A few months back I did a SBD/AUD matrix for some friends' band that ended up being considered for physical release, but I had trouble getting the mix right. I sent it to an engineer friend to mix, was very happy with what he did, and asked him to tell me what he'd done with it. He sent an email detailing what he refers to as "parallel buss processing." I started experimenting with it on my own, and have been very pleased with the results. I know my friend didn't invent it, but as I hadn't seen this discussed here, I thought I'd make a post in case anyone's interested.
I've been doing this in Reaper (because the price is right), but you could do it in any multitrack DAW. The idea is to route your mix to four separate busses: an "untouched"/raw buss, a "lows" buss, a "mids" buss, and a "highs" buss. Then fading these busses for broad tonal control, and also to build up loudness from the bottom without actually using a compressor (I also then route the resulting mix through a compressor on the master channel, but you don't have to if it's not needed of course).
- I setup Reaper with a (stereo) track for my SBD file and one for the AUD file. Then create four more tracks, naming them "Unprocessed", "Lows", "Mids", and "Highs" respectively.
- Opening the Routing Matrix, I route the SBD and AUD tracks to each of those four busses, but -not- to the Master track.
- Route the four busses to the Master
- The "Unprocessed" buss is left alone
- For the "Lows" buss, I add a low-pass EQ, followed by a bit of compression. When the Lows buss is solo'd, you only hear low end.
- For the Mids buss, I add both a low-pass and high-pass in EQ, so that only the midrange comes through when this buss is solo'd. My friend who told me about this adds a bit of a distortion plugin to the Mids as well, but I haven't had a chance to talk with him about the reasoning for that yet.
- For the Highs buss, run a high-pass EQ, so that only highs come through when this is solo'd. I also add a little bit of an exciter after that for a little bit more sparkle.
- I run a compressor on the Master track, and set it at this point in the process with just the Unprocessed buss playing.
- All of the above can be setup as a template, so you don't have to set it up each time.
- Now I solo the SBD and AUD tracks one at a time and do any EQ necessary on their individual tracks. Generally speaking I don't have to do anything to the SBD, and I need to flatten out the lows and a little low-mids on the AUD most of the time (this will depend on your rig, the mix, the room, etc. of course).
- At this point the Lows, Mids, and Highs busses are all pulled down to silent, and the Unprocessed fader is at 0/default.
- I adjust the SBD and AUD faders until I like the balance between the two.
- Starting with the Lows buss, I fade it up a bit until I see some activity in that fader's level meter.
- Moving on to the Mids, I fade that up until it starts to balance better against the Unprocessed and Lows, then do the same with the Highs buss.
- Now I play through the show and tweak the faders as I listen, like adjusting a 3-band EQ. When I'm happy with it I render it out, and later move on to Wavelab for a mastering stage where I bring up the loudness a bit more, do any notching EQ necessary, and dither.
Even when I only run AUD I go through this "mix" stage in Reaper. I've been getting better and easier tonal control, and can build up the quieter sections easily as well.
Any thoughts?
Topic: Parallel Buss Processing (Read 4550 times)