when I install it in a fresh system, just some minor aesthetic adjustments and a couple of keyboard shortcuts.
@@Crazyfistish Reaper is great, there's no need to change. I'm actually kind of sorry for myself for not having started out with Reaper and being used to it's workflow. If that were the case, maybe I would be using it today instead of a more costly option
@@mesamarshall Yup for sure! Just goes to show how every-sided this can be :)
you can achieve this effect using just one additional mixer track in FL and Ableton as well. Just use FL's patcher or use Ableton's effects rack.
You don't even need an extra mixer channel in FL, i guess you can just create a wet/dry in patcher and adjust to taste
@@MichaelDowComposer Yes! From my experience it actually saves more cpu to do it in a mixer channel rather than in patcher. But i'm using an older version. Cheers!
always here for your video dan! I have been following you for a while, and I click on every video you make. (also ableton gang)
Dan,as some of this stuff that you come up with this pretty damned ingenious, I would value your opinion on the kirchhoff EQ before I spend big money on such a thing cuz I don't normally do such things. That is if you would be so kind. Thank you either way.
Thank you very much for the knowledge you share with us, just a remark, I would like, if possible, clearer audio examples.
I watched the video that came after this and I have to say I can hear the effect 10x easier in this one lol
i love how in every video you praise Reaper like a corny sponsorship lol. but i love it, as a Reaper user myself i would love to tell the whole world how amazing Reaper is, if I had an audience. so Thank You Dan for doing this for us, i am sure you have introduced many people into Reaper sofar and i hope the community keeps growing.
I'm not sponsored by Cockos, but I'm open to offers ;)
@@DanWorrall Let's get Reaper on Times Square! No but seriously, I don't think Reaper is really advertisable - it's not for beginners (mostly). It's one of those things you just happen to come across and realise how great it is. You don't find Reaper, the Reaper finds you! ;)
In project settings | advanced there is 'Allow feedback in routing'. Good for having the midi and audio on the same track and Kontakt on another.
That will break PDC. I *need* working PDC, that's a deal-breaker for me.
Perhaps, just for my needs, I would like 2 implementations. Number 1: being able to conveniently assign the Solo output bus or output port routing (only limited by the hardware interface) and not only through the main output as it is today (it is also not solved by creating additional auxiliary output channels). That would give me the power of the AFL/PFL like in the best mixing consoles. Number 2: It was the ability to conveniently assign the point on the channel/bus/main; polarity, since I have found it necessary to invert it from the properties of the item or sample, due to (for example) cancellations in reverb effects on parallel channels, but this explanation of yours has totally solved my own carelessness in the use of the aux sends. Otherwise! is the best and most powerful DAW in existence.
Dan - you probably know this, but you actually *can* create feedback loops between tracks in REAPER, there's a checkbox in the project settings. Of course when you feed any amount of input into it the result is a cacophonous mess, but to be fair the same thing would happen with an analog feedback loop too, unless I'm mistaken?
I hear a difference even on iPad speakers. That’s cool. 😎
Can someone clarify for me please: You might want to consider doing this trick when you have two elements sitting on top of each other in the mix? Instead of EQ cutting one of the elements, this can make them both clear at the same time?
Dan always has unique tricks up his sleeve!
I also wanna know what exactly was happening and how to do this in ableton if possible.
@@sirwanmusic You can use any delay in Ableton or the voxengo delay he recommended, then you can use a utility on any channel or send to flip polarity. I've set my default channels to have a utility on then already
@@fiachnaodonnell7895 🙏
Wow! Thanks for sharing Professor Worrall :)
Brilliant explanation to work with comb filtering. - 0:11, please consider uploading your videos with some tags, might help TH-cam suggesting your content.
I use Ableton Live and Reaper. Which one I choose depends on what I want to. I much prefer Ableton for sketching ideas and arranging using lots of soft-synth and MIDI. But Reaper is my weapon of choice for tracking audio, mixing and mastering (or at least pretending to do so).
You might like Ardour, though the "open source project constantly under development" has its downsides.
About that trick you just showed: I use Reason, and if I understood you correctly, then I can actually make my send returns into their own mixer channels which have a polarity switch on them. So I can do your trick.
I don't know about all the other DAWs.
Nice to learn about audio engineering tricks always !
The "My DAW is better" pissing contest I'm less interested in.
I have a feeling that Dan would hate Ardour, but you never know. I say that cause Ardour is a little bit janky
@@woosix7735 Yes, the jankiness is the "open source project constantly under development" I was referring to. For signal routing though, Ardour is really powerful. That patch bay routing he talked about, in Ardour he could play around a lot.
Harrison Mixbus is based on Ardour, and has a *little* more polish. Though, I've not yet tried the V8 update, that's on the schedule for this weekend, it may have more polish still. What you're talking about is my favorite feature of Ardour/Mixbus. The "sends" are just inserts, even the channel fader is also handled like an insert. You can easily put a send between two insert effects. If you don't want reverb on the audio that's being sent, put the send before it, but you can still EQ first. Also I use Sound Radix Pi. It really wants to be post-fader, but is an insert. In Reaper that means making an additional channel for all the tracks. In Ardour just insert it after "Fader".
Samplitude also has polarity flip for aux sends plus some more spatial controls :) Samplitude is one of the mightiest DAWs regarding control and should be much more well-known :D
I like Reaper because it lets me do almost whatever I want
I've been doing a similar version of this trick to fit synths and strings into dense tracks.
I used to do it in a really ratchet way though. I take an instance of NadIR (typically a stereo IR loader for guitars), set to mono, hi and lo pass the left side to taste, mix to 50% and then I mess with the delay setting until I hear a phase shift that makes the track sit right without removing too much of its main properties.
If Reaper had postfader inserts it would be just about perfect.
Thanks for the tip Dan! As a Logic Pro X user I’ll usually add the gain plugin for a polarity flip. It really should be on the channel and Aux sends. Also, nice beat!
Reaper is for sound nerds, you can even write your own plug in scripts. That's been the main reason I switched 10 years ago. And I absolutely hate dongles, especially when working with a laptop.
I used 2 synth on a song, but when i switched one on the seconds tends to disappear a little bit, so I used this trick to find what frequencies what walking on each other, and what frequencies were best to boost on each synths, and it worked great
Come to think of it, I have never used the phase polarity switch on my send in Reaper and never thought as to even what it would be used for. Now I know. Gotta say Reaper is a pretty awesome DAW. As powerful as any out there.
No other DAW has a built-in language to let you write your own plugins, so I'm gonna say "more powerful than any out there".
Great video and I love the result! I have always used Waves InPhase or Voxengo PHA to make extra-phasey analog synths sit in a mix. I would like to see if my workflow can come close or match your results. Would you be willing offer a download link of a short 4 bar or 8 bar loop of those phasey synth sounds from your song please; same section as the one in your video possible?
great tip, i´m returning to Reaper now and falling in love again. But there´s one feature that I miss the most as an Ableton user too: FX Rack. I know it´s an old request by users, but +1 :P
Thank god you posted recently I came here from White Sea (not that I'm not already subbed to you) but he has a video on the Kirchhoff EQ which seems better than Pro Q 3. He's sent us to come ask you to explain the features bc our smooth brains can't understand like at least56 half the features they have. WHAT IS 117 BITS? HARMONIC WHAT NOW? Please give us a deep dive on this plugin bc these guys seem to know what they're about
Cubase has a phase switch atop every channel as well as a basic hp lp filter and gain
Fantastic work can’t wait to try this!
Interesting stuff Dan.
Thanks again, Dan!
Sounds like a good thing to put it in a JS plugin. I have accidentally found that there are Splitters in the JS folder as well that might use the same trick you used (at least inverting the original signal nulled the output of the splitter). The FFT Splitter had a boost somehow at the crossover frequency but the others did the trick.
Love the music, can we listen to it somewhere?
Is it your production?
Thanks. Not yet. Yes.
Should I change my Cubase12 now? I just bought it. 😕