[sdiy] delaylines

[charlie lamm]

General thoughts about mixing acoustic with synthesizer:

--Sometimes "smaller" or "thinner" patches work better than bigger ones.
Sometimes big/fat patches may sound cool all by themselves, but tend to
muddy up the mix.  If possible use MIDI and then experiment during the mix.

--When trying to un-muddy a mix, panning often is your friend.  Try
using mono sources panned hard away from phantom center, or stereo sources
panned L = phantom center R = hard right, etc.  To put it another way:
panning acoustic one way and synthesizer another may help you.  Listen to
other mixer's work and see if their ideas work for you.

--Think about frequency content.  A cymbal has a lot of high frequencies
and may not work as well when mixed in with a patch that also has
high frequencies.

--Use recording equipment that doesn't murder phase, and be careful of
phasing issues in general.

--Dogdoo in, dogdoo out.  If you didn't do a good job recording your
syntheszier and/or acoustic instrument, you probably aren't going to able
to fix it in the mix.  Good mics, DI's, and pre's help.  In general, if
you are on a budget (most of us are), 414's are good bang for the buck;
I also like the Aphex project studio stuff.  If you can rent good stuff
(U87's, U47's etc, Avalon DI's, etc) for an important recording you
should.

--Stay away from crappy AD/DA like early ADAT.  Bad AD/DA makes mixing
harder from my experience.

--Carefully listen to mixes of the music you like with headphones, and
steal the ideas the mixer used.  That's probably what the mixer you like
did.




On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Dave Krooshof wrote:

> Hi list,
>
> When mixing synths with acoustic instruments, a problem arises.
> Synths tend to become a unreal layer on top, that does not connect
> to the other instruments.
> Applying a springreverb helps a bit, adding a room/hall
> reverb helps more.
> For my bass synth, I'm looking for a delayline with more
> output moments, so I can make a virtual "source and reflextions"
> system.
> I need a few short delays to emulate source-mic distance
> and a few longer ones to emulate source-wall reflections.
>
> My questions are:
> - What do you do to blend your synth in a mix with
> acoustic instruments?
> - Are there chips on the market that have a delayline
> with 8 or 10 outputs on variable points in the delayline?
>
> DAve
>
>