part two: Okay so I just got to an instrument with a table with crazy panning including center, FUCK chopping that up. I think I'll just consolidate instruments like that to their own stereo tracks instead.

I just record in through my board, I use overdrive occasionally and light reverb from the board, I randomly use both additive and subtractive eqing, but other than that, direct in and render out, I've been making electronic music for about 16 years now, with the gameboys, I just like to keep it as close to the original as possible, I just like how the hardware sounds by itself unprocessed, but that's just me...

Bumping to say that threads like this have really helped me lately. I just finished up a release of material and I decided to kick it up a little bit by also releasing a "deluxe" version of it as well at the same time, but this version will be multitracked and feature live instrumentation as well. I mixed one of the chip songs with one of the old live demos and figured I just had to do it at least for my own sanity.

BUT ANYWAY, multitracking is definitely looking good-the waveforms ARE easier to line up than I had originally thought! One question though, when you guys multitrack, are you then taking each of the four channels and making mono tracks for each placement in the stereo field?

Example A, the way I thought most people do it. 4 stereo tracks::

• PU1.

• PU2

• WAV

• NOI

or Example B, something that I'm toying with myself. 12 mono tracks:

• PU1 (L), PU1 (center), PU1 (R).

• PU2 (L), PU2 (center), PU2 (R).

• WAV (L), WAV (center), WAV (R).

• NOI (L), NOI (center), NOI (R).

As has been mentioned before - use a noise reducer. Most modern DAWs have one built in but it's often not too precise. That being said, I've only used it when recording from non-prosounded GBC (big mistake) and on noise channels (which seem to be the noisiest between triggers unless you throw a Kxx in there).

Rawness is one of the reasons that using hardware one-ups software, imo. It gives a recording character as long as it doesn't upstage composition.

For my FM release (Trenchvent) i did some weird stuff.  i wanted to try and get creative with the recording process after hearing Gabe Liberti from 2PP talk at 8static.  one thing i thought about was stereo imaging effects.  i like the sound of stereo imaging - but usually it's too drastic.  so, i doubled up the genesis track - hard panned one that is chorusified and took all the bass out.  the hard panned one is in the mix really low.  some ableton saturator on the main sega track.  some of the DX100 leads were doubled (sorta like punk guitar overdubbing) and i used a bunch of delay effects on there.  used my boss delay pedal to recorded some weird out of time delay stuff on the more etherial stuff like Cyboshellfish.  I also ran the some of the leads through my Roland Jazz Chorus amp (only used a slight bit of chorus from there).  I had a lot of noise in some of the tracks like Antibiotics Bitch (but i actually don't really mind it too much - i think it sounds pretty cool listening to the VDP chunk away sometimes - so i only edited it out in spots).  Most of the tracks have a limiter on on the overall to make it sound like it's punching you in the face.  I stayed away from straight  compression on most things because i think people sorta overdue that a lot.  I just wanted to chop the tops off the transients a bit.   Basically i wanted a gritty, raw, dirty sound so i tried some different shit.  There was some other crap but i can't remember right now.

Not done the prosound mod yet (I have the parts, I'm just lazy).   So X-Noise is a godsend.  Works well on my C64C too. Well...pretty much anything really. Even my Joe Meek compressor which has got a bit buzzy since I replaced the AC/AC wall wart

iZotope Ozone ALL THE WAY

Izotope RX over a prosounded DMG.
Random introduced me to this awesome tool.
If you go too hard on it you will notice removal artifacts, but if you don't, it's magical.

I have prosunded gameboys and the noise still bothers me on multi tracks. Maybe im hoping for too much.

What noise removal stuff do you use? Waves xnoise is nice but its easy to wreck the sound of the game boy using it.

yeah pro-sound helps or just noise removal on each track before mixing.

@Herr_prof: prosound.  I do not notice noise at all in my mixes, no noise gate.

multitrackers -  how do you deal with the noise floor buildup?

I multitrack everything lately, synced manually to a reference point at the beginning and end of each track.
I have only had sync problems with songs 7:00+ minutes long w/ lots of tempo changes, but it worked well in the end.  MIDI is not needed.
This has been very fruitful, it allows for lots of tweaking.

this.