Man from Space - Synth Pop - "Ugly Heart (feat. Huong Su)"

Music Production Track Feedback
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So here I am, with new stuff at last… and new challenges I’m unsure about. This time: vocals.

This time the whole track has been written from the ground up with the vocalist in mind, and this time I tried to make two things right:

  • Make her voice sound bigger, wider, more spacey than in previous attempts.
  • Give the lyrics a much more straightforward rhythm, trying to be catchy.

I think it sounds great… but I am also conscious that my experience writing and mixing vocals is exactly 3 songs long.

And here it is…

EDIT: Credit where credit is due: the singer is doing a much better job too, both on the artistic and on the technical side of recording and I appreciate her effort.

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Hey there @nachenko

Just catching up with latest track feedback here on the forums, so I’ll probably have to come back to it with fresh ears but my first impression is that the vocals are sitting above ( in Up & Down mixing space reference ) and too much spread. The drums are taking over at the moment for me. Have to listen via headphones as well, just went through it on monitors for now. Vocals seem to fit better when listening in mono but still the drums are too loud for the vocals for me.

Now I’ll be honest, my real issue when listening to this song is that vocals & music are sounding out of tune to me, I know it’s probably wanted and it works after a few listening but found it really weird during the 1st listen.

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Thanks for listening!

I let this sleep for two days and read your comment, and this gave me a new perspective about things that could do better. I still don’t know for sure what to do next, but the things you are having problems with happen to be the things I’m most unsure about, so at least I know where to look at. As usual, your help as “educated fresh listener” helps me focus.

I took action using your feedback as starting point for “where to look at”:

I asked the singer for a new recording, pointing out that although not being exactly in key can give a certain style and attitude, in some places it went a bit too far. Once you pointed it out, it yells at me every time I listen to it.
I reduced volume and removed a bit of the FX in the “Korg layer” of the drums. I’m pretty sure the overprocessed Korg Gadget drums are what is popping too much.
I reduced the reverb and the stereo spread of the vocals. They don’t lose presence, but they have less processing now. I may have been abusing reverb and stereo spread for the vocal track.

I uploaded a new version for now and I’ll wait until the singer sends me the new recordings.

Thanks!

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Still need to go through it another time and using headphones as well as monitors, but yes you might be on point with the drums being too much processed since the vocals are quite good sounding apart from the huge stereo spread.

And yep, understood that the vocals where slightly out of keys on purpose but to me it’s a bit too drastic in this version.

I’ll keep an eye and 2 ears on it as it evolves :wink: but you already have good results and you’re improving your mixing significantly IMHO, still using & diving into Ozone for it ?

Cheers !

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Thanks! Yes, still using Ozone 9 in standalone mode. It lets me detach the last step from the rest of the process, so when I’m in Ableton i’m focused in sounding good, not loud. Still, I struggle a lot to find the right balance. I just keep trying.

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Sweeet. It has a quite “realistic” early 80s sound. Well done.

I’d like a bit more clarity on the vocals. A tiny bit more sidechain compression on the stereo effects against the raw vocal probably would do it without losing that wideness. And they could be louder. And on the kick there is a quiet but recognizable high click, like wet lip smacking.

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Thanks, @kuchenchef. I’m waiting for the singer to re-record the vocals, but in the meantime I tried having a clearer vocal track, so:

  • I tried using your suggestion about sidechaining the reverb, which is something I never tried before, BTW, and it seems to make the trick. It helps with the clarity. Never thought of that.
  • Besides that, I piped all instrumental tracks into its own bus and I turned down certain frequencies competing with the vocals (around 900Hz, for example). Something subtle, around 3dB, but it seems to leave some extra room to the vocals.

Oh, and this:

And on the kick there is a quiet but recognizable high click, like wet lip smacking.

Man, you have the sharpest ear in this forum. It’s very, very subtle, but now I can’t get rid of it inside my mind! I’ll attack this issue tomorrow.

Thanks!

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Si si, that sidechaining reverbs and delays against the dry vocal is doing wonders. You can have clarity and yuuuge space at the same time. Also when you modulate the volume of the dry input signul to the compressor you can do really trippy stereo effects.

For the smack on the kick, I find that this type of kick does it a lot. You hear that lip smacking kick even on professional productions from the 80s. Just open Depeche Mode’s Master and Servant or Yazoo’s Only You on Youtube. I found a bit of success in using a de-esser on the dry kick before any other effect and sidechaining hihats and bass against the kick. It’s a very minor issue but, as you say, once you hear it, it’s hard to ignore it.

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EDIT: Something went terribly terribly TERRIBLY wrong. The stereo image is completely screwed up. I don’t know what the hell happened, I will have to check tonight.

EDIT2 : Fixed. And fuck Korg. I removed its entire drum track. Overprocessed shit is for dummies.

If you don’t mind, I’ll put here a new version of the track. The big difference between the two version is: before/after Sonarworks. I got Sonarworks for headphones a few days ago, and I tweaked a second EQ in OZONE just before Maximizer and Sonarworks plugin to address for the differences Sonarworks plugin exposes.

EDIT 3: Link removed

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Got this usual “This track was not found. Maybe it has been removed…Learn More” message with this link, maybe it needs an update if you made changes & had to re-upload the track ?

Was also reading this and I’m not sure to understand the logic behind this :

Why an additional EQ to address what Sonarworks is changing ? Sonarworks doesn’t really aim at exposing issues, it just applying a corrective EQ at the very last step to optimize your headphone and your own listening, you need to bypass Sonarworks before doing any audio rendering, because other people won’t listen to the track on the same Headphone. The same goes with the studio edition & monitors BTW.

So why this EQ to compensate what Sonarworks is doing ? Or maybe I got it wrong :blush:

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OK, last week was the “screw everything you can and embarrass yourself along the way” week for me, sorry for the inconveniences.

  • I installed Sonarworks and tested it with an almost finished track. Very wrong, my brain was screwed by the sudden change of EQ in a familiar environment for a track I’ve been listening to non-stop for two weeks.
  • Besides that, the Systemwide didn’t automatically take my audio interface as output, despite being the default one. It was correcting the iMac’s speakers at first.
  • Anyway, if you want Ableton to use Systemwide correction, you need to set Sonarworks Systemwide as Master output. Sending the output to the audio interface won’t do the trick. I just thought something went wrong with the install, as I also have Loopback installed messing with the audio route.
  • So after scratching my head as to why it doesn’t work, why some things sound different while others don’t, I tried using the plugin instead, and funny enough, Ozone’s bypass switch doesn’t actually bypass this plugin (amazing bug, Ozone, thank you), so when on rendering, I needed to deactivate it INSIDE the plugin.
  • Besides that, did you know there’s a small “render to mono” switch in Live near… anyway, I spent a day feeding mono sources to Ozone, which then went to the Stereo Image plugin, then to Sonarworks, and I was wondering “why does it sound so dull” for two days?
  • Oh, and SoundCloud screws up private links from time to time if you do harmless things such as editing the title. Awesome.
  • Icing to the cake: I also discovered my backup drive has been broken for three months, and not a single backup has been made in those three months.

Not bad for a week, uh?

Bottom line: I removed Sonarworks for this project, I’ll start using on a fresh project. I reworked the whole mix. I uploaded it to Soundcloud (the initial public link) and I’ll let this sleep for three days, which I will spend deep in a cave in silence, full of shame.

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That’s a tumultuous week indeed… :weary:

  • Some tips & hints about Sonarworks Reference 4 ( General tips for both Windows & MacOS based on my own experience ).

I did have some issues with Sonarworks not working after the first installation or some updates from time to time ( mostly on Windows 10 since I’m using a Hackintosh, can’t remember to have issues on the MacOS side of things, at least with the most recent versions, it wasn’t working that smoothly at the beginning ). On Windows it’s mainly due to the way audio & audio drivers are handled. If you feel it’s not working correctly, I recommend to do a clean Reference 4 uninstall, clean up your registry, reboot your PC and run a new install.

Also if you have ASIO4ALL audio drivers installed, it can really gives you some issues with Sonarworks. Basically their new versions are now targeting Windows WDM Audio Drivers and ASIO Drivers from Sound Cards Manufacturers. To get the best out of Sonarworks and use it in your DAW, you need to restart the app in ASIO mode ( at least one time ). If your sound card comes with built in ASIO drivers their will be the ones seen & targeted by Sonarworks.

During a recent Sonarwoks update, I had issue with the application not starting automatically and not activating my profile preset matching my sound card. It turned out that I had ASIO4ALL installed with the demo version of FL Studio, because I didn’t uncheck the “Install FL in ASIO mode” option from FL installer. Had to uninstall ASIO4ALL & the FL Studio ASIO version, uninstall Sonarworks, clean up the registry using CCLEANER or manually using “Regedit” if you feel comfortable, reboot, make a new install of Sonarworks and then everything was working fine.

Now if you rely on ASIO4ALL for audio drivers and need to have it, it’s probably gonna give you troubles.

There’s also a difference if you’re running Sonarworks in ASIO or Windows WDM audio drivers mode, I think it changes the ability to see Sonarworks System Wide as an available audio device inside your DAW.

Anyway, I suggest to browse their blog & support pages, they have some topics about all of this but in a nutshell the best configuration is to use it in ASIO mode with the built-in audio drivers from your sound card manufacturer and getting rid of ASIO4ALL.

Once the application works, it should be a “set & forget” process, you create a preset selecting your audio source and which headphones calibration profile to apply to it and it should set System Wide to use this by default each time you boot your computer. In some cases you could have the app not showing up, or stay inactive ( greyed icon & unable to access the right click menu from Windows running processes tool bar ), if it happens, start Windows Task Manager and you’ll see several instances of processes related to Sonarworks, kill them manually and Sonarworks will close and then reopen it. Same story if you find yourself with no sound anymore, but this time you can just close Sonarworks from the app and reopen it.

Those are the quirks & headaches I came across with Reference 4, but they have really improve since the start IMO.

  • Using it in your DAW : I only use the Ref.4 Plug-In, you simply need to remove it or bypass it before rendering. Using System Wide as the audio out device inside your DAW is an alternative, but it wasn’t meant to work that way and Sonarworks also recommends to use the Plug-In in your DAW.

And YESSS, the listening experience is very very surprising at the beginning, and I can tell you that’s it’s even more drastic with monitors, but even on headphones. That’s also why they have that Dry/Wet Mix feature on the Plug-In, it can avoid to have this drastic change comparing to simply enabling/by-passing the Plug-In.

All in all, it’s really just a matter of time and listening, once you have System Wide as your default audio device and using your headphones profile, get use to listen to music you know on Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube or even better any local high fidelity .wav audio files ( like audio ripped from a CD ), that will give you another listening experience than with your own music because your brain won’t focus & recall the long mixing hours you had with your own audio.

It’s really a matter of time and going trough this new listening habit, your brain needs to be re-programmed since your ears are not receiving the same signal anymore, can really takes a while, some people don’t get with any of those correction software because of this BTW, they are feeling “tricked & fooled” but honestly it’s just a mind-set thing. It’s not correcting your audio at all, it’s just improving what you can perceive & listen to and make better Mixing decisions.

It’s not a perfect solution but I really think it helps, it works better with MacOS Core Audio than on Windows, but that’s been a known OS issue for edges, it’s the main reason why I stick to the Mac side of things for anything audio so far. In your case if you also use Rogue Amoeba Loopback to perform some routing, it can also get a bit more complicated to setup, but you should be able to select “Loopback” as your main audio device within Ref.4. That’s why now having the option to make and switch “Presets” in Ref.4 is quite handy.

  • I’ll have a listen to the new track version with fresh ears in a while, I got a cold and was sick as a dog yesterday, got the feeling to listen to music with my head inside an integral motorbike helmet… Haha, getting better though.
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Back on this.

Just a quick reply to tell @Tekalight I took his advice on Sonarworks. I took “two weeks off” this mix and spent this time studying instead, then I put Sonarworks in place, but instead of applying it full swing, I started applying just a 30% correction, and then I reviewed and adjusted the whole mix applying what I learnt.

I think it makes more sense now, overall.

Thanks for the help.

1 Like
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Hey there @nachenko

Much more improvements since the 1st version IMHO. The new vocal performance definitely sits better with the song now, I remember founding the vocals too much out of tune before. Mixing wise, sounding with much more clarity as well and the vocals are well mixed, sitting good in the front which to me fits the genre.

Won’t go too much into details because I’m simply not listening on my usual setup, having a very “great” ( ironic ) 2021 start off. The PC probably felt that this year might not really improve over 2020, so it just decided to give up and when I thought it was the motherboard, it turns out that it’s the CPU… So waiting for another one & keeping fingers crossed since I had no choice than to buy 2nd hand components from eBay, it’s amazing how fast manufacturers are going, a bit more than 3 years and you can’t find brand new pieces of course and then the 2nd hand market is not very cheap either since sellers know that you’re going to face that kind of issue one day, unless you decide to build a complete new rig, which I don’t really need & want because the Hackintosh & Thunderbolt build to be able to use UA Apollo sound card and MacOS is quite a hassle to get right when choosing for components TBH.

But well, that’s part of the joy & pain when dealing with computers and especially custom rigs, let’s try to make it alive again & keep a positive mind :wink:

Cheers !