Tag Archives: technical

Finalization: Audio Mastering Template for Ableton Live

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 I recently had the pleasure to provide a “Mastering Masterclass” via The Music Production Club. In preparing for it, I decided to craft an audio mastering template using Ableton Live native effects only that is up to the same standards as my own personal “Tasty Mastering” workflow (which has seen continual evolution in use on many professional mastering jobs).

 This rabbit hole (like most projects) ended up consuming more time than initially anticipated, partially due to honing protocols for implementations of fresh features that all PerforModule packs are gradually being updated with (macro variations, xyz control, consistent styling, etc). But it’s done now!

 𝑭𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒛𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 is a self-installing Effects Pack and Template Set for Ableton Live Suite 12.4.1+.

 It includes seven bespoke custom effect racks, each meant for a specific purpose in regards to audio finalization and optimized for the highest-quality fidelity and most tasteful results possible. You’re not meant to use every single effect for every mastering job — but amongst the tools provided are all the capabilities towards such ends that one might ever need.

 𝐕𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐫.         Smooth out top end sharpness.
 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐄𝐐.  Unique multichannel EQ.
 𝐓𝐫𝐢-𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐒𝐩𝐥𝐲𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫.    Next-level effects layering.
 𝐖𝐨𝐨𝐟.         Low cut and boost duties combined.
 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐀𝐮𝐱 𝐒𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐇.    Auxiliary density injection.
 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫.       Inflator clone using Ableton’s Saturator.
 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭.      Seamlessly blend MS and LR Limiting.


 A Template Live Set is included for efficient audio finalization, pre-loaded with the effects, replete with Parallel Pressure auxiliary routing and an A/B comparisons keyboard shortcut.

 For more detailed information feel free to peruse the Device Stat Blocks and User Manual.

 𝑭𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒛𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 is available for $25 $10
— being on promotion until the end of September at a hefty –$15, bringing the total down to ten smackaroonies.
 Use code FINALITY to scoop the discount!

 Ten bucks for an insanely sick mastering workflow with advanced functions that uses barely any CPU? Aw yeah!

 Purchase the Finalization Ableton Live Pack via LemonSqueezy.

 …in Other News…

 I was honored to be the audio and video editor for a Music Production Podcast episode featuring Dennis DeSantis as the guest. You know, one of the people who helped design Ableton Live. Here’s the link to the page about it.
 What an awesome, heady conversation!

Drum Enhancerz Two Released + Drum Enhancerz One Updated!

by in DynaMixing, Linx and tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

I’m happy to announce the release of the brand-new effects pack Drum Enhancerz Two, as well as a fresh update to the classic original Drum Enhancerz pack. This update took quite a lot of time and energy, but was quite fun to accomplish.

Drum Enhancerz One: $20.

Drum Enhancerz One (originally released a decade ago) includes updates to style, function, and documentation.

It includes racks which are calibrated for sculpting specific drum elements. Included are:

Enhance Cymbals
Enhance Kicks
Enhance Overheads
Enhance Snares
Enhance Toms


Each rack includes 8 macro controls for sculpting your drum sounds with ease.
A few of the capabilities are…
-plush control for smooth cymbals.
-smack control to add top attack to kicks.
-smash: go-to overhead compression.
-pitch-matched resonance for boomy toms.

The new version for Live 12 includes updates to style, documentation, and function.

Functional updates include two new devices: 𝐊𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐠𝐞𝐧 and 𝐊𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐕𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐫; woohoo!

Kick Subgen is, frankly, badass, and i’ve used it a ton on mixes whilst behind the scenes in development. The official description: “An easy and tasteful method to generate sub content based on the input signal to reinforce and solidify your low end. It down-shifts and overdrives a parallel lowpass resonance.”

Kick Varifier is a niche thing which is only expected to be used occasionally. It came from my organic music background, being somewhat turned off by stale, repetitive kicks in some electronic music. It allows you to add a touch of subtle variation to individual kick hits (or any audio element) in rhythmically timed intervals.

Other inclusions to the update are Macro Variations, frequency values adjusted to more optimal values based on recent years’ intensive research, cpu streamlined where possible, loudness and tone re-balanced for relative all-purpose usability, and — for Push users, X & Y Controls given default assignments.

Purchase Links:
Drum Enhancerz One at Isotonik.
Drum Enhancerz One at Gumroad.

Drum Enhancerz Two: $20.

Drum Enhancerz Two is the brand-new pack that i’ve been working on. It includes seven Tuned Enhancer effect racks fine-tuned for specific drum instruments and also implementing all the latest Live 12 quality-of-life features. It includes:

Tuned Kick Enhancer. 
Tuned Tom (Floor) Enhancer. 
Tuned Tom (Low) Enhancer. 
Tuned Tom (Mid) Enhancer. 
Tuned Tom (High) Enhancer. 
Tuned Snare Enhancer.
Tuned Cymbal Enhancer.


Each provides the ability to tonally sculpt standard drum types with enhancement points carefully chosen based on deep research into optimal drum element frequency curves.

For example, the Tuned Snare Enhancer will provide boost points perfect for a satisfying wallop and thwack typical of nicer-sounding snare drums. Etc…

Artist-Based Macro Variations.
Each of the Tuned Drum Enhancer racks includes some macro variations that are mimicking the tonal focus points of choice drummers in select songs.  As one quick example, you might move your snare sound more closely towards the tasty low-end thump of Al Jackson’s snare from Al Green’s timeless piece Let’s Stay Together.

Purchase Links:
Drum Enhancerz Two at Isotonik.
Drum Enhancerz Two at Gumroad.

Drum Enhancerz Bundle: $30.

The Drum Enhancerz Bundle is also available, to grab both packs for ten bucks off!
Drum Enhancerz Bundle at Isotonik.
Drum Enhancerz Bundle at Gumroad.

Many thanks to Push Patterns for the new video about the packs!

ᴏɴʟy ʜᴜᴍᴀɴ ᴡʀɪᴛɪɴɢ ɪꜱ ɪɴᴄʟᴜᴅᴇᴅ ɪɴ ᴛʜɪꜱ ʙʟᴏɢ ᴩᴏꜱᴛ.
~`~

Magic Numbers: Rounded Fractions

by in Tute and tagged , , , | 3 Comments

🧠Memorizing Sucks.
As audio engineers, certain numerical values become often-used and thus can become useful to memorize. If you suck at memorizing stuff like me, graphs and charts can be helpful.

~`~

🎛0—127.
In Ableton Live and other programs, range values are often scaled from 0 to 127, rather than 0 to 100. So it can be useful sometimes to know certain fractional values to type in (either mathematically perfect for extreme precision, or rounded values for quick input).

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Tempo Dynamics

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When applying dynamic effects, we are rarely going to need the entire timing ranges available, depending on the tempo, right? The new Tempo Dynamics pack provides go-to racks with minimum and maximum values hard-wired to ranges most potentially useful, given the chosen tempo — avoiding values that are likely too fast or too slow to be helpful.

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Ableton Live 11 Key Map Guide & Template by PerforModule

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The PerforModule Key Map Template for Ableton Live 11: mapping computer keyboard keys to as many potentially helpful functions as practical.
[Note: if you’re on Live 12 now, maybe hold off on downloading this perhaps for the moment, since i’m working on a new keymap template for Live 12. Feel free to steal some of the ideas from this post in the meantime, though!]

The Template

There are three parts to the template:
•a Live Set pre-loaded with the recommended key mappings,
•a Diagram showing color-coded key functions, and
•a Spreadsheet listing custom-mapped and built-in key mappings, also explaining some quirks.

~`~

Mosey on over to this dropbox folder to download the Key Map Template Live Set, Key Map Plan Diagram, and Spreadsheet Guide. Read on for nauseatingly meticulous details below.

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Free Loudness Meter VSTs

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“WTF are Loudness Units?” you may ask. Well, they are simply a measure of loudness, just like decibels.
One LU actually is equivalent to one dB. However, an important difference is that Loudness Units are “shaped” according to the human ear’s proclivity to hear certain frequencies more easily than others. Effectively, LUs tend to feel more consistent to our brains than dB will when measuring varying frequency content, and therefore LU meters are preferable to use (compared to, say, RMS meters) for assessing the overall loudness of music.

Below are shown six free LU (aka Loudness Unit) meters, listing features of each. The most important value when matching the loudness of songs is IL (Integrated Loudness), which is the average loudness over the entire course of given time (with very quiet material gated out).

These devices are available as VST effect plugins for any capable VST host (such as Ableton Live, for example).

~`~

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Dither Presets for Metal

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(intro)

It’s a set of free presets for Dither, optimized for the Metal genre.

They were made for the mastering of the upcoming metal album, Lust & Insecurity by Animus Invidious.

Noise-shaping dither algorithms are theoretically optimized to “bury” the noise in the frequencies you hear least, while avoiding so much in the preeminent tonalities (in this case, distorted electric guitars focused around 2.5kHz).

Download

You can DOWNLOAD HERE and open the .fxp presets using your DAW of choice. If you happen to use Ableton Live 11, you can additionally access the .adg Racks which allow for more easy snapping-to or fine-tuning of the intensity value.

⚠️ You are also going to need to grab the free TB_Dither_v3 VST2 plugin if you don’t have it already, which has been graciously set free amongst a slew of other awesome legacy TB plugins.

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Parallel-Friendly Native FX Racks for Live 10+: “ParallAux”

by in Innov and tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Which Effects Work Best In Parallel?

So one day i got it in my head to figure out which of Ableton Live’s Effects are the best to use in parallel.

What is the criteria for this? Simply, which processes alter the phase of audio passing through them, either to the least degree, or in a nicely summable way.

Why does this matter? Because phase offsets, when summed in parallel with the original signal, will inevitably cause changes to the frequency contour. Sometimes slight amounts of this phase offset can add a nice creamy touch to the sound of things (and pretty much all analog gear causes it to some degree), but when being surgically technical like during the finalizing stages of a track, they are generally just not helpful.

An example of not altering phase at all is Live’s Compressor effect which is phase-neutral; it can be used safely in parallel with no unwanted frequency coloration whatsoever.

An example of altering the phase in a “nicely summable” way is Live’s Reverb. Technically, it’s altering the phase a whole bunch, but it’s doing so in a time-smeared fashion which results in far less likelihood of perfectly-lined-up frequency cancellations, and so, when at 100% wet, reverbs can be just fine to use in parallel, and are often preferred this way.

After carefully checking the phase response of all of Ableton Live Ten’s native Audio Effects, i came up with five distinct racks providing combinations of the most parallel-friendly native effects, optimized for specific purposes with maximal versatility of application.

~`~

>Check Out ParallAux via Isotonik Studios<

>Download ParallAux PDF Manual<

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