Korg Forums

[FranciscoArellano]

I played live for my first time last friday and the bassdrums of some of the songs I made sounded incredibly loud, saturating the sound. That started to happen after the first song, so I guess it was a problem of the sound system or the guy in charge of it in the bar, but also the first song of the four I played has complete less volume than the rest.

That being said, is there a sound level you would recommend me for the songs? I think the bassdrum of the songs that didn't go well were at 127 (max), so I'm thinking about decreasing the volume of the bassdrum of the songs that sounded too loud and also of the rest of the parts of them. But maybe the problem could be somewhere else.

Thanks in advance for your answers.
Francisco.

[troxx]

Hey Francisco,

What I tend to do is set the levels of each part to between 60-75, once I have parts created, then I can make incremental changes from there.

I rarely have sounds hitting max volume, as I'm conscious of clipping when the master volume is cranked, but that's just my way of working.

When I'm working in my DAW, I work the same way, by reducing all tracks to around -12db.

If you feel the volume is too low when playing live doing this, that's what the sound guy is for, to boost the level, if you whack everything at full volume, I don't think all the sounds are going to mix too well.
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EMX-1, Electribe 2, Electribe Sampler, Korg iOS

[FranciscoArellano]

[FreshHorses]

How are you monitoring when you write stuff? I ask because I did a lot of recordings with the EMX-1 using headphones, and when I put it on a regular stereo the bass was always way way too loud/ It also might be useful if you are gonna be playing live to have a small DJ mixer which you can adjust the bass level on.

[s3kn0tr0n1c]

Not emx1 (E2) but I had similar question just after getting one -

http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=650793&highlight=#650793
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www.soundcloud.com/sekonz

[FranciscoArellano]

Good idea about the dj mixer, I didn't think about that. Yesterday I decreased all part lvls -equally- but the sound isn't the same. Maybe the loud volume just made it sound cooler or whatever. Anyways, the sound is cleaner but I still feel something is missing. Maybe i'm not used to it. Kind of dissapointing that when I play my songs with my monitors is really different, but is an issue I read before in an interview of mistabishi, where he said that he usually played his songs on many different audio devices in order to get an equilibrium.

Thanks for your answers.
Francisco.

[thehighesttree]

You're right: sounds on these electribes tend to fight for space which can make some things sound distorted, but there's ways of balancing everything while keeping some of that character you want. When I'm trying to make everything fit and there's a part that bullies the audio signal, I look at the following adjustments in this order:

-Check all parts' volumes, seeing if small changes to the fussy part's level do the trick,
-KILL THE DRIVE! I find overdriving more than one or two parts will chew surprisingly hard into the "sonic bandwidth", so use it sparingly!
-Filter the "problem" part (ESX ONLY on drums!): unless you're already relying on filtering a sweet spot with high-resonence to boost your kick, you can take a little off the bottom end with slight HPF-ing, keep it single-digit and you might just trim enough fat to make everything sound clean, yet still low. Even though I said ESX-only, doing this to your low-end synth parts is also effective at clearing room for your kick.
-Don't forget to pan each part! Keeping a solid bass part at the centre, adjust everything else so that it's spread at least somewhat across the stereo field; the panning itself doesn't have to be much to make your parts re-emerge from the mud. This might be the best way to keep your kickdrum ugly the way you want it, yet more distinct since it has less competition.
-Make sure that you decide on a standard level for your tube gain, then don't deviate from this when you compose! If you keep it consistent, you can make *careful* tweaks to this knob to suit the setup you're playing through. Okay, this may not be completely ideal, but you can at least easily decide how dirty/muddy things ultimately come out, and you don't need any more gear to do so.



These boxes may be cheap and the signal dirty, but you can really learn a few things about audio engineering from those limitations! Try some of these out over different sets of monitors to see what results you can get.

[FranciscoArellano]

[weare303]

Cheers for all these tips guys, got an emx1 & and aes1 about six months ago, & trying to break down 30-40 loops into a live show. been finding driving everything to 127 is pushing things too far. even tho alot of presets seem to have this already. cheers again for the info.....