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Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio - Listening

Distortion as a mix tool

Reasons for Using Distortion in a Mix:

  • Simulating Intensity and Loudness: Distortion evokes a primal response in the listener, making sounds perceived as louder, dominant, and aggressive, even at lower absolute levels. It can suggest loudness without necessarily increasing the overall peak level significantly.
  • Harmonic Enrichment and Tonal Shaping: Unlike EQ, which only affects existing frequencies, distortion adds new harmonics, enriching the frequency spectrum and altering the timbre of a sound. Different types of distortion emphasize different series of overtones, leading to a wide range of tonal possibilities. It can be an alternative to EQ for brightening sounds lacking high frequencies by creating new high-frequency components.
  • Adding Attitude and Character: Distortion can give instruments more “attitude” or “grit”. It can add a “grainy air” or “excitement” to vocals.
  • Creating Cohesion and Warmth: Subtle amounts of distortion can contribute to a mix’s overall cohesion and warmth.
  • Making Details Come to the Surface: Similar to EQ and compression, distortion can help bring out certain details in a sound.
  • Altering Dynamics: Distortion inherently evens out the peaks of a signal, which can be beneficial for controlling dynamics, although blending with the original signal can retain peaks while adding timbre.
  • Sustain Enhancement: Distortion can contribute to a longer decay of sounds.
  • Creating Unique Effects: Extreme distortion can lead to unpredictable and raw sounds.

Distortion can be a really useful tool to make sounds stick out of a mix without changing their volume. A good use for distortion would be to brighten a bass/synth line with not a lot of higher frequencies. Reaper has several built-in options for us to try:

  • Distortion
  • Distortion (Fuzz)
  • Waveshaping distortion

We’ll add this as a parallel track so we can mix the results back in with the original. Let’s check out a scope to see the difference in harmonics with these added.

Types of Distortion Commonly Used:

Various types of distortion, ranging from soft to hard:

  • (Tape) Saturation: Emulates the soft clipping and harmonic generation of analog tape recorded at high levels. It can make lows warmer and deeper without being overtly recognizable as distortion.
  • Drive, Crunch, Overdrive, Distortion, High Gain Distortion, Fuzz: These terms generally refer to progressively harder forms of distortion, often associated with overdriven analog circuits or their emulations. Fuzz can be further subdivided based on the type of diode used. Overdriving a tube amplifier is a form of harmonic distortion.
  • (Hard) Clipping: Can range from the flat-topping of digital signals to the smoother rounding of analog saturation. Clipping doesn’t affect the attack of drums as much as peak limiting.
  • Bit Crushing: Occurs when the bit depth of audio is reduced significantly without dithering, resulting in aggressive, crackling quantization distortion. While lo-fi, it can create contrast in a mix.
  • Valve Distortion: Emulates the distortion characteristics of vacuum tubes. Old-fashioned tube microphones can distort more on low frequencies.
  • Transformer Saturation: Distortion caused by pushing transformers beyond their limits, often affecting low frequencies more. Can help make sounds less “harsh-sounding” by affecting fast peaks.
  • Speaker Distortion: Pushing speakers to their limits causes distortion, particularly in the low frequencies due to the larger cone excursion required.

Techniques for Using Distortion:

  • Insert Effect: Applying distortion directly to a track can lead to quick mix improvements. However, increasing the drive simultaneously increases both level and harmonic density.
  • Send/Parallel Processing: This is often preferred as it offers more control over what the distortion adds. You can drive the distortion hard for dense harmonics but mix it in at a moderate level with the unprocessed track. EQ can be applied to the distortion return to focus the added spectral energy. Be mindful of potential phase mismatches.
  • Frequency-Selective Distortion: Focusing distortion on specific frequency ranges can be useful for emphasizing an instrument without it taking up too much space in the mix, such as distorting only the high end of a bass to make it cut through. Some distortion effects have built-in crossover or pre-emphasis filters for this.
  • Distortion in Stages: Similar to a guitar chain (stompboxes, preamp, power amp, speakers), distortion can occur at multiple points. Varying the gain at each stage affects the dynamics, timbre, and harmonic density.
  • Distorted Delay: Adding aggressive distortion to a slapback delay applied to a vocal can retain an overdriven character in the mix while maintaining vocal intelligibility.

Distortion on Specific Instruments:

  • Bass: Often a target for distortion to add attitude, grit, or texture. Combining a clean DI signal with a distorted amp signal is a common technique for “smooth” lows and a “biting” midrange. Subharmonic synthesizers (which can introduce distortion) can be used to enhance the low end of bass.
  • Guitars: Distortion is a fundamental part of many guitar sounds. Cleaner guitars or acoustic guitars might be compressed, while heavily distorted amps might not need as much.
  • Vocals: Distorting lead vocals is increasingly common for creative effect. This can range from subtle “grainy air” to more aggressive overdrive. Distorted slapback delays can be used on vocals.
  • Drums: Distortion can add “punch” to drums. Parallel compression with added top end can give the kick more attack. Snare drums can be heavily compressed and distorted to add tone. Even the Roland TR808 kick drum is often distorted to make its low end more audible on radio.

Here are some cool freeware plugins:

Soundtoys (installed on the studio computers) have a few very good plugins for distortion.

  • Decapitator: An analog saturation modeler that emulates five distinct hardware models, offering a range from subtle warmth to intense distortion.
  • Radiator: A tube preamp and EQ plugin inspired by the Altec 1567A mixer, adding vintage-style warmth and character with simple bass and treble controls.
  • Devil-Loc Deluxe: An aggressive compressor/distortion effect based on the Shure Level-Loc, featuring additional controls like “Darkness,” release time selection, and a mix knob for blending the dry signal.
  • Devil-Loc: A simplified version of Devil-Loc Deluxe, providing extreme compression and distortion with just two controls—“Crush” and “Crunch”—to quickly add intensity to your tracks.
  • Little Radiator: A streamlined tube preamp plugin modeled after the Altec 1566A, delivering 1960s-style warmth and harmonics to enhance vocals, bass, and other instruments.

Exciter

Also, add harmonic distortion, but in a different way to distortion plugins. Exciters typically target specific frequency ranges, not the whole signal, like a saturation or distortion plugin.

  • Function: Exciters generate and sum frequency-dependent and amplitude-dependent harmonics. This is different from equalization (EQ), which boosts existing frequencies; exciters create new frequencies that weren’t originally part of the source material.
  • Applications:
    • They can help make low-frequency sounds more audible on small speakers by adding overtones. Processors like MaxxBass work on this principle for the deepest frequencies.
    • enhance the overall presence of a signal or entire recording by synthesizing upper-range frequency harmonics, making the sound brighter.
    • in mastering to shape the final sound and give it a unique sonic character.
    • to add more top end (air) to a mix with more subtle control than a high shelf EQ.
  • Harmonic Characteristics:
    • Even harmonics tend to make sounds soft, warm, and full.
    • Odd harmonics tend toward metallic, hollow, and bright sounds.
    • Lower-order harmonics control basic timbre, while higher-order harmonics control the edge or bite of the sound.
  • Examples: The Aphex Aural Exciter is a classic example of a processor that adds overtones to the high frequencies.
  • Usage Considerations:
    • Using an exciter on the entire mix might eat up depth and the distinction between parts in the high end, so it might be better suited for individual elements.
    • The definition produced by exciters can be considered “fake” in a way, so relying on them to save a mix might indicate underlying issues.

JS plugins

  • Exciter - LOSER
  • Compciter - LOSER
  • Exciter (Treble Enhancer) - Stillwell
  • Airwindows - Exciter
  • Tukan - Exciter+Sub (Tukan) - Type C copy – Exciter and Subbass
  • Stimulate - A harmonic exciter plugin - has odd and even harmonic controls.

Low-end enhancements

Distortion can add higher frequency components to low-end sounds. But, if you want to add more to the low end of a sound you can use subharmonics processors.

  • Purpose: The main goal of subharmonic processors is to enhance the low-end frequencies, making instruments like bass parts with relatively high notes feel heavier or adding depth to kick drums. They can also help low-frequency sounds remain audible on small speakers.
  • How they work: A subharmonic synthesizer can generate a signal that’s exactly an octave below the input signal’s fundamental frequency. This often involves using a low-pass filter to isolate the fundamental from the input signal and then converting it into a switch signal to generate the subharmonic. Some processors, like Waves’ MaxxBass, work by adding overtones to the deepest frequencies rather than a direct sub-octave. This allows the low end to become harmonically richer without affecting the mid and high ranges.
  • Usage and Considerations:
    • While some high-profile engineers use subharmonic processors, but they are rarely applied effectively in small studios. This is partly due to the need for good low-end monitoring to accurately gauge their impact.
    • Another challenge is that every manufacturer appears to use a slightly different algorithm, making it difficult to predict how well each plugin will respond to a given bass instrument recording. One plugin might work well on kick drums but poorly on bass lines, and vice versa.
    • a little goes a long way with subharmonic synthesis. Too much can make the sound sluggish and use up valuable energy in the mix.
  • Alternative Techniques: Due to the potential difficulties with subharmonic synthesizer plugins, here are some alternative strategies for adding low-end weight:
    • For kick drums, inserting an additional sample can be more effective.
    • For melodic bass instruments, supplementing with a MIDI “subsynth” offers complete pitching and timing reliability and more scope for tailoring the timbre.
  • Example Use: using a subharmonic synthesizer off the DI signal of a bass, after the compressor, with its own EQ and compression to precisely shape the low end in relation to the song’s key.

Reaper has a built-in plugin called 50 Hz Kicker and another called Thunderkick.

Freeware that I have tried:

Let’s try using Thump on our drum track to add some more low-end to the kick drum. I’ll create a send and add Thump to the send. I’ll also add a low pass filter so that we’re only affecting the low frequencies.

Drum Triggering

If this isn’t working out so well we can try drum triggering. We can gate the drum track filtering out anything but the kick drum. Then we can send that MIDI data to a sampler and play anything we want.

See a tutorial on this here: Drum Triggering in Reaper

An alternative is Steven Slates’s Trigger 2 Free. It has other useful features if you’re doing this a lot.

Synth pads

We can also add some movement and interest to some of the more static synth pads. Some effects to try:

  • Chorus
  • Tremolo
  • Vibrato