Original subtitles

In the last video we had a look at saturation and using it to create little

pockets of frequency density to allow us to rebalance sounds and almost use it

in the same way as we'd use EQ to try and separate things out, declog areas

create kind of little areas of frequencies and sounds to help the mix

of the speakers and be a bit more full of life.

Now we're going to have a look at another use of saturation which is

it's just another by -product of saturation really.

We're going to do that in context of this Tech House style track. Now, this

track I made for the Producing Tech House series on Groove3. So if you like

kind of music and you like the sound of the track, then definitely go and check

that out.

So what we're going to do now, we're going to use Decapitator again to create

sound which has a higher RMS versus peak.

Now, this is especially important for drums because obviously we have really,

really loud transients and loud peaks in our drum sounds.

Then we're going to hit our... ceiling of 0 dB full scale quicker than if those

peaks are slightly tamed and the RMS is higher.

So the tail, the sustain of the sound is louder in comparison to the peak.

That's how compression works. We all know that. If you're not sure what I'm

talking about in terms of compression, then read up on that because that's an

important principle to understand.

But in the same way as compression allows us to bring down the peak, bring

the sustain, or it could allow us to actually increase the peak or the

transient. and bring down the sustain, but a lot of time with compression we're

trying to tame peaks and bring up RMS.

Saturation can have the same effect and can actually do it in a more transparent

way in some ways, or maybe not even transparent, in some ways it actually

the sound bigger, fuller, larger than life in the same ways we saw in the last

video, but it has the byproduct of also taming the transient and bringing up the

sustain. Let me demonstrate.

Now let's have a quick blast of the track.

So let's have a look at this clap sound.

So I'm going to bring in Decapitator.

Now what I'm going to do with this, or what Decapitator is going to do is

some kind of audio magic for me, because we're going to be able to increase the

perceived volume of this clap without actually increasing the peak volume of

Let me demonstrate what I mean. So I'll just dial in some parameters. I'm going

to put the punish mode on, so this is going to be quite extreme overdrive.

low cut it a little bit, increase a bit for the brightness.

because it's a clap sound we want that to come through a little bit now i'm

going to mix this in in parallel i'm going to keep the output quite low okay

let's just bypass it

okay so let's have a

look at our peak level here

So with decapitator in, we're peaking at minus 15.

And with it off,

we're

peaking at minus 13. Once again, minus

15,

minus 13.

Okay, so now focus on how much louder the clap feels.

So that means to say that this clap sound is now in terms of peak level two

decibels quieter than it was but in terms of perceived level it's far far

so we could actually kind of bring this down even further

we're actually losing some of our kind of compression or suppression of the

transient because I'm bringing down the mix control.

Now we're even higher, minus 16.

So it's 3 dB quieter, but obviously much louder in terms of perceived level. Now

this is an extreme setting, so I don't have to have the punish on.

But listen to all that extra level I've got without there actually being any

extra level. So the next challenge is to fine tune this so it isn't too hard,

you know, and it kind of works in the context of the track. Now, it's good to

this in parallel a lot of the time because that means you can maintain the

transient as it is. So what you're really doing is just dialing in a load

extra sustain energy, which allows the track to come through more in the mix.

that's just a fantastic demonstration of that.

Let's have a look at the hat sound here.

Actually, let's choose this hat because that one already sounds quite crunchy.

So you can hear, again, that hat is coming out of the mix so much more, but

there's no real change in level. I think it was slightly louder, maybe a dB, but

if I actually gain match that, or volume match that exactly, then I'm sure

you'll find, again, we'll be saving ourselves peak energy.

Okay, so let's try taking all our drums, and we'll put them to a bus,

and let's try a little bit of bus processing for this.

Let's just try...

using radiator so again this is going to be saturating the

drums I'll do it with the mix control down and bring it in

So we're getting it a little bit louder but all that extra volume we're getting

out

I mean it is louder so it's going to come out a little bit more but it's not

just volume it's adding extra harmonic to the drums creating life and vibe in

the drums

because I've EQ'd this again taking that little bit of bass and boosting

slightly the treble I'm kind of tilting the drums or tilting the radiator output

which we're mixing in to be favoring the high frequency slightly so it's kind of

bringing out and decluttering again that low mid area helping kind of the bass

sit a little bit better because the drums are being taken away from there a

little bit so you can see again another use of saturation different style of

music but still works perfectly so enabling us to tame our transients,

our sustains, increase our RMS.

When you come to mastering your track at the end of it, you're going to thank

yourself if you try and do this as much as possible.

Subtly, a little bit goes a very long way. You don't want to overdo saturation

because the mix will just fall apart.

So you've got to be really, really mindful when you're doing it. Just

bits here and there. And by the end of it, you'll have a mix which has got a

really nice, warm kind of feel to it.

And I don't mean that in a kind of negative way. If you're looking for a

kind of punchy mix, that's fine.

But it's going to have that kind of density to it that you get with analog

emulations and saturation.

And this is why when digital first came in, in the kind of 80s and 90s, all the

engineers hated it because they didn't get anything back from it. It was just a

true representation of sound.

Whereas when we had analog gear before that, and obviously now we're still

analog gear now, these plug -in emulations, they bring in extra

from the kind of degradation of the signal. It's the limitation of the

itself. But actually our ear likes the fact that it brings in these slight

imperfections to the sound and that's what saturation is. So what we're trying

to do is inject a little bit of that principle using these plugins to create

extra harmonic, tame transients, create nice big fat waveforms. And as I said,

when it comes to mastering, it's a far easier job than trying to limit the hell

out of everything at the end because you've got all these crazy transients

very low RMS.

Okay, so that's saturation.

In the next video, we're going to have a look at some of the spatial effects in

the sound toys bundle.

Thanks for watching.