Topic: New to Matricing......

[momule]

Wavelab v5 won't open 4 channel files. Soundforge 9 will but can't mix tracks.

ya it will.  use the montage function

[BayTaynt3d]

I'm going to second Vegas Pro, it is so freakin' awesome and flexible it blows my mind why it isn't more popular than it is.

You get basically as many audio and video tracks as you want (it'll eat four chans of audio for breakfast), full vst plugin support (add delay to the SBD, hard limit applause, mild compression, EQ, etc.), easy panning/level controls and polarity button on every track, multiple bus support for both audio buses and video buses, can real-time edit so many audio/video formats it's not funny (you can even drop FLAC files directly on the timeline), full track automation of any automatable built-in feature (ride the levels, change panning over time) and plugins (ride the threshold of your compression over time, bring in more or less EQ over time, etc.), and the ability to drop video files or even photos right onto the timeline (panning/zooming over photos using keyframes), blah, blah...

And the best part of all is the completely NON-destructive workflow. I can FLAC my original sources right out of the gate, drop them on the timeline, do all the editing/mixing/mastering/tweaking I want, save the project file (usually under 100k), and then render out a master for listening in whatever format I want. Then, later, no matter what happens, as long as I keep the original untouched originals and the vegas file, I can easily render out a new copy to any format needed down the road (or even tweak my original mix again years from now without having to redo everything). And even if Vegas became obsolete, I kept the untouched originals, so you could always remix.

Anyway, just plugging that app, sick...

[tgakidis]

I'm going to second Vegas Pro, it is so freakin' awesome and flexible it blows my mind why it isn't more popular than it is.

You get basically as many audio and video tracks as you want (it'll eat four chans of audio for breakfast), full vst plugin support (add delay to the SBD, hard limit applause, mild compression, EQ, etc.), easy panning/level controls and polarity button on every track, multiple bus support for both audio buses and video buses, can real-time edit so many audio/video formats it's not funny (you can even drop FLAC files directly on the timeline), full track automation of any automatable built-in feature (ride the levels, change panning over time) and plugins (ride the threshold of your compression over time, bring in more or less EQ over time, etc.), and the ability to drop video files or even photos right onto the timeline (panning/zooming over photos using keyframes), blah, blah...

And the best part of all is the completely NON-destructive workflow. I can FLAC my original sources right out of the gate, drop them on the timeline, do all the editing/mixing/mastering/tweaking I want, save the project file (usually under 100k), and then render out a master for listening in whatever format I want. Then, later, no matter what happens, as long as I keep the original untouched originals and the vegas file, I can easily render out a new copy to any format needed down the road (or even tweak my original mix again years from now without having to redo everything). And even if Vegas became obsolete, I kept the untouched originals, so you could always remix.

Anyway, just plugging that app, sick...

I also use it to run real time comps.  You can mix the two sources and mute one alternately every 15 seconds.  You can also resample/dither when rendering.  You can even mix different bit/sample rate sources and render down to 16/44.1.  I have mixed three souces easily (Card/Blumlein/SBD) and rendered as one stereo file.  It also works in tandom with Soundforge and shares the same info files.

[stevetoney]

This comment isn't related to software per se, but FWIW the first concept I didn't understand when I got my first matrix was that your two sources (mic source and SBD source) won't always be aligned precisely at the same point in the time code and one of the pairs might need to be moved forward or back a couple of milli-seconds in the final mix-down.

IOW, the two sets will have the same overall time code duration, but they might be offset froim each other slightly because of the time delay between a signal going trhough the SBD and the sound getting to your mics.  If your mics are say 30 feet back from the stage, there will be I think 2 to 3 milliseconds of offset.  (does sound travel at 1 ms per 10 feet or 1 ms per 30 feet...I can't remember)

If you don't adjust the mic pair of tracks backwards by that 2 or 3 milliseconds, your matrix will sound reverb-y because of the phasing created by the offset.

I didn't understand this concept the first time I pulled a matrix and thought I had some weirdness going on in my hardware at first.

Course, if your mics are located at the stage-lip, this shouldn't be an issue.

[BayTaynt3d]

What he said above. QFT.

And like tgakidis said above too, another GREAT thing about Vegas is that you can drop both sources to the timeline, highlight a region, click loop on, press play and have it just loop that spot. Once you're looping and hearing it, you can zoom way into the timeline and easily "nudge" the SBD source forward/back in time WHILE LISTENING to how it affects the overall mix. You can easily hear the echo/delay come in/out as you nudge the SBD source around. Also, sometimes you need to flip the phase on one of your sources in a matrix (depends on how things got setup and sound obviously), and in Vegas, it's one non-destructive click of a button away. So nice. And if you need to adjust the L/R balance on one or both sources, you can just use the panning control right there (make sure it's set to 0 db center by right clicking the pan knob first though).

[goodcooker]

This comment isn't related to software per se, but FWIW the first concept I didn't understand when I got my first matrix was that your two sources (mic source and SBD source) won't always be aligned precisely at the same point in the time code and one of the pairs might need to be moved forward or back a couple of milli-seconds in the final mix-down.

IOW, the two sets will have the same overall time code duration, but they might be offset froim each other slightly because of the time delay between a signal going trhough the SBD and the sound getting to your mics.  If your mics are say 30 feet back from the stage, there will be I think 2 to 3 milliseconds of offset.  (does sound travel at 1 ms per 10 feet or 1 ms per 30 feet...I can't remember)

If you don't adjust the mic pair of tracks backwards by that 2 or 3 milliseconds, your matrix will sound reverb-y because of the phasing created by the offset.

I didn't understand this concept the first time I pulled a matrix and thought I had some weirdness going on in my hardware at first.

Course, if your mics are located at the stage-lip, this shouldn't be an issue.

It's roughly 1ms delay per foot. You can use that as a starting point and go forward and backward from there. I use the comb filtering in the low end to get me in the ball park then tweak it to the hi hats till they dont sound "washy". I have had to add up to 10ms of delay to a stagelip pair in a 4ch matrix before. The mics on the drums and guitar cabinets were roughly 10 ft from the stagelip mics. It made the drums and guitars sound right on but the bleed from the vocal monitors sounded a little fuzzy but the monitors sounded like crap in the first place.

One thing I cant explain - I did some 4ch at Wakarusa last year and for three diff sets recorded from the exact same spot I used very different delays. Up to 15 ms difference between some of the sets.
Maybe SPL level affects it...PBS was way louder than Cornmeal for instance.

My preferred method (thank you frtower for showing me this)
Open Wavelab Audio Montage
Add two stereo tracks in files tab
in clips tab you can adjust start time of sbd channels (add ~1 ms per foot to sbd), gain... etc
Put in some fades with the volume envelopes and render...you are done

[BayTaynt3d]

One thing I cant explain - I did some 4ch at Wakarusa last year and for three diff sets recorded from the exact same spot I used very different delays. Up to 15 ms difference between some of the sets.

Was it outside? If so, wind can play a serious role, gets all crazy phasy and whatnot. Was it really windy one day and not the other?

Also, another thing I've learned from doing tons of matrices, is I actually usually prefer the soundboard to be a tiny (TINY!) bit earlier than the ambient. Sometimes, when you get the AUD and SBD perfectly aligned, say by matching a sharply identifiable waveform b/w sources, just the slightest tweaks can cause real phasy weirdness. I've found if you bring the tighter SBD source just a tiny bit ahead of that crazy area of phasiness, it really opens up and sounds sweet. I guess my main point is that I've found that absolute perfect alignment isn't always what sounds best, so keep that in mind.

[dmonkey]

Nice discussion. Thanks for the Vegas recommendation. I'll have to check it out. I've been using Audition lately, but I'm always open to better ways of doing things.